Leaving a Legacy: Part 1: Ritual of Devotion

Each morning when I rouse from sleep but am not yet “eyes open” and up for the day, I take a moment to pause and say to myself my phrase of the year in my mantra, “I am wild devotion,” and feel into the words for where my ground is this day. To set my heart and mind around what story am I walking. What is longing to be created and experienced in the day. Where my devotion lies in the light of that particular day…

One recent morning came after I had woken up in the night and couldn’t sleep again easily, thinking of my parents. How my mom has been gone for weeks to India, and I haven’t called my dad. How it’s so damn hard for me to talk to my parents. How I long to just call and say “What’s up” and then move through our days knowing we are loved and love each other in the best way we can being true to who we are right now.

That morning I found myself waking inside of my Mindful Self-Care ritual of Wild Devotion from my word of the year. (Sign up for my email list in the p.s. below to get the details of that ritual in this week’s email). I found my focus on my connection with my parents. I took some moments of mindful communication to release some of the story around that relationship, to shift the words of my thoughts and beliefs from critical and closed to a place of openness and possibility, connection within.

I found myself desiring connection with my parents, more intimacy in our relationship.

A ritual of connection. Something simple. Something practical. Something doable.

Wild Devotion. Mindful Self-Care. I got this.

I got up and saw an email from Hannah Marcotti, the woman who runs the little series/circle I’m in currently called Rooting In Lifting Up.

“Ritual as a way to release expectation…”

Affirmation. A desire for connection. A release of expectation. Find a ritual….

I want to release expectation inside of these calls and contacts with my parents. My expectations and theirs. I want to create a daily ritual of connection with my parents.

A simple text. A quick call. An email. A video. Something sent every day. A longer weekly check in. Something that draws us closer as time our time together draws to a close.

I create a ritual: Daily contact with my parents. A call once a week. Otherwise, do something. Doesn’t matter. Text, photo, email, video of the kids. Something.

It’s not easy. It’s worth it.

Presence. Not perfection.

Say that over and over.

I had created a daily ritual of connection in my relationship with my parents.  After calling that day to welcome my mom home, briefly due to severe jet lag, what a surprise awaited me the next day.

The very next day, I felt like calling, AGAIN. Rare. (Excitement from the ritual?)

And I talked to my dad. Rare. And he talked openly and intimately with me. Very, very rare.

It was as if I, the storyworker, had set forth this wild devotion to capture stories from my parents, and there in the very next day was this juicy affirmation that YES, the stories are the way to understand the legacy.

Because I learned something important the next day. I learned that there was more in this legacy from my ancestors than I realized…there is more to my story than I knew… my becoming and being – so different than any woman in my family – might not have been so random as I once thought.

Perhaps the stories I have found myself trapped within are not really mine at all…

In order to release a story that has a grip on your mind, sometimes you need to get know it, feel your way all around it, and, when you know the way of it, wrap your hand around it to grip firmly, and uproot all hidden creepers at the foundation with determination and commitment.

In order to release the past that chokes out our present – our choice – through programming, those stories must come to be known and told.

It was time to release the past so I could shift my present.

Stay Tuned for Part 2: Releasing the Past, Shifting the Present

May you be filled with all you wish to devote your heart to, dear one…peace, ease, joy, grace, courage….ALL of it

~sheila <3

p.s. Sign up for my biweekly {presence not perfection} emails and get a guided meditation along with my Mindful Self-Care ebook and behind the blog post details that are private email love only for the folks on my email list. (Because I like to share some of the nitty gritty how-to and intimate details.)