Same-state experiences: Re-roofing The Old Layers Shed
I’ve been sharing on social media photos of reroofing my old chicken shed. Where I cut out the old damaged and rotten wood of the old roof, replaced it with new wood and covered it with a breathable membrane and then a tarpaulin as the weather changed and the work needed to pause …
Re-covering the sheds with bitumen felt was one of my favourite jobs to do on a warm, sunny day … though this time I am using corrugated bitumen sheets that I bought 6 years ago.
Six years ago I left work just a month before the first lockdown here in the UK and had many plans … yet life took me in another direction and now I find myself picking up those plans again - with a very different perspective, more substantial inner resources, as well as these external ones I bought in preparation all that time ago. Even after 6 years in storage those bitumen sheets are still perfectly functional, if a little cosmetically flawed. We had what felt like a heatwave, perfect weather to work with bitumen as it softens and become more malleable. The shed was once for my laying flock of about 80 chickens … I also had a breeding flock, but that’s another story …
… and so I feel it’s quite apt to re-name it ‘The Old Layers Shed’.
It feels curious to me that after the year of Snake, which was often referred to as releasing old layers - removing external structures - that this then enables the expansion of the year of the Horse - more room to grow … which loosens what is more deeply buried within to rise up and be seen, witnessed and dissolved.
As I worked on the shed roof I found that my original plan for the ridge wasn’t going to work and so I simply re-orientated.
I surprise myself at times like this, for I remember how I may have responded 10 years, even 5 years ago … and yet it’s like the pathways to those responses no longer exist.
As I watched myself simply accepting a situation meaning an extra days work, albeit the weather was glorious which helped, I noticed I didn’t judge, criticise or condemn myself - neither did I push to finish. I took regular breaks for food, drink and other things so I could move my body differently.
When I got tired I noticed the faint thread of a familiar feeling arising wanting to find ways to feel sorry for myself because it hadn’t gone to plan, was taking so long etc. and I caught it, observed it - checked what I needed to do to complete for the day and accepted that I would finish in the morning.
And that is self-care - knowing not to push through that tiredness and pick up an old thread only to strengthen it, re-establish it and later disappoint myself.
To be honest I surprised myself with the level of calmness and lack of need to go down these rabbit holes of old patterns and programmes. And it is times like these when we return to the same state where such self-sabotaging traits once flourished, that we realise how far we’ve come.
I remember a phrase from a poem, or piece of prose, on experiencing kindness while in grief as being like salt dissolving in broth … though my experience reverses the application of this analogy - how the awareness of what was, that once felt so tenacious and all consuming dissolves …
… and the contrast of the memory serves to enrich and enhance the experience of flavour, while the sting no longer bites or lingers.
After the year of the Snake, much has been said about the year of the Horse and the speed, though little about the stamina, the power, the rootedness, the stability …
… the pure presence that drums up memories through the layers from the bedrock, bringing them to the light of day with the gift of seeing just how far we’ve come, how much we’ve grown …
And then to let them go, dissolving … leaving our life warmer and a little sweeter with the gratitude for the ride.
with much Love,
from my Heart to yours,
Tania Aurora White Crow