Knowing Your Flow and When to Step Away

As I lie here in bed with my laptop on my knees, my 17 year old daughter to my right snoozing, she is feeling unwell, it’s nearly 10am and yes I am still in bed. I feel inclined to pretend I am dressed, up, awake, having done a run and meditation, had breakfast, got dressed but none of that would be true. I am here in my jammies and the thought of walking down the corridor to the bathroom and doing my teeth right now seems a bit of an epic. I question what if I had to go to college, or school right now feeling like this? 

So What is Going On?

The truth is I have just experienced the psychedelic flashing lights of a migraine and am awaiting part two where my head feels like someone is mercilessly squeezing my brain. There is a huge part of me that wants to pretend that none of the ebbs and flows of my life exist, that I don’t get kidnapped by my inner gremlins once a month, that send me spiralling into a paranoid mess and heighten every negative thought that has been at the corner of my mind. I have been conditioned to act as if I don’t have periods that are so heavy that I have historically left my indelible marvelous mark on a red (phew) bus seat in India and on countless pairs of lovely trousers. Or that sometimes the pain has been so intense that I feel like I am going to pass out but I have continued on as if everything is normal. That for me was hard to write and I keep thinking, should I take those last few sentences out…or at least apologize for them? What if you’re reading this and having breakfast?

How Did This Happen?

It is because I am conditioned to keep all of this out of my work life, out of the picture, to hide it away in some box that is called ‘personal/private’ and to get on with life as if none of that happens. But as I have got older and the period pains have lessened but the migraines have intensified, I have decided to watch my rhythms. Why didn’t I do it earlier? To work with them not against them. I know that in the middle of my cycle I am rocking, I believe I can do most things, I am confident, warm, funny, able, clear minded and a great communicator that is when I do my best work. There is a week where I am all of the opposite. I am insecure, a little cold, not funny, foggy headed, weepy, a crap communicator, verging on paranoid like I have done something wrong when I haven’t. I can’t trust myself to be in a meeting lest my gremlins take over and hijack it. If this is happening for me I know that to some degree it is also happening to my daughters. I also know that my son has rhythms, he is growing so fast right now going from a boy to a man that he is totally and utterly exhausted on some days. He must be riding a hormonal wave.

What of The Education System?

All of them are learning to ride with their rhythms, although our girls are at college now so they have to be on top form, always, according to the system, there is no leeway, no give and take, there are no down days, they have to muscle through. Education systems do not allow for ebb and flow, it is as if the head and the body are not connected, that life’s rhythms do not exist. How can there be such a disconnect and that still be acceptable? I know that if I have a migraine, that is it, my brain has been put through a psychedelic blender my body feels pinned to the bed my head hurts and I can only do so much and that is OK. 

We Are Part of It All

I have learnt to listen to myself. This for me is the GOLD. We must teach our children this, it is OK to not be OK. We have rhythms and we must listen to them. There is an ebb and flow to everything in nature, there are seasons, there are rhythms, we are part of it all. We never were designed to be in one constant state of being, we are like the weather patterns, the tides of the sea, we come in and out and there is beauty within it all. 

Our bodies and cycles are rhythmical. This we must teach our children, so that instead of being pulled under by the societal waves and made to conform despite whatever is going on for them, they can speak up, know when to step away. In this way they can listen to what is going on for them and seamlessly ride the ebbs and flows of life, maximizing their own inner power when it is right for them and knowing when to step away when it is not.

That photo was taken at a beach in Devon, how beautiful is that sky!?
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