self-healing

When you’re unwell and people still need things

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

Have you struggled to tend to the needs of patients, children, clients, or elders while you were going through your own big or small health crisis? I share these inquiries with you today in honor of all the caregivers contending with illness or pain, whether there’s cancer, autoimmune disease, recovery from an acute health emergency, long or short covid, or the many other viruses and bacteria we experience living in a body.

Listening in

Our bodies are always talking to us, and those of us with particularly sensitive nervous systems are privy to a whole lot of conversation. Listening to the body, like learning any new language, requires some persistence and patience. One message that’s often loud and clear though is “slow down and rest”. Sometimes the rest we need is much deeper than a temporary pause, and it questions the very pacing and choices of our lives. We might ask, “What is this illness slowing me down from, and what is it asking me to change?” We may not like the answers to these questions, but we can still tell the truth to ourselves and take some time before choosing what to do about it. 

My new favorite word: Divest

Some humans could use a little more empathy, but many kind caregivers are actually learning to divest. Divest from caring quite so much, divest from being so acutely tuned in to other people, divest from the stories we tell ourselves about how we’re not doing enough. And let’s not forget divesting from standards that are too high to maintain when we’re ill. In divesting, we might ask, “What can I not do? What can be postponed? What could someone else do?”

Asking the now 

Have you ever gotten overwhelmed by the multitude of supplements you should be taking, practices and exercises you should be doing, and all the doctors and healers you should make appointments with? That overwhelm matters for your well-being too. Taking a slow breath, we remember that the body asks for what it needs in the now-time. Can responding to that one need be enough, just for this moment? What would it feel like to trust in taking one step at a time?

Compassion is not complete if it doesn’t include you

Being sick can make us cranky, fearful, zoned out, and despairing. It’s ok to be angry; it’s ok to grieve. Sometimes rather than a pep talk, we just need someone to say, “Sweetie, that totally sucks. It’s so hard. I love you.” That someone might need to be you–whether or not you’re near people who care. No one is going to know just what you’re going through like you do, and the voice of your caring heart needs more airtime than any inner critic. 

Illness making you matter

If you’ve been centering your life around other people and giving less to your own body and spirit than you do for everyone else, illness may be asking, “What about you?” We can’t just keep grasping at crumbs and expect that to be sustenance for caregiving. It’s OK to be high maintenance, to need a lot of emotional and physical self-care in order to continue to be of service to others. It’s also OK to dream your own dreams sometimes. You exist here too, and if there’s one person you are most responsible for, it’s you. 

Wishing you gentle loving kindness, tons of patience, outrageously vibrant health, and a whole lot of letting yourself off the hook.

Warmly,
Julia Aziz

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More encouragement for rest:
Rest is Resistance book by Tricia Hersey
Podcast interview on Time Management for Mortals
Beautiful Chorus song we’ll be resting or moving to in the women’s circles this week

On offering and receiving healing work online

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I’m the last person I would have ever imagined working online. A cabin in the woods without WiFi is my favorite weekend getaway, and when I learned about Luddites during a semester abroad in England, I was instantly enamored with the idea of smashing computers–and that was before the internet! Yet here we are three years in to our crazy new world, and I’m still discovering unexpected blessings in healing work online.

What I’m Appreciating

For people who are self-conscious about being seen moving their bodies, making noise, crying, or otherwise releasing deep emotions, a well-tended online space is a chance to really let loose–in privacy yet supported.

For people who keep their cards close to their chest, meeting online can feel both safe and liberating, inviting a “why not?” kind of courage to take bigger risks in speaking what’s true.

For people who struggle with the self-discipline of regular practice and thrive with the accountability of a group, meeting online supports healthy routine. It requires one to remove distractions and set up their space well, building the foundation for regular self-healing practice where it’s most needed–at home and in everyday life.

For empaths and highly sensitive people who are often overly tuned in to others, being online offers the opportunity to build mastery in staying grounded and present in the body while connecting to another person.

For people who have been failed by experts and gurus, or people who have long been searching for answers outside themselves, online healing work can be ideal for practical and energetic reasons. Practicing self-healing tools with online support can give power back to the person in the “receiving” role, encouraging self-worth and sovereignty. 

For people with a lot of responsibilities–you’re busy, it’s convenient, I don’t think I need to say more!

On Being Together In Person

Meeting online will never replace being with people physically. That’s just silly (and scary)! My current approach has been to learn and participate in online spaces, then show up open and available when I see loved ones or meet new folks in person. Personally, I find I have a lot more appreciation and bandwidth for both healing experiences and social connection when I’m not out there all the time. 

As for my own offerings, I am loving working with both individuals and groups online, providing protected space for deep release and renewal. I am also continuing to (or resuming) offering in-person personal ritual, group ceremony, and community healing workshops and retreats, as we need that special time to be together, on the earth, face to face.

On Release & Empower

If you’ve been feeling drained by too many Zoom calls, but you’ve been toying with the idea of joining a women’s circle this season, here are a few things to know: 

We spend most of our time together not engaging with the screen. We do expressive writing, move our bodies to music, relax and receive, and then only at the end do we sit together for sharing and witnessing. Note: we don’t stay in front of the screens during the music, so you can feel free and private experimenting with movement.

You can skip weeks whenever you need to (and it’s OK to come late). We all need a break sometimes.

More opportunities for connecting with women in the group are coming soon. If you’ve been in a group before, you know just how amazing the women are. An in-person retreat for current and former circle participants is coming this spring (save the date: April 1st), and an optional online partnering component for group members will be available in the fall. More on these soon, but in general: more ease, more connection, as needed.

Thank you for reading and continuing to connect in the different forms available to us. I trust you know where you’re at and what you need, and I’m wishing you just the right support, in right timing.

Julia Aziz

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When you’re getting weary and burning out

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

A few weeks ago, I presented a continuing education workshop for mental health professionals on burnout and compassion fatigue. I didn’t share it with y’all because those particular words feel so stale and overused these days. What are we really talking about here?

  • Feeling inwardly irritable or cranky towards clients, children, elderly parents, or other people you serve, though you keep showing up for them
  • Getting scattered and flitting from thought to thought as you respond to multiple demands
  • Intellectually knowing you care about people or issues but not *feeling* that care in your body
  • Trying to do too much and feeling drained and tired hours before it’s time to sleep
  • Being unable to do much beyond what is expected, with every day feeling like more of the same
  • Ruminating on other people’s trauma and trying to fix things out of your control
  • Frequent contemplation of changing careers or what life would be like without your current caregiving role(s)

If you’ve experienced one or more of these symptoms, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person or an impostor. You’re a person who is trying to meet a lot of outer expectations and doing the best you can. The balance of what’s coming in and out just isn’t working. 

Moving from burnout to reigniting the flame within

I often think of burnout as the passionate and loving heart burning down to a low flame, maybe even just the hot coals, with no one feeding or tending the fire. If it extinguishes itself, you’re left out in the cold. If the right wind blows, you might flare up again, but the heat and energy will likely be scattered, maybe even perilous with no one there to support or contain it.

To find enthusiasm for life and the service we do, we must tend the inner fires of compassion and inspiration. But what does that mean?

Here’s my three cents: 

(1) Regularly clearing out what doesn’t burn to make more space for the good wood. In addition to good “emotional hygiene”, this means paying honest attention to what is wearing you out and being willing to make courageous choices about what you give and don’t give your precious life energy towards.

(2) Creating a good container to protect the fire. No one else is going to track what you’re doing all day long and insist you prioritize your own needs in real, tangible ways. Only you can carve out and protect the space you need.

(3) Feeding the fire with new experiences, authentic expression of what you really feel, and creativity that nourishes the inner wild one. When you feel like you’ve lost your mojo, it may be time to mix things up.

Gathering around the collective fire

Changes like this can be hard work, especially when you’re already weary! Sometimes the burnout has gone on too long and to truly warm up and burn bright again, we first need deep quiet and rest. Then it’s time to rebuild with some dedicated time, support, and a much bigger blaze. That’s why I’m so passionate about community healing work (and what the Release & Empower Women’s Circle* is all about). When individually, you have only a little light left to share, you can offer it up to a larger fire. In surrendering over and over again, you may find yourself slowly rising from the ashes, finding passion and compassion bit by bit, energized by the fuel of being amongst fellow humans doing the same.

I hope one way or another, you always find a little light nearby and know there is one within you too. You are doing good work out there! May all that you give come back to you tenfold, even in unexpected ways.

With kindness,

Julia Aziz

*In the past few years of facilitating the Release & Empower Women’s Circle, I’ve witnessed women making brave changes in their work, relationships, health, and lives, not to mention those inner changes in freedom, confidence, and authenticity. These changes are theirs to claim, not mine. This is just what happens when women come together to re-ignite their inner fire. Registration is now open for the winter groups, if you’d like to save a space. Details here.

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Image by Leandro De Carvalho from Pixabay 

When you’re trying to let go

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

I’m happy to say I’ve been meeting new friends on my morning walks again. Just last month, I had encounters with a porcupine, owls, armadillos, hawks, foxes, a crested caracara, and coyote. I always try to play it cool, gently slowing down without making too big a deal of it, wanting to greet the animals in a natural way. As you might imagine, they don’t often hang out for more than a few moments, and I find myself feeling wistful each time they leave. Not knowing when or if we might meet again, I’m left with a fleeting joy, better nourished by the connection.

If you’ve been involved in spiritual, self-help, or personal growth circles, you’ve been hearing the phrase “let go” anywhere you look and listen. Lately, I’ve been curious about what I’m calling “letting leave,” a concept best taught by our wise companions and caregivers, the trees, in this new fall season. Letting leave is a less active, more receptive process than letting go, one that honors a timeline beyond human will. The leaves of a tree are not hustling and on the go; rather, when their time comes, they simply fall to the earth. A gust of wind or a big storm may also blow through and accelerate the process of leaving. Life is like this too, isn’t it? Smooth or sudden, ready or not, when change wants to happen, it will. 

In the healing arts, we often begin with what we want to let go of. What’s wrong, what’s the presenting concern, what are you struggling with? A problem focus is helpful in knowing what needs attention, but concentrating too much on the issue can sometimes hinder its release. As I see it, one of the key aspects to actually receiving help and letting support in is being able to let suffering leave. On the surface, we all want that. But when you’ve been struggling with something for a long time, be it physical, emotional, mental or spiritual, the question of “Who am I if I’m not a person with this pain?” feels almost incomprehensible. There’s no easy bypass here; instead, we might keep asking the question. At a deep level of consciousness, we “let leave” the attachment to knowing what we are or how change will occur.
 


The letting leave process doesn’t often happen in one fell swoop; everything has its season, and seasons come and go too. It can become a bit easier to trust the natural cycles when we notice the subtle shifts happening all the time. Have you ever found yourself telling a familiar painful story, and realized it’s not actually true or still happening in this moment? Healing may be the recurrent “in the now” experience of letting the resistance to what’s hard leave. It is also, as the Buddhists know well, the loosening of our clinging to what feels good. I watch those trees rooted down into the soil, and see how they allow more powerful forces to weather and therefore strengthen them. We have this capacity too, when we are grounded and willing to hold lightly what we think we have to do.

The invitation I’m hearing this fall is to soften and find courage in letting what needs to go leave when it’s ready, whether that’s old patterns, beliefs, or something more tangible. There will be grief, and sudden loss especially will need plenty of time and love to integrate. In holding sacred the leaving times, may we also find deep appreciation for all that is here with us now.

Until next time, thank you for reading,

Julia Aziz

I was able to catch a photo of this cutie pie, thought you might appreciate 🙂

When you need a real refresh to keep going

/ Julia Aziz / 2 Comments

The summer intensity has been calling me back toward waterfalls again. This year, I’ve been playing with shifting my listening from one spot to the next, noticing how water bouncing off small rocks makes a tinkling sound under the noisy rush from heights above. The cascade’s separate sprays are like a crowd of different voices all talking at once, reminding me of the input overload so many of us feel these days. I try to hear one stream or another until I give up, listen to the whole chorus of voices together, and let it become one current, one being, one song. 

Sounds lovely, right, but how on earth do we let the current of our modern times sing us a song rather than slip us off the edge and take us down with it? “Go with the flow” won’t cut it. If we go with the flow of the collective, we are going down a dark vortex of strife and fear. So let’s pause for a moment from the many streams of deep grief, trauma, injustice, and tyranny and see if we can shift how we’re listening.

One of the aspects of waterfalls that strikes me this year is that the water only makes sound because of the rock. The flow is not separate from the hard places. I, like many, would usually prefer things progress forward in a direct line. But that’s not the way water, or life, moves. It curves over, under, and around the hard places, finding any way it can to keep flowing. We, too, must make contact with the rocky edges in ourselves and meander the curves to follow the course. The music is in keeping on.

I recently visited the waterfall I fell down a few years ago, and it, like many things, has changed. Time and weather has rearranged it. I’m a bit rearranged too, and maybe so are you. The way I see it, my Number One Job right now is to release negative thoughts and emotional tension as frequently as possible, so the waters don’t get muddied and stagnant, stuck in a puddle of doom. Letting go makes way for the flow to continue, showing the next right move at the next right time. We may want to get ahead of ourselves and hurry a plan, but like the water, the nature of life here on earth is that we move through what’s current before knowing what’s next. 

Releasing and renewing sounds easier than it is to remember and do. But I believe in you because if you can take a moment out of your busy day to read this, it means you can take a moment to refresh your mind, body, and precious heart too. If that sounds improbable or impossible, it’s time for more support. Support from people, the water, the birds, the ground, the breath, the body–much is available when we ask and open to it.

May the chorus of the world sound to you like perennial permission to pause and re-source yourself, so you can get back up stronger again and again and again.

With kindness,
Julia Aziz

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When you’re over-giving and doing too much

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

I’ve never liked the saying, “if you need something done, give it to a busy person.” To me, it sounds like, “pass the work to the person already overloaded with responsibility, and let everyone else chill.” The intention may be to get something done, but the effect is to ask more of someone who may have trouble saying no. Of course, it’s up to each one of us to maintain healthy boundaries and turn down requests we don’t have the bandwidth for. The problem is, busyness is like a force of nature–once you’re rolling fast, it’s easier to keep rolling than to slow down. 

If you’ve ever had a pattern of over-fuctioning, you know what I’m talking about. You can put your head down and push through busy times, but you can also end up exhausted and depleted from the effort. When there’s finally time to rest, rather than celebrate a job well done, you may just need to recover. It’s not sustainable or even efficient to be on “give” mode all the time. 

What if there were another way though?

What if when you took on more responsibility, you also received more of what replenishes you?

Here’s the new deal: the more we take on, the more we need to take in. That means rather than overdoing it, we “over-give” to ourselves so we can continue to give to others. What does this look like?

  • Blocking out self-care and renewal time during prolonged periods of high stress. Doing this on purpose, even though at first it may seem inconvenient and impossible. This means you actually schedule in time where no one is asking anything of you, including yourself! 
  • Treating yourself to more support than you’ve ever had before, in new and different ways that refresh your spirit and bring vital energy and inspiration into your life.
  • Releasing the idea that there’s not enough time or resources, and opening to the possibility of doing things differently, making room for your capacity to expand. Changing old patterns may be scary, but it’s a worthy risk if it means you can enjoy giving again.

Does this sound good? Impossible? It is certainly a lot harder to make these changes within the same cultural context that tells us we are only worthy if we are doing something productive, income-producing, and/or for someone else. Balance would be easier in a community that supports slowing down, respecting cycles, and stopping when there’s enough. Rather than repeating the unhealthy patterns of what Mark Silver aptly terms “late stage capitalism,” why not be part of a cultural shift? If you tend towards having a lot on your plate, and you’d like some support changing the way you hold all of it, check out the New Year Release & Empower Women’s Circle. It’s women who give a lot to others empowering themselves to set boundaries, receive more, and prioritize their well-being. It’s time to balance these cycles of giving and receiving and co-create the world we want to live in. It’s time to keep commitments to ourselves the way we keep them to our loved ones. We heal these patterns together.

Sending big love to you in your holidays, your family dynamics, your grief, your gratitude, and all the other challenges and blessings this end-of-year brings,

Julia Aziz

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When you’re not sure how you or other people are changing

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Have you ever thought you knew someone well and later discovered a side of them you had never seen before? My brother has been transcribing some letters my grandmother wrote when she was engaged to my grandfather but living apart in New York and Chicago. Nineteen-year-old Helen Yarmush teases her beloved with tales of her dates with other men and says things like, “It’s been a beautiful day today–a day to run in the wind (which I did) and laugh and sing.” The Helen Zimmerberg I got to know three decades later was a mother of four who had already lost her first daughter to ovarian cancer and was undergoing chemo and radiation for lymphoma herself. I’ve cherished my memories of Helen’s sense of humor and ability to make the best out of most anything, and I delight in this free spirit I’m seeing now at her 20th yahrzeit (death anniversary). What a gift it is to discover something new in someone I haven’t seen for so long and to be reminded of how multi-faceted we all are.

If you feel different from who you were a couple years ago, perhaps your friends do too. Maybe you’ve lost some relationships, accepted casualties in these divisive times. What if you’ve lost yourself a bit too? In transition, most everything is incomplete and tender. You may feel in between what is no longer authentic and what is not yet grown. Are we willing to meet anew in this wobbly place, or will we try to connect the way we did before and seek only the parts of each other we used to know? I believe there is an in-between place, a place to cherish the familiar, unique essence which doesn’t alter over time while making room to see what else is emerging–in ourselves and in each other. We meet at this crossroads when we unfurl the grasp on old ideas and become willing to not understand. Like this walk through the fog at dawn, perhaps we begin by trusting the path that shows itself, finding beauty in what is not yet clear.

My grandma Helen had strong opinions, yet what was special about her was that she would change those opinions in an instant when more information came in. This wasn’t confusion or ambivalence; it was a permission she gave herself to change her mind and to make new choices as she learned better. It reminds me of something anyone who has been in a workshop, retreat, or the release and empower women’s circle with me has probably heard me say: “Let’s not hold onto anything that’s shared here. These are snapshots of present moment experiences, ones we honor but don’t carry around as your identity forever more. You’re free to show up the same or differently every time.” I’d like to offer this same invitation to anyone reading these words today. To you, who has gifted your attention here, willing to join me in the field of unknowing. Let’s let each other change and evolve, as slowly as we need to. 

With peace in the heart and health in the body,

Julia Aziz

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What it means to heal yourself, and how “self-healing” is misnamed, incomplete, and so needed

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Have you ever sat by a waterfall in the forest, relaxed in a hammock on the beach, or watched an impressively colorful sunset and felt… nothing? Beauty and peace surround you, yet you’re lost in your own troubles. Maybe you’ve even had that experience with helping professionals, going to therapists and bodyworkers and life coaches and doctors and still, you remain caught in the same struggle that brought you there. It’s an awful feeling, like being handed a beautiful gift made just for you, only you can’t reach out your hands to accept it. You might decide the gift is not right for you and continue your search for more and new and better gifts. But what will help you to receive them?

As many of you know, I am a huge proponent of what I call “self-healing.” This phrase wasn’t super popular long ago, but much like “mindfulness” and “energy work,” it’s becoming so commonplace, it’s losing all meaning. So let me clarify the essence and the hype, as I see it.

What self-healing is not

When we are suffering, the darkness feels more real than the light. Finding solutions to problems in that dark place can seem pointless and burdensome. Self-healing, contrary to its name, is not about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and applying that independent, self-reliant, cowboy attitude to recovering from burnout and trauma. It’s not about undergoing a multitude of different therapeutic modalities or taking every nutritional supplement or psychedelic medicine available on this earth, though your own self-healing process may certainly include some of these wonderful tools and teachers. Self-healing is also not about manifesting everything you desire or replacing social needs with spiritual pursuits. And just like an outside person can’t make a change happen in you, no “self” can force you to think and feel differently either. 

What self-healing is

Self-healing is an opening. It is being able to see and acknowledge whatever kind of angsty mess we might find ourselves in for the moment. It is surrendering from the struggle to make it all better, a giving up on the attempt to figure it out. Self-healing, in the way I practice and understand it, is being willing to accept life on its own terms and to follow the step that shows up next like one would follow a flashlight through a dark cave. The actual steps are unique to each of us and the timing is as important as what actions we take. In essence, though, self-healing includes both some stepping up and some stepping back:

Stepping Up

We accept we can’t delegate our ability to feel better about ourselves and our lives to outward circumstances or to someone else. We don’t wait on what is outside our control to change. We give up the quest for the final answer being out there somewhere someone else has hidden, and take loving responsibility for our own internal experience of this life. We tell the truth to ourselves about how we’re doing and use our will to be willing.

Stepping Back

We slow down and let in the support that is already available. Maybe there’s a passerby that makes eye contact and smiles, a cardinal that lands on a nearby tree branch, a cooling tea with just the right herbal blend, a song, a movement, or a powerful ally or ancestor unseen by others. The form the support takes is irrelevant–what matters is we’ve let down our guard and allowed the spirit of what is present to touch us. The natural flow of life is healing itself when we stop blocking it. We learn how to receive, which, most simply put, is how to relax around what is. 

We think we need to feel better; often what we really need is to release resistance to what we actually feel and allow the everyday magic to do its thing. Healing as a noun is still a verb—it’s a process unfolding all the time. Shit happens and you can befriend yourself through it or abandon yourself. Self-healing is about learning to be your own champion, your own rescuer, your own beloved. Not because you have a big ego and can do all those things, but because you know you can’t. It’s like the little fuzzy caterpillars I’ve been seeing on my morning walks these days. I was looking at them and thinking about how they will become butterflies. Then I saw one being eaten by a chipmunk. All is not light and wonder. Healing is transcendence but not always through outer transformation. 

The caveat

The individual’s decision to accept rather than resist is a turning point, not the whole story. We are each unique beings, but we are also part of a much larger organism, beyond our own families and loved ones. We are not separate from the earth we walk on nor the child on the other side of the globe. We affect each other. We can trigger each other like crazy, but we can also heal together in depths we can’t reach alone. There is quite a lot of stepping up and stepping back that needs to be done in community as well. Self-healing is essential: only you can choose to be willing and open. Self-healing is incomplete: like trees in the forest, we may seem separate above ground, but our roots are interconnected.

I hope whatever you’ve got going on this summer, you’re reconnecting in a way that is nourishing for you. For the empaths and the sensitives, that way may look quieter and more intentionally slowed down, and that’s absolutely OK. For some of us, re-entry to society is harder than turning in to the introvert’s cave of quarantine. We’re all working things out somehow though. Thank goodness we’ve got ourselves and each other for company on this wild ride. 

Julia Aziz

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PRACTICE NEWS

I am beyond excited about the next cycle of the Release & Empower Women’s Circle, where self-healing in community moves beyond theory to practice. Women who give much of their time and attention to others are coming together in a sacred space for their own self-healing. We are upleveling the energetic container of the online experience, returning to a closed group model, and syncing up with the rhythms of nature this year, amplifying what has already been a nourishing and powerful experience for more than fifty women in the past couple years. Women have started signing up for the fall term with the early registration discount. Read more about the women’s circle here to see if it would be a good fit for you or to apply.
 

The changes that happen, the changes we make

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

Spring has arrived fully here in central Texas, with wildflowers sprinkling the meadows, trees bursting with green, and birds singing across the skies. Of course this spring feels different from years past, as the death that came through winter’s freeze presents itself starkly alongside the rebirth. The once proud agave cacti are heavy and drooping; browned palm trees struggle to stand while fallen branches rest defeated upon the ground. What’s fresh and new is intertwined with what has perished. Nature seems to be mirroring the paradox of our strange re-opening world, where excitement over returning to former freedoms goes hand-in-hand with the grief and uncertainty that remains.

If you feel both hopeful and unmotivated, depleted and on the brink of change these days, it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. You’re living through a complex time with complex emotions, and it’s not easy to move forward in ambiguity. Part of the challenge, as I see it, is we haven’t fully shifted out of modern culture’s warrior mentality towards growth. A plethora of personal development and wellness memes tell us to focus on what we want and manifest our truest desires. It’s empowering to realize how much we can affect change through awareness and intention. But as many of the cultures we destroyed and/or subjugated know, growth happens in cycles, with loss and gain inseparable. To support growth, we can observe what’s actually happening and learn to work with rather than against the natural forces more powerful than we are. 

When we push too hard for what we want to happen, we may end up exhausted from the effort of trying. When we don’t do anything because we lack the energy, we may get stuck in hiding rather than take a risk. Perhaps there is another way, a way that accepts and intends, slows down and progresses. With spacious mind and generous heart, something both new and old may emerge, integrating where we’ve come from, where we want to go, and where we actually are.

I’m guessing if you’re reading this, there may be changes you desire for your life. It has been a long hard year, and being shut in and shut down has certainly clarified what’s not working. Maybe some of the changes you’re feeling called to are not quite happening, or perhaps you’re getting waylaid and pulled in unforeseen directions. When confused between growth and acceptance, rather than asking, “What’s wrong with me? Why isn’t this working? or Why do I feel this way?” a better question might be: “What is the very next step for now?” 

The best thing I’ve done for myself lately was to take a day off to get lost in the woods. Wandering without trying to get anywhere, I feel free. It feels like true relief to trust the meandering path that shows itself rather than bushwhacking what might or might not be a shortcut. There is magic in following trails unknown, not trying to figure out the map. And all along the way, it helps to tell the whole truth–to one’s self more than anyone else. It helps to speak out loud to the trees, the river, the birds, or even the dry creek bed, “Show me the way and help me to trust it.”

I hope you’re being gentle with yourself these days, especially when there are more questions than answers. Top of the list for What I Can Do (a much shorter list than What I Am Not In Control Of) is the practice of being tender with the parts of us that are frustrated and confused. A few steps forward, however many back, I imagine that viewed from high above, together we walk the labyrinth of healing, getting closer in, moving farther out, yet somehow being led towards center.

Wishing you some vitality, inspiration, and peace each day, to receive deeply and share wildly,

Julia Aziz

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When you’re giving out more than is coming in

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

Have you ever heard a fox cry? A week or so ago, I was in the hill country and heard what sounded like a child screaming, “Help!” in the night. It was a little disconcerting until we realized it was a fox. My friend and I responded by sounding out a similar cry. The more we called back, the closer the fox seemed to approach us. She came near but never all the way to where we stood. We continued to stay in conversation for a while though, until she moved on.

If this fox actually was crying for help, the help she needed was not for someone to go and rescue her. She seemed to find her own way eventually. Maybe she just needed to be heard, to know someone else was out there crying too. I feel a similar dynamic evolving in this next phase of the pandemic together. In the old paradigm, there were damsels in distress and rescuers. There were people in need and people who helped. This dichotomy was always false though. We carry both of these archetypes within us; we are each vulnerable and strong. Pretending there are some who have it all together and others who only fall apart has led to situations like the current mental health crisis for therapists and real burnout for healthcare professionals in general. 

These are intense times, so if you’re not always doing so well, that seems about right to me. We’re not meant to feel always cozy and well in a sick and troubled society. We are meant to be uncomfortable as much as we are meant to be brave. Who says we have to be stoic about any of it? One of my favorite memories of last year was when I stepped outside one morning in Colorado and heard my dear friend and neighbor screaming at the top of her lungs on her front porch. I immediately responded with a loud roar of my own. We laughed about it when we saw each other later, but in the moment it just felt good to be in our own messiness and know we were not alone.

Being heard feels risky, I know. As a therapist, I’ve been well-trained to not show too much of myself, good or bad. Helping professionals are taught to be clear mirrors for others. We’re not supposed to fog up those mirrors with our own personhood. We hold space for other people, not take up space ourselves. I don’t buy it as a way to live a whole life though. I can express what’s within me in contexts I feel safe in, and also show up with presence, compassion, and my full attention for someone else. We all have gifts, and we all have burdens. There is room in this world for the humanity in us all. I’d like to shed all pretenses of “helpers” and “helped” and instead sing out loud with you the music that arises from our dashed dreams, our triumphs, our sorrows, and most of all, our love.  

When we cry out like the fox and hear another’s cry too, it’s not just about venting. It’s about remembering: this life on earth didn’t come with a promise of feeling happy most of the time or everything working out a certain way. You’re not failing at that game. This life is an adventure of growth and change, an opportunity to feel and experience everything. Our stories are heroic tales of resilience. You’re here, and you’re doing it. We all are! 

Please share your voice, and know I am rooting for you. 

With love,

Julia Aziz

PS: If you are helping other beings through this pandemic, and you feel like more is going out than coming in for you, please check out the women’s Release & Empower Group. We have a few spaces open this month, with either month-to-month subscriptions or a nice discount if you make a three-month commitment to yourself. Also new, 10% of the group’s profits are being donated to grassroots community healing work led by BIPOC women. Current recipients include SanArte Healing & Cultura Clinic and Black Women’s Health Imperative. Help others and help yourself too. 

“I feel so much permission to just be however I am in this group. The journaling, the movement, the breathing, the sharing–it’s all what I’ve been needing to do more of for myself and now I feel like I’m making room for it again. I feel so thankful for the women here, and know that as I am going through some changes in my life, this is just where I need to be.”