Care for the Spark

Hi Lovelies –

Today is the very last day of registration for In Your Element, a beautiful, soulful, wise three month small group training for women entrepreneurs.

In case you missed my earlier emails about it – I’m very excited about this program. It’s created and led by a fabulous coach Jac McNeil, whose approach and very being I adore. The program is best suited for passion-driven women entrepreneurs who want their businesses to grow and thrive more – and who sense that some support, structure, “team” of cheerleaders, and guidance will help make that happen. I’ll be a guest speaker in this program later this summer! Click here to learn more. If this feels like a fit for you, I hope you’ll join in.

And below…today’s post.

Love,

Tara

***

There’s a beautiful blessing in the Jewish tradition called the Modeh Ani.

It’s a morning blessing, and it’s meant to be said while still lying in bed – the very first thing to do or think in the morning. The blessing is this: “I give thanks to you God, for you have restored my soul within me. Your faithfulness is great.”

I have always loved this idea — that our souls are re-bestowed on us each night, that some spark of vitality within us is replenished for the day to come.

This past week, I was sick — that’s why you didn’t hear from me much. I didn’t just have a runny nose, a permanent headache, or a permanent full body ache for that matter. I also had a symptom much more difficult: that spark of vitality felt out of reach.

I couldn’t find my physical energy to so much as walk down the block. I couldn’t find my intelligence or my intuition. I couldn’t find the thing that makes me get up, live, do, and love everyday. Kinda humbling to experience how a mere virus can make that spark that seems so fundamental to who and what I am feel out of reach.

On Saturday, some of the spark came back, and on Sunday, all of it came back. I am still saying thank you.

Losing it for a few days and then getting it back made it clear: The life force is remarkable. Bodies that walk down the street, melt into a hug, or run down the court. Minds that ponder, ask questions, daydream, and layer thought upon thought. Hearts that feel, discern, and choose.

Being alive becomes ordinary for most of us but it is extraordinary. That’s the truth that can be so hard for us to see here: almost everything ordinary in our midst is extraordinary.

Baseline aliveness isn’t a neutral state. It’s a state filled with lightness, energy, passion, questions, imaginings, subtle and complex thoughts, frustrations, laughs.

A garden of stunning sensual experiences. Ecstasy in movement. Intense vitality. Beauty, beauty, beauty.

We are all here – getting up, laughing, crying, doing, striving, not striving- because of a spark that we didn’t create and that we don’t control.

You have a body that is home to the spark.

I love you, and I love the spark in you.

I invite you to care for the spark.

Maybe all that caretaking of you – the things that can sometimes feel like a “should” or that sometimes can be hard to do – can become easier if guided by this deeper intention: may I create the conditions that allow me to continue to feel the spark.

Don’t cloud your access to the spark with exhaustion, or by putting substances in your body that it can’t happily process, or by thinking thoughts that make you suffer. All of those things obscure our connection to the spark.

Eat nourishing food. Be kind to others. Move your body. Do the things that bring you alive. Sleep. Spend time in silence and forgive. These practices scrub clean the channel between you and the spark.

And slow down for a moment now and then, just to feel the spark – the vibrating quality of being. Living alongside it, living this close to it – is your blessing.

Love,

Tara

p.s. – Don’t forget – today is last day of registration for In Your Element. Learn more here.

Tweets to share from this post:

Our vitality comes from a spark within that we didn’t create & that we don’t control. Click to tweet.

Slow down your thoughts and give yourself time to feel the spark. Click to tweet.

Eat nourishing food. Be kind. Move. Sleep. Spend time in silence. Care for the spark within. Click to tweet.