Quiet Struggle
When my son was about 4, we were at Jovita’s watching some music, my friend Jeff Johnston was playing the musical saw and Gabriel came and whispered in my ear - mommy, that sounds like a quiet struggle - chills from that creative insightful child
Yoga is often touted to be a microcosm of life. What we experience, feel, think on the mat, ideally can embed in our psyches, and transform in to ways to cope with the trials of humanness.
Our first day in Tulum back in February at Amansala resort for the Compass yoga retreat - this guy Ryan spoke at our welcome orientation about one of the activity options, the cold plunge, and he offered us this little ditty of a quote “If you do hard shit your life gets easy, if you do easy shit your life gets hard” or something like that
Yes the freaking cold plunge is hard as heck, but this concept applies well to that aforementioned yoga example. Challenging poses, hard balances, strenuous vinyasa, and the breathing and getting through them are that analogy. Do the hard things on the mat, and enjoy the ease of the aftermath.
I do get that and I do see the truth and value…I get that you have to do hard stuff sometimes to get to the juicy goodness
But y’all.
My existence OVERALL is hard. A cancer diagnosis is hard. A metastatic diagnosis is extra hard. Waking up everyday and maneuvering the world living with cancer is so hard even when I’m doing nothing.
So when I chose my word of the year this year - EASE - I didn’t realize the deep impact.
I knew in my heart that that’s what I wanted for this year, the second full year in this life.
The time period before felt like I was striving to figure out how to live, how to get on an airplane, how best to live my best life, what healing things were right for me, how to simply exist in this new existence
This year I want to settle in a bit more and have things come to me, or come easier. But I wasn’t specific in that intention. just ease..
It became more clear this week in Tulum, the yoga was challenging, lots of hard, two times a day, and I definitely took it easy a lot of the time as I know my body. Some easeful walks on the beach, early morning sunrise watchings with ginger tea. Some of the gals did sign up for the cold plunges, I kept remembering that kind of cliche phrase that Ryan threw out there at the beginning of the retreat, and I deeply trusted my intuition that that was NOT the hard i needed. That’s all, just knowing inside what is the hard that is right for me, not just because someone says this is the thing, or it’s marketed as the key to ease and the answer to a better life.
I think ultimately this is a lesson on intuition and knowing yourself and trust - oh and zero regrets. Pangs of “should I?” “am i missing out?” come and go with different loudness but I don’t let them linger, and again I affirm that I trust in my inner knowing and the universe’s support in all things.
I think about the sound of that musical saw - odd, beautiful, slightly ghostly, kind of sad, mesmerizing, and I think of the words - a quiet struggle - and that is what it feels like to live with metastatic cancer, the struggles are often quiet, unseen, plaintive and also beautiful - because I’m alive and it’s part of the song