The house is unusually quiet.

The clicking of her longer-than-usual fingernails on the laptop keyboard echoes in her ears as her pinkie makes a demanding pressured sound on the “enter” key.

She slides her right-hand, diamond heirloom ring—the one that ancestors as far back as her great-great grandfather wore—back into place.

Her coffee cools beside her as she takes earthy sips with her left hand.

The house is unusually quiet because her husband has taken their small daughter to school since she hasn’t felt well enough to, and she’s also not been able to attend yoga class. Their whole routine is thrown off by her aching ribs and by the help that she now needs rather than craves.

They have a lot of adjusting to do though, seeing that a newborn daughter will shortly arrive. (She momentarily envisions the way her tiny daughter holds her thumb and forefinger only slightly apart when she tells her “the baby will arrive shortly.”)

And there is so much routine to life.

Our lives are filled with rituals that happen on so small a scale that we rarely notice how integral they are to our mental make-up, much less to our day.

The particular way she makes her coffee. The handful of earrings that she rotates wearing. The precise time she puts her daughter’s backpack on and takes her hand, walking out to the car.

Yet some rituals are more obvious.

The way she moves her limbs slowly, with the pacing of her breath, on her green Jade mat. The uttering of gratitude before she puts food onto her tongue. The kiss and accompanying “I love you” she gifts to her husband each morning on his way out the front door.

And when we lose these rituals we lose a piece of ourselves, without fully understanding what it is that has been lost.

Because does the amount of peanut butter she prefers on her toasted bread really matter? Equally, does the amount of milk she splashes into her coffee?

They matter to her—and we realize the priority of these trivial aspects of our lives when we run out of coffee beans and have to head to the store for a non-preferred brand.

We recognize the way we like our lives performed when our normalcies become out of sync with what’s actually occurring.

In short, our lives frequently run like smoothly oiled machinery until jam!—something gets stuck and everything becomes topsy turvy.

But it’s these little blips—that force us to try on different, and sometimes challenging, experiences—that force us to grow, to move upward and outward, rather than to flourish stagnantly, where we’re really not flourishing at all, but we can’t tell (so involved in our day-to-day lives).

And she chooses to grow.

She chooses to feel her rib cage expand achingly with a new inhalation and to mindfully slide her unexpectedly relaxed shoulderblades down her back with her exhales. This might not be a yoga practice on a green Jade mat, but it’s a yoga practice for sure—and she’s created a new ritual that rises and greets, along with the dawning sun.

And she chooses to let her mom, here to help with her small daughter while she is physically limited, splash milk into coffee; like Goldilocks, seeking what’s just right, but, instead, discovering a changed ritual of love in this preparation of velvety drink.

And life is not meant to stand still.

It’s meant to undulate and shake and wiggle us free from the debris of the dirty ground that our crackling seeds grew out from underneath.

We are not meant to stand still.

We get into cozy, sweet spots of ease with our routines—with our daily rituals—and we grieve and anger and irritate when the sweetness is replaced with stickiness; when our smoothly oiled machines switch gear directions entirely.

And as we move into a new day, or perhaps a new night, we might lift up or lay down our heads on the same pillowcase, but we are transformed, changed and made new ourselves with each breath and each now-moment.

With this new moment.

And with this one.

She again turns the ring on her right hand. The house is not as quiet.

She hears the hum of the refrigerator and the rhythmic clacking of her computer keys. Her pinkie, less demanding, gently taps “enter.”

Her ribs still hurt; her coffee has cooled completely; her shoulders have somehow ridden slightly back up. Noticing this, she consciously lifts her heart, and her burdens slide down and off her back again, naturally.

Because when we allow our inner light to reach out and up with hope, with gratitude and with grace, we discover that we are never too rigid to flow with life’s changes, and we are never too stiff to sit immobile on an ever-turning world.

No, we are never truly still anyways; our breath always echoing and moving within our seemingly static chests.

She touches her rounding belly lightly with her left hand, and feels ready for change.

Photo: ClickFlashPhotos/Flickr.

The post A Portrait of Change. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

My shoulders settle down my back and my heart lifts at the clickity-clack sound of my fingers dancing across my laptop.

My ring turns on my right hand, so that the family heirloom diamonds point down and towards the softer skin of my palm. I twirl it back into place with my pinkie but it slips back and I don’t care.

I feel my head settle down and into my heart space as I anticipate purging myself through words.

Sometimes life requires purging. 

I sink into my chair with my tall spine jetting up towards the sky; my posture only slightly slumped at my tired shoulders, but it’s more of a softening and a giving in to my need to write and open up than a wilting droop.

Because sometimes life makes me want to envelop myself in bedsheets and tears and drown myself in slow, steady-thumping music as my chosen backdrop.

And then I’m driving down the windy road and feeling this need to blast the music too loudly for the little girl safely nestled in a carseat behind me.

I want to roll down the windows and feel every ounce of wind that I can across my flying, tangled hair and I want to drive off, away from the rising sun, towards a place that awaits in the shadows; calmer, gentler than the life of my past few weeks.

But I can’t.

I learned a long time ago that we cannot run away from our problems or from ourselves and that this only serves to prolong inevitable discomfort.

So I keep the music at a more moderate level and tell my daughter in the backseat that I love her.

I place my hands consciously at ten o’clock and two o’clock and drive to the yoga studio to drop off a few more copies of my just-released book and then to our local eyeglass shop instead of towards some imaginary oasis of pure fun and end-of-summer laughter.

But how do I eradicate my tensions and my stresses, and my over-filled life, when I no longer want to run my feet into splints or starve myself sick or drink too much wine while cooking dinner?

How do I become clean and new in my skin—right now—and my heart and my over-worked brain? 

The shower I took kind of worked.

I let the water wash over me as I quickly rinsed off, and I felt a little bit lighter in my stuck emotions as I toweled off my  dripping hair.

And that long, deep drink of water felt nice.

The soft feel of it on my tongue and the releasing it brought to my dry throat made the center of my chest soften just a touch.

But these are temporary fixes—just like alcohol and pounding the pavement.

Sure, there are long-term benefits to appropriate exercise and I’m not one to diminish the joys of moderate drinking either, but, still, when I go to bed tonight my problems will still be there and their weight will not have lessened.

So I’ll open up a book, after turning on just enough light to read by; holding the loved, worn pages up to my nose as I transport myself out of my bedroom.

I’ll let my eyes droop for too long until I finally admit that I need to flip off the light and, putting my book to the side, finally curl up under my bedsheets.

I’ll will my pre-slumber thoughts to be positive—things that conjure my gratitude and my love for my inhabited human skin—as I feel the way that my body tingles right before I fall asleep.

And maybe I’ll remember a few of my black-and-white dreams or maybe I’ll get up once or twice to use the bathroom, but when I wake, in the soft grey light of my bedroom, I’ll have a split moment in time before the sleepy fog clears and my mind once again turns to my everyday reality, and in that instance I’ll have purged myself of my yesterday.

So maybe, sometimes, we can’t do much to move forward from our troubles.

Instead, we dig in our heels and feel it all and hold the people we love tightly.

We let tears fall and we do, from time to time, roll all the windows down in the car and turn the music up too much.

And we acknowledge that tomorrow will be different from today, even if we don’t purposefully seek out this change. 

We recognize, too, that our daily choices of health and joy help attract these things back into our lives, but, equally, we understand that life is often beyond the control of our own two hands (no matter how well placed at ten o’clock and two o’clock).

I notice that my diamond stones—the ones that even my great-great grandfather wore—are once again perched on the top of my finger, and I honestly don’t know if they rolled back on their own or if I unconsciously shifted them back there while my fingers danced.

I observe, too, how my shoulders round a little bit more and, glancing at the time, I note my readiness for the evening to be enclosed in darkness.

And I tell myself that tomorrow will rise up new and clean and pure from today’s ashes, simply by my continuing to put one foot in front of the next.

Because sometimes that’s all we can do.

This article was first published by elephant journal.

Photo: João Lavinha/Flickr.

The post When All We Can Do Is Keep Walking. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

There have been a lot of grey and rainy days where I live.

While I’m not one to complain about the weather, I’ve noticed how much my body—how much the depth of my bones—responds to these heavy, damp mornings.

My arms have goosebumps, where the fine hair stands on end. The tip of my nose feels cold and my loose rings turn on my fingers. I turn the heat up in my house, only to turn it back down, because I realize that what I want is to fully experience this spring chill.

After all, it’ll be hot and sticky and humid soon enough.

The backs of my legs will stick to my car seat. I’ll have imprints on my thighs from the wooden bench where my daughter and I like to sit after getting ice cream.

In short, each season has its beauty and every season comes to an end.

I’m pregnant.

I feel a fullness in my belly and in my breasts that normally aren’t there.

My daughter sits in my lap and leans back as I read her a story; it’s getting uncomfortable for her to do this.

I go to yoga class and modify poses that I’d love to sink deeply into. The sweat beads on my upper lip and shoulders and instead of letting it drip sensuously down my back; I take child’s pose so as not to overheat.

Yet I’m not desiring that this period slips by, so that I might return to my typical life—I’m already shocked at how far along this baby is.

And I know that when my infant arrives, it’ll be an entirely new season.

Fall will be dawning and winter on our only slightly distant horizon. I’ll need a jacket to cover my now-empty abdomen. (I remember vividly the overwhelming urge to place my hands on my child in utero, only to remember that she’s now lying in the gentle nook of my arms.)

And autumn is my favorite season of all—the leaves crunching underneath shoes on well-worn trails, the splashes of color bringing visual awareness to places that my eyes usually skip over—but part of what makes it so special is that it comes and goes, and comes and goes. Its arrival, much like my new baby, is happily anticipated and its transformation into something more mature—falling snow and twinkling lights—is also beautiful, although drastically new and different.

So when my bones feel heavy and my heart longs to follow—when the damp spring days seem unending and, yes, even annoying—my tendency to either wallow or become agitated is, thankfully, often squashed by a tender recognition of this moment’s impermanence.

I place my hand softly on my belly, where I’ll begin to feel movement nearly any day, and I feel intense pleasure, peace and satisfaction at being grateful for where I sit, right now.

Photo: martinak15/Flickr.

The post How to Feel Change in Your Bones. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.

Her heart feels strangely set free.

She’s struggled and moped and hobbled her way through these last few weeks, only to come out on the other side a little bit stronger and a lot more resilient.

Yet, isn’t that how life often goes?

We face challenges and are presented with uncomfortable circumstances which we can either wade our way through, only to bloom like the lotus from its home of murky waters, or we stay stagnant or, worse, drown. But, more often than not, we grow and blossom and reach back up towards the sun with our shade-tired, sunlight-thirsty petals—after a descent period of darkness, overgrowth and, sometimes, sorrow.

Because moving forward and into new territory isn’t easy, but here’s a secret: Life isn’t meant to stand still, and the people who come out on top—happy, content and fulfilled—are the ones who stay curious and ready for change.

It’s true that movement brings turmoil.

The windy spring weather can conjure sweet, breezy gusts that ruffle a slightly warmed face and tickle the hearts we wear on our sleeves, but winds can also be too strong—they can make us feel fragile and insignificantly mobile as life blows us around and around in an unsympathetic whirlwind.

And we can hold on for dear life—we can grope and cling to the sides of something slippery and not meant for stability—or we can let the winds blow us past the metaphorical fork in the road.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we always seek the new—the different—experience.

Generally speaking, the grass typically isn’t greener and those who flit and float from space to space are usually trying to leave themselves behind (which is, fortunately and unfortunately, impossible). But those of us who like routines and are comforted by earthy steadfastness can find life’s frequently mutable transitions more than unsettling—we can find them downright disturbing, tiresome and depressing.

Here’s the thing, though: We have no choice.

Life will, inevitably, present us with opportunities to grow and widen in who we are, and it’s when we stand tall in our previously created roots and let ourselves be open to embracing this unknown that we are finally able to move into who we truly are and who we have the ability to be.

Because we create our own boxes.

We put ourselves in our own confines of labels, and can and can’t-do’s—and, in truth, we are so much more than a simple definition of success or failure.

We can be ready to fly—but still accepting of a meager take-off.

We can process who we know we have been while still leaving our boundaries smudged just enough to expand beyond them.

We can be anyone we want to be, but what we want can be limiting—if we don’t want to move from the cozy bed that we’ve already created, and slept in night after night.

It’s hard getting out of bed some mornings, isn’t it?

I want to stay buried underneath sheets, with my body warm and my nose slightly cold. I want to flip my pillow over for one more round of the cool side. I want to begin a new day, but I don’t always want that beginning to come as quickly or unexpectedly (those nights where sleep feels like it lasted for five seconds rather than seven hours).

But it’s here—and hanging out underneath the sheets won’t change that.

So I get up.

I make myself a coffee and I get excited about a new morning filled with everything that I’ve never experienced before.

This brand new second is a complete revelation in my life, and so is this one and, while they might not be what I was looking for or waiting for, they’re here to seize, and one thing I’ve learned is that it’s actually much safer to grasp onto life in this manner than it is to cling to the irrational, precarious walls of what we wish could stay the same.

And here’s another thing I’ve learned: When life presents us with the same experiences, circumstances or set of problems more than once, the universe is slapping us in the face with our own denial; saying, “This is something to open your eyes to.”

So, today, I open my eyes to what lies ahead—even if right now my road is currently obscured by (unexpectedly gorgeous) wildflowers.

And I open my eyes to my deepest, clearest truth—that I am more than capable of moving into the unfamiliar.

After all, familiarity and comfort only arrive with enough exposure—and I’m finally not afraid to lift my veil and walk barefoot past that fork in the road, towards my destiny.

Photo credits: anton petukhov/Flickr.

The post How to Walk Clear-Eyed & Barefoot Towards Unknown (& Unwanted) Change. first appeared on Jennifer S. White.