Go Slow To Go Fast

On listening to the trees and trusting where the leaves fall...

Hi there! I’m Hunter. I’m a mother of a two-year-old daughter, married to my British husband, and we live in Northwest Florida along the beautiful white, sandy beaches. I share about sacred & slow living as well as my own personal journey in being a mother and a creative. Make sure to subscribe to have my posts delivered directly to your inbox. Thank you for being here.

I’ve been watching the trees around my house lately. We live on the second and third floors surrounded by longleaf pines and red maples. Most days I feel as if we’re in a treehouse, observing the nature all around us, and leaving the life below alone.

Some of these trees have begun the process of turning from a rich green to a light green, to a golden yellow, to a vibrant orange, to a deep red, to a dark brown, to falling ever so slowly from the branches onto the floor, turning into dust or being whisked away by the wind. I watch as my daughter smiles gleefully seeing the leaves fall, and then runs to ‘stomp’ on them. This time of year, it feels like we are engulfed by the trees. Everywhere we go, everywhere I turn, they wrap their flowing limbs around us and say goodbye as they drift into winter.

But what’s most magnificent about these trees is how they go through this pattern of birth, growth, life, and death, all to be reborn again the next season. They don’t rush through this process, but they embrace it. They know when the weather begins to change that it’s time for them to shed their leaves and begin the hibernation of winter.

I think in life, we think to get somewhere we have to push, fight, and go as fast as we can. We have four years in college before we are sent out into the world and expected to bring in money doing exactly what we’ve studied within the year. We’re expected to meet and fall in love with our person quickly out of college, and then a few years after that we have to start having kids. While of course, it’s great if you want that, I think a lot of that experience is outside pressure that we are encountered by our culture and loved ones.

I was talking to one of my oldest friends the other day and she was telling me how everyone is pressuring her to have kids even though she doesn’t want them right now. I then shared my own experience of everyone asking me, “When’s the second one coming?” And I realized in that moment that there is always something MORE to strive for. There is always somewhere else to be than exactly where we are. It’s infused in our culture, in our communities, in our lifestyle, and in our programming.

We are told to never settle, and that to get what we want, we have to work hard.

But what would it feel like to take a radically different approach?

Instead of pushing, what if we just released it? What if we took our feet off the gas and rather than focusing on striving for something, we focused on embodying it?

“Embodiment can be simply defined as living life informed through the sense experience of the body.” - Ann Saffi Biasetti

For me, embodiment has always been in direct correlation with the speed at which I am moving through life. When I slow down, take in my surroundings, pause my lived experience for the benefit of gratitude and understanding, and therefore embody those experiences, I find that whatever it was I was longing for in life either simply disappears, or arrives within my field at an alarmingly fast rate.

Essentially, I go slow to go fast.

So often when I tell people about slow living, they immediately associate it with ‘laziness’ or ‘getting nothing done’ or ‘just being okay with where you’re at’ and for me, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Slowing down is what allows me to speed up, to move through life with a sense of ease and from a fully aligned state.

The reason I believe there is so much resistance around the concept of s l o w is because it requires a strong level of trust in ourselves. When we take our feet off the gas, we are letting go of the reins of control we have around our life (or our perceived level of control), and instead turn into a receiving state.

From this state, we manifest those dreams, desires, subconscious beliefs & outcomes. If we are rushing through life, outwardly expressing ourselves and responding to what comes into our field absentmindedly, it might feel like we are in total control, but in all actuality, we are only reacting to the experiences that present themselves to us.

I am the first to say that trusting myself is incredibly hard. I am actually the poster child of not trusting myself. However, I have started to truly reflect on how my story plays out when I am in a state of control versus a state of trust. A state of receiving rather than expending, and finding that getting clear on the outcome I want my life to have requires getting quiet to allow the unfolding to happen. To hear my inner knowing, and to find what I truly want rather than what I’m absorbing outside of myself.

So I’ll listen to the trees. I will watch the way they flow and sway, the way they receive, and I’ll trust that when the time is right, I will know the next perfect step. It’s about slowing down to go fast, revving up to race off, and pulling back the bow to shoot the arrow. When we keep our energy inside, it’s a way of being ready to catapult into the next right thing.

Next time you want to make a change in life, try slowing down first. Get clear on the outcome. Sit with the feeling, and see what emerges.

Then, when you’re ready, trust that your leaves will fall just as they are meant to.

To make space for a magical new beginning that will blossom in its place.