Honing the skill of stepping off your path
I'm writing a piece about re-finding your path for the times when we feel like we've gotten way off track on who we are and what we're here to do in this life. I plan to publish that soon. As part of writing that, I had to write this. Halfway through writing that piece, I realized that, for me, a key piece of the puzzle of re-finding my path has been noticing how I stepped off the path to begin with. Was I following my intuition that a shift was needed? Did I get side-tracked due to chronic exhaustion, illness, an accident, holding on to a role I needed to let go of, trying to fix the unfixable, isolation or not spending enough time alone, etc.? Or did I intentionally step off as a well-supported, ass-kicking total bad ass? Yeah, it's rarely that last one. But I'm learning.
Often– not always– finding yourself well off your true path really sucks. It can be disorienting, or disheartening, or energy-draining, or terrifying, or depressing, or anxiety inducing, and/or a huge wakeup call that you wish you'd answered months earlier. How cool would it be– at those times, when feeling those things– to have honed the skill of stepping off your true path? To feel just the tiniest bit in control of something at a time that can feel remarkably, even dangerously or wildly, out of your control? I thought that would be cool. Or, as I hear the kids say now, fire. So, I wrote this additional piece. If you know this much, re-finding your path may be, or at least feel, a little bit simpler and more survivable.
What I mean by "your true path," which sounds new-age-y but isn't
All playfulness, wisdom, and belonging to be found here is your own. By that, I mean, our own. I mean, un-owned. Ugh, I mean that playfulness, wisdom, and belonging are everywhere and within just about everything and everyone on this blue-green planet. Shit. Maybe I am new-age-y. But, I still don't think so. My people and I are practical AF. Stick with us friends. When you're on your own true path, you know that playfulness, wisdom, and belonging are everywhere and within just about everything and everyone. You can feel this in the sun and rain on your face. Hear this in the neighborhood sounds and see it in community members and find it in words that seem to rise up just for you. You can taste this in every meal: every meal that's either a recipe passed on, or a gift for improvisation, also passed on, to us. You can even smell this in flowers, trees, and in all other smells you love, and in the breeze.
When we're off our true path, it's more likely that we'll wonder if we really belong here. More likely that we'll mistrust ourselves and then, others. It becomes more likely that we won't remember that playfulness and wisdom and belonging are everywhere. We forget. It can be like you're wearing earplugs. Or blinders. Or feel like you've fallen in a dark hole or walked down a dark alley, and you can't see any way out. Other times, being off your path can feel like a risky but necessary and much-needed adventure or side quest. How you step off your path matters.
For good and for bad, sometimes on purpose and often by accident, I'm a person who has often been off my true path. I'm off it right now: on purpose this time. So, an important life skill to hone and have at our house is not just re-finding our true paths– which I've practiced and studied and done again and again, for decades– but also understanding the ways we step off the path. There are likely more whys for stepping off true paths than minds to know them. Unlearning and learning about your shadow (hidden from your conscious self) side come to mind. And letting go of people you need to let go of and making new connections. And finding some confidence-laced deep humility. And abuse, exhaustion, and other painful things. But let's just say, for now, that knowing some of the ways to step off your true path can feel good. It feels good to have a bit of agency and feel like you have just a little bit of control when you don't know exactly who you are right now, who you want to be next, where you are, what you'll be doing, or where you'll be going next.
Tricky to teach, because each person and their true path is unique and yet being off our true path tends to feel murky, lonely, and scary. Luckily, you and I were born to, eventually, love the tricky. Trust me. Nobody who reads me can't handle considerable mystery and complexity. This isn't something we're taught by experts anyway. It's something we remember, learn with practice, and demonstrate to each other repeatedly. And, if I get my way, something we talk about!
The feeling doesn't leave you
Luckily, even within the always-stretched-too-thin, always-forgetting human world, our bodies remember what our true paths feel like. Your body knows what your path feels like. My path feels warm, welcoming, inviting, playful, wandering, surprising, like its stretching me a bit, and mysterious, with ample space for wildly different and beloved community and much-needed huge chunks of alone time where I can wonder about everything, out loud, without disturbing other humans.
What the mind worries about and makes plans and contingency plans and backup contingency plans for, the rest of the body just remembers. For example, remember this?
"You can feel this in the sun and rain on your face. Hear this in the neighborhood sounds and see it in community members and find it in words that seem to rise up just for you. You can taste this in every meal: every meal that's either a recipe passed on, or a gift for improvisation, also passed on, to us. You can even smell this in flowers, trees, and in all other smells you love, and in the breeze."
Look at the deer in the photo that I took out of our car window last week– a deer who spent more of his time with his face underwater than seemed prudent or wise for any mammal, let alone a deer in a bison and nature preserve at the heart of the Flathead Reservation where large beings like bison, elk, bears, mountain lions, wolves, coyote, antelope, and human tourists are your next door neighbors. His face was underwater for minutes at a time, it seemed, again and again. At sunset. With all sorts of neighbors at the river, and two cars of tourists, and other deer looking on, nearby– curious, delighted, slightly concerned, and wondering what the hell he was doing. That's the path! He's on his own path! He's being himself! Even when I'm off my own path– like I currently am– I can see and feel and sense when another being is on their path.
One of my favorite parts of being off my own path is how visible and obvious it suddenly becomes to me when someone near me is very clearly on theirs. Being their own weird and wonderful selves and loving it. Being off my own path– eventually, this can't be rushed– eventually fills me with a gratitude that's almost impossible to explain. On my path, wonder feels like it comes from within and pours out of me. Off my path, wonder feels like a generous gift that the world around me offers to me when I'm down and ready to receive it. (Again, eventually. A large part of being off my path just really, totally, fully sucks. Usually, for me, because I'm hiding from a reality that I'm not ready to face, name, change yet.)
Here we tend to notice this wisdom-and-playfulness-and-belonging-in-all-things-feeling when we feel wonder or curiosity or loved or brave or stubborn, and when we value ourselves enough– just today, just this one moment again– to return to ourselves and be ourselves no matter how goofy our actions appear to others. To our own unique-within-all-of-creation-and-connected-to-all-of-creation being. And, for humans at least, often when we face and admit how we really feel today. What we really need. Returning to wonder, curiosity, gratitude, and generosity all help– yes– when you're actually feeling those things and not forcing them. Simply sharing your pain– such as loss, grief, anger, rage, abandonment, disappointment, frustration, fear, exhaustion, isolation, hopelessness, depression, anxiety, illnesses, cluelessness, and other struggles– with trusted others helps far, far better when you're feeling those things. I've learned it's far better to stay off your path for a good long while than to rush to get onto it again when you're just not feeling it.
Three ways to leave your path
A wiser person than me might say that you cannot step off your true path. That you're always on it. That's fair. That's not been my experience, at all– when I'm off I've often felt way off– but then I aspire to wonder, playfulness, kindness, generosity, growth, and deeper connection for earthlings as a whole– more than to personal, individual wisdom– so it's not surprising that I disagree with others, including remarkably smart others, often.
I step off my true path plenty. I've stepped off three big times across the past eight years alone. Leaning on my own experience across the past 8 years, here are three ways to leave your true path.
Way 1: With intuition, then deepening curiosity and wonder
I stepped off my writer's path entirely to deepen my herbalist skills in 2018. Forever? For a while? I didn't know. And I wasn't entirely sure why I needed to do this back then. It didn't make much sense yet, and I didn't know where I was going with it. I just really felt like I needed to do it. Intuition! Back then, I loved to write, but I hated the book publishing industry, and my physical body also needed a break from the repetitive motion of writing almost non-stop for 11 years. This particular following of intuition deepened into curiosity and wonder, which resulted in 6 years of deeply lovely, useful, meaningful, grounding, and life-giving wandering and unshakeable connection to the land here. And connection to more people who deeply love the land here and elsewhere. New friends, muses, community. Across old boundaries. And, it led to me gaining practical, locally useful, mutual aid skills and knowledge that I can share with any neighbors, not just people who like me, read me, or who live or think or act like me. And, it also led me to much-needed courage, confidence, and income during the early years of the Covid pandemic. Eventually, it led to me teaching others about the land and plants here and to selling my herbalist business to a larger, 3-generations-of-land-lovers, family when my partner, elder parents, and extended family began needing more of my time, and I wanted more time with them, too.
Sometimes, not always, when you step off your path with intuition, then curiosity and wonder, it can feel more like taking a tributary off the main river rather than actually being fully lost, totally screwed and scared, and completely off your path/rocker. Although I felt plenty of those things too, now and then. And, you still learn things you didn't know you needed to learn. I now understand that being an herbalist is a necessary grounding element for me for the second half of my life. Because I live more than a thousand miles from most of my family and the land I grew up on, and I've now spent 10 years living 90 minutes away from where I spent most of my adult years too, where so many of my friends are. And because my grandmothers (key grounders for me) have passed on and Mom lost her speaking voice (another key grounder) due to Alzheimer's. And, because some people lean on me for grounding, God help them. ;-)
Also, because having my head in the clouds, imagining, reimagining, daydreaming, envisioning, sensing and calling forth and supporting the emerging and new, and the ancient reemerging, is where I live. That's me. That's my path. A creator's path. Visionary, even, when I don't allow myself to be stretched too thin by anyone, including me. Writing fills me with energy, so my tendency to overwork is far less of a problem when I'm writing than doing anything else. If, like me, you identify as a member of the head-in-the-clouds kite clan or the documenting-what's-lovely-about-us-and-what-works tribe, then having a deep grounding element so you don't float away alone– one that cannot leave you, like herbalism is for me– is really nice. Today the land herself, herbalism, and the people who love the land and lean on land for community and family wellness all feel essential to staying on and near my path as I age. I found own my roots.
Way 2: With exhaustion, isolation, guilt, and anger
By the spring of 2024, my herbalist practice/business was taking too much of my time– often 6 days/week– and caregiving for my elder parents was also taking more brain power and time– at least 2 days/week and more than that whenever Dad got sick. And, somehow (math never was my strong suit), I decided to add to that!
I added holding the daily horrors of dear friends of mine– and their friends and families– facing genocide (funded by my government and fully supported by the $#@!ing guy I voted for) at a great physical distance from me. I began holding some of their pain there, mostly by myself, here. After 6 months of non-stop listening to their stories and watching daily videos of their horrors, and with nobody around me doing the same, I was oozing anger and rage. And then I started working to support artisans and families there. My exhaustion rapidly became isolation. Isolation then became depression. I was holding far too much alone. Only one person noticed. Thank God for that one person. And thank God for the dog, cats, forest, fields, and beaches here–all of whom silently held me as I grieved the slow loss of my Mom and the rapid, horrifying loss and injury of tens, and then hundreds, of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
Only one person noticed. Thank God for that one person. And thank God for the dog, cats, forest, fields, and beaches here–all of whom silently held me as I grieved....
I continued insisting on witnessing, daily, the genocide my government was funding. I started dreaming the dreams of those facing imminent dismemberment, sudden death, intentionally caused dehydration, diseases like scabies– brought on on purpose– and then starvation, within genocide. I imagined them receiving my dreams of harvest plants and walking in the woods while I held their dreams for a while. So, suddenly, my nights, not just my days, were full of terrified, screaming, bloody, limbless, fly-covered children and weeping, wounded elders falling in exhaustion and dying in unfamiliar streets and tent-homes, displaced from almost all they knew and loved. I grew dark. To the point my partner feared for my sanity, then life, and casually started dropping mention of local therapists into conversation. I remember screaming at him as we drove home from my parents one evening: "I don't need fucking therapy! I need family!! I need community!!!" Which, in hindsight, while true, is kind of a horrible thing to scream at your partner who is both family and also just trying to help.
By May of 2024, feeling completely lost, completely alone, hating humanity, and on the edge of suicidal, I started writing again. Only for me: my eyes only. I started getting all the horrible within me up and out where I could fully see it. Horrified by what I was writing, I almost immediately started taking no devices/no internet rest day breaks, and then I hired an employee to help me with my business one day a week. With her gracious help, I rapidly figured out that I didn't want to be a boss (f*ck patriarchal hierarchy), which meant I didn't want to grow the herbalist business (SO MUCH GUILT there given how many people relied on the offerings/products I made), and later, I realized that I didn't even want to run the business anymore (MORE GUILT). The business was stretching me too thin, and I didn't want to do any of the things that would change that. I had to let it go.
Because writing pulled me back from the brink when nothing and nobody else could, by mid-summer I figured out that I needed to return to writing– to help hold and process the physical horrors and painful emotions that both the genocide of friends and Younger Onset Alzheimer's disease cause in my family, and for the non-stop free therapy that writing so easily provides me, and for the community I was missing (yay writer's groups! yay time for friends again!), and also because, unlike working as a local land-centered herbalist growing and gathering the plants to run a products-based business, I can write and publish from anywhere. Including from my Dad's house and from my Mom's room in her memory care home or her back yard. Yay!
It took almost a full year, but my true-self energy began to return to me. My true self energy is playful-most-days-even-a bit-playful-on-ridiculously-hard-days. This energy had to return before I could draw to me/find the perfect family to take over Ritual Mischief from us. A wonderful new family who could grow it with more love and energy than I had to give it now.
How do I know what my true-self energy feels like? In this case, by being so far off my true path that I had to claw and scrap and fight my way back to myself, for myself, first. Then, for all those I love and want to support.
Way #3 - With intention, companionship, and occasional hard conversations and sadness
This way off my true path is the newest to me. I had to exit via Way 1 and Way 2 a lot before my brain trusted that we could pull off Way 3. Before I even understood that this was a possibility.
This summer and fall, as an herbalist who just sold her practice and who is helping a new family take on Ritual Mischief, and as a long-time caregiver of family elders facing the upcoming loss of her mother (we started hospice this week), and as a self-employed writer/blogger/poet again and likely something else too (forming and deepening local mutual aid pods? podcast? hmmm), I've been playing with just intentionally being off my path this summer. I needed a break. Rest. No purpose. No plan. No path. Just space. Just laying face down on a lawn chair in the sun. Just wandering for the pure joy of wandering again, even as I still hold the pain of the world, community, and family some days. Learning to let that pain go completely some days.
I was happily off my path for 4 months this summer. I'm here today– still off my path but aware that I'll be stepping back on soon– on purpose now.
This time, I'm stepping on to deepen friendships and make new friends. To build the community I deeply need but haven't had time for building intentionally for many years. To help make joyful mutual aid a primary and default way of being here? Maybe. Across old boundaries and barriers. Definitely. It feels good and strange. It is strange to be off my path and happy about it. To realize that stepping off was my choice. What it feels like now is that I've been on many different tributaries across my life that have all been leading me back to this. I'm learning to follow my body and trust my energy fully, and, by doing so, I'm calling my people to me now. Finding the people I most need now. With joy and wide-open eyes. Calling my own path back to me– and joining a larger path– by finding the people who want to walk a path together at the community level. I had no idea this could be done or what it would feel like. Nobody in my line ever put words to this way. The third way. A true path that sticks with you: a path of togetherness with people of my heart, not just with the land, the fields, and the forests. People who choose me, as I truly am right now, as much as I choose them, as they truly are right now.
To make space for this, I'm having some hard conversations with friends and family. This is how I feel. I've changed, and this is who I am now. Is it time to grow closer here or is it time to let go of what we used to be to each other so we can find the people we most need next? In several cases, conversations I should have had years ago. Last Year Me wasn't ready for those conversations. Today I am. To be able to find and receive your heart people as you change, sometimes you have to let people go. Even people who mean the world to you. Hello sadness.
I don't know what's coming next and, at least for the moment, I'm glad about that. I'm still in the "waiting in silence, contemplation, and conversation" phase that I'll describe in an upcoming piece about re-finding your path. I can feel my feet beginning to move like they love to move again, and this time I'm also feeling the path itself moving back toward me or rising to meet me. It's not lost on me that "May the road rise to meet you." is a traditional blessing from my deep ancestral past. I can feel the road coming and feel my feet moving in that direction– with every new person I make friends with now (it takes courage to be my friend now), every person who stands beside me at protests and fundraisers for people in Gaza, everyone also interested in local mutual aid, and with everyone who shows up fully. I can feel people moving in my direction again. New community. My community. And our collective direction and beautiful, interwoven paths.
Stepping off your path?
Here are a few things I can say for the first time today, that nobody told me, from here: off my path.
When you feel like you’ve entirely stepped off your own true path, take three deep breaths within this now swirling world of uncertainty and fear and find one small being or thing that you are certain of. Travel light when you're heading off your known path. Take this one being/thing/idea with you. When you're drowning in uncertainty and the unknown or about to leap into the unknown, it's good to have one certainty– like a smooth found stone in your pocket on a forest walk– when you're uncertain about everything else. Once before a major life transition (12+ years ago now), I told D that I was struggling but that I knew had to be a writer. I had to be. I knew that I would give up just about anything and everything to write full time and that I would write in the sand with a stick if I had nothing else at all. At that time, I said that all I needed to be happy was my laptop, him, the dog, and the cats. And, occasionally, non-dairy chocolate mousse. That was the year we moved out of our beloved home, neighborhood, coworking space, and city, and we moved to an island.
Today, I'm someone else. Returning to writing after years away from writing during the year (or months or weeks or days) my mom is in hospice. Helping an elder dad. Supporting my sweetie returning to himself after a difficult and really scary health crisis year. We deeply need in-person community and friends this year. I do. My dad and D both have in-person community and friends, but I let most of mine go under the weight of elder caregiving, plus starting and running a new business, plus holding genocide and the apparent crumbling of kindness and generosity in this country– far scarier than a crumbling, fascist-overrun government, for me. I need friends whose faces I can see IRL. Arms to hug me. Voices to hear. I need a circle of women and non-binary folks of all ages around me. Local others interested in mutual aid. I love staring at a screen when writing and creating now. But not when building community. Not when my family needs help. Not this year. We need all-in humans. Humans who show up in person.
See? My new path is growing closer. And.
You have a unique-to-you path.
Being off your path now and then is an important part of the cycle of unlearning, growth, and learning. Part of knowing yourself as you change and better understanding others as they change. Knowing that doesn't make being off your path suck any less. When things suck, they suck. But the amount of time you feel panicked about what's happening does seem to lessen with time and experience and people able to listen to you when you're lost. Knowing you're not alone as you struggle makes a huge difference. I'm alive today because my partner was there for me, even when I was so down I couldn't feel that. And. Having more than one person who can feel and see and hear you when you're struggling is important. Until I feared that I was going to lose my partner this year, I didn't understand just how important.
Being off your path takes as long as it takes. Trying to rush it– especially rushing through the hard parts and the pain– doesn't work. Trying to enjoy being off your path at least now and then seems to help. Giving yourself rest and respite– or allowing others to give them to you– usually does.
One surefire way to step off your true path as an adult human is chronically choosing conformity to somebody else's path, ideas, ways of being and thinking, expectations, and demands. When you're younger, that often means conforming to societal expectations or the expectations of somebody else in your life. When you're older, it often means that you've been conforming to a plan or path that a younger version of you happily chose but that you're no longer happy with and you're struggling to face that it's time to let that go. It's often about hanging on to stale "I should"s in your own head that it's well past time to let go of. If you, today, wouldn't choose it: it's not your path now. Trying to hang onto it becomes a source of pain.
Being off our unique path helps teaches us who and what we don't want to be, what we struggle with and need help with today, and what we don't want to do or be anymore. Unlearning conformity hurts as we and others fight it and cling to who we once were as individuals or in relationships. Your energy may decrease considerably for a while as you step off your path. Good. Let it. Fixing this alone is usually not what you're off the path to do. Lost and off the path, you're going to need to let others help you. Find new ways of being and thinking and doing. When we're lost, we receive help. When we ask for it directly, again and again, and we don't receive it, then we know where to stop going. And who to stop being.
Remember, trust your body and follow your energy back to what feels like you being you. We know we're on our path again when our body feels it and our mind stops worrying about it.
"You can feel this in the sun and rain on your face. Hear this in the neighborhood sounds and see it in community members and find it in words that seem to rise up just for you. You can taste this in every meal: every meal that's either a recipe passed on, or a gift for improvisation, also passed on, to us. You can even smell this in flowers, trees, and in all other smells you love, and in the breeze."
Your unique path is larger than you can imagine on your own and always still patiently following you when you're off it. Waiting for you to be ready again. Waiting for you to rest, then notice, and then be your more real, more honest, more unique, stranger, and more wonderful, self. Your true path stays with you and changes as you change, even when you can't see it at all and it feels like you've stepped way off of it. Yeah, went full woo woo again there. That's me, baby. No apologies here.
Your true path is connected to far more others than imaginable on your own and will resonate with others and reflect back to you in their eyes when you speak about what truly matters most to you now. What you're deeply curious about now. Who you are becoming now. Today I think that it's possible that the primary point of stepping off your path is finding your next group of other people and beings and friends to help you better see your slightly different, possibly wider or weirder or more wonderful path. Maybe we step off our true path to widen the path. Maybe we're more connected, and more courageous, than we think.
Blame is easy and sometimes easy is necessary for moments when we're deeply hurting. And. Nobody knocks me off my true path but me. Nobody. Not anymore. If you're stuck on blaming others, stay with that feeling long enough to see and understand what lives beneath blame. Speaking what's silently sitting beneath blame tends to set us free together. Putting us back on our paths again– whether that's alone this time, less together than before, more together than ever, together for this next stretch, together in a different way, or together for the first time. But that's a post for another day.
Maybe we step off our true path to widen the path. Maybe we're more connected, and more courageous, than we think.
