Find your own style of stillness

Just. Be. Still.

Three words, three words I found floating around my mind and I watched water pass by, my legs stretched out on the sandy beach of the Columbia River. Barges passed. Boats cruised from one line of sight to the next. Joey and Elsie were playing a couple hundred yards behind me, and our newest little one, Leo James, was sleeping soundly just to my right on a picnic blanket we packed along, under an umbrella shielding us both from the warm summer rays.

Just be still. A deep breath in, and a long breath out. Just be still.

It’s an action, or an inaction I haven’t had in quite some time, really. In the world now, 2020. Covid. Riots. Trying our best to be on the right side of history. Pregnacy and new baby. Isolation. Missing friends. Missing family. Fear. So much fear. All of it is just so noisy and everything is moving so darn fast. So who has time to just be still…

You. Me. We do.

We must, actually. Because as I sat there on the riverbank, the sound of laughter coming from the play behind me, I realized this was maybe the first moment in so many moments, so many days and so many weeks filled with constant motion and constant concern that I had actually just found myself alone with myself, although not really. And that’s okay.

I think I was waiting for stillness to come only in a space dedicated just for that, in a space where and when I could be really alone, in a time I could set aside and package up with a bow, that I could dedicate to myself. A time to think, a time to process, a time to remember what’s important. I envisioned a solitary walk or sitting unaccompanied somewhere for a really long time. But stillness doesn’t need all of that. Turns out, my style of stillness is inside the noise.

I was waiting to give space to so many things in my heart and on my mind. I was waiting to find a space to think about the things I really wanted, and how grateful I was to become a mom again, and to grieve one more time the pregnancy we lost and how thankful I was for this moment in my own history, my husband and daughter creating a special memory just behind me, and this brand new baby that I get to love laying right beside me, his world entirely in front of him. Our gifts and our responsibilities and our own stories deserve stillness, and that stillness found me in the weirdest and loudest time and for that too, I’m grateful. The boats kept passing, the water kept flowing, and now, my eyes had tears flowing from them too.

Like I said, weird.

Maybe you can find stillness inside the noise. Maybe that’s where it lives for you. Because in today’s world, especially if you’re working and parenting and teaching and doing all of the things that demand our attention, we don’t have those moments to be alone very often. We have children or parents to care for, lessons to teach, dinners to make, work to do, relationships to keep, households to manage, news to filter for what’s real or what’s not, and decisions to make that impact so many. It’s all so noisy.

Within that noise, let’s find our stillness because that’s where we get our power. And in no other time in our lives, we need our power and we need our voices and we need our love and our creativity and our feelings of community and we can only have those things if we pay attention to ourselves once in awhile.

XO.

Oh, by the way. I almost deleted this picture (below) because when I first saw it, I thought all the bad things about it, about me. But then I looked at her face, her smile. Another gentle reminder, that we need to be gentle to ourselves. All the time. And take the pictures, and save them because one day, we’ll want them and we’ll hold these memories so tightly. Elsie doesn’t care how I look, but she sure cares I’m in the water with her, spinning her around and around on a giant donut floatie.

Meagan