Grounded

Hi Friends.  Sorry I disappeared there for awhile.  My unintended almost 2-week hiatus was brought on by A LOT:  a lot going on with my family, a lot going on with my work, a lot of driving up and down the eastern seaboard, a lot of packing and unpacking and a whole lot of laundry.  My world has been a little topsy-turvy, and something needed to be set aside and so it was this blog.  I've seen a lot of bloggers blog right on through some of life's most profound traumas: deaths in the immediate family, horrible break ups, post-partum depression.  They're snapping away at the funeral food or reporting from deep in the trenches of life, and I frankly don't know how they do it.  When the going gets tough, the tough need to prioritize, and what I realized in the last few weeks is that SMJ needed to be bumped to the bottom of the list for a bit.

There was something about the intense heat of the last several weeks that has felt not unlike walking over hot coals to me.  The husband and I were put at the far end of what I equate in my mind to be about a football field of these hot coals, and we've been gingerly, fiercely crossing over in fits and starts.  Now I feel we are on the other side.  In the late spring and early summer, life became all about The Move.  I think I thought that when we unlocked the door to our new home, suddenly all of our transitioning pain would cease, and we'd be Here and the change would be Over.  Oh silly SMJ, the change was just beginning!  Getting unpacked, getting to know a new place, settling in to a place that was our home 6 years ago but so much has changed since then we can hardly draw on any past experience of the place, trying to reconnect with old friends and reach out to new ones... all of this has been simultaneously going on, and is as much a part of this transition as loading up our boxes in Vermont.

We've been here 6 weeks now, and the heat the is finally abating.  And so, I feel that we've crossed over into something new.  We know where we are and we know where we are going in so many different ways.  The air is starting to cool, everything is coming back into focus, and suddenly it seems that we are Here.  Finally.  For the first time in a long time, I feel truly grounded.

Last night, I went to a yoga class for the first time in way too long.  My evening was the perfect metaphor for life in general right now.  I attended a class in a new location of an old studio I used to love, the owner of the studio taught the class, and though I haven't taken a class from her in maybe 8 years, she remembered me.  I walked with an old friend to class through her new neighborhood, she was a new friend when I last lived in Boston, and now I've known her nearly a decade.  The new studio space was beautiful... gorgeous hardwood floors, the most phenomenal Buddha statue at the front of the space, trees in every corner, a view of the Boston skyline out the window.  The sun set over the city as we bent and stood again and again in dozens of vinyasas.

My friend mentioned after class that the darkening sky made her think of the fall in a "what ever happened to summer?!" kind of way.  The darkening evoked the fall for me as well, but in the most incredibly soothing way.  We've made it.  We're here.  The heat and the change and the stress of the summer are fading into the cooling embrace of fall.  Soup on the stove, leaves to crunch through with little J, even football -- I can't wait for it all (no, husband, that was not a typo... I am even excited for football... the look on your face when the tipoff happens and the awesome food you cook make it all worthwhile. Go Pats!).

At the end of class, we rolled to our right out of savasana, and the teacher told us to place our foreheads on our mat and just connect to the ground for a moment.  That rooting, that grounding, felt like some sort of diploma for me.  I met myself on the other side of the fire, and I feel stronger for having crossed over.  I feel connected, focused, I feel home.  And with that, I'm back.  My creative juices are flowing again, and I have so much I want to bring to SMJ this fall.

I plan to train for the Seacoast Half Marathon and hope to complete it with great girlfriends on November 14 - I'll share my training adventures and misadventures here.  I am totally recommitting myself to my yoga practice and want to blog more about that as well.  My head is full to bursting with new recipes to try and share, and the cooler it gets, the more action that stove is going to see, so stick with me!  There is nothing so energizing as the change of seasons, and this one is particularly profound for me.  Thank you for staying with me through the thick and the thin of all these changes, through my recent absence as well, and for crossing over with me to the other side.  Here's to what's ahead!