Lub-Dub, Lub-Dub

It’s a cold, damp morning and I’ve just come in from spending time with the donkeys. As I’m here, warming my hands around my coffee mug, I’m thinking of things like Tink’s hoof, what Little Foot and I are going to do today, and the yoga class I’ll teach this evening and I’m having trouble navigating through my mind-chatter.

I’ve not written a new blog post in some time, although I’ve started many entries without success. Draft after untitled draft sit sadly and incomplete in the folder open on my desktop because I’ve had a difficult time sorting through the thoughts in my head enough to make any readable sense out of them. I suspect it’s because my confidence and esteem are struggling under the weight of endless rejections both in my efforts to make any kind of career out my my writing and out of seeing any sort of structure in my future as an aspiring author at all.

Lub-dub, lub-dub, my heart chugs along in my chest. I started this blog shortly after we moved to the ranch as a way to keep in touch with my friends and family back home because I was the unknowing city-girl moving to a small farm up north and shenanigans were surely in store—although it’s morphed over time. Most of my readers are no longer from back home, but are people I’ve connected with along the way through the power of social media (and for those connections, I am truly grateful!). It’s been a way of connecting that I didn’t anticipate and it’s exciting to think of how far it’s come. Yet still, I find myself struggling. Not that there’s been a lack of material in which to document—there’s been the sporadic sighting of the bizarre white rabbit. There’s been stoking of new friendships and plans for a luscious garden. There have been storms, full moons, farrier visits, camping trips and holidays but still, my drafts remain incomplete.

I think this is a perfect time to remind myself that happiness and wholeness does not lie in other things or other people: they come from within. Rejections by others of my evolving craft do not define the limitations in which I’m allowed to write. Rejections by others of the style in which I lead a yoga class do not define the limitations in which I need to teach. I consider criticisms when they’re constructive and self-reflect when pieces don’t fit properly….but I’ve gotten into an epically bad habit of placing my self-worth in the hands of others and that is the best way to feel worthless. Perhaps that’s what’s so wrong with our broken world right now—that we’re trying to desperately seek peace outside without stopping to consider that there might not be peace within ourselves. How can we expect love around us or for us when we don’t know how to love ourselves?

Lub-dub, lub-dub…if you can feel your heart beating, then you’re alive and you’ve got the opportunity to do something. Rejection and feeling exposed means that you’re pushing your boundaries and it’s outside of our comfort zones that growth happens.

It’ll be spring soon enough…that’s when life really starts to grow. In the meantime, here are some cute donkeys.