A love letter to breathing room

The weather has been warm in Bend the last two weeks. Summer is in the air. There is some sense of hope as we transition to the next phase of unburdening ourselves from the weight of the last year. In my sessions this week, there is a yearning by women to be outside. We can collectively feel nature’s call. 

That call for me is all things camping. My favorite part is the bonfire to wind down the evening. Just before the stargazing emerges after the last sliver of light leaves the sky. 

Watching a fire calms me. The moments of staring at the flames feel expansive. As a master fire builder I know what makes a fire burn. It is the space between the logs, a breathing space. Too much of a good thing, too many logs packed in too tight can douse the flames almost as surely as a pail of water would. So building fires requires attention to the spaces between, as much as the wood.

The same is true for humans. 

We trick ourselves into believing that we don’t or shouldn’t need space. We add more logs to our fire in hopes that it will produce a larger fire. More output in human-speak. This is a lie. It does not. Piling logs without space will suffocate us. They will dim our fire. Or worse, extinguish it. 

When we give ourselves the space to breathe, our flames get bigger.
The space allows for things to expand naturally, with less effort. Have you ever noticed that when you stop trying, things happen? This is you making an agreement with yourself to PUT THE LOGS DOWN. To let go and release from the effort. 

This moment for each of us as individuals is up against the collective yearning of companies. For their employees be log grabbers. To go back to some version of what existed before the pandemic. The commutes. The travel. The initiatives tabled because of the uncertainty. The planning ahead that lay rest in the day to day management and surviving. This temptation will be BIG. Made only stronger from a year of feeling like nothing more than a tiny small face on a video conference. And a desire for your company and colleagues to see you - in living form - and as a contributor. 

Our hope for you is that you feel into what logs you do pick up. To have them feel like good choices that support your own fire. And that there be some space left between to breathe. And that you can trust that space will lead to an expansion that another log will never provide.

To space, 
Alicia