- May 1, 2023
- 4 min read

Open Up And Find Your Wings

Updated: Oct 2, 2023

The theme for this month is opening and it comes from the inspiration of nature this time of year where there is a push to create, there is a sense of urgency bloom, and a desire to reach. Everything around me feels like it is creating more vast and extensive root systems while reaching higher into the heavens and just taking up more space in general. A lot of research has gone on through these last few decades about the difference in how people take up space in their environments. Specifically the difference between men and women being big or being small. Their individual expectations and ownership of space versus efforts to fit in and hope for acceptance.

So, I love looking to nature for opening up any lesson and I can quickly see how much space thinking about this can (and is) taking up in my brain. The tree. The river. The eagle that is ready to fly. Everything is arriving and owning the space they need and somehow offering space to the ecosystem it is part of. There is not much looking around to see what everyone else is doing before the tree pushes the buds for blossoms and then more buds for leaves and then more buds for new branches. It just kind of goes with it, in surrender that it exists in every moment of its time. I do very much wish I was a tree!

Opening back up to all of the nature around us, the bottom line that is the underlying driving force for all, is the ability to listen to the power of instinct. Power of instincts to migrate, the power of instinct of when and where, and how. They know where to go to migrate, what their food and homes need to look like, when to wake up from winter's nap, and when to take up more space and grow like crazy. Ancient wisdom is flowing through their bodies and they somehow know how to listen so much deeper than us humans. They also know how to hear and heed the wisdom!

Years ago I remember watching a nature show with my kids and scientists showed up to study a rare bird that migrated through some islands. Scientists showed up on their regular migration patterns on the dates the birds were expected... and there were no birds! A fear started that they had suddenly become extinct. But when it was time for the migration back in the opposite direction months later there were flocks and flocks of these birds! Hurray, but what the heck was going on? The scientist took a look at what might be affecting this and they saw that the hurricane season that year started early and the birds actually migrated early. So strange or was it so amazing? Then the following year the migration was back to its regular cycle and they did their studying and years go by and then eventually we have another year of the birds missing. Lo and behold that next year of the missing birds, the hurricane season was also early. Somehow those tiny birds knew how to listen to their ecosystem and they heard the call to leave early and they took flight. Because they took action on their instincts they were able to have their young and travel on before the heavy storms of hurricane season hit. Even when it came early.

This is truly amazing and inspiring that these tiny creatures are so involved in the moment and so involved in their feelings and awareness of instincts that they could predict upcoming weather better than 100 years or so of weather equipment, satellites, computer systems, and hundreds of years of data to search for patterns.

How can this inspire opening for us for this month?

Can you think of ways that you might be able to listen deeper and hear more of what your environment is trying to tell you?

Could you feel your needs with your family and your community falling into a rhythm a little bit closer to the rhythm of what other families might need in the community you live in?

Spending time with the thoughts of instinct, listening, and openness pushes me into these extra places of reflection:

~ being open to evaluating my foundational beliefs

~ being open to reviewing my boundaries

~ being open to suggestions about how I may be able to listen and notice and shift in new more productive ways

Are these the places those micro instincts came from that would have pushed those little birds into a place to do something different, something out of the norm, and something incredibly productive and sustainable for their livelihood?

Let's open up this month's focus on digging into our own archives and dis-covering those stories when we decided to do the unexpected on a whim like take a different road and we ended up finding someone stranded. Or listening to that instinct check the wood stove one more time finding the side door open. Maybe you had the experience of thinking of a friend and having them call or text or find a card in the mailbox from them! I'm not sure if there's a difference between divine intervention, intuition, and instinct now that my wheels are turning about this whole thing!

What do you think?

I feel like it's a beautiful thing to not try to separate that, I guess, and it might be better to embrace and pull them together even more to celebrate a bigger picture and to make those messages louder and easier to hear all at the same time!

So, how are you taking up space, and with what intention?

Do you feel like you are hoping to fit in or are you totally rocking your best self and letting everything else fall in place?

What is ready to open and grow for you this Spring in the space that opening provides?

Please reach out with your reflections and I hope to connect with you again real soon.