Okay. So it might one day happen that you’re rushing through the grocery store on a school night, somewhere on your hastily scratched list between fire-roasted tomatoes and PB&J fixins’, just rolling the cart and contemplating life and what kind of cereal to buy.

And by you, of course, I mean me. And by me, I really mean all of us. Because that’s how these things work. That’s why we tell stories, ‘cause we’re all more the same than we are not, and it helps to find a home in the words of another.

But on this particular day in this particular aisle in this particular store, a song starts playing that has only told one story for longer than you can remember. You stop, can of organic tomatoes midway between shelf and cart, heart on the floor under the wheels of the cart of that exhausted looking mom and her sticky faced toddler rolling down the aisle toward the granola bars and fruit snacks.

It happens, it does, in the achy times. The holders of memory, — the songs and spaces and snippets of moments — they seem to be chasing us, reminding us of what was and what is and the big gaping hole in between the two. They come and find us, and we end up standing where we are, grocery store or concert hall or school or office or auto mechanic, rushing to cram our hearts back into our chests before anyone notices.

Right then, it’s possible that you could crumble into a pile of blame and self-recrimination. It’s possible that the sadness could take you over, because the loss, it is real and (on a good day) you’re way past the place of blaming yourself for having really big feels.

And listen, if it comes to that there’s probably a corner over by the organic lettuce that you could go hide in to shed some tears, but there are kids to feed and work to do, and reasons enough to soldier on. And besides, you’re trying to stretch this time.

Not trying, love. You ARE stretching. Because there is nothing else to be done.

So now you get to practice. Stretch past the way it’s always been, past the myths and repetition and separation. Stretch past the lies that love looks or feels a certain way or follows a timeline or shows up when and how we want it to. Past the self-protection that wants to shut it all down. Stretch past the really small idea that you ever know what is possible or what will happen or what the universe has in store.

While you’re at it, stretch WAY past the voices that have told you that the damage is too great for you to love and be loved and have love and know love.

Because that lie is the most wicked one of all.

And you, dear, you’re not just looking for a new way, you’re working for one. Walking on purpose toward something that looks like real healing. Something inside of you that dares to show up and stay steady and sustain. Something with courage and a lionheart. So instead of letting that song take you over, you take a breath right now, and you do what you’ve gotta do.

Focus in on the wisdom instead. Ask yourself your own best question.

What do I know to be true, right now?

And then answer (yes, right there in that grocery store aisle). No time like the present and the song is still playing, after all.

You can’t hold on to what isn’t, of course, that’s true. But you can dig deep into your gut and determine what it is you believe. Not the beliefs that landed you here (those were based on some seriously self-sabotaging bullshit), but the ones that live deeper than that.

You can ask yourself what the highest manifestation of love feels like when you’re wide open and ready, and you can channel that with all you have. You can slip-slide all sneaky like past the hurt that likes to close things down and expand into the open space on the other side. You can remember that a wise man once told you that you’d be happier when you quit trying to make meaning out of everything. And that a wise woman reminded you that the hardest thing of all was to stop being at war with yourself.

So stop being at war with yourself. Just for this moment.

You can remember that you’re here to love, and the only way you ever want to fight for anything is with unclenched fists and a wide-open heart. And yeah, open hands are good at letting go. But sometimes letting go is the only thing (fuckery of a cliche that it may be) that allows for the fullness of truth and the only way to allow space for a thing to return.

And you know what else open hands are good for? Grabbing possibility and holding on tight when the time comes.

You can remind yourself that you’ve written your own instruction manual many a time before, finding almost decade-old words in the deepest recesses of your brain, floating toward you as if delivered. Back then you thought you were writing to another, rather than freezing in time for yourself to breadcrumb your way back to one day in the canned goods aisle, but no matter. They are here now for a reason.

“Find your way to living in that sweet spot – between grief and acceptance – welcoming the ache but not nurturing it, holding the angst but not feeding it – and you’ll come to a different place.“

So when this happens, because in high likelihood it will, you’re going to have to put down that can of fire roasted tomatoes and you’re gonna have to reach deeper and deeper into the place where the love lives. The place that is the foundation and bedrock of you. The one that trusts and believes and hopes and knows. Sink down into that, because I promise it is here.

What do you believe? What do you know to be true? What does your heart tell you is still possible? Just how big can you love?

Whatever the answer to the last question, I guarantee is exponentially bigger than you can imagine. It always is.

You are here to love, and to heal (you’ve written all those words to yourself under the guise of writing for others too). The world knows it and mirrors it back to you every damn day. Give yourself grace for not always remembering, but deep down, I know you know it too.

The outcome of love (this or any other)? Not yours to know, nor control, nor wrangle into submission. Love is a slippery thing, and also when it’s time to stop sliding, all you can do is root down and hold your ground.

So find your roots. You’re gonna need ‘em.

So, what is yours? That can of organic fire roasted tomatoes and the cart full of nourishment. The eyes able to see the truth, the wisdom that knows it is time to seek healing.

And yes, the heart. YOUR heart. Fumbling and messy and wise. The heart that finally knows fully what it wants. And if you get steady enough with that, there’s not a sad song in the world that can shake you.

So pay for your groceries. Load up the car. Return to your home and sit down to type. Because moments of wisdom, they come and they go.

But a story written lasts forever.

The post A Story Written Lasts Forever (a self-talk story for the heartachy times) appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

***

And that’s the thing. The body knows.

This world teaches us to disregard the wisdom of our bodies. When it hurts, we push past the pain. That swirling sense of unease we call gut instinct? Woo woo mumbo jumbo. Our kids feel run down with a minor cold – we push them to school; no sick days unless you have a fever. It aches? Take a pill. Tired? Down some caffeine and push through.

We learn suspicion is the correct response to the signals gifted us by bones and guts and skin. At best, they are an inconvenience to be silenced. At worst, a lie determined to hold us back. We can’t read the signs because we’ve decided that our bodies speak a language not worthy of fluency.

But that’s the thing. The body still knows.

The body knows what the mind does not. The body knows what we are not ready to see. The body knows what we do not want to face.

The tightness in your throat? The one that makes you feel silenced when she comes home at the end of a long day?  The way your jaw clenches and your breath feels stuck in your chest? You are not being heard. Your voice has been stifled. You need wide open spaces that let your spirit sing. You need someone with a wild steady heart who is ready to listen. It will not happen here.

Listen to the tightness.

That tug deep in your gut? It cuts right through your not-quite-inhale when you first catch his eyes. He stands across the worn wood counter at the hipster coffee shop you’ve recently begun frequenting without knowing why. He likes obscure independent documentaries too, and he’ll bring you gone-to-seed dandelions in bed one lazy Sunday morning just so he can memorize what you wish for.

Listen to the tug.

The primal burn that declares danger?  The way his name makes a silent refusal rise from deep inside. His breath makes the hairs on your neck stand up in a way that alarms and pulses with menace even though there is no reason to believe he means harm. He will disrespect your boundaries. He will take what is not his. He has done it before. He will do it again.

Listen to the burn.

Because that’s the thing.  The body knows.

Some people have a sixth sense, and some are duds at it. I believe I must have it, because the moment I stepped into the house I felt a trembling along my skin, a traveling current that moved up my spine, down my arms, pulsing out from my fingertips. I was practically radiating. The body knows things a long time before the mind catches up to it. I was wondering what my body knew that I didn’t.
~ Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees

Our bodies are sacred shrines of wisdom. The knowledge and truths of generations; spliced into our DNA and knitted into the fibers of our being. They are finely tuned instruments of insight and awareness and they speak our mother tongue, if only we are willing to listen.

But again and again, we ignore the insight. We discount the silent hush along our skin and the ache in our heartspace and the way our leg muscles twitch run-run-run despite our brain overriding with a sensible stay. In doing so we turn our backs on truth and expansion walk head on into danger, or complacency or the slow quiet death of living small.

But we don’t have to.

It is time to start honoring the ancient pattern of call and response gifted us by our animal bodies, by our heart pound and blood pulse and primal burn. It is time usher back your sacred knowing.

It is reclamation time.

So gather close the wisdom in your bones.
Honor the fire in your belly. 
Offer gratitude to the tug and the tightness and the way the chills rise across your skin when her finger trails down your arm. 
Give blessing to the heat of fever and the churning of rage and the ferocity of fear.
Bow before your holy body.
Listen to its voice.
Remember the language you were born knowing.

Remember how the body knows.

***

In the end, it almost took me out.  It caused a fire that eventually burned down all I held dear. Pushed me off the deep end of jealousy and insufficiency and lack. Brought forth demons who were not content until I was on my knees, hoarse and screaming and afraid. And I could feign surprise or shock or dismay. But I knew.  If I was honest with myself, I knew from the very start.

Because you see, the body knows.  It always knows.

The post The Body Knows: Honoring the Primal Wisdom of our Animal Skin appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

I know nothing.

She is sitting in a park when I speak these words for the first time.  I picture her there.  Worn blanket hastily pulled from the trunk and hastily thrown on cool fall grass.  Leaves overhead beginning to spiral their way into the approaching dormancy of winter.  Reverberation of slamming doors ringing in her soul.  Crisp autumn air on tearstained cheeks.   I give her the wisdom I need the most.

I know nothing.

Whisper those words with soft lips, hollow throat.  Breathe them in and breathe them out.  Let them echo in you for a while, love.  Grant them sovereignty to swirl and swoop and root down deep.   Feel the tingle of truth they raise on lips and fingertips and skin. Let them become, inside and outside and all around you.

I know nothing.

This is the lesson of my fourth decade.  The absolute lack of certainty. The unlearning of truths.  The releasing of dogma.  The submission to the wisdom of emptiness.   The surrender at the beginning of unknowing, and the grace that finds me at the end.

I know nothing.

Can you feel the freedom of that?  The lack of projection.  The release from worry and supposition and what if?  Knowing nothing gives space for letting go.  Room for continuous rearrangement.  Reconstruction. Renewal.

I know nothing.

Five years ago:  I sit in a room.  It is a retreat of wisdom and laughter and silent meditation lead by a woman who is both teacher and student.  I am barely able to contain the pieces of in-progress-destruction that are my heart and soul and life.  Our guide tell us to lift our hands in front of us.  Wiggle our fingers in the air.  “All that you can touch is all that is real” she says.  And she laughs a laugh that tastes like freedom.  I remember this now and feels it mingling with my unknowing, alchemizing along the way into something that feels like the deepest sort of knowing.

I know nothing.

These three words.  They become mantra and survival.   They become graciousness and surrender. When I wonder and worry and stress.  I know nothing. When I crash headlong into the rhetoric of my own stubborn dogma.  I know nothing.  When I don’t understand.  When I can’t explain.  When I’m about to collapse from the weight of my own expectations.  When gearing up to high speed crash into the paradox of love and loss.  I know nothing.

Iknownothingiknownothingiknownothingiknownothing.

If you breathe it deep enough, there is room for the unknowing become a singular, spacious everything.  The unknowing cracks open your heart.  It strips you of the confines of certainty.  It brings you to a fierce embrace of all that can never be known.  It leaves room for the wild soul within, the one who doesn’t concern herself with knowing, because she’s too damn busy with feeling and doing and revolutionary being.

I know nothing.  Neither do you. 

Lover, be brave enough to follow your unknowing as it spirals continuously inward and outward from the edges to the center of your existence and back again.     What you will find  – at the root of all that you do not, cannot and will not ever know – is the core of all that is.

Right here.  Right now.  Forever.

The post i know nothing {wisdom for a life of beautiful uncertainty} appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

Running teaches me, clears way for thoughts that needed a space to be born. There is an education to be had along this path, and I am reminded daily that the lessons of running and the lessons of life are one and the same.

1. Don’t give up too soon.
It takes a while to find your groove. Don’t quit too quickly, even if it feels like misery, even if you hate every step along the way. Stop too early and you’ll miss all the magic. Give it some time to ripen, wait for the ease to find you. And it will. If you give it enough space and you are on the right path, the ease will always find you.

When effortlessness hits you’ll smile in spite of your burning muscles and throw your arms wide to catch the breeze. That’s the sweet spot, right there, where things get juicy and delicious.

2. Breathe.
Don’t forget to breathe. There is nothing in life not made easier by breath. Those cycles of inhale and exhale are more important than we think and not near as automatic as we sometimes believe. There will be times when every breath is an effort, or where you’ll be so caught up with your struggle that you’ll forget to take the air all the way in.

Find your way back to your breath.  No matter where you are in life, your breath is your center.  Honor it.

3. Keep your eyes on the middle distance.
Look too far ahead and you get caught up the difficulty of upcoming terrain. Keep your eyes too close to your feet and you miss important things ahead. In the immortal words of Ani Difranco, “When I look down, I just miss all the good stuff. When I look up, I just trip over things”.

The middle distance is best; far enough ahead to keep your eyes open for potholes and oncoming cars, but not so far that you get intimidated by the hill on the horizon. Don’t get so far ahead of yourself that you miss what is right in front of you, and don’t get so caught up in right-now that you’re not prepared for what’s coming.   

4. You won’t be climbing forever.
There will always be hills to climb. They will seem to last forever. They don’t. Your legs will scream and your heart will be pumping like mad and you’ll want to collapse in a defeated puddle on the side of the road. You’ll think you can’t make it. But you will. Those killer hills will be followed by gentle valleys, or straightaways that give you space to run full tilt.

When you’re on a hill you can’t see what is on the other side. Don’t even try. Just know you won’t be climbing forever. 

5. Appearances can be deceiving.
Never put too much stock in what you think you see. That huge hill may be a gentle climb that won’t even stress you. That gentle slope might be a bitch of an ascent that will kick your ass. Sometimes the horizon hides the biggest challenge of your life. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, life will throw you a curveball.

Rely less on your eyes and more on your heart. Whatever is coming and however it looks from a distance, you already have what it takes. Don’t worry too much about what you have not yet reached; it’s probably not going to be what you think anyway.

6. It’s all a mind game, baby.
You think this is all about your body? The strength of your quads? Your cardiovascular health? How much protein you ate for breakfast? Your body is the easy part of the equation. It’s really all a mind game, darling. Let this sink in for a moment and you’ll really start to move. You think your burning leg muscles are your biggest challenge? It’s really the power of mind, spirit and heart that will power you through the rough spots.

You want to sprint that hill you think you can’t sprint? Change your mind. You want to change your relationship?  Your job?  Your eating habits? Change your mind. You want to change your life?  Change your mind.

7. Lead with your heart.
Proper running posture is important. Head up, shoulders back, chest high, arms pumping front to back to propel you forward. What this really means is leading with your heart.

Your heart will lead you into things, and if you pay close attention it is your heart that will lead you out. When your legs give out, and your mind is tired, when you feel like you were crazy to ever begin it is your heart –  your perfect courageous heart –  that will carry you home.

8. Do it in the rain.
Last week I was already running when the rain began in earnest. It was the last hill of the last mile of my run. Big fat drops hit the pavement and bounced back up against my legs. Mist rose off the road and swirled around my legs. And even though my heart was pounding and my legs burned, a grin spread across my face. I swear my heart cracked wide open in that one, perfect moment.

There’s a whole lot you should experience in the rain. Singing. Dancing. Making Love. The rain brings life. Wakes us up. Quenches our thirst. We spend a whole lot of time and money trying to keep from getting wet. Sometimes we need to just get over it and let the rain drench us until we realize what a miracle we are living.

9. Be your own motivation
There will come a day when you are running up hill. Against the wind. Your phone will run out of juice and you’ll have no tunes to pump you up. A car will drive by and drench you from head to toe with dirty water from a giant puddle. You’ll get a big ole’ stitch in your side. It will appear the world is working against you. There will be nothing on the outside that you can pull from to power you through this. The only thing you have is you. You’ll have to stoke your inner fire from gut to heart until you feel your intensity build from within.

There will always be moments where external motivation dries up. Know that everything you need to cross the finish line is already inside of you.

10. Know when you have something to prove.
Sometimes in life you’re chasing the burn, other times you’re aiming for ease. On Monday you may be sprinting for first place and on Tuesday praying just to finish. Do you run through that painful stitch in your side or stop and lean into it until it eases? Do you push yourself to go faster, longer, harder – or do you just satisfy yourself with moving the way your body wants to move? Do you keep fighting the fight, or just curl up with your tears and some hot tea?

Sometimes you have something to prove, sometimes you don’t. It is helpful, before you begin, to know which space you’re in.

11. Be your own DJ.
I always exercised to music with an edge. White Zombie. Nine Inch Nails. Eminem. This summer I made my customary soundtrack and hooked up my headphones, ready to rumble. But something was missing, the music was not connecting me to the experience. So I switched it up, entirely. Twangy country mixed with Coldplay? Vintage Shakira following Tegan and Sara? Whatever, it works. Everything in life needs a soundtrack. Your monotonous desk job. Your workout. That crazy clusterfuck of love triangle in which you’ve entangled yourself. The right soundtrack makes everything flow – it clears your mind, energizes your body, heals your broken heart.

Don’t be afraid to edit your soundtrack (read: friendships, lovers, office space, the voices in your head) as needed.  Life does not always call for the exact same beat. 

12. One foot in front of the other.
Running, love affairs, building a business, healing a heart, shattering expectations, climbing mountains, getting your groove on, surrendering with grace.   First place finish or slow and steady – the process is the same. In the end it’s always a matter of putting one foot in front of the other, until you reach your home.

Ultimately it always comes down to this: it’s just one foot in front of the other, baby, all the way home. 

The post Life + Running: 12 lessons learned by lacing up my shoes and hitting the road. appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.