Companion Mantra 10

permission to be inconsistent

This summer has been wildly ungrounding for me. It has felt like standing in shifting sand. Beautiful, chaotic, and deeply airy. An out-breath and a scattered smattering of beauty, love and discomfort.

Between the loss of our beloved dog, family travels that pulled me across differing intentions and physical terrains, my daughter in and out of unfamiliar camps, my son home from college and feeling purposeless, a bad bout of COVID, the tides of perimenopause, the roar of political unrest, the collective weight of unfathomable grief, and the uncertain newness of summer thunderstorms - it’s been a season of extremes. There’s been abundance and hyper-presence. There’s also been overwhelm and uneasiness. My observational self is tired and stimulated.

In the wake of all this movement and emotion, I noticed a creeping voice inside. One that sounded like the familiar self-loathing. A whisper that said I haven’t been consistent enough. Not in my daily practices. Not in my presence here on Substack. Not in nurturing Midland’s creative tendrils. Not in tending to The Riverbank on social media with the devotion I imagined I would.

And that voice, I’m tired of it. I’m trying to meet it with compassion. To name it and not resist is. It is the echo of an old program: that I am not enough unless I am producing. That rest is indulgent. That stillness is slacking. That to be worthy or affirmed, I must prove through doing.

I teach others to unravel this. I believe, deeply, in spaciousness. In rest as nourishment. In the sacred act of pausing. And still, the wound runs deep. My nervous system has been trained by a father who is critical and hyper-vigilant. A culture that worships productivity and performance. Voices on social media saying you have to be consistent in output to make a living. And in these quieter stretches, where my output slows, summer asks me to run free, and my family time feels alive, I can feel the ache of wanting to validate my existence by showing results, posting proof, being visibly on it.