MonsterMash: It’s been almost a MONTH without a post, so clearly she’s profoundly and irreparably broken. Clearly she was never cut out for this writing thing. Clearly she’ll never be able to post again. Clearly –

Havi: Clearly you’re feeling really upset and anxious and worried, because you need to know that Susannah is going to be okay.

MonsterMash: Yes but how is she going to be okay when clearly she is such a mess and it’s been a month and there is NO LIGHT at the end of this tunnel!

The video game technique is a classic destuckification tool because:

• it’s about awareness — being conscious of how you’re relating to yourself and the world around you.
• it’s about acknowledgment — letting the hard stuff be hard without being impressed by the hard or thinking that the hard defines you.
• it’s about possibility — taking information and making conscious choices.
• it’s about patterns — recognizing how things fit together and intentionally mixing things up.
• it’s about flow — moving away from things that result in paralysis, and reconfiguring.
• it’s about sovereignty — owning your space and making decisions about what you do with it.

It gives you flexibility, agility, adaptability, grace and all sorts of other useful things. And most of all, it shows you options.

Confidential to CB.

And everyone else who hit a wall with yesterday’s post, or whose monsters are using this concept of the middle to make you feel bad about yourself.

You’re not in the middle, sweetpea. The middle is where we are when we choose not to consciously engage with our stuff.

If you’re asking yourself questions about your relationship to the middle, that’s conscious engagement. Which is already a very advanced practice.

And the thing is: consciously interacting with ourselves and our stuff is hard. And you are brave and wonderful for being in it. That is all.

The middle.

If you caught a glimpse of us after class, red-cheeked, sweat-stained and blissful, you’d have no idea which of us were the advanced students and which the beginners.

But you could always tell when people in the middle were there.

They weren’t sweating, for one thing. Because it wasn’t hard for them.

Also, they were complaining. About how it wasn’t hard. Also about how boring it was.

There wasn’t a challenge. But only because no one gave them a challenge.

The fourth realization: I’ve been looking at boundaries all wrong.

When I say “ohmygod she has no boundaries”, I usually mean someone who will do totally inappropriate things.

But the truth is: I am the one with no boundaries.

I am the one with no way to say stop. I am the one who doesn’t know how to be strong and flexible enough to keep them out.

Sovereignty. Oh, it’s a tricky thing to define. Also to feel.
I’ve described it here as:

“the spiritual quality of not giving a shit.”
“the state of not giving a damn what people think because you are the king or queen of your life.”
“being at home in your body and your life.”
“knowing that you are [...]

It was a pumpkin, as it turned out.

She looked at the event and saw a giant jack-o-lantern.

But not a scary one. Kind of sweet.

Demure looking with lowered eyes and a Mona Lisa smile.

Pretty carved patterns, like tattoos. The light radiating out from inside of it, but also contained and held in the sturdy home of the pumpkin.

Sitting on a porch. Radiating light out in these beautiful, cryptic patterns. Invisibly visible.

There is a reason.

There is a reason for why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling, even if I can’t remember what it is or access the truth of it.

I don’t mean cosmic explanations or finding silver linings. I mean:

The endless wondering but why is it like this isn’t that helpful.

There are plenty of perfectly good reasons for me to be feeling discouraged, disconnected, confused.

And even without knowing exactly what they are, I can give myself that sense of this is a legitimate thing to be feeling.

My first thing that doesn’t want to be done yet:

A decent HAT for my new program.*

* HAT stands for Havi’s Announcing A Thing — it’s essentially a sales page but I can’t say sales page without having to throw up a little. So I decorate hats instead of writing copy.

I’m doing a three day thing in June about the art of not being intimidated by biggification. Which will be awesome. And will sell out in a day.

If I actually write the page and tell people about it.

Why I don’t think we should be “embracing” our monsters.

First of all, because even though I’m a yoga teacher, I’m not that much of a yoga teacher it kind of makes me want to throw up.

But mostly because, in my experience, most of us aren’t ready to be all lovey-dovey shmoo shmoo with with our monsters.

So that language isn’t helpful because it triggers resistance. And when you’re in resistance, everything stays stuckified.