disconnecting, reconnecting

Ooof. Where would we be without our strategies for disconnecting from the present for a bit—giving our tired minds and heavy hearts a break from what they’re holding? Losing ourselves in a yummy show, a black hole of cute baby videos on TikTok, or some similarly consuming task to help fill that sometimes-terrifying space between things.

There’s no question: our bodies were not designed to take in, witness, or feel the sheer volume and scale of information that we do—sometimes within just the first few minutes of scrolling each day. These moments of checking out can feel like such a relief, so entirely necessary.

And yet, it scares me sometimes how strong the pull inside me becomes—to leave the present and retreat into a less daunting, less painful place. The other day I did a spontaneous inventory of Netflix shows I’ve watched in their entirety, and honestly, I was horrified. Not because there’s any shame in enjoying or even binging a show, but because I know I did not consciously choose to give Netflix that much of my time and aliveness. There have to have been other forces at play. Maybe I hit “next episode” with intention some of the time—but definitely not every time.

This powerful pull to disconnect from myself—through scrolling, shows, or endless tasks—is familiar, especially in those in-between moments when one thing ends and a little margin opens up, allowing what’s underneath the chance to begin surfacing.

I notice how far from the surface my feelings have become in the moments when someone asks how I’m doing and, despite their genuine interest, I can only talk about my schedule or the weather—because I’m honestly not sure how I feel. Other times, I notice it when one part of my experience (grief or fear, perhaps) suddenly bursts out of the compartment I made for it in moments that utterly surprise me. Because I hadn't let myself notice that it was there, I also hadn't been able to give it much of the tending it had been asking for.

Like requests for care and attention expressed within my marriage, these requests from the parts of me waiting for my own attention become a bit harder to meet when they've been waiting (im)patiently in the queue for weeks.

Now, I do not want to tear down the brilliant and loving protective barriers that sometimes keep me from feeling what’s hardest to face inside of me, and I don't want you to either. But I do want to be able to choose to tune in sometimes—to ask my heart and body for the honest truth of how they are, and to begin to hear what they might be asking of me.

The other thing about our emotions and energy (which we experience through sensation) is that they are inherently seeking to move on through! I'm not sure they’re really even able to be static or still—except, perhaps, for how stuck our difficult feelings can feel when our bodies have them locked down or tucked away indefinitely. It almost feels like magic when sometimes, the smallest moment of care supports a worry that's been gripping my chest or a cry bubbling beneath the surface to show itself and express and pass on through. 

When our bodies don't feel safe enough to touch in to what's inside, we lose a precious source of insight—about what we need, what we love, what we fear, and about the deeper wisdom we carry in our bodies and spirits, beneath and beyond what we thought we knew.

So, what supports our wise bodies in feeling safe enough to let a little more rise to the surface and allow a little more to be felt and known? 

I think the answer is connection. 

I don't always know what that looks like or how we build that in the ways and in the moments and on the scale that we need it, but I guess that's a big part part of the journey that I'm on.