No bottoming topics today… I’m feeling very reflective, melancholic, and raw, maybe because of my birthday, maybe because I just spent four days at the Embodied Transformation course by Strozzi Institute of Somatics. It has been a few days since I’ve been back, and the aftermath is still going on in my body. Or maybe because it is snowing outside, and I cannot help but think about my roots and my very lost country I left behind…
My thoughts are about growing up and becoming an adult – not an easy process and not necessarily connected to our passport age. It is rather connected to leaving the framework of our parents and creating our own. It is about transitioning out of “shoulds”, prescriptions, and judgments (also “judgments of our muscles”) of our habitual self. Much of what was given to us when we were little and didn’t have a filter. Much of what we exercise without thinking. Much of what we are even afraid to question.
Is it even possible – to do it on our own? In ancient communities, there were rituals supporting this change. In our modern life, we do not have any concepts for the initiation into adulthood by the elderly, mentorship… I always struggled to find a female initiation. It’s just a missing piece in my heart that probably will never be healed.
Yet we grow, and we grow up. We grow a lot through the challenges of adult life, with the pain and discomfort of facing difficult decisions and conversations. We also grow with love and kindness offered to us by others, lovers and strangers. We grow by changing our social environment – sometimes it’s really necessary. We grow by asking ourselves questions about what is really important to us, and what we like to bring into the world. We grow by reaching out to something greater than us, by connecting to nature, and by finding our own rituals. We grow by changing our daily routine, especially our physical routine…
Thank you for reading that far. I do not have any useful advice or wise words on how to make it easier. Just acknowledgement and compassion with all of us, struggling to live an adult life. Maybe just this one – however it is difficult, it matters. When you think, you don’t matter, you matter. It matters when you do your best to show up in life. To bring your art and creativity, your passion, your gifts into the world. So keep growing up and showing up for what is important to you.