Practicing Rest
Today I rested, and it was glorious.
This summer has been dominated by transition: Michael accepted the new job in April; we staggered our departure from Houston in May; we received the keys to our yellow house at the beginning of July. We had no sooner budged the bed into our new bedroom or situated the pull-out couch in the basement game den when company descended: a rotating cast of visitors including everyone from Michael’s assorted high school friends, his family, some folks we know who live in a van, and one of my best friends from college. The intervening weekends have been filled with hikes and local music, biking downtown for jazz and jam bands, all-day board games and artisan markets. Squeeze in that family trip to Las Vegas with Michael’s mom and it’s no wonder that I reached the end of August exhausted.
All these things have been so good, and they’ve been draining. Getting settled in Boulder involved me getting a part-time job, so I’m working at a cashier at the local liquor store. When I’m not boxing bulk purchases of wine or processing payment for frat boys with carts overflowing with Keystone Light, I’m writing morning pages from the loveseat on our back patio. Living here is decadent and whimsical and I take frequent breaks to play with Keana in the long grasses of our backyard.
I’ve been constantly *on* all summer: working, writing, cashiering, hosting. I can hear my people-pleasing tendencies beating in my years like a pulse. The exhaustion comes not from any of these things being bad, but the fact that I haven’t held enough margin in my life. In a recent letter, a friend referenced one of the watercolors I posted. She pointed out the implicit question embedded in the ‘anti-mantra’, “It’s okay to disappoint people.” Reading her letter, I realized that the person I am most willing to betray is myself. I would rather have other people think highly of me, rather contort myself to meet their groundless expectations, than I would disappoint them in order to meet my own needs.
I got up this morning, sat on the back porch, attempted to write. The weather hasn’t started to turn yet—days are still in the 80s or 90s; hiking requires a thick application of sunscreen and multiple bottles of water—but the morning air foreshadows autumnal chill. I moved from the shaded backyard to the south facing front steps and struggled to fill a page. So I did something personally revolutionary: I went back to bed, and I slept past noon.
When I got up, I drank a lot of water. I rolled around in the grass and talked to Michael and let Kitten Keana lick my toes. I read a book in my hammock. I took a long shower.
Nearly every time I meet with my spiritual director and my therapist, they remark to me: you put so much pressure on myself. I’m not the sole source of this pressure—the pressure is a learned behavior, mimicking the culture that taught me to always do more, be more, be different, go deeper, commit harder—but I continue to replicate it. I’m working on not just giving myself grace when I “fail,” but actively practicing self-compassion and permission to be human. I’m working on the willingness to disappoint people other than myself.
Kitten Keana modeling what relaxation looks like
