On summer nights, I escape to the magic of the springs.
I come to her still waters with a purpose to heal.
A midnight decision to press fake tattoos on my arm results in a mishap of raw pink skin shaped like an ill-fated star. All day this wound whimpers in pain, a hot spot of embarrassment and self-criticism. There’s no blood, no broken skin, but an itchy whine that nods to a particular warning that I worry I’ll never hear until there’s a scar of self-sabotage.
So I travel to the pool of spring water to nurse the wound. Only this single-focused intention could lead me straight into the cold elixir of waters that seize and relieve the burned skin.
I breathe into the darkness that exhales steamy heat. I adoringly glance at the residing moon before braving a determined dive into the chilling depths. The enveloping blackness is a winter that whistles to my bones and revitalizes in a shock freeze that instantly revitalizes and soothes.
I propel up with a buoyant heart cleansed of energetic residue. I float, and with a few gentle kicks take turns shifting my view from the illuminated city cradled in between trees to the lacey presence of the moon.
I rest in waters that hold me. I rest in moonlight. I rest in the sacred sweetness of solitude that shares the shore of the greater community here for a summertime swim. I rest in the heartbeat of a city that calls me deeper and deeper home to the healing internal waters of kindness.
I rest in the heart-currents of kindness, and in the spaciousness that has arrived by inviting kindness as a guiding feeling into my life.
And in the delighted revelation of this spaciousness, there’s the heavy reminder of the before.
I can still taste the burn out of my last year. Just in the replay of memory, the fumes of these experiences and relationships constrict my breath and tighten my chest.
I fail to speak up for myself. I fail to validate my needs. I fail to be kind to myself.
My relationships suffer. My relationship to life suffers. My relationship to myself suffers.
And at the bottom of the failure, in the spring company of Kentucky and my family, when I reflect on my twenties and what is sorely missing, I find that the answer is kindness.
My internal world must be rooted in an unshakeable kindness that centers and sustains the life-force that is me, so I’m not so scattered, confused, swept off-course by outside energies.
My kindness ensures my wellbeing, energizes me to serve in an authentic energy that lovingly creates and adheres to boundaries. And when I extend a hand to kindness and kindness warmly embraces me, my life drastically shifts. Kindness emboldens me to swim into the murkiness of my own misbeliefs, sensing and following subtle streams of toxic thinking.
Kindness points to the weeds, points to the roots of the weeds, in a clear voice that like sunshine after rain says, “Dig it, baby, dig it up.”
Because in the grace that is kindness I can honestly perceive the pattern of thoughts that twist me away from myself, that lead me to scrubbing off a fake tattoo and I shred a layer of skin without noticing…until the emergence of burned skin.
The skin cries a familiar cry, a plea from a body that is highly sensitive and tired of being pushed and pressed toward a vision of perfection and so scars instead.
The implementation of kindness starts in the garden of my mind, because I am the one who has broken my heart, hurled insults at my spirit, punished my body through fear-quests that grapple for a wholeness and a love that has always been present.
Stop trying to perfect yourself.
Relinquish the desperation to be pretty, to have flawless skin.
There’s nothing to fix.
And in the acceptance, the supportive self-embrace, there’s the rise of memories, like smoke from the fire that sets all the old blockages ablaze. My heart cracks open to understand the why beneath the wounding, and I forgive myself – because I am so highly susceptible to soaking sponge-like ill-intentioned energies – and kindness protects me from any harsh self-critique. Kindness lifts me from the watery reeds of the past and readjusts my attention to the present me.
Reinstate magnificence. Harness that energy toward healing, clarification of dreams, relaxed and radiant being.
This is the work of a lifetime, and there’s still time to live, and live fully, and celebrate an embodied wholeness that has always been you.
And so I restart by forgiving myself for the burned skin. I acknowledge the loving part of myself that took me to the springs, that encouraged me to rest in moonlit waters and swim on a summer night in the healing currents of kindness streaming always through my being, heart, mind.