Create a Clearing Space In Your Life

Wait There Patiently, Discover What Emerges

Dear Friend,

Happy January winter day to you. Happy time of seeds sleeping under the earth–and seeds nesting deep in your heart.

This week, I had a lot of time and spaciousness to consider our Clearing theme.

My son George turned 21 on Thursday and for people with intellectual disabilities, this age means a move from the school system to the adult services system. On his birthday, George moved from a residential school to his own group home with two other adults with similar disabilities. It’s the beginning of a new journey for him.

A park where George and I have spent time over the last years

George’s 21st birthday reminded me of all of the clearing I’ve done in these last two+ decades. How I have cleared away what I thought parenting would be like and the reasons why I once believed that I wanted to become a mom.

I have learned more about the soul’s ability to connect through my relationship with George than through anything else I’ve experienced here on earth.

I can see from here how I have learned to clear away expectations and opened up to possibilities. This is an ongoing, daily process!

New depths of love wait for me in the clearing spaces, like the life that’s alive and breathing under layers and layers of snow.

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I found a beautiful, powerful poem called Clearing by Martha Postlethwaite to activate our imaginations today. If you click the arrow at the top of the page, I’ll read it to you now.

Clearing

“Do not try to save
the whole world
or do anything grandiose.
Instead, create
a clearing
in the dense forest
of your life
and wait there
patiently,
until the song
that is yours alone to sing
falls into your open cupped hands
and you recognize and greet it.
Only then will you know
how to give yourself
to this world so worthy of rescue.”

Martha Postlethwaite

Take in those rich images, her imaginings of clearing. Let’s write and see what comes alive for you.

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Writing Practice: Set aside 5-7 minutes for this practice. Write in a journal or open a ‘Journey with The Season’ document where you can return each Sunday.

Prompt: We can easily feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s struggles and the challenges in our own lives.

What do you imagine the poet means by “Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest
of your life”?

What happens when you take yourself out of the pressures of everyday life and give yourself physical or creative space? Even for just a few minutes?

Where is your ‘clearing’ space? In nature like the poets woods or in a coffee shop or other favorite place? In your bedroom with the door closed? Listening to a meditation or taking a walk?

Describe the way(s) that you clear space for yourself–or try and how that clearing makes you feel.

I would love to receive your experiences—please send them my way! Please share responses as a comment or email them to me at gabriellekm@gmail.com

Deepening Practice: I loved this poem that community member Meg Monios shared in last week’s comments. Come back to your writing about your clearing space this week and see if there’s a poem, a drawing, an affirmation or a doodle there. Clear away expectations and see what emerges!

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I am excited to share my essay The Shattered Six-Year-Old Speaks and I Ask her to Return. I wrote this essay last summer and the writing of it was a very healing experience.

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I hope you’ll join us for my next (online) writing circle–an amazing group of folks is forming!

Forget the ‘happily every after’ myth we’ve been sold. The magic and richness in our lives comes when things fall apart and break open.

In this four-session writing circle, we’ll read poetry about inner journeys, discoveries and transformations.

For Journey with the Seasons Subscribers, I’m happy to offer a $7 discount code/enter at checkout: efyy8gna.

Info and Registration here.

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Sending you a week of love & spaciousness! Gabrielle Ariella