Sweet friend~
I’m preparing for the upcoming June 14 workshop by looking back at my stepping-stones journal entries. The instructions said:
Imagine your life as a stream that you have to cross.
Imagine you are standing on one bank, and you need to get to the other side.
You see several stones in the stream. You cannot step on each one of them.
You will only choose to step on the stones that feel right for you.
Which stones did you select? The flat and large stones that made you feel secure? Or ones that were pointed and jagged and made you feel excitement? Or the cool-looking rocks that had some slippery bits?
These are your stepping stones, the moments in your life when you felt “things will never be the same again.” They are the places you paused. They are the events that influenced who you are today.
Kathleen Adams in Journal to the Self writes “They are simply the markings that are significant to us as we reconstruct the movement of our life” from its beginning to this present moment.
As I reread my stepping-stones list, I recall how I became the person I am today. I can see a path of moments (for me, they were moments of crying with family members) that made me the gentle warrior I am today—a regulated, restored, blooming being. The list helps me imagine a future with my son where crying is normalized and not shunned or despised. I revisit these scenes from my life not out of shame anymore, but as evidence that I was processing, I was living consciously, I was learning how to understand how my body spoke to me.
