Before I begin, I want to remind anyone who is in the South East of England that
and I are hosting our first Holding Stories gathering — to tend to our creativity and connect with other writers — this Saturday (20th April 10am - 1.30pm) in London. We would love to share this with you, for all the details see this post and book here.Hello lovely one,
How are you today? How is your body feeling?
Today I am sending you a note with words that have been holding me recently.
You can read below, or listen to it here.
Softening my edges
Will you pause with me for a moment sweet one…
Will you stop and look at the magnificence of… you?
A walking miracle
A collection of stardust gathered together in a moment
Can you stop for a moment in awe of yourself… the earth and sky combined in a millisecond and you…
The pure artistry of… who you are came to being.
Purely. As. You. Are.
Some of you know I have been returning to my devotional practice with Ceremonial Cacao, and each time I have sat with her and let the earthy, yet sweet elixir tumble down my throat and into my belly… the same words have been coming up over, and over again…
Can I allow this moment to soften my edges?
Can I allow softness to merge with the shields of protection that I have held proudly for so long?
Can I meet each moment (or as many moments as possible) with the tenderest of hands?
Cacao gives me courage — not the kind of courage that you require to do battle but a loving trickle of courage that melts into the medicine of the heart. Somehow with the arms of Mama Cacao wrapped around me I feel able to step forwards with more intent and more presence, slower yet stronger.
Can you sit with me now… in softness?
Loosen the grip in your jaw.
Imagine a warm, honey-like liquid melting over the muscles in your shoulders and easing them a little further away from your ears.
Take a breath in and as you exhale let the edges that are fiercely holding on to your heart space un-spool a little.
The world is ferocious at times and the easy route is to harden… but what if we softened?
Can I? Can you? Can we?
As I move through my day with an awareness of my response to so-called obstacles — I notice how instantaneously I default to hard. It is an effortless reaction to grow rigid in my body, to close down my heart and to feel victimised by challenge.
So I have taken to navigating my day with a curiosity to softness.
How would it feel? What would it look like?
When my eldest daughter’s tone is the perfect pitch of ‘whinge’ to trigger my heckles to rise… what if I softened?
When my youngest pinches my leg with her teeny tiny fingertips as she claws at my ankles while I am trying to make their third meal of the day… what if I softened?
When my childcare falls through and the spaciousness I had been so desperately yearning for is abruptly taken away… what if I softened?
When I see someone else doing the very thing that I wish I could do in my business, but haven’t had the mental space to bring it to life yet… what if I softened?
When someone tells me something they love and admire about me… what if I softened?
What if?
Softness does not come easily to me. It is something I have to work at every day. Every moment of every day in fact.
It takes a lot more conscious effort to choose the soft path instead of the harshness that has kept me ‘strong’ for many years.
I spent decades carefully constructing a wall around what I now know is sensitivity and tenderness… a wall of perfectionism, control, of ‘good’ behaviour, of palatability, of being highly organised, of productivity, of defensiveness, of fear, of anxiety. I disconnected from softness in favour of what I though the world wanted me to be.
Reliable. Consistent. Stable.
A wall built of stories that have kept me at a ‘safe’ distance from my SELF.
My soft self. My loving self. My sensitive self.
Soft — in my mind — had always been portrayed as weak. Mild. Meek.
And yet when I explore the texture of softness I find it to be malleable, versatile and adaptable. Soft allows for movement, for growth, for transformation, for magic…
Soft is welcoming, nurturing, holding, loving, tender.
I do not want to be a ‘hard woman’. I want others to be able to melt into my arms and feel lovingly held.
Each day over the past few weeks I have sat with my cup of cacao and each day she has reminded me of MY choice to soften or to harden.
To brace, or to embrace.
To expand, or to contract.
When I walk through life without hardened edges… I can meet each moment with love and gentleness instead of seeing my triggers as abrasive acts come to harm me.
It is a repetitive practice. A spiral practice. Returning to it over and over again until it becomes a new and familiar pathway.
I have to choose it over and over again, every single day — for this is decades of calcification that has built up in my body and around my heart. But even if I meet just one of the moments that I previously would have braced against with softness — I am slowly treading the pathway back to love.
I find softening my outer shell (my physical body) is like a signal to my inner shell that it is OK to let go of the holding patterns that I have clung to. This is not a process that bypasses our body — in fact it is vital to work WITH our body as we melt towards softness.
The hardening comes from protection, from a nervous system wanting to keep us safe.
So I invite you, go gently if you join me.
With a hand on my heart.
A hum on my lips.
A breath in my lungs.
A sway of my hips
Can I soften just 1% more?
Layer upon layer being removed.
The reward
When I respond to my outer circumstances from softness my world is filled with colour, with laughter, with joy, with gentleness.
It is full of emotion — tears of grief, heart bursting with gratitude, burning rage at injustice.
It is full of feeling — and feeling to me relates to my aliveness. The more I can feel, the more I am living.
I can make decisions that are in alignment with my highest self — because my highest self IS my heart self, my most loving self. My softest self.
If I contemplate how I would like my girls to remember me as a Mother, I want them to remember me as a soft, safe, loving place to land, not a hard, strong, put together persona.
Day by day I am inviting this thaw, this melting.
Where are you on the journey of softening?
Please do share with me in the comments, or reply via email, what this surfaces for you.
Until next time…
With so much love,
Lauren
xxx
It was an honour to be part of this potent conversation facilitated by
, the entire piece and the comments felt like sitting in a sacred Mother’s Circle.Recent offerings you might have missed…
Unravelling Deeper: Merging Mama Cacao with Motherhood — a solo podcast episode for paying supporters.
Witnessing, and holding, the beauty of an ending — a tender piece on closing chapters in my life.
Reclaiming the possibility of thriving as a woman - words on living life all the way alive.
Hello to anyone who is new here… I am Lauren, a Mother of two daughters, a Writer, Coach, Soulful Business Mentor, Website & Branding Creator, Human Design Guide, Sacred Space Holder and multi dimensional human being. You can find out more about my work here. Please do subscribe to join the journey, and if you enjoy this, and you do have the means, I would be so grateful if you chose to support my creations for £5 a month…
Tears are filling my eyes as I listen to this, sipping my cacao, not knowing what this post was even about before feeling called to open it. I too desire to soften the bracing into embracing. I've been drinking cacao daily for the past couple of weeks and have never cried or felt so much. And my god, it. is. beautiful. As always, I have no words to express my gratitude to you Lauren x
SO beyond beautiful Lauren, I loved every drop of this! And I am here for it all. Softening has been my continued learning since I made the conscious decision to move away from the path of striving and the restricting I had been on in order to return to myself. Mothering has brought even more unfolding layers and I entirely agree that yielding and finding space rather than hardening and tensing creates a whole new dimension of feeling and experience. As you say, it is a constant practice of remembering to soften and find our strength there xx