Earlier this year, the world wanted everything from me all at once.
My septic system stopped working. If you’ve ever dealt with a septic problem, you know this means a parade of phone calls, contractors who say we don’t do that, dead ends, and the particular anxiety of not knowing how bad it is or what it’s going to cost. Just waiting, with something broken underground that affects everything above it.
At the same time, I was balancing seeing clients with two intensive programs designed to expand my reach and reimagine how I serve the people I’m here to help. Both programs were asking me to move faster than I felt ready to move. Define this. Create that. Schedule dates for talks I haven’t written yet. Step into visibility I haven’t fully claimed. Now. Now. Now.
And beneath it all, the particular ache of being in transition, that liminal space where the old has loosened its grip but the new hasn’t fully arrived, and you’re standing in the middle, wondering which way is forward.
Can you relate to this?
Not necessarily the septic system (though if you do, you have my complete sympathy), but the sensation of being pulled in multiple directions by forces that don’t care about your timeline. Forces that simply demand. Now. Figure it out. Move. Decide. Know.
The Peace and Power of Just Stopping
And then I came to a complete stop. Not gracefully, or by choice exactly. I was simply running on empty, with no energy left to expend.
I went outside and lay down on my porch swing.
And I watched the sky.
And the trees.
For a long time.
No phone. No notebook. No productive use of the time whatsoever. Just sky. Trees. The particular quality of light through leaves. The sound of birds going about their completely unconcerned business. And something in me that had been bracing for weeks… softened and released.
Not because anything was solved. The septic system was still broken. The programs were still demanding. The calendar was still full of things I wasn’t sure I was ready for. But I stopped fighting the fact that I couldn’t figure it all out right now. I stopped demanding that my conscious mind come up with a solution. I surrendered to the simple truth that some things resolve in their own time, and that my anxiety about them doesn’t speed up the process by even a moment.
Three Things the Porch Swing Taught Me
In the stillness, something clarified. Not dramatically. Just quietly, the way things do when you finally stop making noise long enough to hear them.
I realized there are forces I have no control over. The septic system will cost what it costs. The right person will come when they come. The transformation I’m in the middle of will complete itself when it’s ready, when my brain has rewired at an identity level. My distress only slows the progress.
I realized there are other forces I can choose to respond to, or not. The programs are asking me to move at their pace. I can honor that invitation without being tyrannized by it and decide which demands deserve my energy and which ones I can hold more lightly.
And then there is simply me. What do I want? What feels true? What is mine to do right now, in this moment, from this place? Not what the world is demanding. Not what I think I should want. What do I actually want?
That third question—what do I want—is the one empaths and highly sensitive people most often forget to ask. We’re so attuned to others’ needs that our own desires become almost inaudible. The porch swing gave them a moment to be heard.
Wisdom In A Text
The next morning, I was texting with my friend Cindy, who was experiencing a similar struggle, but in a different territory. She wrote:
“The answers we seek are there, but they are coming in slowly and clearly as I relax my ‘need to know — Now’ and trust that I’ll receive what I need as I focus on deepening my communion with Spirit.”
Such a profound and simple directive: Relax the need to know now.
I read that, and something in me went quiet and still, the way it does when someone names exactly what you needed to hear.
The answers are there. They are simply coming in at their own pace. And my job, our job, is not to force them but to create the conditions in which they can arrive. To deepen communion with whatever we call Spirit. To observe our concerns from a higher perspective rather than wrestle with them in the conscious mind.
What This Has To Do With You
If you are in a season of waiting, for clarity, for resolution, for the next thing to reveal itself, I want to offer this truth.
Stopping is not a weakness. It is not a failure. It is not giving up.
Sometimes, stopping is the most sophisticated thing you can do.
Your nervous system, especially if you’re an empath or highly sensitive person, cannot process, integrate, and create simultaneously at full speed indefinitely. It needs stillness, the way it needs sleep. Not as a luxury. As a biological necessity that makes change possible.
And in that stillness, things happen that cannot happen in the noise. The underground processes that were blocked and broken begin to move again. The clarity that couldn’t reach you through all the urgency quietly arrives and sits down beside you.
The world will keep demanding. It will keep saying now, now, now. And sometimes, not always, but sometimes, the wisest, bravest, most sophisticated thing you can do is go lie on your porch swing and watch the sky.
As you relax into ease, the answers can find you.
If you recognize yourself in this essay and would like a guide to help you along your journey to reclaiming your joy and freedom, I invite you to fill out my intake form.