What does balance look like when we’re wobbling on the front padding of our foot on a beam 100 feet up in the air?
First off, doing it alone is not how. Rule one: You need others. One is ok, two is supreme, and anything more is cowabunga. They hold your life rafts, the Wicked Witch’s mirror that’s lifted when you’re not so pretty. In October, gravity’s pull had my knees knocking like a freshly born giraffe, and it was my friend who said, “Jaclynn, this doesn’t sound like you.” A gentle hand to my shoulders, directing me back to myself.
Second: when the wild winds blow and the storms rage like an unshackled beast, we need tethers. The actions taken daily—your routine, habits, disciplines. Watering the plants. Washing your face. Reading. Cooking. Nestling your nose into your pup’s and kitty’s snoot. It’s in them that we find ourselves. “This is what I do,” you’ll feel in the action, in that foothold, and no matter the wind’s strength, the tether is there.
But balance is not just the doing. It is also the limits we draw. To push ourselves when progress is already being made is pointless. Take frequent pauses, for spaces, and for the chapter breaks. Your heart and your soul need them—in the releasing of all the things we carry, that we return home, and home soothes.
Still, I notice the sneakier side trips, the ones called rabbit holes, existential crises, where insecurities and pits of despair come suck on our toes. Do I matter? Am I enough? These beliefs echo through the cavernous void.
Relevance. I fear the loss of it. My daughter’s hands that grapple with her hair to set a scrunchie in place—that was my job. The shift of the wind from new to old—will you still love me? That fear echoes like the bowed leg of the cricket, gentle and sweet, an invitation if I allow it.
The quickness of our burn, from spark to dark, I fear our connection lasts only the fleeting flit of the lightning bug’s night.
And this is where I come in. I still my panic with a return to myself. To my breath. Watching the dragonflies dance on the breeze like bumper cars, redirecting again and again.
It’s here I remind myself of my strength, my consistency, my values, of what I’ve built and am still building. There is work to do, and I want the bandwidth to be able to make its draw.
Balance is the how. How we feed the beast, the beast in us that relentlessly pushes and will never stop.
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 