Stillness Practice: The Sound of Waves

Let the wind blow the cobwebs loose. Let the waves soothe your soul.

Hello!

A letter from the Garden, mid-May.

the days following my return from the ocean —

There is a particular kind of disorientation that follows a deep rest.

I came home from just a few days away to Vancouver Island, on the west coast of Canada, bags full of salt air and silence, and for a full day I could not quite find my footing. I felt unsteady. Unfocused. Like someone had shifted the furniture while I was away, and now I was moving through a familiar room in the dark.

On the drive home from the airport, I watched a crow fly above the freeway. I turned to my daughter and said, just a short time ago we were watching eagles soar across the water. Now look at us. We laughed. But something in it was also true, and a little tender.

The island does that to you.

It takes time to arrive at that kind of stillness. And apparently, it takes time to leave it too.

As you press play on the videos, close your eyes.

Imagine yourself there by the ocean.

Take what you need.

The sound of the waves. The birdsong overhead. The wind.

What I know now, and wish I had remembered yesterday, that foggy, unsettled day after I returned, is that the ocean was never really out of reach. It was sitting right there in my camera roll. One small moment away.

And then I remembered the wind.

That sound does something the quiet lapping of water couldn’t quite do on its own. It moves through you, blowing the cobwebs loose from all the corners of your mind. The mental clutter. The low hum of obligation.

I could have stepped away from the unpacked bags and the grocery list, and let myself be there again, just for a few minutes. Not to escape what was in front of me. But to ease the crossing. To give myself a bridge between that open, unhurried version of myself and the one who had to do laundry and think about what to make for dinner.

Stillness is not a place. It turns out it’s portable. We just forget to carry it with us.

I’m curious whether you have ever felt this, the day-after-return feeling, the slight grief of ordinary life rushing back in. And if you have, what did you reach for?

Warmly, Kathy

Vancouver Island, Canada

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A little about me

Hi, I’m Kathy. A guide, a gatherer, a maker of sacred space, and a woman who found her way home to herself after years of putting everyone else first.

For years, I wore many hats at once. Single parent, community manager in a role I was promoted into before I believed I deserved it, event organizer. And later, a family caregiver. Learning all over again how to give without losing yourself in the giving. Caring for everyone, in every direction, all at the same time. What I had to learn, slowly and imperfectly, was that I mattered too. What I found on the other side of that, through stillness, creativity, and the women who gathered around my table, became everything I now offer.

There’s a place at the table with your name on it.