what you resist, persist.
“If, anywhere in your soul, you feel the desire to write, please write. Write as a gift to yourself and others. Everyone has a story to tell…[writing is] just about noticing who you are and noticing life and sharing what you notice. When you write your truth, it is a love offering to the world because it helps us feel braver and less alone.” (Glennon Doyle Melton, Carry On Warrior)
So much of my teaching in class is much of my own processing of life, feelings, experiences, and so much more. What I really love is exploring new places within myself and learning new dialogue to navigate life with. I am more self aware now than ever and I LOVE this work. Something I love more than the work— sharing the work and finding places to be more relatable with those around me. Thank you for being here. For opening. And for asking yourself hard questions, and tuning in to your humanness just a little bit more. This is processing from one of my recent classes, I wanted to remember.
“What you resist, persists.” - Richard Rohr
Learning about your own pushback.
It’s been like icy hot on my soul for a few months. Like the very things we go against, or we reject, will only keep on keepin’ on. What I have come to learn about resistance in most cases— it comes right before you cross a threshold. If you’re resisting something it’s likely because it’s out of your norm, and uncomfortable. And typically, it’s the very thing you need to embrace. Sounds really simple, but it’s incredibly hard to find full surrender in the unknown or the unfamiliar. When we resist, when we ignore the pushback, we find persistence of the thing. We resist because of the unknown.
I am learning that within myself, I find a correlation between resistance and restriction. When I think of resisting something, I think of restricting something from myself. Holding something at arms length and telling myself I cannot have it. Brain says : “when I resist, I must next restrict, because how else will I grow?”. I think much of my programed relationship to resistance comes from years and year of self abuse via an eating disorder. My success in my eating disorder stemmed out of the resistance I had to truth, and therefore I created boundary (restriction) with myself. I know it probably seems like a twisted relationship between the two, but stay with me. The most restricted I could become with myself, the more I felt I was succeeding.
At the end of therapy in 2012, I remember feeling this need to remove all boundaries I had with myself because none of them were producing anything actually healthy. No more logging my food, no more weighing, no more skipping meals, etc. Boundary meant I was still suffering. So I removed all.
Which oddly enough sent me into a tailspin. I began filling the void with alcohol, and once that didn’t work, food. I went to the other end of the spectrum, and began consuming too in excess. Binging, and eventually when it had no place to go within me, purging.
Learning healthy boundary was and has been the saving grace. Learning what kinds of boundaries I can make in order to take really good care. Not withholding, but observing, creating awareness around what I engage in and hold space for. When creating good wholesome boundaries, we are able to realign ourselves to the intention (the WHY) behind what we are doing.
Finding a really beautiful pivot between where you are and you becoming better. When we create a boundary to take care, we create new space to discover. I’m learning its okay to pull something out to create room for new beautiful things. To stop resisting the unknown, and start living within it. Remembering your why will help create healthy and meaningful boundary lines. The awareness of what you’re limiting is the opportunity to hold myself. To give permission to discover. To find places of wonder.
We never hold space for wonder anymore. “We’ve moved from wondering to answering” Richard Rohr writes in the Naked Now. Rather than answering, or figuring out the next move, can I find myself in a place of wonder. Imagining possibilities, but not desperately working finding one. Allowing what needs to happen time and space to do so.
Meeting the resistance with open dialogue. Alomost like meeting a new friend. How do we bring to get to know it? Rachel Dunaville says— “Constriction breeds creativity. Contraction is vital to birth.” Giving ourselves permission to feel the weight of the change within us, more times than not we need to remove to receive. When we feel out of element, it’s a sign we are not tethered to the ground. We give permission to ourselves to create a new thing within ourselves, to feel connected to the present moment.
This is one of my practices the past year between having a baby, learning to navigate work and life and relationships in a whole new way, and learning to trust that I will take good care of me along the way. If I am resisting, nothing is changing, and if I am remembering my intention, I can learn to set an appropriate boundary to keep moving forward.
I hope this challenges you to find new spaces within yourself. To listen closely to what you resist. To give yourself permission to reside in the unknown, the beautiful place of wonder. Seeing what lives there, and finding an openness to discover.
In this new year, can we simply allow.
