A Table Tale 🙏

A couple of weeks ago I had an anxiety attack at a dinner party. I could feel the rumblings beginning when I walked in the door. I felt age-old shames swimming up in my body from the root. I tried to push it down. I sat at the table and the rumblings got louder, like a storm brewing in my gut that had loud angry butterflies flapping. A drum in my heart pounding louder, stronger, braver, fierce like hungry reptile-lions, if ever there were such a thing. Maybe those are the ancient Dinosaurs. I had a couple, maybe four or five choices in my mind. Keep pushing it down. Run away. Hide in the bathroom the rest of the night. Maybe I could lie and feign illness. Or I could let it out. 

I did a lot more than just survive, in fact. Speaking the words that felt like they might kill me brought me to life.

I expressed letters strung together that were pulled from the depths of I don't-even-know-where. I allowed tears to stream and gush and fall and honor the truth of what I was experiencing. I gave words to hard, stubborn, ugly-ish feelings. I untangled knots of stories; some true, some not. I released a soul song that needed me to honor it, lest it suffocate me. And in the midst of the outpouring of myself onto the table in front of me, I even made jokes. Lol. We laughed. We gazed deeper than the surface and actually saw each other past any possible facades. I was held. I was loved. And in the middle of it all, every single person at the table offered up what a GIFT it was that I did not Push it down. What a gift to be able to really be. Together. And that feels like really living.

I feel so lucky to have found such a table. 

On this day of giving thanks, may we all find ourselves a table where we feel we can say the things we are sometimes scared of saying. I promise it offers more life to the soil of the soul, not less. I hope we all find a seat where we get to see and be seen. A place where we are able to honor the people, the life-force, the plants, the animals who are native to this land we now live on and offer some love---maybe a crystal full of our whispered gratitudes---back to the Earth in honor of them all. 

Holidays can be anxiety-producing.
May we pull it all up, not push it back down.
Give it space to be seen.

We are, after all, much like the crystals that have spent eons like lifetimes forging their way through to the top where they can be fully witnessed in their magic. 

What a gift.