Moving countries. Packing up things.

(Emotions are happening.)

/housekeeping:

1. The next Cosmic Calibration is on February 11th and they are SO FREAKING MAGIC. A 2-hour meeting with me and the Guides to calibrate you to your own Authentic Frequency, where we answer questions about the things that are holding you back from being fully yourself. Big questions, small questions, in-between questions, you name it. We all flow this incredible energy (yours!) to you over the course of the meeting, and by the end of it you’ll feel like you’re more aligned with your own Heart Path self. A+. Come!

(yes, the recordings get emailed out afterwards so you can watch even if you couldn’t make it live!)

2. I’m going to have space for one more 1:1 long-term client starting at the beginning of March. Do you have a longing to feel like you’re truly living your potential? Do you wish you could live more authentically, deeply and fully? Do you long to be the version of yourself you know is in there but don’t know how to do that? Email me.

3. I’m moving in just over 2 weeks-- I’m going to take a couple of weeks off from writing here. I’m avoiding panic by the skin of my teeth and it’s only from saying ‘no’ to absolutely everything that isn’t packing, long-term clients, spending time with my loved ones. If I have something urgent and important to say I will, but other than that, I’ll probably write again from London. In 2 weeks. GULP.

/end housekeeping

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A friend came over yesterday to go through my herb cabinet and take as much as she could. I don’t want to throw things out, but I will if I have to.

As she went through all these things I’ve gathered, made, concocted. Bags of herbs-- my friends!-- laid out, put in boxes, carried away. Boxes of bottles, jars, oils. I started to get this strange feeling in my cells that I couldn’t quite name at the time.

I knew that this moment would come-- when the full impact of packing up my home and leaving would hit-- but I hadn’t expected it to come from this direction, watching something that feels like such a core part of me packed up and carried off. I started to think about my house differently: each room a different expression of self. For weeks I’ve been noticing piles of things in corners, and couldn’t believe that I’d let them accumulate for so long. Why didn’t I do this before?! I thought, as I threw out a pile of hooks I’ve had sitting on a window ledge in my office for 3 years.

Why didn’t I NOTICE these as I threw out the detritus in a basket that had been hanging behind my door since I moved in. Why didn’t I do all of this to fully enjoy this space in all its total clutter-free glory NOW? I thought, as I threw out all the dead plants that didn’t survive my summer away.

In going through my toiletries I think the same. I have candles that I’ve stockpiled (don’t want to run out!) but then use sparingly because they’re expensive. Body lotions I think are better served in their containers on a shelf than on my body when I’m just going to wash it off in 12 hours anyway (I have no idea where all of this comes from honestly). When I decided I wanted to sell my house and move, I realised that I had to make choices: I didn’t want to be shipping all these unopened candles and bottles of things all the way to London just because I’d been hoarding them. So I started using them all liberally. I’m actually using the things I’ve bought that I didn’t want to use because then I might run out and have to buy more, even though I’d stockpiled for that eventuality anyway.

I’m burning all my favourite candles all day. I’m revelling in the liberal application of my favourite body lotion (In my defence it IS expensive, I can see why I would rather not finish it and have to buy a new one... but then, in not using it, I’m not actually getting the benefits that I’d paid for in the first place).

You know those terrible well-lit magnifying mirrors? I’m sure they mean well bur I’ve never walked away from a magnifying mirror without a new wound on my face from where I started picking at one of the exposed horrors that are invisible in a regular mirror.

Moving feels like that. Every corner of my house is viewed through new eyes and very little of it is flattering. Why do I need 4 of my favourite candles stockpiled and gathering dust. Why do I need 3 of my favourite body oil that I’ve since stopped using. Why do I have so many shoes I don’t wear. Why do I have 20 rolls of parchment paper and 400 kitchen rolls (I just started going to Costco a year ago). Then there’s the papers in piles. The rocks. The feathers. The acorns. The keepsakes.

I watched Mel carry away boxes of things that feel like parts of myself, and I realised that moving is simply a dismantling of self.

I’m taking a lot with me. But I don’t even have a long-term flat to put my stuff in yet, and houses in the UK are significantly smaller than in the US, so I need to downsize. Plus, I think [uncomfortably] to myself as I grab Eliza’s leash and take her on a walk in the rain, so much of this stuff is my old self. My married self. I feel like holding on is clinging to something that no longer actually fits, no matter how fond I feel of it.

I think about this as I walk, noticing the rotting leaves on the wet earth. The petrichor smell I love comes from those rotting leaves, I think, as I watch Eliza shake the rain off then squint up at the sky. It’s pouring. She stares at me intently then turns back towards the car, looking back over her shoulder, as if to say ‘let’s go home’. I’m soaked through-- I left my raincoat in London, assuming we’d have snow in the mountains by now. Still, I tell her no. We keep going. I have THOUGHTS to PROCESS and need to be moving to do that.

Okay, I say to myself.

This is more emotional than I thought it would be.

Big decisions often are.

It doesn’t matter if it’s the right thing.

It doesn’t matter if you’re unbelievably excited about the future.

There’s still a breakdown happening, just like these rotting leaves. It’s not just breaking down of rooms and stuff but of selfhood.

A dismantling of the old-self in the home that represented SAFETY in all its forms.

“I wonder if a tree ever feels reluctant to let go of its leaves”, I think absently as my foot squelches in the mud. “Probably not”, I answer myself out loud.

It has to be the right time, though. You wouldn’t expect a tree to let go of green leaves... only the ones that are no longer receiving energy.

This helps. Muttering to myself about old selves that are no longer receiving nourishment being easier to let go of. “Just like the leaves.” I say out loud, hammering my own metaphor home.

I can feel my nervous system right on the edge as I walk: I could start to freak out now. I could easily step into anxiety from here. I could start to think about how much time I have and how unsafe and uncertain the future feels.

But I know enough about selves and nervous systems and change. I know that if I let my nervous system tip over then I will have to work harder to come back to my usual easeful baseline than if I simply stay regulated.

More than that, I know that if I let my nervous system tip over into stress, then I won’t be able to think as clearly. This transition requires clear thinking: there are a lot of moving pieces, in not that much time. It’s at this point, hovering right on the edge, that I decide to choose the path that’s harder to see whilst emotionally agitated.

I choose to trust the old-self who made the choice to move halfway around the world on 6 weeks notice. I choose to trust that cycles happen and letting go happens and that these leaves of old selfhood are ready to release to fall to the ground to rot and become soil. It’s uncomfortable and emotional, letting go. But it’s time.

“It’s time.” I say to Eliza. She squints up a me and shakes the rain off again. “Ok yes let’s go... home. For now home. For 2 more weeks home. Let’s go.”

When it comes to the natural world there is a tacit understanding that the space between Autumn and Spring is one where things are happening that we can’t see but can still trust. We know the trees haven’t all died. That the leaves will come back. The forest will feel vibrant and alive again soon.

Home, safety, my old identity, who I thought I was are all falling to the ground one leaf at a time and I only need to remember that this is a season. They can drift back down to the earth and mix with the rain and become soil.

Fecund soil. Fertile soil. Beautiful soil. Soil that is full of potential. Soil that nourishes the buried seeds, the unknown seeds, the who-knows-what-seeds, the mystery seeds.

I don’t know what’s going to sprout from all of this, but I am excited for spring.

Big hugs,

Rebecca