Claiming ease doesn’t have to be difficult, but that doesn’t mean it is always easy either.
You see, ease is different than easy.
When you do something with ease, you are actively choosing to be led by your intuition and feel your way forward. When you choose to move through life with ease, you are choosing to keep things simple… and that’s not always easy to do.
One of my favorite television shows has a character in it who is often caught up in drama, and she feels her emotions deeply and passionately. She is an artist. In one episode, she is asked by a fellow show character about a particular issue where she would likely find herself in an overwhelming, emotional, and chaotic situation, and her response always makes me laugh deeply and heartily because it speaks to my soul. She responds by saying, “I have this thing for chaos.”
One day, I realized that I am this character. Everyone’s life has a certain level of chaos every day, but in my life, it often tends to be more than just mild. And one day, amidst the intense challenges of the pandemic I watched the episode of that television show where this scene played out. I was expecting my seventh child (yes, I have seven children), and I began to reflect on this character’s response and how it resonated with me.
It wasn’t until I really began to reflect deeply on the persistent presence of more than mild chaos in my life that I gained some valuable insight. As I said, I am this character. I have a thing for chaos, but I really leaned in and asked myself, “What is it about chaos that serves me?”
I used to express that I couldn’t stand chaos and that it was bad for me. Because, based on a personality profile I had taken one time, chaos was deemed not helpful for my productivity; yet, here I was finding myself in the midst of various degrees of chaos every day of my life.
However, looking back, I can see that when I was in the midst of a certain level of challenge and a certain level of chaos, I would actually perform my best. Interesting! So, to some degree, I realized I needed a certain level of chaos in my life to challenge me. Since having this insight, I have come to peace with my attraction to chaos, much like my favorite TV character, and I have chosen to embrace it. I just didn’t know how much I needed to embrace it until it was time for my seventh child to be born.
Recently, my family and I went through an incredibly intense experience surrounding the birth of my youngest. To be brief, his birth did not go as we had hoped and planned, and when things went wrong, they went very, very wrong. He almost didn’t make it, and my life was on the line, too.
I was able to recover, but my son was in critical condition.
My son spent eight full weeks in the NICU of the hospital he was born in, and within the first couple of weeks we received a phone call that delivered a bad report of his progress. The bottom line was we had one option to choose from that could potentially allow our son to make it beyond that day, and they weren’t sure it would work. We were given the option to either try the suggested procedure or to not choose it and possibly lose our son.
I cried. I prayed. And I leaned into myself, my intuition; I listened, and I felt. It wasn’t easy, but I was able to find ease because I felt my way forward. I claimed ease.
We opted to move forward with the procedure and see if he would make it past the day. We immediately went to see him in the hospital. We prayed over him and touched him as much as we were allowed to touch him, and we waited to see how he would do.
Through that experience, especially in the first several weeks, I had to actively choose how to move forward. I had to feel my way forward with every breath, every thought, every prayer through the minutes, the hours, and the days. After that soul-challenging day, he improved day-by-day until he was finally able to come home and be with us.
Even now with him home, it is still challenging. People will comment that they do not know how I do it – having seven children, running my own business, continuing my education, playing ice hockey, staying active, and so on. But let’s be honest, life is chaotic. Life with seven children is challenging. Life with any children is challenging. Parenting is challenging. Adulting is challenging. Life. Is. challenging! We all have a certain level of chaos that we live in day-in and day-out, and that level fluctuates throughout the days, weeks, months, and years of our lives. And, it’s not always easy.
As a mother to seven amazing and energetic children, who are all eleven years down to six months of age at the time I am writing this, I am constantly faced with overwhelming emotional, mental and physical challenges. But life is a beautiful, chaotic mess that is full of challenges and blessings and it is not always easy; but when you choose, actively choose, to move forward in life by simply connecting to your intuition, your inner self, your bodymind… you feel your way forward and you move forward with ease.
The choice becomes quite simple: claim ease.
MARIELLE SHOFFSTALL
Marielle Shoffstall, BodyMind Method© Coach and Embodied Wellness Practitioner
After nearly two decades of working in the wellness industry, Marielle is currently transitioning her mainly massage and bodywork-based business into a location-independent embodied coaching and wellness business.
She uses the BodyMind Method©, along with her many other credentials and insights from personal experiences to support her clients to connect more deeply with their bodies, improve their flexibility, and intuitively move forward through life’s many challenges with ease and confidence.
Marielle is the proud mom of seven beautiful and energetic children. She holds two degrees from Lake-Sumter State College in Psychology and Sports and Fitness and is currently furthering her Psychology education with a degree at the University of Central Florida.
She is a licensed massage and bodywork therapist, a therapeutic yoga and movement practitioner, a certified personal trainer with NASM, and has a wide background of experience, both personal and professional, in the realm of the birth arts.
Marielle lives with her husband, seven children, two cats and two dogs in sunny Central Florida.
