“I needed, more than anything else in that moment, to simply disappear.”

Recently, I had the chance to get properly acquainted with gentleness.

I was pushed there, after circumstances forced me to realise that should I stay a minute longer in the situation I’d found myself in, I’d be crippled entirely.

In a time when we are forced to speed up, I was being called to slow all the way down. I listened, and the experience of leaning into gentleness proved to be quite a revelation.

What it revealed most, is how overlooked gentleness can be in its capacity to revive, restore and replenish us so that we can fill our depleted reserves instead of insisting we run ourselves on empty.

I had 4 ½ days to disappear completely.

I took myself to a place that has been my haven, my sanctuary. A humbled abode nestled in the Macedon Ranges in Victoria. I shut myself away and immersed completely in nature – by the wind and rain whipping the land, by tending to the fire and listening to its crackle, and by being wrapped in the soothing arms of quiet.
I needed to be assaulted by softness…

Being in that space, allowed a different kind of insight. It had me catching myself and almost asking how did I want to tread in my actions in this moment – hard or soft?
More so, it allowed me to see, as the pouring of work-related projects started coming through, that you can tread soft, and still fulfill big things. Big things don’t always have to come from a place of grind, force or hardness, and that sometimes those places of vulnerability within us, actually allow us to produce some of our best work.

There’s moments to be insular and there’s moments to move. What we are always being asked in those instances, is recognising the value in deciphering between the two.

When I was slowly coming up for air, and my time away was drawing to an end, I was asked to write a feature story about my experience of being soothed as part of a summer profile on Wellness that was being created by host and owner of the wellness sanctuary I was staying at, Sandy McKinley from Acre of Roses. I wrote it then and there, while I was still immersed and cocooned in gentleness.

In the last few years especially, the idea of soothing has come to in the guise of the most unexpected sources, and what it has revealed, is that when we are attuned on where to look, our sources of soothing and respite, are all around us.

It’s a reminder that leaning into softness can be a most powerful tool to help restore and support our entire wellbeing. 

We all need those places that soothe us. That call us to venture there during urgent times of need. These are the places that bring us back to balance, when the load of life becomes too great.
Thank you Rob & Sandy, for the sanctuary you provide, for the wellness you give, that makes us tender souls walk away with the greatest sense of feeling we’ve just been in the hands of the ultimate well-being sanctuary that soothes us with its embrace wholeheartedly.

For anyone being called towards gentleness, I hope this feature encourages you to inch there slowly.

Read the full story HERE

 PHOTO CREDIT Marnie Hawson