Radical Self-Devotion – Care and keeping of you
It is nearing the end of 2020. Mind goes to all the things I “coulda, shoulda, woulda” done this year. My body thanks me for stopping, resting, caring and creating more space in my life, more freedom. My mind still the dominant talker agrees wholeheartedly.
In this time I have been drawn to the word “devotion”, meaning love, loyalty, or enthusiasm for a person or activity. Imagine if that person was you? For me self-devotion is more a feeling than a specific action. It feels like an intention to create a ritual around the simplest thing: putting on lipstick, resting on the couch and falling into a delicious sleep, wearing a lovely dress, being present to the contents of the mind with a soft heart, accompanying a sunset or sunrise, a slowly made, and savoured meal.
The result for me is a return to wholeness and balance and an uninterrupted home coming to the self. The softening and awareness that flows from this reverential state of self-devotion ripples out to the people around me. In menopause, self care and then it’s higher version self-devotion, isn’t optional. It’s what the body is calling for: to sit with and for it, to find a new way to be with it and ultimately author and retell our own story for the rest of our lives.
This poem was written after a trip to the Northern Beaches of Sydney in September 2019 to celebrate the launch of my friend, Nila Chamber’s book, The Gift of Intuition – Guidance on a Healing Journey.
Radical Self devotion
I am the eye of the storm around the
chaos of human turbulence. Humming, heaving, grinding, breathing.Here the eye is still.
The lap of ocean the sshhhh of the wind in the trees.
Even the cockatoos silent on their perch preening,
intertwining heads ruffling feathers in the wind,
noting the butterfly heading south.Sink into self devotion.
A quality of tender hearted kindness.
Devotion to the divine inside and out.
It’s simple, free of judgement, it’s radical.
Watch the breath with grace and ease.
Feel the density and give it space to breathe.
Feel the body, no pushing just release.
Crying with relief.Salt on my skin, ocean in my eyes,
emptied of all the ballast in my head.
Rocks, to stones, to sand and swept back out to sea,
eventually that will be me.Gratitude for the food in my mouth.
Cosmic dust, now soil to substance,
animal, vegetable, mineral, settling,
Earth’s chi deep within me.See, there’s no schedule for this.
Not performing for points or marks in the sand.
Just moments of presence where love rises,
and finds a resting place.
Not selfish because it moves on to touch,
another in its infinite wisdom.
