Sort answer: You don’t.

Long Answer: Sugar, you really absolutely, positively don’t. In fact, the quest for this ever-elusive equilibrium is pure crazy making. Balance is a fallacy. A giant conspiracy designed to make us all feel like we’re continuously fucking up and falling short. It sells yoga videos and meditation retreats and time saving kitchen devices. We download productivity apps and make to-do lists and buy things that plug into our electrical outlets to make us feel like we live in the midst of an artificially scented rainforest.

Serenity now. Please.

And despite all of this we are wildly, continuously off kilter. Unbalanced. Crossing the universe on a tightrope with no safety net below. There is not enough time, or money, or passion or even interest to sustain it all perfectly all the time.

And darling, of course something has got to give.

But here’s the real truth.

We’re made for the ebb and flow. Just like the ocean. Just like the cycles of the moon. Just like the movement from dark to light to dark again.

We were born to shift and be selfish and howl and get messy. We were made to create beauty and to make crazy love and to find the bliss right at the center of our raw, aching parts. That’s the heart of life, the center of the paradox.

And it often says to hell with balance, because balance keeps us safe.

What if we halt the chase for this impossibly esoteric notion of balance and give ourselves to something a lot more earthy and true and real. How about we let ourselves be seduced by the beauty of disequilibrium? What if we agreed to let it all go, with a wild, lusty abandon.

Because that’s when we find that it’s all about the moments. Moments for pure creation. Moments of uninhibited sex. Moments of the sweetest mother baby love. Of pissed-the-fuck-off anger. And of come-here-right-now lust. Of falling head over heels in love with the world. Of feeling like the ground is going to give way beneath our feet. Of feeling free and wild and true, and of feeling chained and constrained and too heavy to get out of bed. And yes, in the midst of all this, even moments where it all feels like it’s sliding into the most exquisite alignment.

And before, you might have been tempted to call that balance. To try subduing it and controlling it and keeping it at all costs. But now? No.

You’re too fierce, too elemental, to unabashedly you to be something as mild and tame as balanced.  And that’s fucking hot. I’m pretty sure your partner would agree that you living in the fullness of your perfectly unbalanced self is a pretty good way to keep the love turned all the way on.

No balancing act required.

So don’t wait to fall off the tightrope.  Take a flying leap.  Trust your wings.  And the unsteady ground that greets you will be perfect and exhilarating and true.

Just like you.

Uncommon Sense is an ongoing series where I respond to comments and questions that stir my heart. They arrive by email, by text, by comment. They speak to something universal in me, and my response comes quick and sure. If you have something stirring in your heart and would like me to respond – please send me your message. I cannot respond publicly to all messages, but I do promise – with everything that I have –  that I will honor it and keep it safe.

The post Uncommon Sense: The Fallacy of Balance appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

This is a love letter.A love letter to women in transition.

This, then, is also a love letter for all women. For at one time or another we will all find ourselves moving between spaces and lives and iterations of ourselves.  Indeed, perhaps we always are.

~~~

Dearest,

This is not easy. I know that. When I look down the length of my own body I can still see the indentations of gravel on kneecaps from the time I spent on the hard ground, howling at the moon.

We all go to the earth sometimes, down to the depths of ourselves and sit with the center of our pain. It aches to be, to dance, to live and breathe and eat and sleep in this space that is neither here nor there. Somewhere in the namelessness. Somewhere in the wild nothingness of the ether. Somewhere in between.

There will come a time – there will come many times – when we must stagger the liminal spaces between this life and that. When the night sky has deepened to the color of an unhealed bruise and only the haunted remain awake. When that ceaseless moan ramps up its siren song in the melancholy hush of 3am. When the cacophony of voices deafens and hands grasp from all sides pulling, grabbing, pleading us to stay. Or to go.

staystaystaygostaygogogogo.

The liminal space is best friends with desperate bargains. With grasping and pleading. With prayers from those usually far too busy to kneel. With the disordered embrace of childhood religion. With the distancing from faith that sustains. With the desperate push-pull. With the exquisite intermingling of loss and longing.

It is a space of disequilibrium. Of quaking knees and unsteady breath. Of a yearning for balance that is nowhere to be found.

Balance, she is a tricky bitch. The tightrope is stretched taut, high above an anxious audience. The space fills with an expectant hush so loud it transforms your being into an echo. Half of the souls below are hoping you’ll make it, the other half wait for you to fall. You will freeze in the middle, guaranteed. You’ll be convinced you have to stay, await a clear answer that delivers you the certainty of the exact right choice. The one that will make everyone happy.  The one that delivers truth without regret. The one that will take you to the other side without collateral damage.

And I wish I could say that that answer will come. That you will do what you need to do and cross to the other side and everything will be the same.  And maybe it will. But darling, transition is no time for the hopeless task of satisfying everyone. You’ll drive yourself mad trying.  We all do.  But now it is time for doing exactly what scares you the most.

JUMP.

You think you need a tightrope act, but you really need trapeze release. You have to let go before you’re holding on to anything solid. Have to feel that brief, terrifying moment of freefall and trust that you will be caught if you need be caught. Fall if you need to fall. Land where you need to land.

Feel the air rushing past your body. Trust. And trust. And trust. Speak your bone truth. Discover the root of your endless compassion. Un-learn lessons that have kept your heart on lockdown. Embrace what you need. Discard what does not serve. Bless your tender kneecaps. Bless your holy longing. Bless your wild soul.

And know you won’t be alone at the end. We will all be with you. Everyone who has leaped. Everyone who has landed. Everyone who has found their way through the liminal spaces, and everyone who still lives there. You’ll be full with your own fierce reality. Unapologetically, divinely you. And the ceaseless moan and the echoing gasp and the desperate prayers will fade. And you will be filled with the song of yourself.

It’s time to turn up the volume and dance, love. Damn, you make beautiful music. 

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