Walking The Long Way Home: Reflections on Rest
I read ‘Appalachian Elegy: Poetry & Place’ by Bell Hooks last week, and this one section (32) stuck with me in the moment. It begins with the line “Walking the long way home”, which for me speaks to the passage of time, the push-pull of doing versus being, and rest as a necessary part of the journey.
When we frame the time after birth in the same way, I think, we consider the importance of taking our time coming home to ourselves. Integrating birth – for everyone who witnesses and experiences it – is a process that deserves compassion AND time.
As a companion in this space, often I arrive home after attending a birth and it takes a little longer to land back here, in the after. I’m buzzing with the energy and momentum of birth. I’m still holding the hugeness of witnessing that cosmic shift in my body. Feeling the adrenaline and the sigh shiver along my limbs as I move back into my own familiar space.
Long slow walks help, feet and toes curled in the grass, filling my lungs with the smell of wattle, noticing as ritual. Necessary moments to pause, to listen, to come back to my own gentle rhythms.
So, fuck urgency culture. We all deserve to go softly after monumental shifts, to move slow, to rest. To walk the long way home guided by our body’s – and the earth's – seasons and cycles.
32.
walking the long way home
walking ever so slow
talking to be
wholly in this world of wonder
standing still
waiting
standing in the centre
of a long and winding
dirt road
leading uphill
to a small house
surrounded by lilacs
black-eyed susans
roses and honeysuckle vines
a bench at the bottom
that bodies may rest
before they climb
12.10.2022
