moving through a mood
grief and all its shades
held is a monthly newsletter centred around yoga + movement, and introspection + feeling. blending embodied practice with therapeutic self-exploration, we dive into different themes, ideas and respond to the world around us.
shoots through the cracks
Lambs bouncing around fields, unsteady and with a quality akin to floating as they leap through the air to return back to their mums after snoozing in the midday sunshine. Stars at night - protected by laws - ensuring the integrity of the nights sky, so each constellation can really go to town sparkling in their own light show for the night. Staying on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors offered something restorative this last week, a place to truly be apart from my phone with no internet, no phone signal and a screen time report that would make my eyes water; normally only possible through restrictive apps and hiding of devices. It also offered a chance to recalibrate after a chaotic and changeable start to the year ~ a very quick decline and passing of our brilliant Geoff, my labrador, a co-world companion for the last 12 years.
Loss is a funny thing. I say funny and I mean something very far away from the belly laugh variety, more over in the oddity sphere. Sometimes it is very easy to speak about it, because in many ways there is a pure quality to it, a filter that allows for honesty to stream out of me. In other ways, it feels insurmountably difficult to express, with too much feeling swirling around, a disbelief in what has happened, a processing that happens in real time and a reality smack to the gut. Loss is wrapped up in lots of other things, which means it can serve as a wave, moving the shore around, discombobulating the owner and turning over older feelings, difficulties, experiences, memories. The winner in all of this is the therapist who gets to work with this new landscape, the driftwood and washed up shoreline. Lucky her.
I spent much of the beginning of the year going inside ~ inside myself, inside my work, my deadlines, my home. Being outside proved painful when walks coincided with open green spaces where Geoff was alive and vivid in my minds eye. The mismatch in inner turmoil and the time-must-move-on relentlessness of a life. A sense of being out of time with everyone else, the world having irrevocably changed and feeling like, what we just carry on, like… normal?! A desire to sit in the melancholy as a way to be close to the loss, to him, and a need to oscillate and code switch to being ‘on’, bouncy, bright and not a mood hoover.
Walking had been a cure before when a grief had made a home within me and yet walking proved to be too harsh a reminder of the absence, the constant companionship, the steadiness of walking in time with another reliable and compassionate being. So movement disappeared and existed to only transport me between rooms, between sitting and lying locations. Movement for joy was moored and waiting to be brought back to life at another time.
And yet. The daffodils sprang up on the verges of roads; weeds shooting through the cracks, new life was finding a way to break through wherever the light allowed. Colours scattered their pigments around the garden, decorating my walks to university and the spring palette offered a reprieve. A reminder. That loss and life are the loop, that endings and beginning are forever. That the absence does not mean existence was untrue; quite the opposite. Instead the absence is created through the space taken up by the life; through the love, the joy, the care, the experience of navigating a short section of a lifetime together.
The mat is slowly unravelling; movement and embodied shapeshifting is on the horizon, a desire to stay internal but to allow an expression externally through the body. A different frequency, set of vibrations, and new beat all lie within me; all wrapped up in the old, but like a piece of wood carved and filed into a new shape; everything has changed.
things you might like (esp. if you are in some shade of blue)…
I should say, because my movement practice has been between rooms, sofas, beds, my recommendations are things you can do pretty much with no movement. Safe to say, movement recommendations are yet to hatch. Apols for those more energetic at this time.
watch The Ballard of Wallis Island to experience something made with heart and such warmth that it’s like bathing in warm hot tea (I imagine that to be nice)
read The Hounding for tales of 18th century gossiping, misogyny and a refusal to be well-behaved girls
put together an impossibly tricky but gorgeous jigsaw puzzle. Still in the middle of Van Gogh’s Starry Night but can confirm it’s equally satisfying and mind boggling
listen to Amy Poehler and all of her pals on her podcast, old episodes of Adam Buxton talking to the likes of Tom Allen, and Dish where Sara Pascoe talks about her love of soup and maybe now I am converted?
watch The Other Bennett Sister for pure joy, fun, gorgeous characters, costumes, scenery, Jane Austin goodness
take film pictures and wait for the scans to be sent to you, and upon arrival feel like a giddy toddler at Christmas as you see what they came out like.
Like this scenic shot at Franks Cafe, sunset, Peckham
thank you for reading held, this post is free and if you know people who might enjoy, please do share ~ thank you.
Feeling all of this. Thank you for putting it into words.