REST
When Rest is Anything But Idle
Lessons Learned From Dormant Fields
In the wake of my divorce, I did what people do and I jumped into another relationship. After all, I had the blessing of my divorce attorney, who upon telling me my divorce was final, told me I was free to date and move on with my life. The man I became involved with was someone I met on a dating app. He was recently divorced as well. In hindsight, we were probably both desperately in need of time to heal. While I can’t speak for him, I know I was.
My marriage crumbled nine months prior to our first tentative messages and about a year prior to our meeting in person. The summer that my marriage and all that I thought my life was fell apart I had to go to grad school and teach museum classes, be a mom, friend, a functioning adult. I needed to keep an even keel for my kids, and for me. I didn’t think I could be the mom, woman, or friend that I was expected to be while I properly mourned the end of my marriage, so I didn’t. I was afraid that if I was, I would lose what little I had left of the life I knew. Sure, I cried. I was angry. I ate too much, and then when I couldn’t stomach food, barely ate anything. I stuffed my emotions, and in the end, my emotions did what they do, and approximately two years after it all fell apart, they made it clear that they needed to be reckoned with. They flooded me and I was left a puddle on the floor while I lost hold of the strands of the relationship I thrust myself into post-divorce.
I tell this story because I remember a conversation I had within that relationship, that stays with me still. He and I spent a decent chunk of our time together driving the 70 or so miles between our towns, through rolling Iowa farmland. Together, we witnessed summer growth, fall harvest, winter rest, and finally spring planting. I remember once commenting on how sad the fields seemed in the winter. Covered in snow, bleak, desolate, wind-whipped, harsh. He commented that he didn’t see it that way, that perhaps they were just sleeping.
Perhaps they were just sleeping.
A shift. Resting. Healing. Absorbing. Transforming.
That relationship ultimately ended inappropriately spectacular form, as one does between two very broken humans who haven’t properly healed. Still, I’m grateful, for that conversation and the shift that came as a result.
It was after that conversation that I began to look at the fields differently. I have spent a total of six years living in rural parts of Iowa. I’ve had a lot of time to observe the subtle changes that happen in that landscape. It isn’t as dramatic as a forest full of big trees and lots of in your face wildlife. Farm fields also don’t hold the same beauty as prairies with their diversity of flora and fauna. Farm fields, especially those that grow corn and soybeans, are by design, not diverse, boring even. Still, they are places where life resides, and like all living things, require rest. During my time living in rural Iowa, I spent a lot of time sitting with the cycles and seasons of the fields and because what we witness in the world is ultimately what we witness in ourselves reflected back, (a lesson I learned several years after that conversation,) I came to wonder what that rest really looked like. I imagined all of the microbes beneath the soil's surface working frantically, like Santa’s elves, preparing the soil for the next big show.
Do farm fields dream when they rest? Or, do they send their focus inward and focus on the work of preparing themselves, digesting, absorbing, transforming for the next season. I would like to think that is very much the case.
I’ve since come to realize that those moments of idleness, stillness, quiet, are usually anything but idle. It is perhaps in those moments when we allow ourselves to feel, and ultimately heal, that our greatest capacity for growth resides. I remember friends coming to me during the year I was navigating the implosion of my marriage, offering to watch my kids, or help in some way. I was too proud, or perhaps too fearful, that they would witness me falling apart, it would be too much, and offers of help would cease, so I seldom accepted their help.
There is tremendous strength and, love, in honoring yourself enough to step away, take the quiet moments, and time to heal. When I hit the two-year post implosion of my marriage mark, the emotions did what they do and backed up on me, I was forced to take some time to deal with them. Fortunately, that happened during the summer, and my being a teacher, had time to sit with the emotions (and a gifted mental health professional) and unpack them. Through that process, I learned the importance of honoring emotions as they arise. It was a powerful lesson to learn. Consequently, when the shitshow known as teaching through a pandemic came to a pause last summer, and I was gifted a broken ankle, it meant time to sit and really process what it was to live and teach through the first year and a half of a pandemic, I chose to process the emotions rather than numb them with an exorbitant amount of Netflix, and maybe a little chill.
In the five (almost six) years since the implosion of my marriage, and then avoidance of feeling the feelings I have come to realize that even if friends and life beyond your immediate focus move on when you take time to heal, those that love you will indeed welcome you back. They will probably even offer to stop by or bring food, and they will definitely support you as you navigate these moments of pause. Those that truly love you will celebrate your willingness to honor yourself, and the bravery that it takes to vocalize your need for rest.
In Katherine May’s book, Wintering, she details these moments and their importance. I read May’s book during the seasonal winter of 2021. At the time I felt like I was in the midst of personal winter as well, and this book came along at the perfect time. In reading it, I came to realize how normal, even crucial, times of retreat are.
In the wake of my divorce I feared that if I honored myself, and gave myself time to process, and grieve, it would result in my support system abandoning me. I’ve since come to realize that my friends, my support system, wanted me to take the time. They weren’t going to go anywhere, in fact, they probably would have circled the wagons and held me through it.
I had been through similarly traumatic events in the past. When my dad died, again at the start of summer, several years prior to my divorce, (this shit always happens in May or June for me) pausing felt appropriate. Expected. Even pressured in a way, like I needed to hurry up and get through it before the start of the next school year. It was an uncomfortable place to be.
The implosion of a marriage was different. It was angry and full of rage. It felt to a degree like I should be ready to move on, walk away, fly, celebrate my freedom. In reality, I needed to mourn the death of a life that wasn’t meant to be first.
The fields have taught me that there is no way to rush through healing. Healing, rest, transformation, takes time, and the more you try to force it, the longer it takes. Soil that hasn’t been properly tended to cannot possibly produce good results. The same is true for us. A heart that hasn’t been properly helped through the healing process remains broken.
Sleep is medicine. Rest is healthy.
I have come to this place, courtesy of my friends the fields, where I recognize when I need a moment to pause. It feels like the top of a breath, amplified like I’ve taken in all I can at the moment and I need to pause before I exhale.
In May’s book she emphasizes that as important as it is to recognize these moments of personal winter, it is equally important to understand that spring eventually comes, and when it does we will emerge, transformed, by the work we witnessed.
Finding spring for me has been a slow process, not completely unlike my midwestern fields, where spring sometimes stretches for months. I had found my post-divorce spring when the pandemic forced us collectively into a period of rest. I witnessed a false spring or two, and finally feel as though I am emerging, like the first few bits of growth I am tentative but strong. I am so full of light as I learn to command this new space. And? It is indeed a beautiful space.
© Sarah Backstrom 2022
