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Ep 49

Tina: [00:00:00] Hey there. You are listening to the In Kinship podcast, a podcast for those who crave a joy-filled, vibrant, lit-up life on their own terms, and I’m your host, Tina Vandenberg. Hey, thanks for being here. I am thrilled to be talking with you from a snow-free northern Michigan.

So I work from home. You probably know that already, and what that means is that I talk to very few people in person. I talk to my son, I talk to my partner, I talk to the occasional friend, but I don’t see anybody with regularity on a day-to-day basis.

And while I absolutely adore the freedom that working from home gives me, I love that I work for Charm Patterns, and I can do that work remotely and [00:01:00] more or less on my own timeline. There’s, of course, deadlines that have to be met, but typically, I can fit it in where it makes sense in my life.

And also, I have my own business, and I can create space in a similar way for that. Again, there’s also deadlines there, which, honestly, I sort of adore deadlines because they help to really anchor my work and anchor my timing, if that makes sense. And so I feel incredibly fortunate to have built a life where I can determine my work day.

I can really determine when my brain is at its most active, when it’s most likely that my energy will be highest for certain kind of activities. I can arrange my day more or less in ways that feel really good to me. There are, of course, restraints as far as dropping my son off at school, picking him up from school, being available for those kind of things, which my life also supports, right?

I’m a single mom, and One of the very most important [00:02:00] things to me was that I had the freedom to go to a school function during the day to be the kind of mom that I desired to be. That’s not for everyone, but that’s what I desired as a mom, and so I’m incredibly grateful for all of that. But even when you have a life that’s full of really beautiful, wonderful things, it can sometimes still feel out of balance in other directions, right?

So the out of balance for me is that I sometimes get kind of lonely. I sometimes don’t have the kind of social interactions that I want to have because I don’t go out into the world all that often . And to be honest, like, I have these hermit-y kind of tendencies. In fact, my human design, is that I am both an extrovert and I’m also a hermit.

And so there are true moments in time where I want to just hole up at home and not go out into the world. But too much of a good thing is [00:03:00] not a good thing. I have a dear, dear friend that said that saying to me probably 20 years ago, and I’ll tell you that 28-year-old Tina found that to be incredibly annoying

Turns out it’s true, which is probably why it was so dang annoying. That’s not to say 28-year-old Tina was, like, trying to amass all the vast amounts of experiences or things, but

For some reason, that statement used to grind me. It doesn’t anymore because I’m like, “Wow, that’s so true,” right? And now that I have turned 48 just a couple weeks ago, I am an Aries, baby.

And as I’ve aged, I’ve really fine-tuned, or rather learned how to recalibrate my situation. And I think that we can often in our culture think that we set something and it’s all set, we’re all done, and we can just move through life, and things will always be great. And of course, like, nobody [00:04:00] actually believes that.

But I think that we get the feeling that that should be how it is when we determine what it is we want, that our desires aren’t gonna shift or our balance isn’t gonna show up as being off in some other way. I think that we are continually going to be recalibrating what feels like the right balance at the moment.

And so right now, what’s out of balance for me is that I don’t have enough social, physical, in-person interactions as I want. And there was a part of me while I was walking that thought, “All right, well, maybe I should just, like, scrap it all and start working for somebody else and go and work in an office somewhere.”

And I’m like, ” No, that’s not what I need to do,” right? I don’t know about you, but I can kind of catastrophize I think is what the therapist said, the solution, that it has to be, like, a whole overhaul, and of course it doesn’t, right? Anytime I’m teaching people to sew clothing- There is always a moment when they first make something and they put it on in front of the mirror, and there’s something about it isn’t quite what they’re [00:05:00] expecting, and their face falls.

And they have this moment of like, “Oh, this is not quite what I wanted.” And then I come up from behind them, I pinch a little bit here, and I pull a little bit there, and it’s transformed. It just takes small changes to make huge shifts in your perception of what something is, your experience with something.

And so that is also true in our lives. So no, I do not need to overhaul my whole life and start working for somebody else. But there is an opportunity in this craving that I have for me to try to bring something else into my life. So one of those things that I did is I started going to a weekly yoga class, and that has been great.

I mean, to be truthful, I haven’t, like, chatted it up with anybody there yet, but just being around other humans feels really nice. And so that’s been pretty fun. And then I kept considering creating some kind of a class or some kind of a gathering locally that [00:06:00] could bring people together in a circle, which if you’ve been following me for any time, you know that I love gathering people, and I love bringing people into a circle.

I don’t know why we can’t be in a rectangle, but apparently we can’t. And so I kept thinking about what that could look like ’cause I also don’t have a ton of time, like a lot of you. Life is busy, right? I’m in the middle of working on building an addition completely by hand, and by hand I mean with power tools.

But just myself and my partner for the most part, although family have stepped in and helped out here and there. But it’s a slow process when you don’t have a crew. Heck, it’s a slow process when you do have a crew. And so that’s been a major creative expenditure, if you will, in my life. And I also have a business of my own.

I also work for somebody else. I have a young son that I’m raising. All of those things, just like everyone, right? We all have so much going on in life. And so I kept thinking about what I could bring in because I’m a strong believer [00:07:00] that if something’s not working how you want it to in your life, you have an opportunity to make that change.

And if there’s something that you desire out in the world that is not in your world, then why not you? Why not you make it happen? And so through several different iterations of what could be and just following the breadcrumbs in front of me, which is always delightfully magical, right? There’s this retreat center in a town near my town, and I saw it on a chance, Facebook post that somebody that I know had posted

which is crazy that I even saw it because several weeks ago- I decided to protect my own sanity and to increase the chance that I’m gonna have more vibrant experiences in life, I deleted all social media off my phone. And I don’t know how my phone use relates to anybody else’s phone use, but sometimes I forget where my phone even is, right?

[00:08:00] So I think that’s, in my own opinion, in my life, that’s a good thing. But I still would spend more time than I care to admit getting lost in scrolling things that never made me feel good, never made me feel ultimately inspired. I mean, occasionally I would hit something that was interesting, but even then it was like a three-second engagement, and it just…

When I was really honest with it, it was not enhancing my life. And this is sort of controversial as a business owner, but, I have no intention, and I’m saying this now, that doesn’t mean I won’t change my mind someday but as of now, I have no intention on doing anything with my business in social media again, and I know that, some people might feel like that’s a poor choice, but I believe that doing things that move the needle in my business, that light me up, is a direction I’m meant to be in, not doing things that make me feel depleted and terrible.

Anyway, I cut social media off my phone, and it was harder to do [00:09:00] than I thought it would be. Like, I found myself mindlessly finding something to scroll on my phone because I was so used to just sort of checking out and looking at images in this very sort of rapid way, and it took me a couple of weeks to really stop that habit, and there is not a day that goes by that I’m like, ” I am so glad that I did that.”

So my little crutch that I have now, is, I left Pinterest on my phone ’cause I thought, “That’s not really social media,” and I love gathering information and gathering ideas on Pinterest, and Pinterest typically doesn’t catch me in the same mindless scrolling that other social media does, except it does now because it’s the only media like that on my phone.

And so, A, I have way more projects now, or project ideas I should say, than one has any right to have, and B, I will sometimes catch myself [00:10:00] mindlessly scrolling through Pinterest which some of you will be like, “Yeah, preach it, sister. I’m doing the same thing.” Totally understand. So probably I’m probably gonna have to get rid of Pinterest as well because- While I sometimes get great ideas, I just wanna be more mindful about it, right?

I wanna choose my time in a really mindful way. And so I can still do all this stuff on my computer, right? It’s still there, but that requires me to probably get off the couch and walk over to where my computer is, open it up. It just has so many more hurdles to entry that I find I don’t do it anywhere near as much, and that, for me, feels really good.

Everyone gets to decide for themselves what feels good about that. So know that this is no judgment. If scrolling Instagram feels like rest for you, then by all means, that should be what you do

So back to this retreat center. I saw this post on social media by pure luck, and I was really intrigued with the look of the [00:11:00] place, and also I knew the little town, and it was this quaint, very tiny little town, but has so much character. And I thought, “Well, I’m just gonna check this place out.”

And I reached out to the folks at the resort, so I could come and do a tour and consider it for a retreat in the future. That got postponed several times due to, we had massive snow up here and lots of flooding has been happening in the last couple of weeks.

We postponed it for almost a month. But I stayed with it, and I kept wondering if I should just let it go because ultimately, I did believe, that my next retreat center was gonna be someplace in Southern Michigan, someplace that was a little easier to access for people coming from afar.

‘Cause Mackinac Island is a stunning place, and it’s so much fun. But it’s a ways up here, right? Like, You don’t know how many people book and then cancel because they hadn’t realized how far away it was and how challenging it might be for them to get here.

Listen, I’m not trying to scare you away from Mackinac Island [00:12:00] to come to a sewing retreat ’cause it’s amazing. And if you are up for a little road trip, it’s not that far. But if you’re not interested in a road trip and you want things to be a little simpler, it can be a bit of a challenge.

Okay, I’m, like, getting nervous that I’m, like, scaring you away. But even if you’re flying in to some place, say, like Grand Rapids, we’ve got a way to get you up here, so don’t worry too much. Just reach out to me if you have any questions.

Anyway, so I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to do a ret-retreat in this area because that doesn’t really solve my location distance issue. And so I don’t know why I kept holding onto it, but I did. And so I went to see it last week, and I had been thinking a lot before I went about this craving I have for a regular in-person local event.

And whether that’s something where I just create an event that is friends gathering or that’s an event that, where I’m teaching something. And the idea to have this beautiful, magical evening with hors d’oeuvres [00:13:00] and maybe a mocktail, a bit of mindfulness, a guided meditation, some journaling, and we make something Beautiful to take home.

Maybe people come dressed in something that makes them feel extra special. But this beautiful evening, just three hours, where you come, and you’re held, and you can drop into this magical, deep place. And so I had started to ruminate on this idea, and then I went to see this retreat center, and while I think it might have some potential for a retreat for next year, I immediately saw its potential for this gathering that I started to dream of.

And the way that life works, right? Is like I had no idea this is where my mind was gonna go. I had no idea this is where those breadcrumbs were going to lead me. And so then this week, all the details just fell right into place, and I have nearly everything ready to start this and try it out in June.

Like just imagine this [00:14:00] place. I have spent a lot of time imagining what the experience would be like. It’s one of my favorite things to do, especially with my retreats, but also when I have an experience online. But I love imagining what the energy would feel like. So what I imagine is people are coming from the end of their day.

Maybe they have gotten dinner for their kids, and they’re rushing over as soon as their spouse gets home, or maybe they’re coming right from work, and this evening is set aside for them. They have nothing that they have to do other than be here and drop into some mindful depth and they walk into the room, and it’s this beautiful, old building with hardwood floors and a big stone fireplace. There are twinkle lights going, maybe candles on the table. There are delicious hors d’oeuvres and a mocktail. We do a toast to start off the night, and then we [00:15:00] do a little bit of gentle breathwork, and we do either a guided meditation or some kind of an introduction to an idea, and we journal for a little bit. And it’s a way to drop into yourself that you don’t have to orchestrate. You get to just experience. And then after that experience is done, and we’ve shared what we want to share with one another- Then we move on to making something magical, something beautiful.

You know how much I love making things and how valuable it is to make things with your own two hands. One is it’s a nervous system calming activity which is always good for all of us and two, it’s a beautiful way to connect ourselves more deeply to our innate capableness and also to one another.

And so imagine some sort of a small hand sewing project, maybe it’s a little pouch that we put medicinal herbs into. Maybe we do some kind of flower dyeing on silk. [00:16:00] I don’t know, some kind of beautiful small craft that we can do together that people can take home. And then we end with cake because my goodness, who doesn’t want to end with cake?

People would go back into their lives having engaged in beauty. And so all of these ideas have come to me, and then I see this retreat center and it’s exactly what I picture. And so all these details are coming together, and I think I’m gonna start this in June, and this feels like the exact kind of event that I would want to pry myself out of my house for.

Right? Because even though I crave people, once I’m home, it’s sort of a challenge for me to determine how many days in a row I can be home and not leave. And yet being in community with other beautiful souls feeds me on such a deep level. And so how fun is this, right?

The [00:17:00] idea that I want you to take home is that we can change our lives in small ways, it doesn’t take huge, sweeping changes to bring the balance back into our lives. And recalibrating is a lifelong journey. Because what I desire today at 48 years old is probably going to be different than what I desire at 48 and a half years old .

And so go out there today and sit with what’s out of balance and think of what you can bring in to pull it back into balance. And again, it’s a little pinch here, it’s a little nip there. They do not have to be big, changes. They can be small, little elements like taking social media off your phone, that increase your joy in life and give you more space to do the things that you love.

[00:18:00] Because, we all know this, but the things that we love are not going to shove their way onto our schedule. Nobody else is gonna make that happen. We have to make time for them. We have to choose to do the things that we love doing rather than checking out and doing something that doesn’t fulfill us.

Because my life is gonna be spent whether I choose it or not. And There’s always room for magic, right? There’s always room for checking out the retreat center that you’re not even entirely certain why you’re looking at it, only to find that life unfolds in the most beautiful way.

But that’s still a mindful choice. And so I hope you have the most beautiful weekend. I hope you do something just for you that you are craving in that moment. Check in with yourself and bring it to life. All right, dear one, I will see you next time.