Grounding

Space to breathe....

There are times when life becomes overwhelming at such an accelerated rate that the need to reground myself becomes a matter of survival. Usually this is a result of some thing, some change, some reminder, which spurs a rise of fear tied to my ideas of survival. Some thing that threatens my health which is so precariously balanced on a pricey grocery list... some thing that steals into our rent money, or the money we owe in taxes. Today is one of those days, though the blow actually came yesterday when we (3 months late) finally received Jeff's new contract for his main income source. Though we were made to believe (again) that it would provide enough space not just for the work they require, but also for the income that we require, it does not. For the second year in a row we will be finding ways to support our family on only 30% of what we used to, and roughly 50% of what would meet our needs. It will be another year of getting seriously creative.

When we stepped away from a six figure salary, and the solutions that provides, we had only an idea of what we would go through on the road to learning to sustain ourselves more fully. How could we have more than an idea? We've done it. Year by year we do better. Month by month we learn to meet our needs in new ways, on less money. Each time we have believed that gig was certainly up we have come out, wiped our brows, shaken off the panic and moved on, but it feels like a Herculean feat.

Each time I hit our budget looking for something new to slash, believing that there is something that I missed, and finding that of course, there is not, I find myself eying that grocery budget... wanting desperately to slice it in half, hack at it until it is small enough for me to stomach, and the panic rises as I realize that I simply cannot cut it any further, because doing so means swapping nutrient dense foods for fillers, things that will, in short order, begin to attack my health and the ability of our family to function.

These are the times when I must put down the numbers, force myself to breathe, and find a way to regain grounding. These are the moments where there is nothing for me beyond faith, release, meditation/prayer, and more faith. These are the times that I pull out my old journals searching for those entries when I struggled with the big fears, with no outs, and then rest in the understanding that I did not perish, that the world did not end, and a way through was provided and often walked without knowledge that it was the way through. In times like these, as we contemplate the expense inherent in investing in future self sufficiency on top of our survival expenses, I realize that sometimes there is nothing to be done but have faith and be willing to do what it takes when the opportunity presents itself.

It is times like this when the desperate need to do something can only be met by making space to breathe. It is times like this that I am thankful that the very biggest breathing room is provided in the forest outside my door, wrapped in more forest, wrapped in expansive desert, surrounded by epic prairie and more desert. Just the idea starts to pull my breath in and out again. The tight ball of my heart starts to loosen, my brain ceases the panicked circles and lies down on the floor of my skull to close it's eyes for a moment... so that I can stop figuring and go back to living.

How do you ground yourself? What do you do when life as you know it seems that it cannot work?