The Burden Basket
How a near-burnout, a solstice feast, and a car crash led led me back to myself.
I just woke up from a 2-hour long nap, if this is indeed even called a nap. And I feel that this alone made me backtrack away from the impending emotional burnout that was looming over me for the past two months.
You see, I often get a heads-up from my spirit guides when I’m driving 200 km/h in the opposite direction from where I’m going. Like tiny red lights popping up on the dashboard of my car just before all hell is bound to break loose – “you’re running out of gas”, or “your cooling system isn’t working”, or “I’ll flash you with a red screwdriver and you figure out what’s wrong” – I would hear whispering instructions or premonitions before my being is in danger of collapsing.
My best friend called on Saturday morning, just as I was whipping up the astounding amounts of food to sell at a solstice celebration later that night. We didn’t talk long. But I’ve come to know that with the right people, the people you have deep, meaningful connections with, it’s not length of time that counts as much as the impact. With people that feel like home, we ease into our souls immediately, don’t we? No foreplay, let’s get straight to business kind of thing. I felt the same way with my last boyfriend – not requiring much foreplay, because the foreplay was simply existing with him in our bubble of half a cubic metre at most, breathing in the same air that he had just exhaled and soaking in my soul’s recognition that I am exactly where I longed to be, exactly where I’m supposed to be.
I didn’t talk long with my Friend on Saturday, but those few minutes stretched long enough for me to really hear my rattled nervous system share that it is way, way, way in overdrive. It seems that my ability to hear myself multiplies in conversations with trusted friends. My soul sharpens its tiny little ears until they look like elf’s ears – with meandering silver decorations and all – so as to listen more profoundly and not miss a single exhale. And what I heard in that conversation was a soft and clear whisper within me that arose from far beyond me, saying: “You’ve been holding too much for too long, love. Stop or this homecoming will become unnecessarily arduous and long-winded.”
My burden basket has become too heavy.
The burden basket, a traditional basket for carrying firewood, food and water, used widely among the Indigenous peoples of North America, symbolically refers to the emotional load and stresses we carry within our hearts. And for the past two months my burden basket felt like a bottomless pit, overflowing and wearing me down.
I’ve been grieving heavily the loss of two of my most significant relationships – my dog and my boyfriend. But grief and loss weren’t the only things I’ve been holding. There is also love. So. Much. Love. And longing, hope, uncertainty, mothering, my new-found devotion to my writing, and the deep need to stand up on my own two feet financially. Add to that my decision to accept the invitation to prepare and sell food at a nearby solstice celebration, and you get the straw that broke the camel’s back – and nearly broke mine, too.
Agreeing to drop my devotion to writing for three days and work my ass off in the kitchen initially seemed like a good idea. Cooking as a skill was passed down my mother’s line: from my grandmother who was a chef by profession, to my mother who is a very passionate amateur cook, and down to me who ... well, seasonally enjoys cooking and somehow seems to whip up dishes that most people – save my son, my toughest critic – think are finger-licking. It’s something that’s easy for me, and ease is exactly what I was after.
This time, however, easy didn’t translate to ease, but to more stress.
I had a lot of help preparing and selling the food: my mom went shopping for the ingredients on a Saturday morning (a tedious affair if there ever was one) and baked bread, my grandma peeled 80 garlic cloves and peeled and chopped 40 onions, while my friend Petra and Svarun, my son, helped me at the stall. But because my endeavours didn’t follow last year’s success and were far from amounting to as much as I had hoped for, Sunday morning meant that I was left with loads of food with a short expiration date, needing to be consumed. I’m not someone who can tolerate resources going to waste, so I decided to feed my friends and family with the remaining food – something that I love to do and makes me happy – but that involved a lot of texting, making arrangements and driving around in the midday sun, when all I truly needed was to stop and rest.
In other words: I wasn’t listening.
I could already hear my guides singing the old pirate song “What do we do with the drunken sailor”, only they weren’t faced with a sailor, but me, and I wasn’t drunken, but in my controlling mode, overriding myself yet again.
“Put her in the longboat till she surrenders?”
“Nah, we don’t have that much time.”
“Shave her belly with a rusty razor?”
“There’s nothing much to shave anyway.”
“Stick her in a scupper with a hosepipe on her? Put her in a brig until she surrenders?”
“Intriguing. We’ll get back to these two. Unless ... we make her an offer she can’t refuse.”
“This sounds a lot like a threat. We love her, remember? She always keeps us busy laughing.”
“Chill, nobody will get hurt. Besides, you were the one suggesting shaving her belly with a rusty razor.”
“That was part of the song.”
“Anyway, I’m thinking ... something innocent but loud enough she can’t ignore or willingly misinterpret the way she does whenever she doesn’t like what we’re saying.”
“I know, she is so infuriating when she collects the cream and leaves the milk behind. But – what exactly did you have in mind?”
“Oh, you know, just a tiny little ... nudge.”
Insert: a car crash.
No need to worry, friends – I’m fine.
So is the guy. And both our cars seem untouched. Buying a 28-year-old car has already been proven beneficial, because it can’t go as fast as I was used to driving. Consequently, the speed at which we crashed after both mine and his brakes didn’t seem to work, was low. But it did give me a wee scare. And it did stop me to the point where I’m now taking naps in the middle of my workday, if I feel like I need them.
Fast forward to today. Too exhausted to sit at a desk, I am lying on the couch with the computer sitting on a tiny milking stool in front of me. I am working on a piece of writing, when I feel my eyelids slowly drawing together. I check my phone for time. It is 11:40, the middle of my workday. But what with the crash and all, I know that if I just keep going, there may not be any working days on the horizon in the future.
I close my eyes, curl into a ball and put my burden basket with everything I’ve been holding, aside.
Sleep helped me backtrack from the burnout that was coming to get me.
You know how we all live under the impression that tiredness is our bodies’ way of signalling they’re in need of rest?
Well, I once heard that it’s actually our souls who need a break from life when we’re tired. They want to put down the body suit and nurse at the breast of the great cosmic mother.
I can see how this could be true.
Because although the body is my god and there are very little things that fascinate me as much as living and breathing and holding all of the realness of this soft and strong temple ... sometimes you just need a nap.
A break.
Mama time.
Later, ‘gator.
*
Thank you so much for reading this piece. If you resonate with my writing, I invite you to subscribe to my Substack SO REAL (button as above so below) and receive new pieces every Tuesday at 9 a.m. and Friday at 4 p.m.
And if you ever feel moved to support my devotion to telling the truth and talking about the real, here’s the link to my Ko-fi, where you can donate a lil’ something something if you’d like.
Love,
Tamara