Slow Mornings and a Change of Pace

thoughts on rest

The morning started slowly. And gradually picked up speed. After a cup of coffee and journaling, I set out on a walk. With a step count and target heart rate goal, I headed away from the water and into town.

An hour later with my goals met and the temperature rising, I decided to take a different route back to the vacation rental condo. I took my shoes off and started the return on the beach instead of the pavement. The sand was hot and soft. The water lapping over my feet was cool and refreshing. The waves tickling my toes, asking for attention. Little birds dancing, wanting to be seen. The sun calling out like a song. I wanted to stop. To wait, watch, and sing.

The night before, two women at the pool shared how every morning for a week, while walking on the beach, they saw a pod of dolphins. With joy they described how close the dolphins swam to shore. How they jumped and played with one another. Maybe they’d return for me?

I wanted to just sit down in the sand. Breathe. Be present. Aware. Open. Greet the dolphins. And once again, I couldn’t allow myself to be still. What was it? I was on vacation. Absolutely nothing to do or anywhere to be. Why was I so unable or perhaps unwilling to rest? Or even try?

Taking the month of July off, I realized just how complicated my relationship with resting really is. I’ve long understood rest as a privilege and treated it like a reward. One that I haven’t earned and do not deserve. I have wrongly equated rest with laziness. Worrying that if I am not doing enough others will accuse me of being idle or unproductive.

The need to do and the constant desire to go, comes from the years when I couldn’t do much other than survive, and when going meant summoning the energy to just get out of bed in the morning. Depression robbed me of so much. And while I am no longer in that desolate place, I still wrestle with feeling a need to not only prove my wellness and my worth, but also to make up for lost time and opportunities. Believing that I don’t just need to succeed, but I need to find success as quickly as possible. Like the depression that stole years, this unrealistic pace has taken from me too. Always taking the fastest route, means you miss lessons and beauty along the way. Whenever I take a road trip, I prefer the scenic route, even when it adds hours to the drive. What if I treated life the same way?

I first enrolled in community college the fall after graduating high school. Eleven years later, I walked across the stage to receive my associate’s degree. There are multiple reasons for this time line, all connected to the depression. And those eleven years are the reason I finished my bachelor’s and master’s programs at warp speed. Once I was well enough to study and learn, I loved school and developed an insatiable appetite for education and knowledge. And I felt I had to complete my studies ASAP. No one could look at me and see those years I lost, but every time I looked in the mirror, I saw them as clear as my freckles and brown eyes. I made decisions based on internalized shame and self-imposed expectations. I shifted into high gear because I felt like I had to. Like I had to demonstrate that I could.

I don’t want to live that pace anymore; the pace of proving myself, the pace of making up for lost time, the pace of outrunning the past. One month of rest didn’t erase this pace from my patterns, but it has helped me begin to reset my rhythms.

I have nothing to prove to anyone. Those years cannot be re-lived, but what I glean from them is up to me. Not everything has to be redeemed. Some things can only be accepted. I do not want to rush through any more days in a futile attempt to make up for what didn’t happen while I was navigating a trauma that did.

I want to look in the mirror and see those years as experiences of survival rather than shame. I want to give myself credit for the hours and days and weeks and months I worked full time at healing.

I want to walk without a gang of fear following alongside me. I want to move untethered from doubt and regret.

I want to rest often. Free from guilt. Unconcerned with others’ opinions. I want to sit down in the sand. I want to dive head first into the waves with my clothes on, unbothered by not having a swimsuit to wear or towel to dry off.

I want to wholeheartedly trust that there is ample time to soak in what’s before me and arrive where I am called to be at exactly the right moment.

Resting, truly allowing ourselves to rest, is hard. In large part because society teaches us to identity by what we do. When someone says, “tell me a little bit about yourself,” I feel the pressure mounting in my chest, the lump rising in my throat. Resting from writing, I began re-imagining my response. We do not have to be actively doing something in order to be someone.

I am a poet, whether I am writing a poem or not. I am a poet even when I intentionally say I am putting my pen down. Being a poet is who I am and how I exist in this world.

Poetry is how my brain feels and how my heart thinks. How my pain alchemizes. How my hopes rise. Poetry is how I connect parts of myself and how I connect with others and nature. Poetry is how I explore curiosity and cultivate creativity.

Poetry is who I am when I finally say yes to rest. When I become a faithful part of the slow morning club.

Poetry is who I am at the shore, when not only the dolphins appear, but also the manatees and the pelicans, and I simply sit until we are all ready to move on.

Found this hat on a clearance rack. Too perfect to pass up.

Here’s a few questions I am currently spending time with. Would love to know your thoughts, answers, ideas.

• How do you articulate who you are without including what you do?

• Can you define rest without making a list of resting activities?

• How does doing impact your sense of being?

• Does slowing down shift your perspective on time or a particular experience?

With water and rest, Rebecca