space

I'm sitting down to write today after a long pause. I took the month of January to do some deep reflection, examine my 2025 and also look ahead to my wishes for 2026. It was big work, and it stirred some big feelings that needed time to process and integrate. Then I had a long Covid flare in February that took me down hard. In March, I was processing some more Big Stuff. And that theme continued in April and May, with a big invitation to wake up and pay attention.

What happened? It was late on a Sunday evening, late in April. I got an email - two emails, to be exact - relating to something that I'll just call The Thing. I was tired, and shouldn't have even been in my inbox at that hour. But I was. And so, I read the emails. What I read caused me to get upset. And - as has always been my way - I reacted and got emotional. In my reactive, emotional state, I sent off a reply. And that reply has set off a chain of consequences.

It's not world-changing stuff, but the situation has woken me up. And now that I'm awake, I can trace the path that brought me here. I've been running hard for a long time. My life is full and busy. There's always something to do. I have items on my to-do list that I've been carrying forward for months. I'm always tired. And for the last couple of years, The Thing has taken up a fair bit of real estate in my brain and in my nervous system. My cup has runneth over. And not in a good way. More along the lines of there being no space. No room. Not even room to breathe. Which is why I reacted the way I did on that Sunday evening in late April.

I've made my apologies and accepted responsibility for my reaction, but some bells can't be un-rung. And with that, The Thing isn't in my life any longer. I didn't get asked to leave or step aside. But I did realize that continuing engage with The Thing was going to cost me something that I just couldn't give: SPACE. Space in my brain, space in my nervous system, space in my conversations, space at my desk, space in my relationships. I'd allowed The Thing to permeate every space in my life. Nobody asked me to do that. And I rather suspect that none of the other people involved with The Thing have allowed this to happen. But I did. And that lack of space is what caused my reaction.

Between then and now I've been in a period of deep self-reflection. Integrity is one of my core values, and so I've had to accept that how I've been living is very much out of integrity with how I talk about health and nervous system regulation in my daily life. It wasn't intentional! I really thought that I was doing a good job of balancing my priorities alongside taking care of my health and my nervous system. But it turns out that I was so accustomed to running around with my overfull cup spilling water everywhere that I didn't recognize that there was a problem.

There has also been a great deal of... settling. When I made the decision to step away from The Thing, I quite literally felt hundreds of pounds lift from my shoulders. When I pressed 'send' on my final email, I could breathe. I felt space. I didn't realize the weight I'd been carrying or how confined and boxed-in I'd felt. And now that I feel that space, I want more of it. I want space in every part of my life. I want to have room to take a full breath without needing to schedule time to sit down and do it.

It's a simple wish, isn't it? To ask for space and room to breathe? It's been almost 7 years since this quiet life was born, and I feel like it's taken me until now to peel back the final layers and understand what a quiet life looks like for me. And space is a vital part of that equation. How do we create more of that? I'll share my journey and what I'm working on in my next post, coming very soon...

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I'll leave you with a question for reflection: Do you have space in your life for you and the things that matter? If you don't, is there something (just one little thing!) that you could set down - today - to free up some bandwidth in your life?