Life in the Eddies

on finding purpose in the storm

Welcome to Slow Folk - a community for gentle hearts and rebellious creatives, thirsty for a slower life in a world obsessed with speed. Notes and reflections from a decade + of life in the Slow Lane. If you’re ready to push back against busy to build a life of purpose and presence-over-perfection - please join me.

Welcome to the Unbusy Revolution.

Well. It’s Friday. I don’t usually write on Friday but here it is, and here I am. Finally.

I haven’t sat down to write in so long, and with good reason. Since mid-winter our lives here have been turned upside down; a season of storms. My mother always said, It never rains, it pours. This has been that. Plenty of that.

But in between the tragic loss and the disorientation of unasked-for change, there has been, as always, More Beautiful Questions to be asked.

Questions like -

• What does it mean to live slowly when life demands too much?

• When the seas of our lives become stormy, do we turn back for shore?

• What does a ‘life of purpose’ look like when we face a sudden and unexpected change?

Because, let’s face it. Slow Living as a concept needs to be able to withstand the demands of real life (not just look pretty on Instagram) if it’s going to be useful.

Unfortunately, Slow Living as it’s depicted in popular culture, especially online, isn’t gonna cut the mustard when things go sideways, as they have for me this year.

Beautiful linen and wildflowers and #cottagecore aren’t enough when grief brings us to our knees. When our sky falls. When we find ourselves wondering how we are going to simply keep putting one foot in front of the other, never mind keep the lights on.

(Now, to be clear - I’m not saying they don’t help at all. Sometimes, something seemingly trivial, like planting flowers while the world burns, is the greatest act of resistance and rebellious joy we can take. It does matter. It’s just not enough.)

What if there’s more to Slow Living than the superficial, aesthetic trappings of social media?

What if Slowness can be a practical tool for navigating the stormy seas of our lives?

What if Slowness could be both a life-preserver and a compass? Or maybe one of those terrifying yellow oxygen masks that explode from the ceiling on airplanes? Or a nourishing meal? A warm hug from a friend? A place to come for clarity and calm and direction in the storm?

What if Slow Living could be all of those things, even, especially, when life looks like anything but those beautiful shiny squares on Instagram?

What if, instead of simply being about beautifully styled homes and weirdly specific activities and baking bread from scratch - Slowness could be something you reach for when things go wrong?

An anchor. An open hand. A place to plant your feet.

How might you use Slowness when things are hard?

And more importantly, how can you embrace Slowness when life feels like too much, too fast - without feeling like you’re failing at Slow Living, too?

First and foremost - we shift our beliefs about what it means to live a Slow life.

If you haven’t already, go read my piece What is Slow Living (Plus 5 Things It’s Not).

If we let go of our limiting beliefs about what Slow Living is supposed to look like, it frees us to truly benefit from this nourishing, life-affirming way of being in the world.

Instead of worrying about whether we’re doing it right or wrong, we are freed to use Slowness as a tool for our overall well-being. To pick and choose what we need in any given moment, to say no thanks to whatever doesn’t serve us and to give ourselves grace.

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You don’t need more shame, judgement or self-doubt when your life is in a stormy season. You need clarity, courage, direction. Slowness can give us that.

Once you’ve let go, you can start using a spirit of Slowness to cultivate more beautiful questions.

To ask yourself - What do I need in this moment? To identify where your life is calling you to soften and surrender and where it is offering you an opportunity to practice grit, determination, perseverance. Simply to be open to the possibility that there ARE opportunities to be had within the storm.

One of my more beautiful questions is - What is this moment trying to teach me? What is there to learn? What can I take away from this steaming dumpster fire that will steel my spirit for the future challenges that will surely come my way?

Slowness during the storm isn’t just another name for toxic positivity.

Slowness - being present and fully alive to the moment we find ourselves in - recognizes and makes space for the fact that sometimes, life is downright shitty. It also allows for the possibility, in fact the likelihood, that life can be both awful and beautiful at the same time.

When my mother was dying from cancer, I was both broken open by grief AND overwhelmed with love, beauty and grace. The worst thing happened and it was also one of the richest, most beautiful experiences of my life. Both can be true.

Practicing this when the stakes are low by embracing Slowness in my daily life was what allowed me to access that truth when the sky fell.

How might your most difficult seasons shift if you were able to be present for both the joy and the sorrow? The unbearable pain and the infinite brightness of being?

Slowness cultivates self-trust.

As I write this, I realize that this, maybe, is the greatest gift of Slowness in my life to date. It didn’t happen overnight, and it wasn’t without great effort. But drop-by-imperceptible-drop it happened. And one day, I simply realized that I had learned to trust myself.

That tiny voice that we all have doesn’t get a chance to speak when we fill our heads with a firehose of outside noise. When we never take time to simply sit, to be with ourselves, our thoughts, our inner wisdom. When we allow distraction, mindless scrolling or the demands of daily life to drown out our own knowing, our sense of ourselves, our truth and our most tender desires, we lose connection with our greatest tools for stormy seas - self-trust.

When we find our tiny boats suddenly tossed about in rough seas, it is natural to instinctively turn our boat round and head for shore, for safety of hearth and harbour.

There’s only one problem. You’re not going that way.

The sticky thing is, if we haven’t taken time to embrace slowness beforehand, we may not even know our true aim.

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don't much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

Alice in Wonderland

And that, sadly, is where so many of us unknowingly find ourselves.

But if we listen, if we create space, even the smallest moments within our hectic lives to take a breath, root our feet to the earth and simply listen, you’re likely to discover - you already know the way.

It may be a whisper, it may be a visceral scream, but if you slow down and listen, your body will tell you.

Trust it.

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And so, although I’m facing rough waters, I refuse to turn my bow towards shore. This is how Slowness manifests even in the most chaotic moments of our lives.

Even though I may be blown off course, I will not give up. I know, in the deepest reaches of my belly, that this, too, serves my purpose.

Does it look like I’m living my purpose from the outside? Probably not. It doesn’t matter. Because I trust myself and I trust my inner compass of Slowness, I can see this detour in the swirling eddies of life for what it is - a necessary journey. A chance to practice my grit, my self-trust, self-compassion, determination.

To recognize that living a life of purpose doesn’t mean that everything we do takes the form of that purpose.

That in reality, a life of purpose - at its core - is built by choosing again and again and again to refuse to turn back to shore. To continue to point our bow towards the unseen horizon of our hopes, dreams and desires. Towards our best selves, our highest point of contribution. To do this tirelessly, to believe that every wave we must crest serves a purpose of its own. Exists for a reason. Has been put in our path for a reason.

To know that regardless of whether we ever reach that distant shore, our gaze never left it.

You will stop fighting the waves when you realize you are the ocean.

-Mike Fields

Stacey Langford is a writer, renegade farmer and slow business mentor living and working in Canada’s Fraser Valley. In 2010 Stacey ditched her cubicle in the city to turn her attention homeward, farm and help others craft a simple life, from scratch.