“…Make room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing – they reason they can fly.” – Mary Oliver, Storage
Sometimes the only way to know if we’ve really healed is to get out and test the parts we injured in the first place. After 10 months of rehab following my Achilles repair surgery last February, healing was put to the test snowboarding in Mammoth over New Year’s. There’s really no way to emulate the ways your muscles and tendons get worked and stretched, balanced and bent while sliding down a mountain on fiberglass. Luckily, the expert help I enlisted and months of hard work in the gym paid off – I was able to engage in this sport I love with minimal pain, soreness, or restriction. That first week of 2023 spent in the Sierras felt like my word for the year, Expansion, was kicking off in big and beautiful ways.
My annual words are like snowflakes that float gently down to me – each one unique and longing for examination. When “Expansion” landed on the pages of my journal late in 2022, I welcomed it though I didn’t quite know what it meant. “Expansion? Great! Expanding my business, expanding my experiences, expanding my personal development,” I thought to myself. And while all of this is relevant, I knew there was more to it, something I was missing in its gift.
After returning from back to back snow trips last week, and in the quiet moments of a morning spent in reflection, a different significance for Expansion revealed itself to me: leading with an open heart instead of the quick mind that usually takes up residence in the driver’s seat of my life. I have leaned more and more into the wisdom of my heart in recent years and months, and she is ready to step out from behind the wizard’s curtain and usurp my brain as Queen. My heart is fierce, brave, and a warrior to be sure. But she’s also tender, nurturing, and overflowing with love ready to be poured out.
The truth is, living a life where nothing is left on the table has always required my heart being on display, front and center. While I appreciate my mind with her intelligence, reason, and positivity, it’s my heart’s guidance that has led us to the most beautiful moments of our life. Ideally, Expansion will result in a consistent and creative collaboration between my two, helping me show up as my best self.
As a result, Expansion will include stretching beyond what’s comfortable, not playing small, taking up more space, using my voice powerfully, using my gifts and talents to serve the world in the new ways, and saying no to anything that isn’t a “Hell yes!”
It will mean being ok with not being ok at times. It will require showing up with my heart on my sleeve, authentically, vulnerably, and dangerously in love with myself. It will continue the deep work of healing, fiber by fiber, loving big and bold, and attracting in the love I know I deserve.
Like my Achilles, my heart has been ruptured and stitched back together again. She has learned that returning to pre-injury activities results in a little soreness, but continued stretching and strengthening usher in joy, peace, and freedom. After all, with some things in life – like snowboarding and love – there’s no other way to practice except to get on the chair lift, strap into your bindings, and point your board downhill.
[Photo: Enjoying a powder day in Mt. Hood, Oregon. January 2023.]