Kerri On Down The Road

 This past weekend, I took part in a ritual that is somewhat new for me:  I did a deep spring cleaning of my space.  It's not that I never clean my apartment; what I don't usually do is devote the better part of a day to the act of diving into dustball rabbit holes and the like.  As I moved from room to room, scanning for nooks and crannies that needed my attention, I realized I was involved in something more than a physical cleanse.  I was also embarking on an emotional cleanse.  I have often thought of myself as a sentimental soul.  I tend to hold onto things that I am given or that represent special times in my life, and have a hard time parting with these artifacts even long after the moment has passed.  As I moved through my physical space, cleaning and rearranging things, I began to notice items whose importance felt diminished.  Reminders of times that have passed, and whose presence is not necessarily required moving forward.  So...

Where I live, springtime has had a rocky start.  Although it is not unheard of for us to experience snowstorms in late March or April, they feel out of place and annoying when they occur.  We are now moving into a patch of more "typical" spring-like weather, complete with early flowers poking their heads out of the cold earth, and trees throwing forth their blooms, and it has made me think about patience. I wonder if these plants feel impatient to start their growth cycle in the spring.  If they are sitting below the Earth's surface, feeling annoyed by the ongoing weather delays preventing them from doing their thing and bringing colour to otherwise dull-looking spaces, or if they simply take it all in stride, knowing when the time is right, they will be called to start their magic.   Humans also lose patience when our sense of divine timing is thrown off.  Speaking for myself, I absolutely feel frustrated when something I feel has taken "long enough" to oc...

 If you are like me and tune into astrological forecasts and downloads, you will know that we have entered a time of looking at relationships in our lives and evaluating the ones to keep and the ones to let go.  These can be relationships of a romantic, friendly, or job-related nature, and I have also been feeling a pull towards evaluating the relationship I have had with myself. I say "have had" because I cannot deny that in the past months, I have been experiencing a shift in perspective around the nature of this relationship and the aspects of it that I feel ready to shed. Have you ever taken a moment to sit and think about the adjectives that come to mind when you ask the question "Who am I?"  Perhaps you have never asked the question.  It is a powerful one, and an insightful exercise to experience.  What came up for me were some very well-worn and outdated narratives that I have carried around for too many years.  When discussing this with my therapist...

 Learning to trust the process feels like a very repetitive lesson in my life.  Brought forward each time a new challenge or change is on the horizon and I am left feeling uneasy and unsure of the next steps or how to exactly proceed.  And there is the crux of it - the burning desire to have the path plotted out for me.  The more I think about this, the more I realize that it is a lack of trust in myself and my ability to navigate that puts me in a place of feeling lost without clear directions.  This lack of self-trust manifests itself in many areas of life.  I notice it most often when faced with tasks or opportunities that fall outside of what I consider to be my wheelhouse.  I suppose nothing is surprising in that - where we feel the most outside of our natural comfort zone is likely where we will feel the most challenge when trying something new.  At the gym, for example, the number of times I have been ready to choose a lighter weight or sto...

 One morning last week, as I sat on the beach preparing to dip, I took a few extra moments to admire the tiniest slivers of colour peeking through the dark clouds. There was at least a half-hour until sunrise officially occurred, making this the pre-show before the sun was visible.  I love this time of day because you never know what you might see.  The colour of the sky changes before you can register it or try to capture it on your phone, leaving you to simply observe and marvel at its beauty. This morning, these slivers of color were the sum total of the sun that appeared.  What struck me as I waded into the lake to take in the show was the sense of anticipation and wonder that I felt as I watched the colours appear and then fade away -- the promise of a new day on the horizon and all that it might (or might not) bring with it.   How often do we have the chance to step outside our daily routine to be present in the moment and to be open to what may come,...

 Box jumps?!?  Did he just say we are doing box jumps???  It was the end of Friday's workout, a beta test of new programming dropping in a few weeks.  My workout partner and I were the only two in our time slot and were running through exercises that, while not new, were being presented in a new format.  Box jumps, however, were not something that I had on my radar at all.   Let me back up to explain why this basic move had me shook - I am scared of jumping.  Throughout my life I have avoided the need to jump in most activities I pursue (aside from skipping rope as a kid, which I don't feel qualifies).  Anytime a workout included plyometrics, I bowed out.  The reason behind this fear is basic self-preservation, and perhaps a bit of humiliation suffered during high jump in grade eight when I landed on an already well-worn bamboo pole, causing it to make a cracking noise which my jerk of a gym teacher put down to me breaking the pole....

This past weekend I had the opportunity to embrace creativity through playing with clay.  Although I was an enthusiastic crafter as a child, creating earrings and other jewlery pieces, I had never thrown clay before and had images of my half-completed vases being flung off of an out of control pottery wheel.  I shrugged off my self-doubt, reminding myself that this was all about fun and play, not end results.     As I was handed my first ball of clay to work with it dawned on me that I hadn't given any prior thought to what I wanted to create during the workshop.  So unlike me to not have a plan or even remote idea of what I was working toward.  I started to work the lump into a ball, allowing my hands to explore and exeriment.  Our instructor gave us guidance regarding shaping and defining our pieces, but the rest was up to us.  To say the experience was soothing would be an understatement.  It felt magical to watch as my unseemly ball ...