Chickens can teach you about your passion!
Taking care of our inner world can be like tending chickens.
Serving your soul is a lot like tending chickens. You may be in a big city area or in the suburbs. You might not have much access to chickens, wildlife, or you might. I spent most of my life in metropolitan areas with little nature connection. It wasn’t until I transitioned to the country, making it my intention to slow down, and I realized the tending to chickens is a lot like tending your soul. Tending to chickens is like building a creative life where you want to show up and feel whole. There are many approaches. You can either build a highly controlled coop area with a long run, and you can insulate it to make sure predators don’t come in. You can have something small outside that has some protection, or you can have a space for them to lay eggs, to rest at night, and have some space to run free. So much of our lives is about control, and we learn to adapt to a highly controlled environment. However, when it comes to soul control, it’s not at the forefront. It’s almost like trying to corral chickens to come in for the night. If you have ever done it, you are running around like literally with a chicken with your head cut off.
On the outside, you appear calm and confident because you are badasses and at the same time inside, life can have you feel like you’re running with a chicken with your head cut off. Part of you wants to breathe, connect, and nourish the things that really matter to you, but you feel stuck. You try to control it, create a pattern for the chickens that work for you, and sometimes listening to them and following what they need makes your life a lot easier. And you’re so happy because the chickens are beautiful, their combs are red, healthy, and they are roaming the beautiful fields eating what they need. So much of letting go of control is permission. We have scripts that are imprinted in our thoughts and what we believe about ourselves through our culture, our family of origin. These scripts tells us to be a certain way or that if we’re not the certain way, things will crumble or relationships will wither. And when you choose your soul, what you need, and sometimes that does happen, which is painful, and it’s a reality.
A great resource on undoing scripts and understanding are health is Dr. Gabor Mate’s book, “When the Body says No”. Dr. Mate states that you either choose yourself and you struggle with guilt, or you choose others, and then you struggle with resentment. According to Dr. Mate, holding onto resentment hurt our physical and emotional health. Setting boundaries and living according to your values is hard at times. The shit gets real. Dr. Gabor Mate notes that people who always give to others are not connected to themselves and experience resentment when they have not listened to themselves. Dr. Mate describes significant health challenges and concerns women face when not listening to themselves and choosing others. Giving when you’re empty sucks the energy out of you and hurt your body. This does not mean that we can’t freely give and nurture other people when we are full. He is talking about when we are empty, running like a chicken with her head cut off, trying to make it all happen, and we still decide to do something even though it’s going to take the loss ounce out of us, and we have nothing with ourselves. As strong, badass women, the cultural message that is imprinted upon us is you should be the helper, figure it out, the one that needs to hold it all together. And when you start choosing yourself, guilt is a natural feeling that follows. Because your whole life culture told you that you needed to give freely, you need to think of others first and not yourself.
Soul Glue Reflection:
What is one small little way that you can put yourself first?
Sincerely,
