Are you filling your cup?
When your cup is full you have so much more to offer. You never really know just when or how you’ll be tapping into the reservoir you’ve created, but it’s important to keep it full or even overflowing.
I’m sure you’re shaking your head in agreement. It’s not a new consideration. That being so, it’s still super common in our culture to give beyond our capacity and be walking around spent and empty, but still giving. The result is oftentimes depletion. It’s now December so we should be sleeping more, slowing down and moving more towards the hibernation of winter vs the fast-paced of summer. I mean c’mon, the days are significantly shorter and all the signs of nature are drawing inward and pointing to slowing down. If we are in tune with our bodies, they too are giving us signs of slowing down and asking for more sleep, more fat, more hydration. I know personally, this is easier said than done, but after years of practice it is paying off. What if we give from a full cup? What do we experience then?
I have a consistent self care practice and daily routines that keep my immune system strong and my cup full, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have moments of depletion or feeling spent. This past week was a good test for me. I pride myself on my health and the health of my family, but the truth is some things are beyond our control, like when my two year old has a 24 hour flu (or ate something yuck).
It all started in the middle of the night on Thursday. Miles woke me up doing his best to describe he had a tummy ache. We had enough time to get into the bathroom before he was sick for the first time since he was a baby. He was up continuously until dawn and only wanted me to hold him, touch him and care for him. While I held back tears a few different times in the night, my heart swelled with the capacity and connection between us. By the next morning he was back to climbing, running, hanging and talking nonstop, but still recuperating. We talked a lot about the importance of slowing down and did our best to spend the day reading, snuggling and sipping warm water.
Given I was up all night with a sick kiddo, it gave me plenty of time in those early morning hours to contemplate the sacredness of my life and life in general. Thoughts around the overall health of my child, children everywhere, my own personal capacity to care, other parents and their ability to deal all over the world in this same situation. I tapped into a recognition and alignment with my mother, my mother’s mother and so on as family healers through the years. I experienced an impeccable clarity in those hours as I paced with Miles in my arms with him wrapped in my meditation shawl. A surprising sense of familial gratitude emerged during those early morning hours and the role of the mother’s in my family. My mother lost her mother when she was 18, so this holds another level of acknowledgment for me.
It made me think about so many nights and days growing up where I only wanted the warmth of my mom by my side. She could make it all feel better, by simply being in the room. Did she learn that from her mother? Is this role modeled? Practiced? Or in our nature? Either way, my mother is a healer and after years of seeking the presence of healers I realize I am one too. I am my family’s healer.
The next day I made sure to reach out and thank her for all the times she put her agenda to the side and snuggled up next to me to be the love that heals.
It was a long night, but I felt into the deep reservoir of my own capacity to love and serve, for my habits that cultivate patience, for my immune-building practices, for my intuit
ion and for my daily life aligned with what’s important and my ability to respond with ease and most importantly, love. My cup was full and as a result what I had to offer was limitless. A few days later, my husband ended up in bed with body aches and a fever. I offered love. I’m still the last one standing.
I am my family’s healer.
Fill your own cup with Rachel’s 12 Week ALIGN Life with Ease Course.
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Rachel Peters is a yoga teacher, yoga health coach, lifestyle and habits expert, easeful living advocate, and lover of wild places. She leads others towards Embodying Ease through a yearlong wellness & lifestyle journey to dissolve perfectionism, embody daily habits that promote mental clarity, overall ease, and deeper connection to life on this wild ride of modern living. Learn MORE today!