Holding and the Year of Slow

I can definitively say 2022 was the hardest year of my life. 2022 was our first full year as a family four (two under two for a littles less than half of it). There really isn’t any way to explain how challenging this is. If you’ve done it, you know. If you haven’t, you don’t know, although if you have any children, you can imagine. Starting in January 2022 I began having extreme and unrelenting insomnia, my nerve inflammation and pain increased, and my HPA axis dysregulation (aka thyroid and adrenal burnout) reached a whole new level, making me sweaty, exhausted, prone to breaking out in rashes, gain a lot of weight, very intolerant to any stress (think toxins, emotional stress, exercise, etc) whatsoever, and lots of other very uncomfortable, painful and inconvenient symptoms. All of these health issues are inextricably linked, of course, and come from the same root cause of my body simply not being able to handle the stress it was under anymore.I recently learned that I had what they call a “calcium shell” which is when your minerals are so out of whack that your body starts storing huge amounts of calcium in the tissues, slowly turning you into bone. These are the type of health issues that are not easily treated by allopathic medicine, this calcium shell thing is not something that most holistic practitioners even know exists or how to diagnose. A medical doctor wouldn’t know what you were talking about.I have not pursued any conventional treatments as I have no interest in getting on the hamster wheel of medication, specialists, and there-is-nothing-wrong-with-you’s, it’s-all-in-your-head’s. I have chosen to truly go all the way to the very bottom of the root cause, look at all aspects of being (physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual) and work up from there.In 2022 I also entirely dismantled my business as it stood and I fully reoriented to an entirely new paradigm of truly serving energy. No gimmicks. No unethical sales tactics. No discounts. No fake urgency. No ‘ideal client avatars.’ No ‘niche markets.’  No using my business to serve my ego. To be completely honest, I am still unwinding the threads of egoic grippiness around my business and the way I have used it to prop up my ego, but I am committed to this new foundation of having a Magic Led Business [my teacher’s Perri Chase’s work].I am a representative of the energetic of Nourishment. That is what I serve. When you sign up for an experience with me, follow me on social media, or work with me in any capacity, this is what you are feeling and being transformed by, not me, Clara.Nourishment is what I am transmitting in my work with students and in the world, always. It is the energy that permeates everything I create. This year was hard, but it was also full of lessons.It was rich with wisdom.It kept me grateful and close to the ground.I learned how to truly surrender into letting people help me and to truly receive that help. And I am still deepening this lesson, as I am with all of these lessons, but I’ve come a long way. I learned how to do less. A lot less. I learned to truly rest. Not to crumple and fall on the floor in exhaustion after grinding tasks out. But to really let myself have the space I need simply because it’s true, even when I haven’t been remotely productive. I learned how to truly take life one minute, one hour, one day at a time. I learned about being present when my physical body is in searing pain and feels immoveable, exhausted beyond belief, and not preforming in any way shape or form that I expect it to. I learned to be grateful for my body even when it was unruly, messy, and unattractive. 2022 was so beautiful. When I feel into the year the words that come to mind are: Family. Presence. Stillness. Rest. Wisdom. Power. My word for 2022 was HOLD. And it was truly all I could do to HOLD all of this. To just be with it. To just hold myself and my girls and my family while I was going through all of these huge unveilings and transitions. To HOLD myself through this health journey has given me invaluable embodied wisdom about how to serve my medicine of whole being nourishment in the face of extremely uncomfortable circumstances. I have not given my power away out of fear or desperation once throughout the whole process. I have stayed with and trusted the Truth and myself with every single decision. I have also worked with and sought out the experts that I trust and work with me as an equal. I am so proud of myself for how much I have held this year. I am so proud of me. And just this statement, “I am proud of myself,” shows how far this recovering self-punisher has come. I actually mean it and I feel it to my bone marrow. 2022 was a year for the books, but let it be known that it is the year that I started to mother myself into who I am becoming.For 2023 the word that came through is SLOW. And it’s so fitting, I’ve been holding. I’ve been learning to widen in place and hold more. To be still and present with what is. And now it’s time to move. Not quickly. Nothing fast. No huge expansion here, there will be a time for that, but not this year. 2023 is about staying with every little piece, only moving as fast as I can hold it all. No bypassing. No rushing.Feeling it all. Tasting every morsel. The SLOW life. The juicy life.Like a slow back and forth of the hips; eyes closed, tongue wetting full lips, SLOW is real life sexy. SLOW is rare. SLOW is the speed of the body. SLOW is the speed of glaciers. SLOW is the medicine for me this year. I am here for it. One micro baby step at a time.  This is a public episode. 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