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The Invisible Altar · Relatively Stable

• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: The Invisible Altar.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Who we are when no one is watching.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: This old farmhouse makes a sound before dawn.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't the wind, though the wind here has its own vocabulary.
• 0:32
  This sound comes through the morning light,
• 0:35
  streaming through the newly green trees.
• 0:39
  The sound makes shadows like meandering frequencies along the
• 0:44
  floorboards.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: The sound doesn't come from the horses,
• 0:49
  though they are awake before I am standing in the geometry of
• 0:53
  comfort they've
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: arranged for themselves in the dark.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: The sound comes from the house itself.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's the noise that 200 years of timber and stone make.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: as it settles into the warm spring ground at the foundation.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: The house continually adjusts to stay upright.
• 1:16
  I've been learning this year to notice the sounds moving
• 1:19
  beneath the surface of things.
• 1:25
  Indigo,
• 1:26
  our little cat,
• 1:27
  spent her early weeks at the new farm pressed against my side,
• 1:32
  purring.
• 1:34
  The sound she made was different from the lazy sunlit purring
• 1:38
  of a cat who has
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: found a warm patch of afternoon.
• 1:42
  The sound she made was urgent and pleading and low,
• 1:47
  a frequency I felt through my bones.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: And like an answer to old wishes,
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: she started making biscuits against the duvet every night,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: her paws rhythmic and insistent,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: a small weaver at a loom of linen.
• 2:05
  I took the motion as a sign that she considered me her familiar
• 2:09
  and felt safe with me.
• 2:12
  After a year of high-velocity loss,
• 2:16
  I thought indigo's purring was the sound of peace.
• 2:20
  I thought she was telling me that we could rest now because
• 2:23
  we'd finally taken root
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: in the right ground.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: All of that might have been true in a way,
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: but more importantly,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know at the time that her purr was a war cry.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: A few weeks after I delighted in her finally making biscuits,
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: a vet informed us that indigo had developed FIP,
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: feline infectious peritonitis,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: an uncommon immune response to the common coronavirus.
• 2:58
  It had been slowly dismantling indigo from the inside for
• 3:02
  weeks,
• 3:03
  maybe months.
• 3:05
  The diagnosis made me reconsider her sudden onset purring and
• 3:10
  biscuit making.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: I replayed our nightly bedtime ritual in my head.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: A cat's purr vibrates between 25 and 150 hertz,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: a frequency that has been shown to stimulate bone density,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: accelerate tissue repair,
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: and reduce inflammation.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: When she amped up the purring and kneading,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: it wasn't a sign that Indigo was finally contented and settling in.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, her body was intuitively in triage.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: She was crouched at her own invisible altar,
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: using the only instrument her body had,
• 3:53
  knitting herself back together in the dark while I lay there
• 3:57
  interpreting her pain
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: as gratitude.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: I get it, Indigo.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent most of this year doing the same thing.
• 4:07
  There is a specific madness in being a coach who focuses on
• 4:12
  nervous systems while
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: watching your own perimeters come apart at the seams.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know all the buzzwords for dysregulation.
• 4:22
  I know the signs our bodies give when we're in a state of
• 4:25
  continual watchfulness,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: our tight jaws and shallow breathing,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: the way our limbs will keep moving when nothing at all is fine.
• 4:36
  I daily walk clients towards recognizing that capability is
• 4:41
  often just a very
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: sophisticated coping mechanism,
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: wearing responsibilities clothes.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: I know all of this,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: and I still spent the better part of a year purring into the dark,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: hoping I could knit myself back together again.
• 5:00
  I've gone through the list of things that landed us here at
• 5:03
  Lavender Hill too many
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: times as I sit down to write.
• 5:07
  My teeth cracked from clenching against the hidden sounds of it
• 5:11
  all,
• 5:11
  and I mean that literally.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Ask my dentist.
• 5:15
  I have pulled a paper gown around me in a waiting room that
• 5:18
  smelled like antiseptic
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: and worry as I stared at the other women around me,
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: fingers crossed against a mammogram.
• 5:27
  I came home to an anonymous letter threatening legal action
• 5:30
  over fences and absent
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: shelters,
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: written by someone confusing the aesthetics of a farm with its soul.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: I look like I'm handling it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I keep showing up.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: From the outside I am purring.
• 5:48
  But the sleeping dragon at the base of my spine stays coiled,
• 5:54
  its golden eye never closing.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Stable Roots is written from Lavender Hill,
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: where the floors are creaking and the horses know things.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: If this found you at the right moment,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: consider subscribing or forwarding it to someone who needs it too.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just glad that you're here.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: The horses show me the magic of internal regulation every day.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: I watched them long before I confused indigo sounds with comfort.
• 6:33
  When the wind picks up on the ridge and the old trees start
• 6:38
  groaning and swaying,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: the horses stand still,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: dropping their heads down low.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Their postures follow the weather.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: When the wind has passed,
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: they sigh a deep,
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: rib-rattling exhale that moves through the whole body.
• 6:56
  You can see it travel like a wave,
• 6:59
  shedding the external noise and returning to themselves.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: The movement is a biological prayer,
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: as if their bodies are saying,
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: I was somewhere else for a moment,
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: and now I'm back.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: As humans, we have largely lost our cultural permission to do the same.
• 7:21
  We are raised inside a mythology of handling it,
• 7:25
  of being fine,
• 7:27
  of getting on with things.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Regulation has been aestheticized.
• 7:32
  It looks like a clean house,
• 7:34
  a consistent workout schedule,
• 7:37
  a calm voice in a difficult meeting.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like productivity,
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: composure,
• 7:43
  and the ability to hold the thread of your life without
• 7:45
  publicly unraveling.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: The nervous system doesn't care about any of this.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: It just wants you to breathe.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: What I've come to understand this year,
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: slowly and at some cost,
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: is that our invisible altars,
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: the states our nervous system draws us into for rest,
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: isn't constructed in places of peace.
• 8:09
  You won't find it on a meditation cushion,
• 8:11
  a yoga mat,
• 8:13
  or a beautifully built morning routine.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: That altar is the triage unit of the soul.
• 8:21
  It's where you go when you're out of options,
• 8:24
  when you've lost the energy to pretend.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a wholly unglamorous state of being.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's just a pause,
• 8:33
  and other times it's standing in a field with a horse or a dog
• 8:37
  or a cat in the
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: dark,
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: not doing anything but breathing in the same air.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: It sometimes looks like counting out pills,
• 8:49
  bitter little seeds of hope for a cat whose body is trying to
• 8:53
  destroy itself and
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: deciding that you will fight for her alongside her.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that decision alone is enough.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Christopher and I are no longer in the hotel breakfast phase of love.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: That version of us,
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: the one that existed in a shiny,
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: laminated world of early partnership,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: where you're still each other's best audience,
• 9:21
  got lost somewhere between the hurricane and the hospice bed
• 9:26
  where my father spent
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: his final December.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: What we have now is different and in many ways better.
• 9:35
  He watches me count out the GS 44,
• 9:39
  15,
• 9:43
  24 pills and doesn't ask me to also fix the fences.
• 9:44
  He knows because he has watched carefully the difference
• 9:48
  between when I'm handling
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: something and when I'm acting fine.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he stopped pretending he can't tell.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: You don't capture that kind of love in a photograph.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make for an interesting caption.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: But it is the only kind I trust anymore.
• 10:08
  Love that can sit still in a triage unit with you without
• 10:12
  needing to be busy with
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: something else.
• 10:17
  I think that the women who stood on the porch of this farmhouse
• 10:21
  in 1825 didn't have
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: the luxury of performing wellness.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: They were too busy surviving.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: In the immediacy of living, you either regulate or you don't.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't, the consequences are immediate and real.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Those women built invisible altars out of necessity.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: The bread they needed in the dark hours before anyone else was awake.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: The garden that was also a pharmacy.
• 10:54
  Their way of standing at the window in the evening as they
• 10:57
  watched the light stream
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: through the trees.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: They did this for restoration, a momentary breath, a dose of wonder.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: They called these habits different things than we call them now,
• 11:11
  or they didn't call them anything at all because naming felt
• 11:15
  like idleness.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: But they did it.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: As proof, the house is still standing.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think about this when I consider the letter that arrived,
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: chastising me for not doing enough,
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: while my to-do list was already a form of ambient noise.
• 11:34
  The bones of this house have stood for 200 years without
• 11:37
  seeking validation from the uninformed.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: The women who lived here before me didn't ask for permission to exhale.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: Here is what I now know.
• 11:51
  the crash course in creating an invisible altar that I didn't
• 11:57
  know when we pulled
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: into this driveway with everything we had left.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Regulation is not the absence of distress.
• 12:07
  Regulation is the willingness to be in contact with distress
• 12:13
  without being consumed by it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: The purr is not always a sign of peace.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Productivity is not always a sign of health.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: The steady hand is not always a sign of groundedness.
• 12:30
  Sometimes the most alive thing you can do is to stop seeking
• 12:35
  stability and drop
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: into the unsteady place beneath it,
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: the place where the vital noise lives,
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: your invisible altar.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's in this honest dark that we begin to heal.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Indigo's purr is quieter now as the pills do their unseen work.
• 12:58
  I hear the different tones in her rumble as her body refuses to
• 13:02
  accept its own dissolution.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: At a little under eight pounds,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: she fights something ancient,
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: internal,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: and enormous with nothing but the instrument of her own frequency.
• 13:17
  Each night as she curls beside me on the bed,
• 13:20
  I lie there and I feel it move through me.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, yes, that is the sound.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is exactly what this sounds like.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come with a chime or a certificate.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: Just the ongoing, unglamorous, bone-level work of remaining whole.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_00: The fences can wait.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: The horses know where they belong.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: The house remains standing.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I have finally learned how to find my altar in unadorned moments.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the deep exhale before I go inside.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: In the dark hour before the house wakes up.
• 14:07
  In the small and private gestures that no one sees and no one
• 14:12
  will write a caption about.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the purr that holds me together.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Who are we when no one is watching?
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: We are the frequency we choose to hold.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: We are the altar we return to.
• 14:30
  We are the exhale that moves down through our body out to the
• 14:34
  ground and deeper
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: still into the sounds beneath us.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: We are the choices that ring us back to the sovereignty of our own skin.
• 14:46
  The rest is just fence line waiting to be pieced back together
• 14:52
  at the mercy of the wind.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: The fence will always need fixing.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Love, Kim Identifying your altar.
• 15:08
  This week,
• 15:09
  I invite you to look at your own kneading,
• 15:12
  your own making biscuits.
• 15:14
  Where are you performing the motions of being okay while your
• 15:17
  nervous system is
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: actually in a state of frantic triage?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Give yourself a little audit.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: Notice the tension in your jaw or the rhythm of your productivity.
• 15:28
  Is it coming from a place of overflow or is it a permit to knit
• 15:33
  together a breaking heart?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: and explore your practice.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Find your biological alter, like a horse's sigh or a cat's frequency.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: Find one movement today that is purely for your own regulation,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: the person you are when no one is watching,
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: and honor that state for how it keeps you whole.