The month I needed my own advice

May brought some hard things. Here's what we're learning from being in the middle of it.

I'm going to be honest with you this month, because that's kind of the whole point.

May is supposed to be the month we talk about permission to slow down. And I had a whole idea of how that would go — something warm and encouraging about rest, about giving yourself space, about the massage table and the float tank and what happens when you finally exhale.

Then May arrived.

Last week we said goodbye to our Rosie. She was almost 15, which means she came into our lives when my kids were 9 and 12. She was there for every hard year and every good one. She was there when they left for school in the morning and there when they came home. She was there when they went off to college. She was there through the chaos of raising a family and building a business and moving and all the messy in-between. And now there's this particular quiet in the house that anyone who has loved a dog for that long will recognize immediately. Nora is here - sweet, wonderful Nora - and she helps. But we miss Rosie. There's just no other way to say it. 

At the same time, my parents are going through some significant health challenges. My father has Lewy Body dementia, and my mother is currently in treatment for lung cancer. I want to be clear - I am grateful to be able to show up for them. There is nowhere else I would rather be, and I would make that drive every single day without question. But they're over an hour away, and it is a lot to carry alongside everything else. I've been at Circle less than I'd like lately, which carries its own kind of guilt that I'm sure some of you know well - the particular weight of loving people in multiple directions at once and feeling like you're never quite enough in any of them.

So here I am, writing a newsletter about permission to slow down, while also white-knuckling through a season that feels like it's moving very fast in all the wrong directions. And here's what I know, because I've been in this work long enough to know it even when I'm not doing it well: this is exactly when it matters most.

I floated last week. Two days after we lost Rosie, actually. I got in the tank and I didn't drift off peacefully and I didn't have some beautiful moment of clarity. I cried a little. I thought about her a lot. But I also felt my body release some of what it had been holding. Not all of it. Not even most of it. But some. And some was enough to get me back in the car and make the drive and show up.

That's what I want for you this month. Not a transformation. Not a breakthrough. Just some. Whatever you're carrying right now - and I suspect some of you are carrying a lot - you don't have to put it down to come in here. Bring it with you. The table will hold it. The water will hold it. You just have to show up.

Permission granted.

Jennifer