Birthday Month Reflections: Looking Forward

I love November. Maybe it has to do with the fact it’s my birth month. Maybe it’s the shift into winter, where the sight of freshly falling snow is still magical and the excitement for Christmas is in the air.

November, for me, feels full of quiet contemplation, a time to deepen into personal practice and an illumination of what is truest.

This morning I participated in a group call where we engaged in ritual and connection focused on regulating the nervous system and being in relationship with truth. After this morning’s call, I pulled out my journal and began self reflection.

What I love about the practice of somatic embodiment is its really a resilience based practice, and we start with what you love and care about and the kind of person you need to be to get to where you want to go. And I started with asking myself the questions I ask clients at the beginning of our sessions together:

What do you care about? Who do you love? What do you love? What are you called to? What survival strategies (conditioned tendencies) have you embodied? What skills do I not have that I need to embody my vision?

I wrote this:

I care about beauty. Having it, being it, chasing it. I care about being alive on purpose. As I write this, it’s the last full moon before my birthday going into my 28th year of life, and I care about cultivating spaciousness within, cultivating confidence and creating art, letting my life be art.. I love who I’m becoming, I love the little girl version of myself who tried so hard just to survive, and the web of people from whom I come. I’m called to this life, to making sanctuaries out of ordinary spaces and pursuing pleasure. I want to be remembered for my presence, my with-ness, my joy.

I tend to treat my birthday like my own personal new year, choosing a word to use as a guide for the next year. I focus on who I want to become instead of what I want to do, what I’m committed to. I want to move in alignment with the things I care about.

Every year I fall more and more in love with the person I’m becoming, and I feel more room to be myself. I feel more drawn to this work of experiencing what its like to be in this body, and creating opportunities for others to feel what its like to be in their bodies, and to tap into the truth of who we are as humans.

I want to be a person of deep presence, and I’m cultivating that in my actions. I want to be a person who loves life, and who life loves. I don’t know a lot of things, and I strive to be ok in the not knowing. I know who I am, and that’s what matters.