Softness
A Summer Rebellion
[Listen here or read below]
The more we are in the era of dopamine, the more I want the opposite…that’s what I’m craving.
-Rosalía
EARLY HARVEST, AND I WILL BE RIPE
At the end of the summer and the beginning of the Early Harvest (Lughnasadh in the Celtic calendar), I am writing notes and reminders to my future self to avoid another July of anger and burnout. By this time next year, the Early Harvest, I want to be sensuous and ripe, not depleted and fragile.
And, perhaps, I hope, I can still soften into my nourished nature over the next days and weeks to recover this sensual body, this fertile womb of a life.
It started, as it often does, with my deep desire to be helpful, to be useful. I watch my husband work 15 hours a day building a dream, tending to his obsession, giving people something deeply sweet (made from scratch gelato) in a time when the world is on fire. I want to help, to be useful, to magically shorten his days, to go on walks with him, to make and eat a meal together.
And then I remember, we just had a “baby.” I midwifed the birth of his 20-year unfolding dream, a gelateria, everything made from scratch in a depth that most people don’t even realize. I want people to “get it,” to appreciate it. Most do appreciate it, they get it, and it’s why business is good overall (thank you to all the good humans). But there are those who don’t get it (“the pistachio tastes too pistachio, do you have anything sugar free, will you make a flavor with collagen), and I wish I could punch them in the face. It’s mama bear energy like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
I want everyone to know how much care and devotion goes into my husband’s gelato. 20 years of obsessive study and practice. 15-hour work days. Seven days a week.
And so, I feel that I should be helpful. But I’m not.
NOW NOURISHED, LESS HELPFUL (OR MORE?)
I’m an artist. And I realize more and more why I am an artist and what that actually means for me.
It means I need so much quiet time. I need to move slowly, deeply, soak my whole body in clay before I mold a vessel, receive a poem.
Being an artist means being soft. And that feels incredibly rebellious in a world that demands constant achievement, definition, highs, peaks, leveling up, speaking out, and living large.
Softness is my rebellion.
SOFTNESS IS MY REBELLION
I’ve been taking weekly online movement classes with a dancer who has created something more fluid and beautiful and natural than Tai Chi/Qigong or dance alone. The way she says “soften” and “coherence” makes me want to weep—the softening feels like a deep homecoming in my body. I take notes:
Sensitivity before strength
Move coherently—not too stiff, not too soft, sensitive
Energy that’s just enough
Sensation, not exertion
Receive—a vessel for movement that moves you
Not fragmented exercises
No forcing, no effort
Move with joy
The neck is the pelvis is the tibia is the ankle—wholeness of body moving coherently
In this Early Harvest season, I’m finding courage to soften, to live coherently, sensuously, deeply. I want to be ripe, not depleted. And so I am reclaiming a slower pace, reclaiming the courage to live an intimate, quiet, beautiful life here in the mountain with my Beloved. Perhaps not so helpful, but more nourishing and rooted.
I will be softening, receiving more oxytocin/connective/coherent moments rather than activated/dopamine spikes. I’ll be building blood, substance, and the yummiest life I know. Rather than being useful, I will become ripe. I will be held. I will be moved. Effortlessly. Sensuously.
COURAGE: RECEIVE. RECEIVE. RECEIVE.
I will slow down, and stay. Stay with the earth beneath me, the sky that surrounds me, and the trees that hold me. I will tend to the clay and the rhythm of words. I will pause and receive, receive, receive.
Softness is my rebellion. Courage to be slow, held, and nourished.