This summer, let yourself be good

Hi Soothers! Happy Sunday. This week's newsletter will be short and sweet, as I begin my annual Sunday Soother Summer Break. Basically I take most of August (and some of September, maybe?) off from both this here newsletter and its sibling podcast, as well as social media (though I scheduled 31 days of journal prompts for you over on Instagram for you to enjoy).

I'm doing some other stuff, too: unsubscribing from all podcasts; instating stronger boundaries around my phone (it doesn't get to come with me unless I need it for driving directions this August, and I won't look at it for an hour after waking up and an hour before bed); and not working with any 1:1 clients other than my existing Soothe masterminders; not creating any new workshops or classes. I'm planning lots of long walks and book reads by a river, and while all of this sounds magnificent and relaxing... I am totally dreading it.

I am beginning healing of my overworking, which I turn to to numb out, try to gain control in this world of chaos, and use to distract myself from uncomfortable feelings. To many other humans, a lazy August of reading and strolling probably sounds delightful, but my brain and nervous system well understand what they're in for: an August without easy access to distractions, to speed and hurrying, to lots of doing. And without distractions, emotions I like to avoid will arise. And my sweet little brain and nervous system: they're flipping out.

But as I consistently remind myself: Even I deserve this.

I am a human deserving of joy, and belief that I am sacred.

I deserve rest. I deserve goodness. I deserve abundance. I deserve to learn (finally!) how to be present.

As a life coach and teacher who is so often holding space for others, who unreservedly absolutely believes that my clients are good and worthy and delightful and deserve all that they desire, I too often struggle to hold this same belief about myself.

But I'm working on it this summer.

I do believe buried under all of our conditioning and shame stories is a deep desire to see ourselves as something real, good, sacred.

Something that belongs, that has a purpose, that's here for a reason.

So this summer, allow yourself to tune into your own goodness, your own sacredness, even if it's just flashes of it.

And if you can't start with yourself, tune into the sacredness of something like the strawberry or the slow ice cream drip.

The sacredness of toes on grass, of children with grandparents.

Of the slow canoe down the river with the bald eagle drifting lazily above.

Of the beads of sweat running down skin or glass.

We can't forget we are sacred. We are. We are. We are. There is meaning to us being here. There is a reason we are on this planet right now.

Systems of oppression try to make us believe we're more robot than human, but please, don't forget the sacredness of your humanity this summer, the tenderness, the squishiness, the softness, the beauty, the grief, the mess, your place in the grand order of things.

Because you have a place.

You belong.

I'm going to try to remember that this August on the banks of a river in rural Indiana. That I am not merely an energetic extension of my phone, of social media, that I am more than just my work or my words or my posts into the digital space.

I belong here with the blue heron, with the eagles, with the turtles and the flopping catfish, with the tottering wild turkeys leading their babies across the bank into the trees, with the sunrise and the sunset and everything, every breath, every cloud, every falling leave in between.

I belong. You belong. We belong.

And we are all sacred.

And we are all good.

And we don't have to do anything to prove it.

As the famed Mary Oliver poem goes,

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

May you have a blessed August, and I will be returning to your inboxes in September.

All my love,
Catherine