Early Morning

Mornings With Martin

 

Hiking Season

It’s almost MTB season

 

Bird Song

I was not having a spiritual morning

I hadn’t had my coffee yet

I was in compression socks with a hole. Fully awake, not exactly thriving.

Then the birds started.

Several of them. Outside my window. Extremely enthusiastic about whatever was happening out there.

And I stopped.

Because something landed that I didn't expect on a Sunday.

Birds only sing when they feel safe.

Not when everything is perfect. Not when the list is done. Just... safe.

And I stood there thinking about how long I'd been doing the opposite.

Waiting to soften until things settled. Waiting to breathe until the uncertainty passed. Making peace something I had to earn before I was allowed to feel it.

The birds were not waiting.

They were just in it. Fully. Loudly. Without apology.

So I took a step.

Then another.

Not because everything was resolved. Just because I decided to.

And something shifted in my chest that I can only describe as: oh. This is available right now.

I can name what I need. And I wait anyway.

I make softness a reward for finishing a list that never gets finished.

The birds aren't waiting for the list.

Neither should I.

The List

Today during one of the last ski days of the season

I made a list

Of all the things I love about it - like Fish Tacos afterwards at Lone Star

Weekly Flowers in my favorite vase

And booking flights to go visit Martin’s Dad in Portugal since we didn’t make it to Spain last year 

 

All The Thoughts

This morning I walked outside after Martin left for work before anyone else was awake. No reason. Just the trees and the night doing what they do. And somewhere between the first step and the fifth, I was eight years old again, because something reminded me of childhood. Because the quiet did.

There was a version of me who found her way outside every single day. Long afternoons. Stillness. The trees not needing a single thing from me.

I did not know at the time why that mattered so much. I just knew that out there, I could breathe differently.

What I did not understand until decades later was what I was breathing away from.

The tension in the room that I had named "normal." The unspoken things I had absorbed so completely I thought they were mine.

The little girl who adapted, and then kept adapting, and then one day woke up inside a life that fit... but did not feel like hers.

I thought my childhood was an adventure.

I was not wrong about that.

I was just missing the whole picture.

So why do I tell you this?

Because I’m not a struggling women. I’m a woman who adapted beautifully. Who made chaos feel familiar. Who called performance survival, and then called survival identity, and then called identity self.

I am sophisticated. Accomplished. Deeply invested in my own growth. And I am still living, quietly, inside something that I never had the words for.

The part of me that loved stillness still knows the way home. It has always known.

What I want you to do next is simple:

come sit with me.

My sponsor said that is where we begin. It is free. It is live. And it is the first room where you will not need to perform knowing the answer.

4.09

Shutterfly had a no shipping fee sale today 
Guess what I ordered for Martin’s birthday?

 

Steps

Fritz is not used to the heat yet

 

Brunch

Market Street

Easter Brunch

With my family 

Martin & Divy

Morgen and me

Holden, Candie and Emmett

Mom and Dad - Casey

Marilee & James

 On Sunday after we checked out of the Lava Hotel we went to Easter Brunch with the family 

The Walk

 The walk that actually moved something went beyond words

Into my body

Into my breath 

Into the place that existed before the part of me that knows how to manage a clinic.

Happy Easter

From Lava Hot Springs