the remedy for overwhelm is support

“The remedy for overwhelm is support” has been the driving message of life lately. This whole season I have felt four beats slower than the pace of the world around me. In every single way. My thoughts are slower to come, my physical actions and pace, how well and how quickly I am able to accomplish really anything at all… I find myself on the tail end of the line. Not in a negative “failing” kind of way, but truly just this noticing that I would be wise to honor and to allow myself the time and resources that my spirit is needing in order to be. And wouldn’t you know it, I am seeing the wisdom in this exact thought threaded through nearly every conversation I’ve had and all of the stories I’m witnessing.

This is the second year our daughter is bringing cows to the county fair. It’s a wild time, honestly. There is so much that goes into it. Months and months of working with the heifers to let them adjust to all she asks them to do, practicing every night on the ins and outs of how to be really good at showing off the animal at her side, highlighting their structural strong points, showcasing their positives, softening their faults, and shining attention onto how well overall these cows are built and how productive they will be in the herd. It’s a lot more than just walking a cow into a ring, I’ll say that. And with me juggling three little boys and all of my various things and general slower pace, in order for her to do this it has truly taken a team. It has taken (for me) relinquishing the belief that I must do all all on my own. We are so fortunate to have a village of family and friends that foster her desire to give this a go, to give her opportunity to learn from the experiences, and to make great friends along the way.

None of this would flow without lots of support and collaboration.

And how true this is for so many scenarios, yet how scarcely it seems that people are willing to acknowledge this truth.

This entire week in particular, this has been the blanketed theme across all peoples and places in my awareness. Whether we’re talking about the young kiddos and teenagers who are doing all they can to make sense of the world around them, mothers in the wilderness that it is to be raising up sweet and spicy little children, fathers carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders (often literally), men and women alike who are journeying the realities of physical ailments or diagnoses, or the wise women and men in their great-grandmother and grandfather years adjusting to the slower or different pace of life (like it or not, sometimes).

Overwhelm is a symptom of being under-supported.

Every single one of us, in all seasons of life, needs support.

One other thing stands true, too: We are continually called to adjust. We may feel that we’ve finally found the rhythm, and maybe even feel like the queen of the dance floor, and then, without warning or instructions, the music shifts and we’re asked yet again to re-find our footing. You know?

And in the re-finding, re-defining, or the overall exploration of what the freshness of current life is, it’s in our design to have social scaffolding that supports us to reorient ourselves as we find our way forward. It’s our biologic design, truly, to have a community. We are infinitely wise and capable herd animals that often deprive ourselves of the safety that is the herd, and then suffers the realities of solitude. Silly, yeah?

Support can come in so many flavors though.

It may be the random quiet in the afternoon, that just when your muscles start to ask for a rest, you are able to oblige and allow the floor or the bed or the couch to support you for a nice ten minute reset. Or maybe the feel of the breeze on your back, at just the moment you thought surely you might overheat, as you’re finishing your outside jobs. Maybe it’s literal monetary or exchange resources to bring into your possession the tools you need in order to accomplish that thing you’ve been working toward, or maybe it’s a friend showing up to do your dishes when she knows you’ve had a tough week.

Sometimes it’s all of the above.

What I’ve found to be true is that when we are under-supported, under-resourced, or feeling over-looked, we’ll often believe that we need so much more to recover ourself than we could even begin to ask for. When the reality is, like a little bit of water for a drooping flower, it doesn’t take much to perk back up.

I’m seeing it again and again and again.

How a nourishing conversation can bring a mother’s 10% battery life back to 100% in just an afternoon.

How gentle touch and warmth can soften the stiff, cold, stuck parts of our bodies in just a few moments.

How seeing with our own eyes that little bit of progress made can inspire and motivate us to accomplish the whole damn thing that we previously thought we couldn’t possibly get ahead on.

This is the shift I choose to focus my awareness on. Rather than watching a mother from afar and labeling her “overwhelmed” or “anxiety ridden” or “depressed” — see her need for support. Know that this is a symptom of solitude. A symptom that really highlights the fault in how modern people do life. That is, alone.

This too is the mission behind the work I offer to the world — the womb care sessions because, my lanta, the things women silently carry. The stories are unreal, you guys. Women are the toughest creatures I’ve ever met. The auntie circles because up and coming girls need mentors in really big ways, and I don’t mean “formal” professional, sterile mentors. I mean women who will share truth with them and allow them space to form their own thoughts and genuine questions on it all. Sacred Sister care because walking through the portal between maiden and mother was never meant to be a solo journey.

There is so so so so much to say, always.

My prayer for you, today, is to know and honor your self as a highly powerful being that is here on this earth to do incredible and unprecedented things, and that to allow yourself support is the opposite of weakness, in spite of what we’ve been told. Allowing yourself the support you need is to succumb to your innate design to be in community with the other very powerful and amazing people around you. That’s not to say there isn’t challenge embedded throughout. As they say, iron sharpens iron.

Banded together, loading the table with each of your varying, individual, yet equally beautiful gifts, brings nourishment to all.

May you have deep compassion for yourself through the process, and extend that compassion to even the pokiest of people around you, knowing that none of this began with them.

With so much love,

Gab