Last night I was drinking lemon balm tea outside with my magical friend Bria and I was telling her about my current life status, as friends do when they haven’t caught up in awhile.
I could feel myself getting anxious while talking about it – I’m moving out of my apartment at the end of August (right after my birthday, so it’s the start of a new birth year too!) and have committed to doing a “test month” in San Diego — you can see how non-committal I’m being about leaving New York City because I keep calling it a “test month.”
I feel like there’s movement happening, and choices being made, which is MUCH better than simmering in the murky stew of indecision (the worst), but it also feels like I’m jumping into a brand new storyline, which can feel really unsettling.
“Ah, yes…you’re in the space between stories, my friend.” Bria said.
“You know that moment on a trapeze – where you’ve let go of one person’s hand, and you’re in mid-air for a few seconds – before grabbing the next person’s hand? Yup. That’s where you are. Mid-air.”
MID-AIR!? Terrifying!
“But you have to trust that there IS something on the other side. You don’t just STAY in mid-air forever!”
True.
Bria then sent me the link to this podcast episode, Navigating The Space Between Stories — it’s from The Next Level Podcast with Jeff Agostinelli, with guest Charles Eisenstein. As synchronicity would have it, my friend Miles has been nudging me to read this book by Charles Eisenstein for months now. Yes, ok, I see the breadcrumbs. I get it. And I shall pay attention.
I just listened to the podcast and it was one of those things where I wanted to pause it every second to write something down. I felt the way I feel when I’m in an epic next-level conversation. I get so jumpy in the best way, like an excited puppy. Like the ideas are too big for my brain to hold alone, and I need to speak them out loud to someone in order to release some of the energy. Do you know what I mean!?!?
Honestly, I have to go slow with this stuff because it starts to freak me out and blow my mind too much and totally deconstruct the way I think about reality and then I get confused and I start to think I’m in the Matrix. So I gotta go bite by bite.
I recommend you listen to the whole episode – there is WAY too much in here for me to share — but here are a few things that stood out to me regarding the space between stories.
“A lot of times, people have to leave the old job, or the old relationship, or the old way of living – without any new one to greet them.
You enter this place where you just don’t know.
A place of helplessness, and not knowing.
And you let go.
And that creates an empty space, where something genuinely new can arise.”
Letting go. Of expectations, control, stories about what could or should happen. Breathing into that.
AND I LOVED THIS…
“Knowing where we’re going seems to be synonymous with the stories of the past.
If there’s already a map for it, then it’s a place that has already been discovered and explored.
The poet David White says, “any path that already exists is the wrong path, because it was made by somebody else.”
Yowzers.
And maybe my favorite part of the podcast:
Jeff: So how do we navigate this space between stories? Give us an idea of your strategy.
Charles’s answer:
“It’s almost the wrong question. There’s something – like this craving – for a map or a strategy, or ‘here’s what to do.’
The essence of it is that you don’t know what to do.
That said, I can say – trust the process of life.”
Hilariously enough, I smiled and looked over at my fridge — where I already had this posted up… :)
He goes on to say…
“Trust the process of life…
That’s not actually an instruction that you can carry out through an effort of will.
Trust, surrender, letting go. I find that when I try to carry this out willfully, because I’m supposed to, what I end up with is ‘fake letting go.’
Real surrender happens when I can’t hold on anymore. Something larger than me forces me to let go.
Maybe there is a moment where I feel like I’m making a choice to let go, but it’s taken a lot to bring me to that moment. Therefore I can’t offer it as a prescription.
Nonetheless, speaking it out loud is still useful…somehow that idea of ‘I could just let go’ worms its way into our psyche, and perhaps when that moment comes, it’s infiltrated us enough that we’re able and willing to let go at that moment.”
Trust the process of life. Or at least be willing to say you trust the process of life. Be willing to admit that we don’t have any idea what’s going to happen, that we don’t have total control, that sometimes we just have to take a LEAP and make a change and see where it leads us.
And this is how deciding to move away from NYC has felt for me. I’ve been talking about it for years. Creating an opening for something new to happen. Letting go, subtly, through lots of travel and different experiences.
And somehow when the time came to make a decision, it was still hard…but it happened. And all of the experiences I’ve had here have led me to this point. And now I will pack up and I will no longer have an address in New York. (ahhh!)
People move cities all the time. I’m making it a huge deal, I know. But really, it’s just the flow of life. A fresh start and new energy (and sunshine) is a good thing. :)
I got a sweet text from an old friend today. It was so eloquent that I had to re-write it here.
“New York, she will always be here for you.
The memories are with you. The city is waiting should you need her.
Thank the apartment you have loved, right? She has housed your wild ideas and your tears and your big sloppy dreams, dance parties, and broken goodbyes.
Follow that deep knowing and whisper inside of you saying, go west… go west… and you may find everything you never knew you wanted or needed.
Being a little scared or a lot anxious… sounds about right. So exciting too…. and so many fresh avocados…
What a blessing to be right where you need to be — at home inside yourself.
I think of you. I carry you in my heart. You are a love letter to me.
-Meredith Levick”
DUDE. What a brilliant writer. I cried.
And a huge, wholehearted ‘YES!’ to fresh avocados.
Deep exhale.
Love,
Jenny
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