Thursday, September 24, 2015

it's ok for things to just be weird sometimes

I just got back into town after a 3 week trip less than a week ago. I have been feeling sort of off ever since coming home and for some reason I feel really guilty about it. I keep telling myself it is because I was gone for a long time and now I am home, that reality is trying to set in and I am trying to stop it, because the seasons are changing, or because I'm hormonal, or because mercury is retrograde… I keep trying to explain why I feel not quite myself. Really though, when I think about it, sometimes life is just weird. Yes it could be any combination of these things or all of them that make me feel unsettled, but honestly I need to focus less on what "explains" it and just sit with the uncomfortable-ness of it. I have to remember that it is ok for everything to be up in the air sometimes, because that is just how life goes. The more I struggle to label and control what is happening, the more it will just upset me.

My time in Montana was once again magical. I had the great pleasure of teaching a lovely group of yogis restorative yoga in the evenings at our retreat. We really were so blessed, the smoke from all of the fires in and around Glacier had become so dense that it was difficult to see and breathe the week before and especially the day before the retreat, but somehow, as if all our prayers and magic and juju were heard, the morning of the retreat the smoke parted and we could see the mountains and clear blue sky! I was able to spend my 27th birthday taking class from my best friend and amazing teacher in the morning, saw an adorable young black bear while horseback riding in beautiful weather, had dinner which included birthday cake and pie and surprise presents and balloons and singing from all the sweet yogis and cooks at the cabins, taught a gentle sleepy restorative yoga class on a gorgeous pavilion while the sun set over the mountain range behind me, and sipped hot chocolate and bourbon with my close girlfriends giggling until our eyes wouldn't stay open any longer. Only thing missing was my boy back home, but we had a sweet phone conversation too. The whole retreat was so lovely and made my heart so very full.

After the retreat my friend and I started the long drive back to Atlanta, stopping plenty of times along the way to make the drive a trip of its own. We stayed in a haunted hot springs in Montana, explored the wonders of Yellowstone, backpacked 2 nights in the Grand Tetons (where some highlights include seeing gorgeous foliage turning fall colors and seeing mama bear with 2 adorable cubs and much much more), stayed in 2 more awesome hot springs in Colorado, stopped in Santa Fe for green chilies and Jackalope shopping, and stayed a night in Oklahoma with my mama. The trip was full of adventure and beauty and emotion. After writing all of this out, I can see more clearly that it is only natural being back less than a week that I would feel a little let down from the trip being over, and knowing that life is back to work for awhile. I am so happy to be home with my sweet man in our cute little house and with my friends again, but I also have to let it be ok to feel weird and a little let down and off as I re-adjust to life in Atlanta.