November prompt

Pockets of JOY

This was supposed to be an October prompt, yet as it often happens lately, life got in the way and my energy was ripped off and scattered along like ashes. My latest therapist (we only lasted for 2 sessions together - my partner says I suffer from therapy burnout, which is probably true) would claim I have no finely tuned boundaries, which is why I (still) allow life to take over, instead of LIVING LIFE. I would argue that all this overwhelm I’ve been experiencing deeply over the past year has more to do with being neurodiveregent in a perimenopausal stage, on top of moving along with a world in chaos (and a change in climate that has ripple effect over every living thing, on every possible level). The truth might be somewhere in the middle. Or something different altogether. Like fear of stepping into a new chapter of my life in full power, which casts a shadow over everything that could go right. And IS already.

October was a beast. A challenge. But also full of colours and the unexpected.

I have always waited for autumn with a childlike enthusiasm, as if I would finally embrace the season of coming back to my self - relentlessly nostalgic, pulsating in colours, rich in yields. Intense in manifestations of all sorts. Always the same yet always changing. I’ve lost some of that attunement in the past years. An autumn in full bloom kept on eluding me, so I would long for it with even more urgency - an adult kind of urgency, one that often falls short of real presence with the experience.

Some of the most authentically beautiful autumns I have ever come across are the ones in Romania. By authentic I mean native trees in all of their splendour, forests brimming with life and rural settings doing justice to the wholesome energy of this season. Walk through a forest in Romania during autumn and you will be greeted with the most royal red (yellow, orange and remnants of green) carpet (of leaves).

One good friend from Romania got married at the end of September and so we linked the event with a full week in nature. I was emotionally and physically equipped to immerse in the season’s colours, soft light, and hiking heaven, yet I was caught up in an unexpected winter. September also felt really heavy on my shoulders so I was craving to move my body in nature, in an attempt to take the load off my mind and bathe my spirit in color and solar energy. As it often happens in life (as it is, not a manicured online version of it), expectations don’t always match reality. The worst window of bad weather we could have gotten, we got. Temperatures dropping to zero degrees, and that was not even the worse part (I don’t mind that, actually, particularly when hiking). The relentless, annoying rain, though, was making it close to impossible to undertake any more serious journey up the hill.

Coming from a part of the world where bad/good luck is deeply ingrained in the cultural backbone, to the point that people live by it (a fear response), I am educating myself to create my own luck, while also allowing space for randomness - life, that is. Sometimes, still, I fall back into the fear pattern and I allowed it to define me throughout this whole year. Everything felt askew, which triggered many chain reactions and frustration. And here I was again, my system finally feeling ready to surrender to her (natural) environment after holding too tight for too long, and the weather had something else in the cards. Bad luck, only of course it wasn’t. As if the weather is something that humans can control - that on top of a current reality that has dire consequences on the climate as we used to know it. Some of us, at least.

How could we have forgotten, though, that rain is also a likely catalyst for MUSHROOMS (and that Romania is a small paradise for these forest creatures). Before having this realisation - we were too focused on how to somehow deceive the rain and hunt for those minuscule pockets of better weather (generally meaning showers vs downpours) - we decided to let go of any initial plans and take each day for what it was. We also didn’t have any other choice.

During the very first hike (but not before our very first flat tire, ever, on our way to the hike :)) ), within maximum 10 minutes in the climb, we were greeted by a fantastic display of fungi, like nothing I had experienced before in any of the many forest walks, hikes or foraging workshops. It only took one perfectly shaped Amanita to open our road, eyes and appetite, for a whole palette of fungi to define our entire week in nature. Three more steps in, ten more creatures popping seemingly out of nowhere. Like they were luring us into their world, deeper and deeper, until we reached a spot so full of mushrooms, as if they all gathered there to impress us. Ok, maybe to also laugh a little at our clinginess to predictability (mine in particular, my partner is of a different kind, thankfully). And once one starts focusing on something, one’s senses becomes even more responsive - one starts to see and feel more of what brought pleasure in the first place. Such impressive depiction of the natural world I had only marvelled at in the coolest illustrations books. And now there it was, reality overcoming fiction. At some point, while stopping every few minutes to contemplate and capture the mushrooms on camera, I asked myself if it still made sense to strive to finish the five hours hike with so much magic at every step. In the end, we did manage to stop at almost every single mushroom along the way, and also complete the hike, yet I was so full of these encounters that I almost didn’t even realise the weather hadn’t been as dramatic as meteoblue predicted. The rest of our week in nature followed the same cadence. A feast for all our senses. Creative inspiration. Nature skills upgraded. Imagination enhanced. Culinary delight. PRESENCE.

How easily one’s perception of reality can change if one pays closer attention to their surroundings and creates more space for opportunity. Also, if you’re like me and get very easily distracted in your daily life (and feel guilty for it), then just go out in nature, as often as you can, and allow yourself to wander and wonder around. You’ll soon notice something quite extraordinary - although you might feel that you still get distracted (by so much beauty around you) your capacity to focus will actually expand, as your senses will follow something that is already in you. In nature our senses soften. Touch, sound, scent and sight become a source of playfulness and peace, not overload.

How often do we miss out on life when we get too caught up in the fear of missing out? Would we have experienced the same level of mushroomness were it not for the annoying rain and humid weather that made the soil fertile for them to cross our path in such an abundant way? Most probably not.

On top of it, we were also gifted with maybe the most intense rainbow I have ever experienced. At Casele cu Stuf in Salicea.

Your turn

Reflect on those times in your life, maybe it’s the present moment, when you were holding (too) tight on an ideal image of how your life should look or be like, yet the more you tried to turn that image into reality, the more strenuous life felt. What does it take for you to make some room for joy and pleasure even when life itself feels like a joke? Overwhelming. Like it has no grip. Like it’s going backwards despite your own biology. And how do joy and pleasure look and feel like for you? Is it losing yourself to dance or through a forest? Or maybe it goes through the stomach in the form of a food that your grandmother used to cook? Or a good book that you glue your heart to? Or setting on an adventure to find that perfectly spotted mushroom? Or just taking a moment to notice the pattern and pulsation of your breathing? Whatever it is, leave some space for it and let it surprise you.