Resistance to rest is a trauma response. ⁣

It’s a culturally condoned and glorified coping strategy that keeps us from having time to examine and feel the pain, the fear, the anger, the insecurities, the sense of inadequacy, and the grief that we bury beneath productivity, efficiency, achievement, and constant activity.⁣

Busyness is not only something we’re conditioned to equate with worthiness. It’s also our culture’s avoidance behavior of choice. And because most everyone around us is infected with this toxic programming, too, it seems normal. It seems necessary. It even seems inevitable. ⁣

But your wildish nature knows better. ⁣

Your soulful self remains unconvinced by and unimpressed with the “never enough” narrative. ⁣

She knows that wisdom and solace and nourishment and inner peace require slow and tender stillness. ⁣

She knows that healing happens in the space between. ⁣

⁣She begs us to listen, but her voice is quieter than that of advertisements, screaming kids, and taskmaster to-do lists.

⁣Want to hear her better? Dare to slow down. Dare to say no. Dare to enter that terrifying realm of unscheduled, unproductive stillness. 

⁣She will meet you there, in all her messy, raw, and untamed glory. The wildish nature is patient, but she is not a bullshitter. ⁣

⁣This is why we fear her. ⁣

⁣We busy ourselves because we know that if we slow down–even just a little–she will find us again. And that when she does, we will be forced to look her in the eyes and admit to the tragedy of her abandonment. ⁣

Thankfully, she’s not going anywhere. 

From the stillness,