Month: March 2021

Just like healing, retreat is a process. Unlike healing, retreat often feels too nourishing to conclude. But, the power of retreat is in the promise of return. 

The promise of building, of becoming what we want to be. Better yet, what we truly are. 

Not just bringing back the truth and the insights, like perfectly whole sand dollar souvenirs, but actually applying them in life. Moving forward into a new life. 

Away from the constant heartbeat of the waves crashing onto the Oregon coast and living in our human-made world of buildings, streets, cars, nonnative plants, out-of-season food. Only two weeks of being back in the city since my last retreat and yet, it’s always so easy to forget.

Our true nature. Especially our inherent adaptability—the ability to adjust to new conditions—due to a little-known process. We learned homeostasis is our internal process toward maintaining balance. A steady state. Like at the playground, standing in the middle of the Teeter Tooter until that miraculous, temporary moment when it’s even and flat. The rest of the time it wobbles up and down, is a different—maybe even more miraculous—process:

Allostasis is the process of constantly adapting by proactively “anticipating needs and preparing to satisfy them before they arise,” according to Wikipedia.

In other words, remaining stable by being variable. And maintaining stability through change, is a fundamental process through which organisms actively adjust to both predictable and unpredictable events.

This is the way our body works. This is the way an ecosystem works. This is the way the planet works. This is the way the universe works. 

Throughout the past year, I’ve written about my own revelations from when the pandemic began, when Election results finally came in, when I felt the injustice at my front door, when we started to feel hope on Inauguration Day. It’s been a huge year of growth. I will remember and carry these lessons forth especially about balance. But, will humanity?

Will we let this past year be just another newsworthy year? Going down in history:

A brief “unprecedented” interruption of what we thought was normal life. Instead of an inevitable crisis at worst, a disruptive catalyst at best. 

Was last week the anniversary of “the week our reality broke” as the New York Times wrote?

Or was it the moment, the day, the week, the year our delusion broke? From the abnormal state marked by beliefs and practices of extraction, consumption, corruption, oppression—all that is untrue.

When we awoke from our unreality. Coming back to what is true. 

Healing reimagined.

This is our opportunity, right now. As we carefully emerge this spring, we carry forth these powerful lessons from our year-long retreat and hold in our hands the promise of return. 

May you commit to your truth this week. 

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 

Heading to the coast a week ago for my women spiritual group‘s annual two-day retreat—albeit virtual this year—and coming up on our COVID-19 anniversary, I reflected a lot on the last year.

I packed everything that needed to be released to make way for new life.

To seal the intention of adaptability. 

Because this is what happens during the winter—the last season of the natural year—to make way for the next cycle of growth. 

But, what needed to be released this winter, this retreat—and especially this year—in order to create more space for healing? For moving forward, into the future?

The short answer: Everything. But how?

I carried this immense question and a piece of very expensive chocolate with me to the edge of the foamy waves that Saturday morning. I stayed an extra second at the cusp of wet sand and nearly wet running shoes as I tossed my chocolate offering to Grandmother Ocean. 

My heartfelt ask: Show me the way. 

Her answer? The rest of the day. 

After running on the beach and a hot shower, I returned to meditate thoughtlessly beside the waves. From the far end of the beach, Neah-Kah-Nie Mountain beckoned. And so I drove to the trailhead. Traveling swiftly up and down the steep trail, I only rested at the top long enough to take my favorite feet-seascape-and-horizon photo and a sip of water. When a snowflake hit my face, I stayed an extra second in surprise and delight at the cusp of winter and nearly spring weather. Then, back to the ocean, this time for a full plunge into her salty embrace. The truth washing over me, seeping into my pores and sticking to my hair like the salt.

Just like the tides and cycles of the moon, just like our body’s allostasis, just like a nurse log’s decomposition, just like the seasons of the year. Healing is a process.

​Healing is a process of becoming whole again. A series of stages or steps. This we know: 

1. Shock Stage: Triage
2. Immobility Stage: Protection
3. Growth Stage: Rebuilding
4. Mobility Stage: Recovery

And yet, is that true?

Rebuilding: from a broken to a fixed place. From a divided to an integrated place. Either way, things returning “back to the way they were.” But, that way doesn’t exist anymore. 

Something my Dad said decades ago—a lesson shared from observing my Mom’s experiences for 33 years—filed neatly into a folder for truths I couldn’t yet grasp, until now. Retrieved last Saturday somewhere between sea level and summit, during a day of simply being one with nature, with my own nature: 

“Stop focusing on what you don’t want to be. Focus on what you DO want to be…what you are.”

That was it. Not rebuilding, just building. 

Healing reimagined. 

Later that evening, as the orange flames of our campfire illuminated the dark sands and far off horizon of the low tide, I realized:

• I had not reflected on any of the retreat session questions, 
• I had not organized my thoughts into reasoning,
• I had not written anything in my retreat journal, 
• I had not sought advice in the counsel of others,  

and yet I had the answer I needed. 

Just like healing, retreat is a process. Unlike healing, retreat often feels too nourishing to conclude. But, the power of retreat is in the promise of return. 

The promise of building, of becoming. 

May you know what you already know this week. 

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights! 

Having missed it other years, I was super on top of getting my flu shot as soon as it came out in late September. By Valentine’s Day, the flu shot must have worn off because I started to feel bad while driving home from work. Dang it! The cough that appeared earlier in the afternoon wasn’t just a tickle in my throat. 

By midnight my fever was 103. I vomited all morning, then spent the day on the couch watching movies. By the next morning, I felt human again. Enough to rally and lead a four-day work retreat that week, then attend a two-day retreat the following weekend?

Yes, thank goodness! Those retreats turned out to be some of the last times indoors with coworkers and friends—not just being, but living, together. Hugging, eating, sleeping, breathing. Being without fear that the flu could lead to the ICU. 

Some anniversaries come and go. Notable but inconsequential. Another year at a job. Another birthday. 

As we approach this COVID-19 anniversary though, each preceding experience from a year ago today, feels thick with significance. 

In retrospect, we see meaning in all the crevices of the moments preceding the moment when everything changed. And it’s easier now to name all the elusive feelings that were hovering just below the surface of shock. 

Surprise, followed by confusion, followed by hope, followed by reality, followed by survival. In the case of this last year—followed by the next surprise, then the next, then the next. Actual surprises. And new surprises of things we hadn’t noticed until now. 

In all this survival, there wasn’t a lot of energy left for grief—deep sorrow, immobilizing suffering—to mourn what we didn’t know we were going to lose. And still losing. 

Defying the laws of physics, the energy to accept feels so much harder than to resist. 

To accept what happened. To accept the way things are, now. The “New Normal.” 

Except, there is no more “normal.” 

While I can’t remember a lot about holiday break during my junior year of college, I have replayed the day I dropped my Mom off at the hospital for minor surgery a million times. I dropped her off in the morning on my way to work, then surprisingly had to go back that night because she was on a ventilator in the ICU. Where she stayed for three days. Where we stayed for three days and three nights before she died. 

Eighteen years ago and yet likely so similar to the feelings and stages that 2.5 Million families have experienced over the last year (except without actually getting to be together). 

Surprise, followed by confusion, followed by hope, followed by reality, followed by survival. One that is so much harder by seeking a new normal. How is there a new normal after that?

After this last year?

There is something different. There is a new life. 

A new way of being.

Rich with gratitude, presence, vulnerability, adaptability. 

Fully accessible once the reality is accepted and we’ve mourned what we forgot we would inevitably lose. Not just people or things, but the sense of security, the sense of control, the sense of privilege—above nature, not within it.

Because things don’t stay the same. That is not the way the world works. It is dynamic, ever-changing, ever-calibrating. The ability to adjust to new conditions is adaptability. 

Heading to the coast last weekend for my women spiritual group’s annual two-day retreat—albeit virtual this year—and coming up on our COVID-19 anniversary, I reflected a lot on the last year.

I packed everything that needed to be released to make way for new life.

To seal the intention of adaptability. 

May you let the grief in and out this week. 

Love,
Jules

I share a lesson learned about integrity every Monday. Sign up for delivery right to your inbox. Want more? There’s lots more lessons learned here on my blog, so have fun exploring and commenting about your own insights!