I have a love for reading, and this morning, in the first hour of my day, I’d already read pieces and parts of several books. In one of them, I turned to page 15.
Fifteen holds special meaning in my heart. It’s directly connected to the wisdom within me.
The page was about the pregnant pause.
I got curious about where that phrase was born. The word pregnant comes from Latin, and at its root it means the state before birth. It shares its oldest root with genesis and nature. So a pregnant pause is full — something is about to be born.
For years, my office held a whiteboard and a large pad of paper. I tracked things. I measured, observed, created — all of it with my mind. Everything written there was something I had lived and thought through. It was real.
And yet the mind is always in motion. Even when the body seems to be resting — even when we decide to pause, meditate or contemplate — the mind is still involved. Staying in motion, we gloss over what we might otherwise see and feel. We stay with the way things have always been. This has worked for me, so I’ll stick with it. Because if we go into the unknown, who knows what would happen?
So we sit in the in-between. On edge. Not allowing ourselves the decisions or changes that are calling.
I learned something about the mind while birthing my children. Both times, I decided I wasn’t going to take any pain meds. I didn’t want to be numbed out, or have anything passed on to my babies. That was my mind’s decision — made before my body was doing its thing.
Then my body started doing its thing. Contractions came whether I wanted them or not. And my mind said, I can’t do this. Give me something.
Both times, they told me it was too late. I was having the baby.
And I did. My body knew what to do. I had read the pregnancy books, even the famous What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I’d gone to the classes. And most of it went out the window during the actual birthing of my beautiful children.
So the second time around, I took a different approach to all the information. I let myself take what I felt I’d focus on and use, and leave the rest.
It’s interesting how the mind can change, even when we think we’re firm in our decisions. That’s why making decisions from the mind is not our best option. The beautiful way each of us makes decisions doesn’t come from the mind at all.
There is an amazing intelligence within us. I’ve been calling it the wisdom within. Even if we had never studied a single thing — or we did, and completely forgot it — in the moment of birthing, all turns out naturally. We are the source.
My last letter spoke to the one-of-a-kind gifts we’re given at the time of our birth. To me, this letter feels like another way to soak in those gifts, because it links directly to what only we can birth. One of a kind by design.
Maybe that’s why clearing the whiteboard matters. When I started to slow things down, I realized the best thing I could do in the moment was clear it. Erase it. Shred the pad, recycle it, start anew. What was written there was lived. And the wisdom was underneath it all along.
The mind will still try to get involved, just like it did in labor. So the pause asks for something else: knowing our own true process. A one-of-a-kind way of deciding that lives in the body, wired within us at the time of our birth.
The best part about tuning in to this one-of-a-kind way is the awareness it brings — whether or not we’ve been practicing our own true process when we make our decisions and create new things in life. If we haven’t, that’s okay too. Now that we know, we can begin the practice, and watch the new things we choose to birth light up everything in our world, and those we love and come into contact with.
This is where the micro pauses come in — the modern-day pauses built into ordinary days. They’re how we start to tune into the wisdom within, the natural intelligence that holds the clues and holds the answers.
After all, going into the mysteries of life doesn’t require any sort of mastery on our part. It’s not by taking a class or a course, or studying the books, or getting a special certification — a piece of paper that says we are this or that. Although those things are meaningful, and can create moments where we’re proud of our accomplishments.
And when we’re fully aligned with that experience — embodied, able to step out of our minds — that’s when the true beauty of whatever we’ve taken in can be shared with others and create transformation. It won’t come from the exact text, or the papers that say we have grades or accomplishments. It comes in those moments when we live it out loud and share it in a way only we can. Most times, that will look much different than the course or the class or the book, because it’s aligned with who we truly are.
That’s the most special thing we could ever do — birth it in our own way.
So if we love books, like I do — if we love research and study — that’s awesome. What matters most is putting it into practice and living it out loud, in the way only each of us can. That’s what makes a life more fulfilled, and leaves a legacy that lasts long after we’re gone.
What I’ve found is it’s simply a willingness to take those moments of mystery, when we feel like we’re on the edge and we know in our hearts that something new is waiting to be birthed. And just take the time to clear that whiteboard, to create something new.
Creating something new doesn’t mean eliminating everything that came before. It’s what She Returns speaks to.
We keep the rootstock, which is strong — the wisdom within — and we graft onto it, so that we can blossom in every new season of our lives.
xo, Sharon
P.S. This letter has some connection to my recent letter, The True Page Turner. If you haven’t read that yet, you’ll find it here on my page.