Embracing a Slow Season

Recently I found a scrap of paper in my desk with my handwriting on it:

"Extend the timeline for everything."

I have no idea when I wrote these words down. Did I hear someone else say them in one of the many workshops or classes I've taken? Or perhaps the language surfaced in a calm moment and I felt compelled to capture it.

As a recovering perfectionist and over-extender, these words actually feel quite radical. For years I have been working to know when to down-shift and to accept that my energy isn't infinitely flowing. To genuinely embrace the ebbs of "ebb and flow."

We are seeped in a culture that pushes productivity and more, more, more. These ideas permeate: think about the language of the "self-improvement" field. Growth is supposed to be linear and consistent. While nature rests, hibernates, composts, and embraces fallow seasons, humans put an immense pressure on ourselves to maximize and "reach our potential."

These cultural norms have ended up being harmful to me, a person learning to set boundaries, working to grow self-trust, and living with a body that requires extra tending. As I've gotten more honest about how the rhythms of modern life don't feel intuitive to me, I've offered myself a reframe that feels more natural and comforting:

I am a creature who honors cycles and seasons.

I began to notice that after an emotionally and politically intense winter (which I wrote about here), I was entering my own season of quiet meaning-making. I was physically moving around a lot – spending much of April, June, and July traveling away from home – but my inner landscape didn't match the fast pace of my body moving through space. I've been managing a full calendar and a life that looks "busy," while also nurturing an inner world that has needed extra care and intention. Typically I'm willing to give voice to things while in process. This season has been different. 

At first I thought: maybe I don't have that much to say. Eventually I wondered if I've been experiencing something new: perhaps more patience with myself to truly walk my own talk and take the time I need for processing and alchemizing the season that came before.

By walk my own talk, may I direct you to "values at the heart of my coaching" on my website. One of my values is "take your time." I write: "We do not have to move with urgency. We have time to breathe and check in with our bodies. Our worth is not tied to our productivity. We have time to rest. Slowing down is a valid response to a world urging us to speed up. By slowing down we can listen in new ways. We can center ease, rest, and spaciousness. We can take the time we need." Okay, self, I hear you.

Taking my own advice and slowing down felt unnerving at first. This is understandable. It is also something we talk about in coaching a lot: any new thing we are trying or new way of being can feel uncomfortable simply because it's unfamiliar. 

As a writer and verbal processor, I was initially uncomfortable and concerned about how long I need to be with things right now, the absolute glacial pace of it all. I've wanted to keep things to myself for longer. To stay instead of rush forward. To not take action too quickly. To resist over-explaining. To dwell in the unraveling instead of hurrying to understand.

This all made me wonder: who am I if I'm not translating my experience into words and sharing what I'm processing? And – this part makes me laugh out loud – who am I if I'm truly honoring my ethos to take the time I need? Last year a friend shared a Báyò Akómoláfé essay with me where he writes: "the times are very urgent: we must slow down." 

I'm now realizing just how much these words have informed this season: how they've been with me, sometimes unconsciously. These words have been my internal compass: go slower, slower, slower. Don't take on the urgency around you. Move even slower than you think you need to. 

I am shifting from distrusting my season to surrendering and letting it unfold. If I am writing notes to myself, some part of me must be listening. Extend the timeline for everything! I am surrounded by encouragement – from within and around me – to move slowly and with intention. I'm finding acceptance, and occasional delight, that I am in a season of slowness.

Have you had a season of life that has been supported by a particular phrase, word, metaphor, poem, or something else? How do you honor your cycles and seasons?

While I have not yet moved on from this season, I can feel some big things starting to emerge. It's exciting and scary. I'm not completely ready for the emergence, yet I am trying to trust it is moving at the pace it needs to. I won't fight it.

In all of this slow churning and yearning and being with and processing, I realized that this August marks seven years of Growing Home Coaching! I am pretty damn proud of that and very excited about the coach I am becoming! 

This year I finished up some big certifications from Co-Active Training Institute and the International Coaching Federation, which I haven't really taken a moment to acknowledge or celebrate (though you might notice some new, fancy badges on my website). I am taking a moment now to celebrate seven years of coaching as well as all the time, effort, and energy I have put into how I show up in this work. Most of all, I am reflecting on the many humans who have worked with me and feeling so grateful! If you have chosen me as your coach in these past seven years: thank you!

I did not become a coach in a particularly easy time in human history, to put it mildly. So much has challenged my expectations and surprised me. A few of you have been working with me since the very beginning and I find that truly amazing. I guess I was onto something when I wrote in 2022 that coaching can be a marvelous companion for all our seasons.

People joke about a "seven-year itch" (mostly when talking about personal relationships but I think it works for career too). The itch I am feeling is to keep growing and expanding the ways I can support humans through their transformations. I want to be more courageous and playful and unattached to outcomes! Seven years in I feel that I'm truly trusting the collaboration and relationships at the heart of this work. This trust is allowing me to slow down in my coaching too. And slowing down is actually making coaching more fun, powerful, and generative. 

Coaching has allowed me to honor cycles and shifts with more ease and less fear. I don't yet know what this slow season is ushering in. But I know I'm so glad that I'm a coach because it has strengthened my capacity to center curiosity when I feel a new season arriving. Being a coach has helped me welcome change after change after change.

I am so grateful you want my support and championing in all of my seasons. I am honored you let me meet you and coach you in all of your seasons. I love being a part of your lives.