For several weeks now an injury has kept me from moving my body in the ways I like to move. I'm not able to sweat, or jump or engage in any kind of vigorous activity.

I'm noticing my body is softer -- my breasts more full, my belly more round -- and I'm uncomfortable that this has made me uncomfortable.

I'm being brought to look at things that my running body was running from.
Things that don't align with what I believe.
Things that make me feel shame and like I'm an imposter.

My wise body has brought me to yet another layer, another opportunity to recognize patterns I've accepted to be "enough" -- the prison of, "you can accept your changing body only if you're doing everything you can to make it better."

I have wanted to be beyond these feelings -- to embody full acceptance of my form, to see its dynamic beauty, and yet, the journey of freeing one's self from oppressive conditioning is not a linear one. It is a spiral.

As we walk towards justice, sustainability, kindness, self-compassion and the like we're brought over and over again to the internal wounds that challenge these possibilities. They persist in us, even amidst our best efforts, because we are fundamentally connected to what lives in the collective psyche. We're confronting our stories and those of so many others.

We are not deficient when we feel these pains.
We are not deficient when they rock and roll us and make us wish for another reality

It is not so much that these ghosts haunt us, but how we relate to them.

Do we avoid and push down these heartbreaks?
Do we cover over the discomfort with a new plan?
Do we disparage and shame ourselves for not being further along?

Or . . . do we do the opposite of what that fearful part of ourselves would have us do?
Rather than gripping harder, do we let go?

Do we feel the wild panic of being "out of control" and remain where we are?
Do we tenderly grieve the loss of the controls we can no longer reach for?
Do we address those same old, tired challenges, the ones we thought we had put to bed, with a little more kindness, a little more patience and a little more understanding?

Maybe that's the practice of liberation?