How I navigated a 15-year-long cycle of contraction
It always takes longer than we think it should
Welcome! This is the Sunday Soother, a weekly newsletter about compassionate personal growth and authentic living, written by me, Catherine Andrews, a life coach, teacher, and writer. Did somebody forward this to you? You can subscribe to the Sunday Soother here.
Happy Sunday, Soothers. Recently in my Sunday Soother Membership, where I do Tarot readings most Sunday mornings, the cards revealed the energies of the week ahead might be contractive. They also gave a bit of insight in how to move forward, towards sunlight and expansion again.
I thought it was a nice and useful message, and was prepared to go about my day, when one of the attendees asked this potent question:
"But what do you do if you feel like you've been in a cycle of contraction for YEARS?"
I paused.
"Do I give her the truth, or do I say something reassuring?" I asked myself.
I decided, as with most things, the truth was preferable, if not as comforting. (Though honestly, hearing actual authentic truth, even if it's not the answer you hoped for, CAN be more comforting.)
"What I've found to be true," I said, "is that cycles of contractions can and often do go on for years... even decades. And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that, or you for experiencing it."
I talked about how I felt I'd been in a particularly painful cycle of contraction for over FIFTEEN YEARS. It started and aligned with the astrological transit of Pluto in Capricorn, which began in 2008 and is only ending just about now.
And I can feel the lightening finally beginning.
This past 15 years, in a lot of ways, really sucked (while of course being dotted with beauty and privilege and a lot of goodness, too. It's never all or nothing). I struggled so horribly in dating, throwing myself at the feet of man after man. My relationship with alcohol began to feel out of control for the first time in my life in my mid-30s; I felt at loose ends in so many other ways, with creativity, with my purpose, with many other relationships, including the one with myself. It felt like the crumbling of one identity and often the sign that any other identity was coming forward was so faint, so weak. I'd felt I'd see a little seedling of a new identity, of relief, sprout up through the rubble, and then it would be crushed by another piece of falling concrete.
Now, as I round the corner to turning 44, things have eased in some ways (and then, simultaneously, new contractions are beginning, because that's how it goes). I'm in my soul purpose career, I have a beautiful romantic relationship, I feel as though I may never drink alcohol again. I feel I finally KNOW myself again, and trust myself. I live out in the woods, I hike every day, I write and create every day, my spiritual beliefs have never been stronger.
Was any of this lost because it took 15 years of contraction?
Was it supposed to go "faster"?
Should it have been some other way?
I can't say I fully know.
But I don't think so.
I think it's absolutely normal to be in years and even decades of contraction, sometimes.
Is it painful? Yes.
Sometimes, are the lengths of contractions because we're not awakening to our own power and agency, and staying stuck in limiting loops? Yes, sometimes.
And sometimes they are truly and utterly out of our own control.
And they're all part of our natural unfolding, even as painful or heavy or awful as they can feel.
These cycles of contraction and expansion apply to all of us. Much like nature, you (since you are of nature, you are not separate from nature, you are nature and she is you) grow in a dance of expansions and then contractions, one after the other.
Expansion is not better than contraction; contraction is not worse than expansion, though our patriarchal and capitalistic society, so focused on linearity and endless growth at all costs, would have you believe so.
Because, however, we’re so conditioned to believe that contraction is a negative event, we don’t create healthy rituals or processes to tend ourselves through it.
And that is TRULY when years or longer of contraction can feel the worst.
We blame ourselves. We don't have support or tools or rituals to steward ourselves through the contraction. We feel shame around the contraction, its length. We frantically try to "fix" ourselves, often burning out in the process. We make it mean that we're doing something wrong. We don't have community to validate our experiences.
To tell us the truth:
A life is made up of a lot of contraction.
And we often can't do anything about it.
We can't force our way out of contraction.
We're not puppet masters of our experience on this planet, bending circumstances and our lives to our ego's will.
Constant expansion is not possible for anybody, nor would it be healthy.
What we think "should" be happening is often at the root of our suffering. If we think we "shouldn't" be in a contraction, that attachment to how it should be otherwise, that we actually "should" be able to be in expansion, is actually what's causing us the most pain. (Sorry to tell you that the whole Buddhist non-attachment thing is pretty correct, at least from my very tiny life experience.)
What CAN we do, then?
We can tend to ourselves with care and thoughtfulness and support.
We can begin to practice, perhaps at first reluctantly and grumpily, tenets of self-acceptance and non-attachment.
We can stop blaming and shaming ourselves for experiencing what is a wholly normal and authentic and necessary part of nature (and therefore ourselves).
Instead of trying to beat and wield ourselves into a forced period of expansion, we can search for community, and tools to nourish ourselves through the contraction.
We can know that expansion WILL come — it is a part of the cycle, after all — but that we can't know or control the timing of it. (Ugh I hate it.)
Just know this: If you’re in a season of contraction, nothing has gone wrong.
The tightness and pain of the bud of the flower before it blooms is contraction.
Your expansion is coming.
Yes, it's true. It may be months, years, before it blooms.
But see if you can melt into the trusting of the timing, and take care of yourself through it.
If you are in a period of contraction and would like support, community, and validation through it, as well as tools to nourish and tend to yourself (instead of trying to relentlessly "fix" yourself), I encourage you to take a look at my Soothe 2024 mastermind. This is a year-long program, starting in January, where we come together in circle with other highly sensitive women. When you sign up, you will be placed in a small group of other women who will be your fellow journeyers for the year. You will meet in these groups 2-3x a month, for deep calls of coaching, support, sharing, guidance, accountability. If you choose to add it on, you’ll also receive a monthly 1:1 mentorship call with me, to dive more deeply and intimately into the guidance you need. With the groups and me, you will enter into 12 months of self-discovery and education on everything from what codependency actually is, to nervous system awareness, to a process to regulate and partner with both your thoughts and your nervous system. I’ll also guide you through a series of plant medicine, herbs, and flower essences that will be our allies in our year together. Through herbal infusions that will strengthen our nervous systems, the shifts that flower essences create vibrationally, the ceremonies around cacao and plant medicine, as well as using earth medicine and microdosing for healing, we’ll make shifts at levels that are deeper than our conscious awareness.
Ready to explore more? Find all the details of Soothe here, and book a gentle, no-pressure discovery call with me here. Enrollment closes mid-December.
I'll leave you with this testimonial from Nina, a member of the current cohort of Soothe: "I came into this feeling like I had so many problems, and worst of all, that I was a problem. Now, more often then not, I feel like I don’t have any real problems, and that all problems are resolvable. To the point where things just feel oddly easy, and I am just learning to feel comfortable with that and if that’s where we got to in 6 months I am so incredibly excited for where we are by the end of the year.”
Reads & Recs
Where I share articles, books, recipes, podcasts, beauty products and more that I'm enjoying! (A few links may be affiliate links off of which I'll make a small commission; I only endorse stuff I've tried and loved).
🌳 How plants communicate with each other when in danger "Real trees on our Earth can communicate and warn each other of danger — and a new study explains how." [Washington Post]
💫 A ritual for digesting and resting amongst big change. [Rachel Maddox]
🤩 This podcast convo on ways to rethink retirement and saving blew open my little mind. Loved, loved, loved it. "What if we lived in a world where personal security didn’t require vast individual savings? Erin Axelrod (she/her) is a partner and worker-owner at LIFT Economy, where she accelerates ecological and justice-centered businesses. We talk about reimagining what retirement could mean and look like, including what Erin believes to be the 5 unsafe assumptions about retirement investing as it currently operates (here in the US) and some alternative ways we could measure wealth." [Nicole Antoinette's Pop Up Pod]
🍃 How would nature run a business? "One of my favourite companies, Faith in Nature, became the first company in the world to appoint Nature to their board of directors. That’s right, they legally made nature one of their company directors. OK, they didn’t literally make Nature a director, but they created the legal structure to ensure that board decisions must include a truly independent person who represents the best interests of nature. That person would have a voice and a vote, just like the other directors, but would have no other involvement in the company. It was an inspiring and visionary move that once again set my cogs in motion." [Tom Greenwood]
👉 Ta-Nehisi Coates Speaks Out Against Israel’s “Segregationist Apartheid Regime” After West Bank Visit. “There’s no way for me, as an African American, to come back and stand before you, to witness segregation and not say anything about it.
💡 We’re sedating women with self-care’: how we became obsessed with wellness. “If you work hard enough and you buy the right things, you’ll be saved from disease and ageing and anything bad happening to you.”
📖 I found PD James' Death Comes to Pemberley in a little free library recently and am thoroughly enjoying it. Everybody is (mostly) happily married after the events of Pride & Prejudice... until there is a MURDER! (Gasp)
🎨 I love love love this bursting with magic and color tiny apartment.
🧡 In Blackwater Woods, a Mary Oliver poem worth reading every late autumn.
🍿 I'd never seen the film Coraline before, but I watched it with my niece and nephew this weekend, and it was proper creepy, affecting, magical, sinister. Really loved it, even though it spooked me so.
🌡️ In an effort to supercharge my winter walking (the only exercise I really do between December and April, I just long ago realized my motivation to work out more strenuously does not exist in this time period) I ordered a weighted vest, a HEATED vest, and ankle weights. I'm sure to be a sight on the trail, I'll report back how these go.
That's it for this week, sending my love for the week ahead,
xo
Catherine
