3 Tenths

Tuesday morning, day after Memorial Day, the Bolder Boulder, and my niece's 6th birthday.  Big day yesterday.  I walked the Bolder Boulder with my youngest son and daughter, and much of the way with my niece,nephew and sister-in-law, until we couldn't walk that slowly any more.  At Kilometer 7, the three of us took off at our own speed and didn't turn around to go back and wait, and wait - like we had been doing.  I really tried to be in "family" mind for the full 10k, but it couldn't last the whole race.

Perhaps this is a metaphor for my life.  I can do family mind for 7/10's of the time, but the other 3/10's I just gotta walk  my own walk, at my natural pace.  Great thing about yesterday is my natural pace was right in sync with my kids' pace.  Together, we found an easy rhythm and perfect speed.  Then to top it off, Steve and my older daughter, who both had already run the race, came back to meet us and walk the last 2 kilometers.  There was something very fitting about all of this.  My family kind of fits together - how we walk, the speed of our walk and our aligned intention for how we wanted to finish the race.  It felt really good.  It was only a race, but a great reminder of when you walk your walk, there are those who will join you and walk right beside you, walking their walk too. We are being true to ourselves, and in relationship with each other. Also, there are those who will be left behind, and those who will walk ahead, as well as those who will walk a different path altogether. 

My concern, actually it is a way more than a concern - it's a downright fear, is that when I walk my walk, I will be all alone.  I will have to separate myself from my loved one, my family.  That who I am and what calls me will tear me away from the fabric of my family.  That I will be all alone and they will be altogether judging me for who I am and the choices I make.  That they will not love and accept me.  That I am unloved and not accepted.  That I am unlovable and unacceptable.  That I am alone.

That I will have to split myself off from my family to walk my soul's path.

So I don't walk it.  I stay home.  I stay in family mind and be a loving mother, a good wife. I do the dishes and the laundry, I cook, I garden, I work.  I support and love my kids. I support and love my husband.  As the mother and wife, I hold the family in the way of the feminine.  7/10's of me loves everything about this.  I love being a part of my family and that I am mother to these 4 incredible kids.  They're amazing and they are each so unique and different from each other.  I cannot parent one the same as any of the others.  I love this.  I love being with Steve and sharing our lives together.  It's not as straightforward or simple as being a mother.  Our relationship has all of the challenges of any marriage when you've been married for 23 years.  So I would say that I am at a 6 out of 10 with the marriage part.  I love Steve and our marriage, but would also love to experience the passion and excitement of when we were first together again.  As I write that, I realize that the sex piece makes this relationship more complicated.  Hence, the 6 rather than the 7.

But I'm not ready to write about sex just yet.  That will have to be another blog post.

So how does all of this relate to my belly?

Let's start with the physical and see where this goes.

Yesterday I wore my splint when I walked the Bolder Boulder, and also when I gardened.  I must have spent 8 hours in the garden this weekend, preparing my new vegetable garden (still not quite ready for planting) and transplanting different plants to different beds.  A lot of work.  A lot of walking.

I loved wearing the splint, not for how it felt from the outside, but for how it felt from the inside.  I felt supported and held as I dug, bent over, pulled, carried and walked.  My back didn't get sore.  I remembered to pull in and engage a lot more frequently.  I used my body and more core much more consciously and correctly.

As I lay in bed this morning waking up, I was thinking about a conversation I had with a dear friend last night at my niece's birthday party.  My friend says that everything in her life is falling apart and that what used to work is just not working any more.  We got to sit on a chair swing together and just talk.  What I was so struck by was that all of her compensations that have served her to "get by" in the past are no longer enough for her to get by.  We're talking on all levels here.  K. deals with significant dyslexia and her methods for dealing with that - gone.  What has worked in her relationship - no longer enough or what the relationship needs.

Thinking about this idea of compensating.  I have compensated for my belly split by using the outer muscles.  I have used the big muscles in my legs, hips, butt, anything to not use the muscles in my belly.  One, the belly muscles haven't worked they way that I have needed them to.  I feel a lot of shame and not being good enough when I do use them, and then this only contributes to the split and makes it worse, at least energetically.   A viscious cycle.

So I would have rather compensated and gotten by than feel shame, blame and self-loathing.

Makes a lot of sense - oooohhhh, there's that line again.  But it didn't support or challenge me to deal with the cause of the shame or with the split itself.  It just left me with 20 years later still having the split that affects every area of my life.

When we compensate, we get by...until we can't just get by anymore.  What worked in our 20's and 30's, even our 40's, no longer works in our 50's.  Our bodies change, we begin the process of menopause - which is a whole journey unto itself!  We're not as strong, fast, slim as we used to be.  And that's just the physical aspect of it all.  What we want and what matters to us in our 50's is very different than when we're younger.  And when we're younger, we just don't think that it's going to happen to us.  I sure didn't!

To tie this back in to "walking our walk", I have avoided my walk out of my fear of being all alone and not being loved and accepted.  I have compensated for this fear by staying out of my core - my core desires and dreams, and have supported others to live theirs, as a mother, wife, friend and coach.  This is how I have felt loved,  useful, wanted and needed.  7/10's of me is happy, fulfilled and not scared.

But the other 3/10's of me is no longer willing to be quiet and compensate.  I am now 51 and this 3/10's of me - which must be the most close to the essential part of who I am - is getting loud, antsy, and ready for a good, long walk.

And I gotta listen.  I gotta stop compensating, justifying, explaining, and wishing it would go away.  'Cause it's not. It's only getting louder and more insistent.  This 3/10's of me is demanding that I listen to it, come into it, love and honor it, and get on with doing what it wants to do.  I realize that I am blessed in that I know what I want to do. For the first time in my life, I know what I want to do when I grow up!  So many of us don't have a clue and that contributes to the fear and justifying we do.  I know only because I was somehow willing to listen to the first calling to walk the El Camino de Santiago and travel the Celtic Camino by train.  This in  itself was the initiation to these next steps on my journey.

I WANT TO WALK THE CELTIC CAMINO.  This is my Camina, my journey of the feminine. LA CAMINA.  Next spring.  I want to walk parts of it awith other women who also want to walk this sacred pilgrimage.   I also want to walk alone.  I want to join my 77-year old  father in Cornwall in early June along with my brother and sister, and for us to assist him to lead a tour based on his book that he is writing right now. I want my family to join me in England after trip so that I can share with them my homeland, my extended family, the land of my ancestors and my soul.  Ultimately, I want to live in England, to lead pilgrimages and to support all people, and especially women to live and walk from their beautiful bellies.  I want to walk, walk and walk some more.  I want to support and challenge people to walk their walk, to respond to this part of themselves that knows exactly what it wants to do, who it wants to be, why it is here, and what it desires to contribute. 

I want a world full of people who are walking LA CAMINA, however and what ever that looks like for them.  This is the journey of connection and alignment to spirit, to the divine feminine, and thus to the inherent beautiful balance in all of us.  When we are connected with the feminine, we are connected with ourselves, our hearts, our divinity, with Earth and Heaven.  There is no split - the split has been healed in the journey, in the walk itself.  They journey is the healing.  The journey is the transcendence of the split.  There is no split. It is not taking the joureney - not walking one's walk - that causes the split.  The journey, LA CAMINA,  is the wholeness. 

There is an important distinction here.  It is not just any journey.  It is not the journey we just happen to take even if we are asleep or not intentional, although this of course becomes part of  LA CAMINA.    It is not the journey that we take by default, only find ourselves asking, "oh my god, how did I get here?  This is not where I intended to go.  I thought I was going over there."

This is the journey that one chooses, with intention and commitment, as a spiritual being in a human body living a human's life and making choices, creating and being in relationships.  This is the journey that has become one's sacred pilgrimage of life.  This is one's commitment to living, expressing and fulfilling one's true and sacred purpose here on Earth this lifetime in all of its beautiful reflections.

This is the pilgrimage of one's soul -  back to one's soul -  to express one's soul.  This is LA CAMINA.

This is the pilgrimage when  the 3/10's embraces the other 7/10's and one becomes fully integrated, connected and aligned to become 10/10's, to actually become more than 10/10's.  This is where synergy, and perhaps alchemy, occurs.  Once becomes more than the 10/10's to embrace, embody and own all of who one is, on every level of  body, heart, soul and spirit. 

This is the embellied pilgrim, walking from her core, true to herself, and sharing joy, love, compassion and wisdom with all of whom she shares her path and all who she meets along the way.

And perhaps, just perhaps, as you walk your path at your natural pace in the way that resonates from your soul, your loved ones will just happen to walk at a similar pace in a similar way and join you for part of your journey.  Each person is walking their true path, and experiences a joyful crossing of paths with loved ones, new and old friends, and pilgrims along the way.

This is the journey of the pilgirm.  This is LA CAMINA.