do not look for me::
on sabbatical, sacrifice, & primal morning cocktails
Dearest Community~~~
Greetings from the otherside of the solstice, from the sanctuary of January.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a shameless Sagittarian bae with a winterqueen soul who loves only one thing more than vibing on a collective celebratory wave~~~and that would be a long dark stretch of seasonally sanctioned hibernation.
That is exactly the freneticism of December for me: my introverted spirit is ready to descend into stillness while my very social bodymind says yes to all the parties. So much holidaying; so many birthdays. Saturation. Inebriation. Family overload. Plus, the unceasing windmill of kiddie viruses & cold.
Still, I adore December. But in the relief of the New Year, I am soaking in a tranquil pond, repeating this Woven Kin ballad like a protective mantra:
Do not look for me,
I lie dormant, my love
Do not look for me
For I sleep beneath the Earth
Do not look for me
I’m a seedling under snow
Do not look for me
Let me sleep
Let me go
.
.
We began our New Year in Florida, where I got to delight in my parents & son delighting in each other—a rather disorienting wormhole, if you let your mind get too lost in the gossamer labyrinth of genetics & time— but that’s contemplation for a different newsletter.
My favorite thing about Florida is the dock. I sit there in the mornings, with my coffee, yoga mat, journal and absorb tropicality through my pores. Oftentimes, the water reflects the sky. Creatures jump up or swoop down or call out in horrifying sound. Oftentimes, the atmosphere appears to mirror my mood. Gusty & breathless. Or dark & still. Does the outside morph to match my insides, or am I even more permeable than I’d thought?
One morning I watched a manatee roll its thick back through the surface of otherwise still, blackwater. Her body went on for so long. I sat there, mouth agape, eyes opening & closing. Reconsidering my plans to kayak.
Felt scared, and blessed, and quiet inside.
In pursuit of more of that, in 2023 I am re-turning
towards what I like to call my primal cocktail, my integral medicine, my alchemical recipe for clarity. The method is simple: begin every morning with a listening. This consists of three components: meditation, yoga, writing. The intention during all of these modalities is not to achieve, exercise, or check something off a list, but to simply:::::: listen. To listen through the body, mind & soul. To notice what’s asking to be tended to. To give each aspect of my Self unmitigated attention, with time for each to communicate, and space for these wisdoms to integrate.
This is nothing revelatory for me, or anyone really. I have been practicing this in some form on and off for many years. But parenthood has shifted time allocation & priority, and over the past year and a half my early mornings have been dedicated more towards recouping on rest & dreamcatching inside the warm yawn of a many bodied spoon composed of me/husband/dog/cat/cat/toddler/bottle &, if desperate enough, /miss rachel.
((fortunately & unfortunately, I am a sucker for the morning mess of warm beings & badbreath, especially in the dry ladle of winter, where, just before the sun begins its rise, everything hangs so impossible & tenderly in the palm of the days potential; time holding out in its own raw pause to lull you everso gently back to the other side of the other side of the dream; in fact, I live for these moments, as good slumber & all that surrounds it has always been a passion and a talent of mine)), but I digress &
what I am really trying to share here is
how my intention for 2023 is to show up for my spirit each morning, through:
movement (to tend, to ground, to stretch, to strengthen, to shake, to hold, to flow)
meditation (to breathe, to still, to listen, to accept, to surrender, to receive, to be)
writing (to clear, to catch, to drain, to sort, to gather, to symbol, to make sound)
///// this commitment requires a small sacrifice on my part, of some of the cozy morning moments I love so dearly to steep myself in, but the root of sacrifice is sacra meaning the offering up of one thing so to make another sacred // & I am not sure of my God’s name but I am almost certain she too feeds on dreams & the strange hypnosis of early morning//////
While quality of attention during these rituals is unnegotiable, what feels perhaps like the most radical part to me is the beauty of the leniency I am offering myself in terms of quantity. While I’d love for this to always be an hourlong endeavor, many days I will realistically only have about twenty minutes. No matter. Show up anyway. On Sunday, we woke up at 4am to catch a flight back to Denver. I held a three minute ritual: one minute of breath, one minute in a long forward fold, one minute spent writing 4 lines in my journal.
“It’s the commitment to showing up. To listening. To making myself a vessel for old echoes. To being a harbor for song.”
I have a lot more to say about this ritual, the intricacies of the method, the boundaries I am playing with. A lot more to say about integration & homing & yoking the bodymindspirit. As this year unfurls, I’m sure I will accost you here with further discovery.
This feels raw & sort of like an overshare into the intimacies of my very particular brainspace; how I organize my priorities; how I personally enter into moving & connecting, in other words, how I enter into other worlds, in otherwords how I enter into prayer.
But I guess I am feeling called to offer this out—perhaps a gesture towards vulnerability or perhaps a way of simply expressing where I am at— as a mother, as a writer, as a yogi, as a person who is trying to get back to some precious state of herenowness I tasted once, and find myself longing for again..
Finally,
I am taking a bit of a sabbatical* from teaching & offering sessions for the next few months, as I focus in on a new/old writing project. I am excited. I feel blessed to be able to be here. And if you made it this far, I am earnestly wanting to hear from you about where you are at, and what your main intentions are for the year ahead. Are they similar to mine in any way? How do you make sacred space for yourself, within the spiraling demands of your work/family/world? And what are you sacrificing in its name?
Sending out pulsating vibrations of love & light (iykyk)
as I personally take flight into the bardo,
Gabby
ICYMI:
-Both of my poetry collections, [a go] and Bread Of , are available here through Ornithopter Press !!!! Get you some poetry for 2023.
-*Despite proclaimed sabbatical, a small Prenatal Yoga Group is potentially forming for February. If you are pregnant & interested in joining, do reach out <3