Feeling v. Filling

Good Sunday morning! My friend, "B", emailed me last night about how she decided to tune into her own innate wisdom instead of following the generic rigid diet a nurse at her endocrinologist's office handed to her. Her gut told her to be weary, and she's so happy she listened and has been able to make healthy eating and exercise decisions based on her body's signals instead of thinking someone else had the answer. Of course, we all need guidance from other resources, but be choosy about those resources! Even the experts could use a little fine-intuitive tuning.

I'm having the most lovely morning - lots of me time. After being on the fence about going to church or not (I needed some quiet time without dodging traffic around town), I decided to see where the morning took me. I got out of bed, had breakfast, checked emails, brewed coffee, then took an hour and a half nap while my coffee sat on the pot! Too late for church.

Then, I started reading Eating in the Light of the Moon by Anita Johnston again. So lovely and so nourishing. The specific passage that resonates with me this morning focused on the masculine/feminine, sun/moon, feeling/thinking, trusting/doing. Like my friend, "B", I'm definitely in a place that says "Come back to you - trust your gut!" And, that really means to focus on myself more - do more of my own "writing with the body" exercises to let my intuition and deep signals guide me daily.

For whatever issue (diet, exercise, job decisions, relationships), sometimes we feel the flurry of "ohhhhhhh, i don't know what to do, this person tells me xxxx, that person tells me xxxx" - You might want control, you might want the right answers for fear of making a mistake, yet I think that's a sign for us to get in tune with our own wisdom. We think it's not there, that everyone else knows the answers, but if we give ourselves the chance to feel it instead of think so much, we can figure it out. Yet, perhaps, sometimes there's nothing to figure out, and there lies a chance to honor emptiness or the unknown.

Last Monday, while I was at the pool enjoying Memorial Day, I read an article in Creative Loafing by a man who suffers from alcoholism. He closed his piece saying he has to honor that unknown and wonder of it all every single day to stay on his sober path. This reminds me of something we can all relate: Filling v. Feeling. Sometimes that "feeling" means feeling nothing or the emptiness or wonder that resides in all of us. It's kind of blank and icky, but it's necessary to honor instead of "filling" with emotional eating or compulsive exercise, alcohol or drugs, toxic people, or endless to-do lists.

Feeling what's there - whatever it is - can be the biggest challenge. Maybe there's a daily answer, maybe it's still open space. Maybe there's an action or decision to be made, maybe going with it and basking in the wide wonder is more of a gift than we can ever imagine.