The Ripples We Carry

Learning to See the Beauty in the Journey

Listening to the history and experiences from 220 years ago put what I have been discovering and charting in my own life into a different perspective.

I began mapping the trek from a childhood spent largely surrounded by family — parents, grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, generations ahead of mine — to more recent experiences of mapping the land and connecting with pieces of my family's WWII history.

Somewhere within that exploration, another understanding began to emerge.

There were experiences that weren't mine to physically walk through, and stories that weren't necessarily verbally shared with me, yet I wonder what my nervous system, breath, and body may have absorbed simply through being surrounded by those who had lived them.

And what, all these years later, has my body been ready to release?

The topography of the land can be likened to the topography of the body — the skin, its layers, and what is absorbed knowingly or unknowingly: physically, emotionally, mentally, or energetically.

What happens with those undercurrents may depend partly upon how each of us relates to what we feel.

Do we automatically perceive something as our own?

Do we recognize that some of what moves through us may have another source?

And through our individual choices, do we begin creating different ripples in places where the status quo has said one thing while our own experiences or relationships have shown us something entirely different?

This year has felt very much like that for me.

What have I faced, overcome, or moved through? Where are the steps I'm taking bringing greater clarity? And where are they simply opening the door to better questions?

For a while, I have felt the need for a more stable flow system — a steadier stream of foundational income that could exist alongside private and individual client work rather than asking that work to carry everything.

It has taken time to see what that might look or feel like.

Not knowing what the inflow will be, especially when there isn't even a baseline underneath it, can take a toll. And sometimes the possibilities we need aren't found inside what we've already known. We have to become willing to look beyond it.

The ripples have taken their own time to appear and to be seen.

This trip gave me an opportunity to recognize that some ripples are still occurring 220 years later, each person opening another gateway or portal into her or his path forward.

We say yes. We say no. Sometimes we don't answer at all.

And still, the path moves.

We do the best we can in each moment with what we understand at the time. There will always be moments we look back upon and think we could have done something differently. Yet rarely do we remember that we may not have had the tools, perspective, capacity, or understanding then that we have now.

Sometimes we have to travel farther away from something before we can actually see it.

Perhaps that distance isn't only measured in miles or years. Sometimes it is the distance created by a different lens.

What needs to be brought outward so we can see it differently?

Our actions. Our beliefs. Our perceptions. Even familiar ideas such as the grass is always greener can look different depending upon where we are standing when we view them.

I love being with animals. I love connecting with them and helping them feel seen, heard, and respected exactly where they are.

One of the quieter realizations emerging through all of this is that the very things I have so freely offered them are also the things I have needed to offer myself.

To see myself.

To hear myself.

To respect where I am.

And perhaps to allow myself the same agency I have always believed belonged to them.