Submit

This weekend I stopped by a familiar place where I worked for a year while we were getting settled back in the Dayton area years ago. I walked in with May Rose who was two months old when I started to leave her in Rich's care, only to walk through these doors and attend another morning meeting, rife with tension. The tension of a disjointed team permeated that conference room, but perhaps the more notable tension was my inner struggle. I remember so well the unrelenting questions: Shouldn't I be with May? What am I worth here, where I'm asked to put out fires with my hands tied behind my back?...Where I can't get to the job I was hired to do as I'm too busy trying to mediate the relationships between my staff and a rather narcissistic overlord of a manager? What can I contribute here, to this place and people whom I had anticipated I'd help to grow for years to come...until the day Rich and I found land to work for ourselves? And ultimately, the questions took a turn...why am I afraid of crossing the bridge I've come to?
Ultimately, I submitted. I submitted my notice and stepped onto the bridge, no longer resisting the feeling that it was time to move on. In fact, if I was going to burn out, I was going to do it with Rich, on some land, building a life for ourselves. No more locking myself away in my office, struggling to let down and pump enough milk for May due to an inordinate amount of stress. I had more to contribute elsewhere.
And so years earlier than planned (and sitting on a smaller nest egg than planned) we felt motivated more than ever to work for ourselves and to start the farm we had been dreaming up since meeting each other. The time was right, and who would have known? I know we did...and that collective confidence and gusto was all we needed.
I have a hard time letting go...alway have. And partnering up with Rich has been a great boon for me, because being with him is like being a student in his classroom of flow. He operates completely in the zone that he's in...napping when he is tired, spontaneously buying roller blades when he in an energetic spell and wanting to tear up the bike path. My habit of resisting going with the flow and instead expecting my best laid plans to come to fruition, it's exhausting and disappointing. When my body was struggling with autoimmunity a few years ago, I fought against it, maintaining high expectations of myself. Rich all the while, asked me to submit to it in not so many words...to rest, to sit on my tuffet, to let things go in the field or around the house. Sure enough, it wasn't until I was approaching being debilitated and our off-season began that I heeded his advice and rested and gave time to my yoga and healed. It was a reckoning year...and another lesson in following the flow.
While walking out of my old stomping grounds with May, I realized how grateful I am that we submitted. The place is rebuilding with new leadership and on its own path toward healing. And I am with my daughter, 6 years of her life measured on a wall in our farmhouse which we together make a home. On the grand trail of life, there are so many paths and crosspaths and shortcuts and long ways around. I am so glad we crossed the bridge, one which at times felt rickety en route to the other side. The other side :)...our patch of land where the kids learned to crawl and then walk and now climb to new heights in the trees outside of our windows.
Fighting the tide or suppressing intuition depletes the spirit and quite literally has made me unwell at points. Here's to more lessons in relinquishing control and allowing destiny to manifest. Here's to keeping open hearts and flexible minds. And here is to my Grandma who I love and who encouraged me to write and put something out this weekend :))). Love you Grams.
Thank you for reading :).
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