Learning to Speak, Slowly
A season of being pulled to expand, with nowhere yet to land.
Something is itching to move through me right now.
I’m craving expansion, with little room to actually expand into.
The lack of space has nothing to do with burn out and everything to do with simply being in it. And what a funny challenge it is to balance a full life while something else is clearly trying to open inside me.
This pull is toward more voice, more visibility, more community, more saying the real thing instead of the safe thing. Every time I reach for it, I run into the same wall.
So yes, I’m in a funky little waiting period. At least I’m able to identify that it’s the kind of liminal space that comes right before expansion.
Whether it’s the podcast I’m starting with a friend, the sound healing course I signed up for on impulse, the screening with a live Q&A that has nothing to do with client work (and everything to do with something in me wanting to be fed), or the keynote draft I’m itching to finish, it’s all the same hunger.
I want more voice, input, and room to actually take up space.
If you know me IRL, you know patience has been one of my greatest lessons in this lifetime. 44 years in and I’m still working on it – despite my Sun being ruled by Saturn and my having a Libra stellium (you’d think taking things slow would come more naturally).
In a funny twist of a metaphor, I’m just now taking the steps to correct my tongue tie, after going down a rabbit hole of research into how it connects to so many underlying tensions and physical issues I never thought to trace back. I’ve started myofunctional therapy to prepare physically for the release. It’s no small undertaking. An hour and a half each way, daily exercises… It’s a real commitment for something I know will bring overwhelming release.
I can’t stop thinking about the timing. The exact season I’m feeling the loudest pull to speak, to be on camera, to stop editing myself down, is the same season I’m doing all this quiet, unglamorous, daily work on the one part of my body that makes speech possible in the first place. Oh, the irony.
Our family trip to Japan last month cracked something open in my 4-year-old. Food, art, a version of the world bigger than the one he knows at home. He grew daily, before our eyes. And then we came home and ran straight into some major parenting wars. Listening, control, each conversation turning into very loud negotiations every. single. day.
What’s interesting to see is just how much my parenting is also calling for expansion. I used to be afraid of one thing as a parent: keeping him safe. Now the fear has so many more rooms in it: what he’s taking in, what he’s absorbing about the world, what experiences are forming his view on life. Now we’re wondering constantly about how we give him both freedom and a container at the same time.
And as I keep watching him push against every container I put up this summer (wanting more room, more say, more of his own voice in how his days go), I recognize it, because I’ve been doing the exact same thing in my own work. Somewhere in the same stretch of weeks, that wanting showed up for me too: a major pull to stop playing it safe in how I talk about what I do, and to let the work sound as expansive as it actually is.
I know I’m not the only one in this particular season. Every woman I’ve sat across from lately (I recently had the kind of dinner with a group that fills you all the way up) has been circling some version of the same thing. A desire to be more visible, find more connection… but they’re also being asked to wait for some of it while life works its way through their own obstacles.
A client was just in town to work with me for a few days where we focused, almost completely, on finding HER voice. And the healing I was able to witness first-hand was… beautiful. Helping her find hers while I'm still working to find mine, that's not lost on me.
I’m not going to pretend I’ve made peace with waiting. But I’m getting better at identifying the why’s behind a wait. Understanding that the waiting is doing its own something as well. The therapy of it all is slow and unglamorous and building toward a release I can’t rush no matter how ready I feel. Maybe that’s true of everything else on my list too.
If you’re in a season like this, full of pull and short on room, here’s your reminder that waiting is just a part of expansion nobody posts about.
You can choose to let it be slow, daily, and unglamorous.
When it opens, it’ll open for real. Until then, I’m doing the quiet work, my daily exercises (both physically and mentally), trying to stay present for my kid during a truly transformative summer, and trusting the timing.
Thanks for being here.
~Jess
So much here, I’m feeling you.