New Foundations

This week my basement flooded. Twice. 

In 13 years in my home I never had a leak. Now 300mm of rain did fall. And the snow melted. And it was a scene. It's an even bigger scene now that my basement is torn to bits, drying out and prepping for pumps to be installed and a rebuild. 

I feel like I'm in a monsoon season as I have shared recently that my senior dog, Tetley, was diagnosed with CCD - canine dementia. We're weaving our way through it all. 

But it's a lot. That doesn't amount to life and school and work and the demands that we all have on us. My husband is away working and I vaguely remember saying "I'm learning to be SO independent" - which I am. But also, can I take that shit back?

With so much happening and so much falling behind it's easy to feel the pressure mounting. Thankfully, the work I've been investing in for years comes in handy during these times when I can literally hit a STOP button and say NO. I can't. 

I try my hardest, even in tough seasons, to keep my appointments, schedule, etc. Sometimes I can't. But instead of being overbooked right now, I'm under-booked, I'm anticipating the need for more attention at home. 

WHAT A FUCKING SHOCKER. 

Now don't get me wrong. I am a doer and I always find things to do even when I'm resting. Going for a walk or a hike or reading a book, researching something, sweeping the driveway - I'll always be busy because it's who I am. I get self destructive when I don't have enough to do. But I also get self destructive when I have too much to do. Finding the balance is key. 

I've always been the type of person who doubles down when things get hard or busy, pushing sleep aside, downing coffee and pre workouts to "push through". 

This time though I knew it wasn't about pushing through. It's about being here with it all. The pain. The struggles. The uncomfortableness that threatens to engulf us. 

In moments like this I can see why our fight or flight response kicks in. Wanting to get away and when we can't wanting to get angry. THat helps even less than running. 

It's in the pain that we grow the most. It's in the pain where we live the most. In our willingness to unfuck it, to stop numbing it, to stop holding ourselves back, to feel it, to not need to package it, change it, wash it away that gives us the greatest growth. 

There is something about people who have faced their pain - you can see it in their eyes that they've witnessed their own destruction, faced the impossible, lived through hell, and perhaps looked the devil himself in the eye - that is immeasurable.  There is a depth and a power to them, unshakeable, unfuckwithable, empowered. 

Because we have turned around and faced it when we wanted to run, when we have fought when we wanted to fawn, when we ran when we wanted to freeze there is great power in not succumbing to the survival mechanisms of the limbic brain that screams at you to shut it all down. 

Cracked, Old, Outdated Foundation will never serve a new powerful future. 

That's the message I heard when I sat with myself long enough to hear it. In a crisis when there is no time and everything is going wrong, I've learned the best thing we can do is STOP. Slow down. Ask yourself questions. 

I took a few hours, lit the palo santo, candles, turned on the drumming music, cleared my energy field and then asked "what do I need to know about all of this?".

Foundations are critical. 

I have a confession here. Back in the fall I moved my office to the basement. I was struggling with peace quiet and getting anything done. I didn't want to go to the basement. But it was the "most sensible" solution. With school and other things I didn't "have time" to really work out of the home. Plus, I'm not "working much" and couldn't "justify" it. 

Now I can't go down there and all the renovations to make the basement space my office space was for naught. I'm back upstairs, where I want to be, dealing with my life things, that I don't want to deal with or at the least wish I didn't have to deal with. I wish we weren't here but we are. 

As I explored the concept of foundations, of which I have spoken of many times, I realized I was ready to start over but I did exactly the opposite of what I wanted. I went to the basement where I didn't want to go. 

I made a choice of rationality, of fear, of contraction instead of expansion and joy and fun and happiness. I made a choice because I couldn't "justify" the expense or time or if I'm being really honest, the need that will create to have a schedule and stick to it instead of doing things all over the place of where people want me to do it *cringe*.

See in life our foundations get cracked - sometimes when we're young we are not given the things we need for a proper foundation. Imagine building a house without proper structure. It wouldn't go well. So why would you life be any different/ It's a house. And if you didn't get what you need to create a great one, how could you? 

Sometimes our foundations are cracked by external forces that descend upon us like relationships, bosses, children, trauma, car accidents, death - you know - life. They take a sledgehammer, like an earthquake, to our foundations, rattling everything we thought we knew and believed in and stood for. 

And sometimes we don't exactly know what happened. We think we have a solid foundation only to start asking big questions about the meaning of life and why we're here and if this is all there island why we believe certain things. And our foundation, we realize, didn't include all that's possible and created limitations in our lives that we now have to find new foundations. 

Most of us deal with all three of these. 

We couldn't get what someone else didn't have to give us, we are limited by the world around us and we are traumatized by life at times. In order for us to move forward we must create better foundations for our lives. 

Now I'm a meaning finder. I like to find meaning in everything. And maybe that's good and bad sometimes. Sometimes shitty things just happen because it's life. But I still believe we can take time to find the good in the bad. 

And in this case I realized my life is ready for a new foundation - literally and figuratively. 

When I made the decision after Wild Soul Inc closed to keep going it was because I truly love my work and want to keep doing it. Big dreams don't belong in the basement. They don't belong in the squeezed together spaces, the crumbs, the left overs, the making do. 

No. Big dreams, especially in the work I do, require the belief and resilience to create what I want because I can and I know how.  *cringe* It literally makes it worse when you realize you have the exact formula you need but you went on auto pilot and did what conditioning teaches us to do. 

Shrink. 

Make do. 

Chase crumbs. 

Make it enough. 

Sometimes we need a monsoon to wash away our foundation in order to get the message. Don't go down, go up. Don't shrink, expand. Don't make do, find a way. 

As this is the first post on the new blog, I thought it was fitting to start here, where I am. The vision and knowledge that I am ready, really ready for a new powerful future. And it's up to me to create it. That old foundations won't build new futures. 

What foundations in your life need to be rebuilt?