I also really enjoyed the chapter on discipline as this is something I am always trying to cultivate in my life. Donna says, “when we choose to stay with our practice despite the inevitable highs and lows in our lives, we are actively choosing to focus our awareness on that part of us that is unchanging.” As someone who is ruled by her emotions, this chapter and the chapter titled “the Riptide of Strong Emotions” were both inspiring and encouraging to me. I believe somewhere Donna says: “practice anyway”. That was my mantra that best connected me with my intention throughout this Yoga Training. I may feel uninspired, frustrated, distracted, depressed but I tell myself to practice anyway- in whatever capacity. I made it a goal to get on my mat even if it was just to sit for five minutes and check in.


I often wonder why it is so hard to do the things we know will bring us happiness, health, wealth, etc. Why are we so resistant to devoting ourselves to the things that we know will be good for us? Well, Donna does a great job at explaining why that resistance sticks around. She says in the chapter of “The Freedom of Discipline”, that “resistance to practice occurs when we have not yet formed a clear intention. Until we form a clear intention, we cannot rally our energy and align with our goal.”


On day one of this training, Kelsey asked us to form our intention, or rather let our intention arise during our meditation. I had already given this some thought and made notes about it in my training manual. There were lots of goals and aspirations- things like, “to dive deeper into my curiosity of yoga, to connect with others on the same path, to learn what I needed to be a teacher, to gain confidence, to be a guide, to serve, to embody a strong, steady and peaceful spirit.” Then during the meditation the word: “becoming” came to me and I knew that this is why I was here. To become the true version of myself, to continue the work of untangling the limits and lies and conditioning. To become the vision I hold for myself. To become united in body, mind and soul. To become the teacher and the student.


So daily I remind myself, to practice anyway and trust in the process of becoming. My yoga practice is evolving just as life itself is.

Coffee is brewing, but not fast enough for my liking. Last night was rough. 

We went to bed to the sound of our cat, Happy, “playing” with a mouse; although, I’m pretty sure the mouse wasn’t having much fun. I could be wrong, but something was telling me that this mouse knew what was up. We’ve learned to not intervene, because it only makes the process drag out longer. Instead we let nature do its thing and go about our business. We appreciate Happy for doing his cat duties, but just wished he could be more empathetic to the Mouse. And also more civilized. Why must he bring his dirty work inside the house and parade about like some egocentric champion. 

Excuse me, I’m digressing. 

It’s 9:15 in the evening. As I slip into bed, trying not to wake River, I listen to the rukus downstairs. The mouse squeaks as Happy tosses him up in the air. The mouse scampers across the room. Happy dribbles him like a basketball. I hear it. I know the scene all too well. The mouse tries to escape again and again until eventually he gets tired and surrenderers to his death. The whole ordeal makes me sick to my stomach. I get attached to the mouse and can’t help but think about what it must be like to be hanging out of the mouth of your enemy just waiting for the kill bite. Does the mouse think about his family? How old is the mouse? Did he live a good life? Did he even get the opportunity to taste my dog’s food? I wonder about all these things. 

The house goes silent and I know it’s over. I’ll wake up tomorrow, go downstairs and all that will remain of Mr. Mouse will be his head at the bottom of the stairs. I fight the urge to get out of bed to clean up the mess. I must sleep now. 

But I can’t. I’m restless. 

I begin to pray and my mind wanders to the nights I couldn’t sleep as a kid, where I would lay in my bed silently talking to God about my day. I would anxiously wonder then if this counted as “praying” since I wasn’t saying anything out loud. I was so afraid of messing up as a kid- always concerned with doing the right thing. I would think to myself that I should say my prayers outloud the next night on my knees with my hands folded like Mom’s Precious Moments dolls in our curio cabinet.
My mind jumps around to all the times I’ve found myself completely bewildered after I tried to do the “right thing” but ultimately ended up hurting someone or myself. I ask God, what that means for me now. “What is the right thing, God? So often, it seems like I have trouble figuring out what the “right thing” is nowadays. Why so fuzzy and unclear? Especially with mothering.” 

I’m spiraling. 

River wakes up screaming like something is terribly wrong. I quickly give him my breast to soothe him. He’s sniffling and trying to catch his breath. He pulls away from me and screams again. Usually, this means he needs to let some gas out so I massage his stomach. It doesn’t help. He continues to wail. I pull him onto my chest so our stomachs are touching, hoping this will ease his belly. He quietens for a minute, but as soon as he starts to drift back to sleep he jerks awake and howls. Like, someone is hurting him from the inside out. 

I sit up in bed. My legs are crossed and I begin to rock him. He’s nursing, sucking hard. It hurts and takes everything in me to stay still and not pull away from him. It feels like I’m getting a tattoo on my nipple and it’s never going to be finished. I begin to pat his bottom, just as I did when he was a newborn, and he eases up on my breast. I’m thankful we have a window where I can watch the woods. I focus on the trees and my eyes search for nighttime animal activity. I have to keep myself awake. My baby needs me.
He falls asleep but only for ten or fifteen minutes. He wakes up abruptly, kicking and screaming. He sounds terrified and in pain. 

“Must be bad dreams.” I think. Josh and I whisper to each other like we are trying to troubleshoot a mysterious car problem. We go through the list. 

Maybe, it’s because he didn’t have a good nap. Maybe, it’s what he had for dinner. Maybe, it is truly a bad dream. Or maybe, it’s teething. Maybe, it’s a growth spurt. Maybe, he’s hungry. Maybe, he got too much sun. Maybe, he’s hot. 

Yes! He must be hot. We take his clothes off of him. It doesn’t help. 

Josh picks him up and sweetly talks to him. “Hey, Riv, everything is ok. It’s ok. You are safe. Daddy and Mommy are right here. Are you having bad dreams, buddy?” 

He calms down for a moment. Sniffling and coughing from all the crying. Then . . . the wailing begins, again. 

“We have to wake him up”, Josh urgently suggests. So we did. 

We both get out of bed. Josh is still holding him, talking to him louder this time instead of a whisper. I search for the light and turn it on. River looks around with squinty eyes as we describe to him where he is and that everything is ok. Josh and I are both bundles of nerves. I know he is thinking the same thing as me in the back of his mind: “what if something is seriously wrong?” This has happened once before when he was nine months old. We had given him peanut butter the day prior and thought he was having an allergic reaction. He wasn’t and everything was fine. But what if this time was different?? Still, we stay calm, even though on the inside we are both irritable, anxious, stressed and slightly terrified. 

We all three walk downstairs to get some water. To my surprise, Mr. Mouse’s head was nowhere to be found. I’m tempted to turn on Peppa Pig and throw in the towel. I was losing this sleep battle, anyway. Might as well just accept this night was over. 

My guilt voice chimes in to offer her most heart-felt comments: “You should know what’s wrong. A good mom has a strong intuition. You should know how to help him. You shouldn’t be co-sleeping. He should be in his bed by now. He should be able to self-soothe. Why haven’t you taught him that, yet? You are too attached. Yet, you don’t know what’s wrong with him. You should be better. You suck. You aren’t being loving enough. He feels your tension and that’s why he is upset. If only, you could be better at being loving and patient. You suck.” 

To which, I kindly said: Shut up and go to sleep so I can, too. You suck, guilt voice.
We eventually climb in bed after fumbling around the house, not really knowing what to do. I go back to rocking him. Biting my lip through the discomfort. Wishing his nails were cut, because he was digging them into my ribs. I could see his nose was clogged and tried to clean it with an aspirator. That was a terrible idea, apparently. 

I start to pray again. 

“God, this night is long. Please send my bear friend out into the woods so I can have something to take my mind off of this. God, please let River sleep. Please, let him go somewhere beautiful during dream time.”
The woods were still and Bear never showed. However, finally, River starts to drift. I carefully ease myself backwards with him still attached. My right arm is numb and my wrist is aching from patting his backside. I roll him over to my left towards Josh and slowly pull my breast out of his mouth. I wait, because if I move any more, he will wake up and we will have to start all over. 

He begins to breathe deeper. This is my cue. 

I roll on my right side to get comfortable, holding my breath and hoping for the best. Adjustment successful! 

As I fall asleep, I feel something crawling on my eye and quickly brush it off. Without thinking of waking the toddler that I had spent so long putting back to sleep, I sit up and start to brush our whole bed out with my hand. Thinking irrationally (and also in a British accent): “If there was one spider or beetle on my eye, there must certainly be more!” 

Of course, River wakes up screaming, flailing. Josh is frantic. “What is going on,” he loudly moans.
I don’t speak. I’m so angry. I’m outraged at myself and at the situation. 

I start to go through the steps to put River back to sleep. Untangling the sheets and pulling him back to my breast for him to take his upset out on me, I feel abused. I try to mentally disconnect from my body because the discomfort is so painful. I can tell Josh wishes there was something he could do to fix the problem at hand. 

Then suddenly, something falls onto my arm and I fling it off. It’s dark and about three inches long, the width of a twig. I knew what it was the second it started to move around on our fluffy, white comforter. A long, squirmy millipede! 

“This night is cursed,” I boldly exclaim. “Where did that even come from?! Did it just fall from the ceiling? I had a spider on my eye earlier!” I wasn’t sure if it was a spider, but I had to be the most dramatic to get my point across, you see. 

Josh seemed bothered by my comment as if I was verbally attacking our humble home or him personally for not bug-proofing properly. Then, naturally, I was bothered by him being bothered. 

This did not help matters. We were disrupting River even further in the midst of our drama. I began once more to soothe him back to sleep. This time I laid beside him with the sheets up to our necks. Just in case we had any more insect visitors. I thought about getting up to bet my buff to wear around my face, but I resisted and forced myself not to think about bugs crawling in my ear and hatching eggs. My eyes cast upon the ceiling. There was just enough moonlight coming through the window to see the rafter at the pitch of the roof. 

Last summer, I spotted a snake skin sticking out from the same spot directly above my head. I wondered if Josh had sealed the crack since then. My mind roamed to the flying squirrel that was stuck in our house just three days prior. I was curious. “What other creatures were within our midst,” I thought. 

Even though I’ve spent many nights sleeping in open shelters with mice crawling on me and spiders a foot away, I am still bothered by the unknown. The fact was that we had no idea why River wasn’t sleeping or where the millipede came from. (and I still was unsure of this whole “right and wrong thing”)
I was fine. Everything is fine. I knew I would survive. 

We live in the middle of the woods in a century old cabin – these creepy, crawly things are bound to happen. I am becoming accustomed to that and at the same time, becoming increasingly aware of the fact that motherhood is full of uncertainty. All the time. I know all of this. Yet, it doesn’t seem to matter. I still get scared and worried and behave oddly because of it. I doubt myself over and over. 

I prayed once more for a peaceful night and heard God say to write my stories. Write all of my stories. “Write them for your children and their children and the children to come.” God’s plan was revealed in my mind’s eye. I went to sleep thinking about all of my stories of overcoming obstacles, braving the unknown, finding calm in the midst of chaos, times of discerning what is right and what is wrong, messing up, making art and all the moments of joy in between. I saw my stories written on scraps of paper and fashioned together with ribbon and string. My children huddled together reading them aloud to thiers, finding hope in the fact that we all have to find our own way in this world. Every single one of us.
I find comfort in knowing that we all have fears and we all get upset. From the tiny toddlers to the seasoned seniors- We all have stories of personal triumph. We all have messages of hope to share.
I sleep sweet thinking of my ancestors, wishing I had their intimate stories to read, but excited to start our family tradition of passing down mine, knowing that they will speak through me. Knowing that my children will add their own stories of learning and growing and finding their way. The layers will grow as our family grows. 

Maybe when the next generation is faced with an obstacle, they will be a little more stronger than me. Perhaps, a wee-bit more compassionate with themselves. A little more quick to remain calm, a little more certain that they will find their way, because it’s in their blood to pioneer and embrace the unknown. They can trace their roots back to me – a mother who believed in them before they were even born on this earth.
Like I said in the beginning, it’s early morning now and River is as happy as clam. All is fine. All is well.
#god #stories #lifeinthewoods #river #unknown #mothering #wonderings

FORTITUDE IS A FORGOTTEN VALUE THAT WE ALL NEED NOW.


Enduring pain and suffering is a part of trail-life. "Embrace the suck" is a famous saying on the Appalachian Trail (AT). You have to, because most of the time, it sucks. You are uncomfortable a good 90% of the time. Your muscles ache, and your feet are torn apart. The mosquitoes are relentless at times. You are downright dirty, and hiker-hunger will get the best of your emotions. The boredom of monotonous duties can and will mess with your psyche. You will want to quit. You will question why you started and what the point is. As the thru-hikers say, "No Pain, No Maine."




Joseph M Marshall III talks about fortitude in his book, The Lakota Way, as "quiet persistence." It's the "ability to take one step at a time and make the best possible use of your attributes."

Today, we are so conditioned to cushy, cozy lives. Being comfortable might just be our Achilles heel. It gets in the way of living our dreams. To live your dreams, you have to risk being comfortable. You have to be brave and overcome fears. You have to be patient. You have to stay connected to your purpose and your original intention. Above all, you have to endure with the strength of your heart and mind. You must possess fortitude. If you don't yet have enough, the journey will give it to you. So just believe and try to embrace the suck. 

CLARITY OF PURPOSE BRINGS HAPPINESS


It's basic stuff in the backcountry. There is never any questioning of what needs to be done. Secure safe shelter, fire for warmth, get clean water, enjoy community. These are the priorities. Everything else falls into place after the basics. In the modern world, there are so many distractions. It's hard to stay focused and connected to what matters most. Our priorities are quickly thrown all out of whack.

Being connected to the elements has a mystical way of revealing how you should approach the more complicated layers of life. One can gaze into a campfire or stare into the stars and suddenly feel a sense of "everything makes sense". I know that I have a heightened sense of intuition when I'm in nature and feel much more confident about what I want out of life. Nature grounds you to the present moment, which seems to be where the magic happens. Gratitude, fulfillment, and clarity all reside in the present.

One of my life purposes became clear to me in 2014 when I was on my thru-hike. I wanted everyone to feel the peace that I felt among the trees. I wanted to inspire everyone to connect with nature and look deeper. 

CONNECTION, RESPECT, AND DEEP REVERENCE FOR NATURE


When you are in the backcountry or the deep ocean, or anywhere else, there is no question that you are a part of nature. The water, the berries, the sunshine, and the animals are family. John Muir says it best:

"Wonderful how completely everything in wild nature fits into us, as if truly part and parent of us. The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and; tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love." 

OUR TRUE HUMAN NATURE IS GOODNESS.


The community surrounding the Appalachian Trail should receive a gold medal in hospitality. There is a reason why people refer to the kind-hearted folk as Trail Angels. Moms and pops, veteran hikers and churches, aspiring trailblazers, and entire towns rally together to help hikers achieve their dreams. It's really that simple. We just want to help each other and see each other thrive.

I remember being in complete awe of the thru-hiker trail etiquette. Generally, whenever you meet another hiker, you stop and have a quick conversation with them. Exchanging questions like: "How is your day? What's up ahead? When did you start hiking? How far are you going? I remember daydreaming about what this would look like in the modern world. What if we made a point to stop and have a real, meaningful conversation with every person we come in contact with throughout our average day? What kind of world would that be? Well, I guess it would be a much slower pace of living. Maybe, some of us are doing that with our social media channels in some sort of evolved way. Anyway, the point is that the genuine level of care about another person's journey was high on the trail. The exchange was valued. It had a profound impact on my life. I may not be able to converse with everyone I meet each day, but I really hope that the conversations I have are full of care and meaning.

Watching my son, River, grow has only solidified that we are born so pure and innocent with a strong innate desire to do good. 

NATURE AS THE ULTIMATE GUIDE FOR DREAMERS.


Like all relationships, a deep intimate connection with the natural world takes work. You must be open and patient, and willing to learn. If you put yourself in the student role and step outside- I promise nature will guide you to where you need to go. I've always been connected to nature. Growing up, my dad would often preach about passages in the Bible where it talks about the rocks crying out and the fields clapping. I felt a deep resonance with his sermons because it felt true. I would feel the tree's messages of strength and the flower's messages of comfort. I would hear the birds and watch as they dance us into a state of joy. Living on the AT affirmed for me that nature is my ultimate guide.




#god #lifelessons #appalachiantrail #nature #hiking #learning #living