Taking Stock

It’s coming into Summer here in Melbourne. Freaking finally. This place has ridiculously long Winters, if you ask me!

And with the warm weather, comes a desire in me to have holidays. At the beach. Long ones.

Dromana Beach Houses, Summer 2009

I also step back and look at the year that was: have I lived into the two word intention I set for my year?

This year I chose healing and wholeness. Kind of cheating, since they are basically the same word.

But, as I say every year, this thing of choosing two words is very powerful. It gets to the core of us, so instead of setting external goals  like ‘I will lose weight’ or ‘I will save X amount’, we have these two words to judge all our choices against.

They are the ‘why’ instead of the ‘what’.

There is no point trying to lose weight, and you are quite likely to fail, unless you know why you are doing it: I want to be healthy so  I can see my children grow up.

Same with saving. Why bother? Unless you know what your real motivation is: I want to take care of my family/provide more space for my own creativity/build a financial cushion that will help me launch my own business.

So, with that in mind, let me tell you about my year!

I got sick. A lot. Weird, you might think, in a year meant to be for healing and wholeness. Well, not really.

The first time I got sick (lady troubles) I changed the way I worked: I cut back dramatically on how many classes I was teaching, and I started to think about sustainability. How could I continue to do this thing I love so much (teach yoga) without burning myself out and getting sick?

The answer? mm…Yoga! I quietly started asking other teachers to take over my corporate classes in the runup to my big trip to Europe. My absence during that trip would be a good test of whether the business could run as it should (i.e. without me).

The second time I got sick (food poisoning. Twice. In Europe) I had to actually stop working altogether. No more hour long sessions morning and evening, crouched over my iPhone, trying to find a new teacher because one had, how should  I put this, dumped me in the shit. While I was on the other side of the world.

So  I got to find out that mm…Yoga! could run on its own, and that would give me space – space to heal, to teach less so I could nurture myself and not just others, and space to write. To write a book… 

The third time I got sick (flu, then inner ear infection, interspersed with a house move) I got to realise that even if I am out of action for six weeks, which I effectively was, I will be safe and supported. This was a very healing realisation.

I also realised that I had people who would help me: not the people I expected, true, but there nonetheless. My partner’s parents came to take care of me: walking me to the toilet because I couldn’t get there on my own (losing all sense of balance is a real bitch!) and cooking weeks worth of food for us so that we would be nourished. I started crying when I saw that: nobody has ever done that for me before.

A part of healing, unfortunately, is also the shedding of scabs and pus and the things that cause illness.

I did a lot of that this year: I cut ties with my parents, so that I could speak up and speak freely about my childhood. I would never have been able to do that were I still in contact with them: the pattern of protecting them from the consequences of their actions just runs too deep.

I cut off all my hair: a symbolic shriving.

I lost friends too: turns out some of them just weren’t good for me, nor I for them. And I realised that some friendships have changed. This is sad, but it’s also just the cycle of life.

Healing needs renewal.

You can’t heal fully if whatever is causing the problem is still there. So that thing has to go.

Am I healed? Well, I am still coughing and convalescing from that last illness…

But I am a heck of a lot more whole than I was this time last year!

I wonder what next year’s words will be? I have no idea yet.

How’s your year been? Did you set intentions? Have you lived into them? And was it in the ways you expected?