Even when you’re alone.
I read that we learn to regulate ourselves,
Learn how to handle our emotions,
And be with the way that they move
To come back into calmness once more,
By doing it first with others.
And I’ve seen and felt that,
Both ways.
My parents holding a calmness
That I could nestle into.
And my own slowing breath soothing
My son’s snuffly breathing,
When he was so small his whole body fitted onto my torso
My moving ribs must’ve been like the ground breathing.
And after this beginning, we self-regulate as we grow
Using the things we’ve learnt
In moments when the tides rise
When we shake
And then still.
And I’m still learning how to do this part.
In my journey to be sovereign
And no longer codependent,
My nervous system becomes a sea
That I can choose to quell the storms in.
But I realised…
There’s another process too
That I practice without noticing.
And I think this is
What faith might feel like
(Although I’ve never really had it).
My slippy spirituality doesn’t like a name
Or set practices
But I grasp at words and images to share them with you.
Alone,
I lean into a force
That is separate from me
And greater than me
And regulate with them.
The universe perhaps,
Or
A deity
A creature
A tree
A rock.
In a moment when I don’t fully have
(Or want to have)
Everything covered
All by myself.
I close my eyes and breathe
A furry wolf warm curl pack
A mossy chest to rest my head on and feel the heartbeat of the earth
A silent goddess’s marble arms
The water spirit of a heated bone-comforting pool
The long strokes down the perfect egg of a started rabbit’s body
A fast twitching nose slowing.
And I slow too.
There’s no one else there…
But there is.
This new practice is emerging
This coregulating with something invisible.