I just spent more than a week at the Oregon coast, a place I usually feel instantly at home. Being on the ocean simply returns me to source. It’s a short cut for me.
So when I decided to go there to get started on a book I’ve been wanting to write, I expected a vacation. It was a vacation, all right. I vacated my body and moved right into my head. The mental work of framing my ideas and beginning such a large project had me set up housekeeping in the world of the mind, which happens to be what I was writing about. I got a good start on the book, but I’ve had a series of headaches from the mental strain. Not an accident, I think.
What’s just as difficult is that during the frustration and challenges of living in my head, I returned to my old ways of compulsive eating. Only this time, after having retreated with Geneen Roth last spring, it’s harder to stay in denial. Which makes the whole thing much more painful.
My heart says to simply return home. To my body. Body knows. And when I remember that….and stay in my body, in the experience of eating, being, writing, I’m home.
