I Get To Live My Life….

The song came to me last week as stacked the wood.  It came slowly.  First, a quiet tune running through my head.  It was one of those familiar folk tunes, although I don’t know what songs it comes from.

Then I started humming it, bits and pieces flowing through me.  After a while, the words came. I didn’t think about them, they were just there, rattling around in my head.

“I get to live my life, I get to live my life, I get to live my, every single day.” 

At first, I sang quietly, but as I pulled each piece of wood from the pile and placed it on the stack, I got louder.  And like the crickets and frogs, the darker it got the louder I sang.

I felt the words coming up from my belly and the truth of each one as they came out of my mouth. Soon I was singing so loud the song vibrated around me.  I had no idea what I sounded like and didn’t care.

A sense of freedom coursed through me. As if I had arrived at a place I’d been longing for all my life.

It’s all I’ve ever wanted really.  To be able to live the life I chose.  Without feeling guilty or bad about my decisions.  Without feeling the need to live up to other people’s expectations.

That song has been going through my head since last week.  Sometimes I make up new words for it but I don’t remember them from one time to the next.

This afternoon as I stacked the last of the wood, I sang my song over and over again, sometimes to myself, but mostly out loud.  So loud at times that Jon heard me in the house.

The last time I wrote about stacking wood Leslie left a comment on my blog saying….

Maria, you have organically and spontaneously (yay! you!) experienced the somatic healing that comes with “rhythmic patterned repetitive movement.” The list of repetitive, rhythmic regulations that have been used for healing trauma is extensive; I think wood stacking can now be added! 

She was referring to how I had been intentionally thinking good thoughts as I stacked the wood.

Jon always wants me to get help stacking the wood (which is kind of him) and I always tell him I like doing it myself.  I think because I intuitively understand that it’s good for me not only physically, but emotionally.

It’s a process that I use to work things through.  Similar to the way dreams bring up issues that we need to address or cleanse ourselves of.

Jon wrote about my stacking wood as work I love to do.  And how it’s not really working because I love doing it. “If there is a code that binds Maria and me as much or more than any other, it is this idea of living our lives.” he wrote.

In one version of my song, I sing that I get to choose what I do every day.  That doesn’t mean I don’t have to do things I’d rather not, or that I get to do everything I want to. But I do get to make the decisions about my life that I believe is best for me.  And I get to take responsibility for them.

For me, that’s what freedom is.