A Comfy Bed On The Floor

Here to be a voice for soft, tender surrender.

In my last essay, Welcome 2024…, I shared that I was exploring “my ever evolving dance as a spiritual being inhabiting a human form.”

And, I feel called to add that I am most human in the mornings, after a night of disrupted sleep. I am very, very human when I’m exhausted.

I have talked about sleep a lot here. There is a reason sleep deprivation is used as a method of torture.

I wrote about my sleep (or lack thereof) in Farewell 2023…

And a couple of weeks ago, I made some headway.

In case you missed my previous shares - a very (very) long story short: Sloan had either slept in our bed all night or eventually made her way to our bed, every single night, for months. That meant months of getting kicked in the head or kneed in the back or hours spent awake because I was not able to fall back to sleep after I helped her into our bed. And that doesn’t even account for Silas’ participation in my nighttime sleep disruptions.

A couple of weeks ago, I was attempting to help Sloan fall asleep. I was laying in her bed, next to her. She wanted to go straight into our bed, but I needed a little time to sleep solo that night. Even though she knew that I would stay with her until she fell asleep, she was crying real tears, lamenting that she didn’t want to be alone.

I said a foxhole “please help me, God” prayer and I almost immediately had the thought to move her mattress to the floor of our room. I had previously considered buying her a bigger mattress so we could comfortably sleep in her room. But, I had never thought to relocate her mattress to ours.

She was GAME. We set her up all comfy on our floor and I watched her drift off to sleep with a small smile spread across her delicate face.

We all slept well that night. I even woke up to an alarm that I had optimistically set - I had 45 minutes of alone time before the kids and Alex woke up. Solo time in the AM is what my nighttime dreams are made of.

Almost 2 weeks later and we are still moving Sloan’s twin mattress back and forth every morning and night. I’m taking this sleep situation one-day-at-a-time.

A couple of nights after Sloan set up camp in our room, Alex and I went on an early evening date.

Over the holidays, Alex and I didn’t have many opportunities to escape, just the two of us. We desperately need that time together to soften the sharp edges of some of our morning interactions.

The afternoon of our date, Sloan’s grandparents arrived to care for her and Silas. One of the first things Sloan told her Nana was how we were going to move her mattress back into our room that night. She is beyond pleased with our sleeping arrangements.

Alex and I left for our date around 4PM - my favorite time to head out…Sleep deprivation loves an early bedtime.

We journeyed to the neighborhood of my favorite coffee shop, Maya Moon Collective. I have shared about Maya Moon many times on DTS.

I often go to Maya Moon early in the day and I wanted to visit a bookstore across the street that is closed when I am there on weekday mornings.

The Book Tree’s website says it specializes in “metaphysical, spiritual, and controversial books”.

I obviously needed to go.

It was everything I expected it to be - dusty, disorganized, amazing.

Alex and I casually walked around and turned into a little corner that was jammed with books in every direction. I happened to see a book titled “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry” by Jack Kornfield.

I immediately grabbed it and a $4 copy of The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. I haven’t had a physical copy of The Prophet since I lived in Chicago over a decade ago.

After we paid for our books, in cash, we walked over to Maya Moon. We ordered our drinks and sat down in the back corner. The cafe was busy that day and a woman asked us if she and her father could join us at our table. As we casually chatted with them, I slowly started reading “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”. 

I was in complete awe. I was reading exactly what my heart and soul needed to hear for months and months.

On the last page of the Introduction, Kornfield shares a passage from Pir Vilayat Khan. Khan is the head of the Sufi Order in the West, he once said:

“Of so many great teachers I’ve met in India and Asia, if you were to bring them to America, get them a house, two cars, a spouse, three kids, a job, insurance, and taxes…they would all have a hard time.”

I am blessed with moments of divine, spiritual embodiment and connection. And those fleeting moments are quickly swept away by frustration and exhaustion and my human-ness.

And, so far, in “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”  I have read countless stories that relate to my own lived experiences: stories of spiritual seekers and teachers who’ve had profoundly enlightened experiences, only to return back to their very human nature when  met with the responsibilities of our modern civilization.

Every time I pick up “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry” my spirit lands in my body in a softer way. It has been pure, delicious medicine.

And to put two seemingly unrelated stories together, moving Sloan’s bed to our room has reminded me that our lives - my life - does not happen linearly nor sequentially.

I call it my “ever evolving dance” because that’s exactly what it is: Two steps forward, one step back. Side steps. Twirls. Dips. Leaps. Spins. Fast paced, slow paced. Alone. With a partner. Behind closed doors. And, in crowds, outdoors.

And moving Sloan’s bed into our room reminded me that even because I was once able to do something, it doesn’t mean I am going to be able to do the same thing, in the same way, forever. And instead of forcing myself to continue to do something that feels inauthentic, or scary, or lonely, or hard - I can make a safe bed for it - even if it's a metaphorical one.

I remember a time when Sloan would tell us she was tired and we would do her bedtime routine and she would lay down in her bed and fall asleep after we walked out. You could say that she is having a “regression” right now. I choose to frame it differently, though.

Sloan is expressing her needs to us - she needs more togetherness. I don’t need to understand why. I simply found a more sustainable way to give it to her.

Moving Sloan’s bed to the floor of our room reminded me that I need to find ways to meet myself where I am, right now – versus where I once was or at the space/place I think I “should” be.

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The New Year always brings the “push harder” messages - and through my relationship with Sloan, I am finding that the very opposite is equally, if not moreso, potent.

Before I continue, I will say this: maybe you are in a season of “push”... I believe we all have times where and when we are meant to give a little bit more to up-level.

And, in the same breath, there is a difference between healthy tension and the unhealthy stress that comes from the people, places, and things that are out of alignment with our true needs and nature.

If you find yourself pushing up against something - in a way that your body and soul knows is not serving you - here is my message to you and for you: make yourself a comfy bed on the floor.

It’s okay to not always be brave or strong or do it alone. As adults, that “bed” is going to look a lot different than it does for Sloan. So, what I am trying to say is: find a way to cradle yourself in soft, tenderness. Even if it’s only in your mind and heart.

As of late, I find myself witnessing my humanness and instead of scolding myself for it, I give it a safe place to rest: in the tender knowing that I am human and I am doing my best.

I recently read something that more or less said, “change doesn’t happen in shame.”

I am certain that shame won’t propel me into a more spiritual way of being. I’m quite confident that my spiritual evolution will manifest through gentleness and grace. 

Right now, anytime I find my ugliest human qualities taking center stage, I gently remind myself to breathe. And when I’m unable to check myself in the moment, I am soft with myself as I reflect on ways I can behave differently in the future. That is the comfy bed I am making for myself: compassion over self- judgment and criticism. Also, these days, my comfy bed includes very low expectations for my worldly achievements.

My “human” rewards are often gained with might and muster. I am quite sure that my spiritual gifts will be fulfilled by melting into a surrendered state of soft openness.

My prayer for you and for me is just that - a disarmament of anything that tells us we need to do to be. A prayer for tender surrender.

Spaces for Deeper Rumination:

What, in your life, could use a metaphorical comfy floor bed?

If you are truly honest with yourself,  would this season of your life benefit most from “pushing harder” or “tender surrender”?

More Deep and Shallow Stuff:

• My Winter MVPs - Canopy and Weleda Skin Food: I am Vata and in the winter I get DRY. This winter, I have been running my Canopy nightly and applying Skin Food to my hands multiple times a day and I must say, it’s made the winter more bearable than past seasons. If you know of a small-business, handcrafted lotion that works as well or better than Weleda, please let me know!!!

• Patrick Watson Spotify Radio, Aaliyah Spotify Radio, and my “Marriage is Fun” playlist. I’ve had some moods lately and each of these playlist hits the right spot when I need it most: uplifted emo, vibey, and letting off some steam through loudly singing the emo rock ballads of my very young youth.

• Maya Moon’s Cacao: I just realized you can buy the make-at-home cacao I love from Maya Moon. My favorite is the Classic Drinking Cacao. And recently, I started buying Moon Balance Drinking Cacao for a little moon-time support.

• Goldie Yoga On-Demand 20 Minute Yoga Flows: I have something crazy to share… yoga is amazing! After a long hiatus of regularly making it to my mat, I’ve recently got back into a yoga flow and I’m like YES. Sometimes, it feels good to intuitively move around on my mat and other times, I want to be guided…. And most often, I have 20 minutes (or less). Most of the on-demand classes I had purchased at the start of the pandemic were either postpartum focused or 30 minutes plus… So, this past week, I purchased Goldie’s Five 20 Minute Classes. She is an incredible teacher with very unique, accessible flows. Yesterday, I did the “Shoulders, Chests, Triceps, and Upper Back” class and it was just what I needed to open.