Soul Tides

I sit on the shores of my soul, watching in disbelief as this dynamic dance of life has me swirling and twirling and pirouetting into caves of darkness and tunnels of light

I remind myself ~

Every day the tides of the world undulate in ceaseless, primordial rhythm.

At their low, they expose the land once sheltered by nourishing waters - a landscape temporarily hidden from sight becomes visible, and with it awaits a cornucopia of activity and aliveness.

The sea birds come to feast on the unveiled microarthropods scurrying amongst the surface of the sand.

The crustaceans side step urgently along the shoreline.

The brown algae cling to rock and glisten in the dun, now available to hungry foragers of both human and other.

The myriad forms of aquatic life shelter in the intertidal pools last remains of water. The small pools provide sanctuary form the desiccating sun, wind and heat.

These tidal rhythms shift and shape the entire functioning of this system.

And then, without hesitation, the ocean rises again, submerging and swallowing all of these various expressions back into its mighty chest, calling the communities of beings into radical adaptation and shape shifting.

The land shrinks, the sea expands.

In and out, in and out.

Never ceasing.

It brings me comfort, tides. They serve as constant reminders of beauty and pain, like the tides of my own emotional seas, equally powerful and dynamic.

One day I am raw, vulnerable, there are predator and prey dynamics unfolding within me. I am exposed, desiccating.

The next, I am fluid and strong, all-encompassing, salty, dense, resilient.

The more dynamic pressures play out in an ecosystem, the more radically apatite the life that calls that place home tends to be.

Just as I, highly adaptable to my ever changing tides, learning to stand in the lows and swim in the highs.

Tides remind me how beautiful it is to be such a dynamic force - to experience such vast spectrums of emotion and undergo these undulations is far from a ‘disorder’, but rather, a gift.

Pushed and pulled by lunar gravity and an infinite amalgamation of forces of the seen and unseen, the tides shape the world as we know it, and my tides shape me. The inner and outer landscapes, my body and the Earth body, are one in the same.

Learning to love them has been the greatest journey.

So I sit on the shores of my soul and watch as the tides go in and out, in and out.