This story wants to be told.
I’ve realized over the years that I have always been in a hurry, for different reasons at different times.
In a hurry to finish school, to get married, to figure out parenting, to lose weight, to make art, to sing my songs, to make decisions, to get to the next *thing.*
And I’ve tried to slow down, truly. I’ve tried to become more aware and more conscious of time and patience and letting things be.
But some things are meant to be fast.
Sometimes moments pass so quickly, it is like a flash and it’s gone.
It makes me feel like time wants to be danced with and not controlled.
Hold me when I’m slow.
Run with me when I’m moving.
Pause when I’m quiet.
Celebrate when I’m loud.
Stop trying to predict me.
Let me surprise you.
Don’t fight me.
Trust me.
Close your eyes and allow me to just be myself.
This is what time says to me now.
So a month ago I was in Sedona, Arizona, and I visited this cave — the Birthing Cave.
I set the intention that I would come into this cave knowing the life I’ve dreamed of, that I’ve carried inside for so many years, and that I would leave this cave bringing that life into my reality.
I’ve had ideas of what that life might look like and how it might play out.
I’ve seen visions of it in my mind and dreamed of it at night.
But something happened when I actually climbed barefoot up the wall and into the hole at the center of the cave.
It’s like my body knew what was coming because these icy hot chills were pulsing all the way up my back to the top of my head from the base of my spine.
This spiral of energy pushed me forward even though my mind was screaming what if I fall?
With my toes on a tiny ledge at the base of the opening, I jumped, pulling myself up with my arms like out of the deep end of a pool, and let this hole in the cave catch me.
I settled in and looked out at the view of the landscape before me.
Time froze.
It was like she was saying, “but if I show you this life, will you remember me? Will you still dance with me? Will you let me move you in the way that‘s best? Do you trust me?”
And then I climbed down.
As if time wasn’t already strangely paced enough, life since that cave has been a speed trap.
A 75-mile-an-hour stretch falling straight into a 30.
Moments of pure joy followed by intense upheavals of suppressed anxieties and sadness and grief that I didn’t realize I was carrying still after all these years.
I thought I had worked through all of this – why surface now?
Do you remember me? She says.
Do you remember what we discussed?
Dance with me.
What I thought would propel me into dreamworld actually brought me into a deep need for rest, something else I have fought for years and years and years.
Fighting with time, and fighting the need for rest.
So interesting how the two are connected.
Because even though this is a familiar cycle I’ve faced and worked on and practiced… this time around, it hit.
The fear.
The fear that if I’m not constantly pushing towards my goals, they won’t happen.
The fear that if I let go, that if I fall into the warmth of this season of life that’s calling me, that if I stop focusing on chasing the dreams I so deeply desire, that everything will fall apart…
So why is there this knowing deep inside that, Caitlin, don’t you know it’s falling together?
A few months ago, when I could feel the onset of this cycle repeating in me, I literally stopped everything and made a list in my journal of all the things that have happened in my life that I couldn’t have ever predicted or planned…
People that changed my life, events that shaped me, opportunities that propelled me forward…
All happened in a time I wasn’t looking for it, when I was focusing on something else.
The list is so long, so very long.
Remember me? She says.
Time has shown me that when I let go, she still moves on, finding what is for me when I need to stop.
Time has shown me that I can trust. I can move my attention to what’s calling me, and she will move on, taking care of things I cannot see, and bringing them to my awareness at *just* the right moments.
Time has shown me that there are parts of me that need to move quickly, that need to be on my toes and act fast… but there are also parts of me that need stillness, that need to wait things out and not have all the answers at once. That I can move between the two as needed, and neither one defines me.
Time has shown me that the visions that call me are so big that there’s no way I can fit them into this hurried frenzied state I have lived in for all the years of my life I was “pushing” for it.
Time has shown me they unfold in the moments I lean into simply being who I am…
That it takes me being who I am for these things to pour out of me anyway and if I need to rest, to slow down, to pause, to take a break, to wait, to think some more, so that the Who I Am can still be intact, and whole, and fully alive… then that’s exactly what time will show me.
Dance with me, she says.
Knowing all this I ask… what happens when I let go now? What’s on the other side?
Dance with me, she says.
