A Woo Woo Kind of Week

Yesterday, as I drove up my driveway after a tiring yoga class, I was lost in thoughts and barely noticed my husband working away on the front porch, his office space since the beginning of the pandemic.

But then something caught my eye above our house and I hit the brakes to get a better look.

My husband saw me and popped his head out of the front door smiling and asked “Hawk?”

 “Yes!” I said as I attempted to grab a picture of the red-tailed hawk. I watched it circle above our roof and then the pine trees in our backyard, before it disappeared into the clouds.

There it was - my spirit animal, snapping me back into focus, and imprinting the thought I was lost in.

Right before I saw the bird, I had been thinking about an old friend who I lived with in NYC during our graduate program in International Affairs. At the moment of the hawk sighting, I had been rattling off all the countries he had worked in and traveled to in the 14 years since we graduated. Greece. Benin. Ghana. Egypt. Belgium. Pakistan. Jordan. Morocco. The list goes on.

I had been reflecting on the fact that I probably won’t ever travel to all those places.

And for the first time in years, that thought truly felt OK. 

I said to myself, “Casey, your travels are inward, towards stillness,” and it was at that exact moment I spotted the bird.

And just like a whisper in my ear, it reminded me, You are on the right path. 

If you haven’t noticed, this has been a woo woo kind of week.

There was a super moon on Tuesday (the first of two taking place in August), and I had to chalk up my son’s sudden, dramatic meltdown on Wednesday morning to something energetic moving through him.

I have been receiving texts from clients and other families with PDA kids who have noticed similar moments of meltdowns, dysregulation, more trouble sleeping and general energetic craziness this week.

In response, I’ve been putting my crystals in my pocket while I work, meditating more, and doing a little anthroposophic movement activity a shaman taught me, while staring out my bedroom window, at a particular tree in my neighbor’s yard.

Sometimes Brain Science, Logic, Cause and Effect, and Linear Thinking get us the clarity we need to move forward with our kids. And other times, we can only rely on intuition.

This reminded me of a text I got this week from a friend with a PDA teen. She shared that even after years of accommodating her son, something has shifted and the approach doesn’t seem to be working anymore. He doesn’t seem well or happy.

In those moments, the answer is not often logical and it doesn't mean doubling down on something because it is "the right way" or the set of rules we must follow. Rather, sometimes we have to move into stillness and silence, and ask, What are my Gut and Intuition telling me?  Is there knowledge in my bones that I haven’t let out because it is different than my expectations or what others (including Casey) are doing?

It is often in those moments that we find our answer.

Which she did. By turning inward.

I will leave you with that and hope that the astrological events haven’t made things too topsy turvy in your home.