Question #16: How do you feel when you wake up?

Before I dive in, let's address the elephant on the calendar. It has been well over a month since my last MomX Quest. I've journaled elsewhere, here and there, but my dedicated practice of showing up to THIS platform and working THIS process has taken a pause. 

Why?

1. Because I up and moved out of that little apartment in San Jose and landed, after some big adventures, in San Diego, where I'm just now opening up my computer again. 

2. Because sometimes there is a gap between my thinking, or planned life, and my actual, or lived one. Sometimes daily practices take a month off. And, sometimes things happen so fast that there's no time to sit and process it all. 

3. Because every time we fall "out" and then back "in" to a practice, we strengthen its cutting edge. The same mechanism exists in jazz. When a song travels away from the base track and then comes back, the music finds a deeper groove.

And now for the quest. I notice that the way I feel when I wake up is directly informed by the way I felt when I fell asleep.

The last few nights, I've been falling asleep irritated, overwhelmed, and depleted. I wake up feeling tired, and reluctant. Then I reach immediately for caffeine, and toast with avocado, and other comfort-items. While this helps incentivize my participation in the day, it undermines something else: my optimal morning routine. I am still developing a practice that supports me in coming into myself without reliance on something external. A movement meditation, an embodiment exercise, a song, a prayer, something inherent. Something so nurturing and connective that I wake up feeling ready to arise.

Leaving San Jose was like crawling out of another cocoon; I'm now experiencing that awkward sticky stage as I detangle my wings, again, while still on the fly. Wrestling with old coping strategies, updating my systems. Scraping out time for regenerative activity.

I've declared that I shall not live in any situation that discourages me from thriving as a mother. And, I have not determined how I shall finance such a life, or where that life will be most likely to occur. I have a vision, however, and I'm flexing faith.

By the Grace of The Big Hand I am also, lately, feeling incredibly GRATEFUL when I wake up because the first thing I see through a big picture window is the ocean stretched out in front of me. A wave of wonder washes through my cells, because it looks so fresh and different and totally new, every single time. In this sun-lit apartment my father has provided for temporary housing, I also experience a healing for my inner child, whom my father kicked out into the streets.
 
Every day I face my fear, my doubt, my exhaustion, and all the other feelings that accompany the human experience, especially when one abandons the beaten path and takes off into the wilderness. Especially with small children. I commit to courage.