Kislev to Tevet – Dedication and Clarity

My greatest impediment in life is my executive dysfunction. It trips me up constantly. Even if I want to accomplish a task, sometimes I can not budge my brain to do it. Something about pressure, something about expectations, shuts me down.
I’ve been working this past year on being uncomfortable, sitting in emotional or even physical discomfort to get my body/brain to feel not everything is conflict, not everything is a problem. From trying food I don’t like (with a big glass of delicious beverage near) to dancing naked in the snow with runs back to the hot tub, from making myself not run from actual conflict to laying on a accu-pressure pad (hated it but still do it). It feels somehow like it’s been working because despite a painful uncomfortable year I feel … Hurt, but remarkably whole.

This new Jewish month is difficult – dark, a month of contradictions and ends, high energy – a month that starts with a monster’s roar. But the light of Hanukkah is a focus, pulling your dreams and rest into the colder winter, drawing illumination forward for focus and clarity. Next month the sap will rise and trees will begin a slow preparation for flowering spring. But to get the flowers we first have to live through the bare branches; it lets us see the structure for what it is. Winter is pruning time and self care time; they are both the same.

There are many mystical related teachings that your greatest weakness hides within it your greatest strength, that the very thing tripping you up and giving you most grief is your source of power. I truly hope and want to be able to work around and eventually through this inability. I realize how much more I could do for myself and others if I can somewhat repair this all-encompassing coping mechanism. I hope you can turn your hurt to strength, your harm to personal inner power.

Let’s prune away these maladaptive ways of being! Let’s shine a dedicated light into the crevices and clearly see what we might repair! Let’s dance in the snow and remember there is joy in the hard work of becoming better humans!

Love and solidarity!