Late for Life

I have a client who simply tells me how late she will be for each of our appointments.

If I have something on the other end, I let her know the hard stop. If not, I simply do the flow of my day until she's ready, we do the full length of our appointment, and then I do the rest of the flow of my day.

We've been working together for years, but that certainly would not be true if I had engaged in any type of power struggle over the timing of appointments.

In fact, the flowy nature of our timing has been an intentional enactment of devotion to her experience. It has been an integral part of our container's service to her. We have created space for that flow in order that she might devote to her inner nature, which has always struggled with quantifiable time.

She's struggled all her life to be ready on time.

If we accept the cultural value system, she's got a problem, she's being problematic.

If we enter an understanding of primal nature, society has a problem, and this canary stopped singing.

Why do we even HAVE this canary if we aren't going to listen to its silence?

If we question the cultural value system, we ask,

What is struggle?

What is readiness?

What is time?

What does the culture value about struggle to encourage and require it?

What does it mean to be "ready," and via whose standards? What type of outfit do I need, how clean must I be, how available for the unexpected and unwelcome?

What does it mean to be "on time" and why does it matter? Is the reason real, engineered, or imagined? Is the consequence harmful? Is the threat emotional or material? Do I fear the consequence or the threat?

When she told me she struggled to be on time, the first thing I offered was that this did not need to be a struggle.

We removed the struggle with sweet boundaries. She will tell me her timing preferences, and I will be real-world accommodating of them, sharing my physical and emotional limits.

I genuinely do not feel charge around her lateness, but I have had to assure her that I am responsible for my emotional limits as well, that I will tell her if my "patience" begins to run out.

(She imagines I am being patient and tolerant of her often. It's cute because I fucking LOVE HER and all of how she is, but if what she can receive is mere patience or tolerance for now, that's good too.)

I don't recall a time this has ever presented a real world threat. In fact, I've allowed this practice to inform my work on a few fractals, and I notice utter magic happen in my scheduler.

Clients will reach out within a few minutes of each other wanting to switch spots, to the point where when the first text comes in I let it sit for a moment to tell me how to answer it. The answer is always forthcoming.

The nature of humans, the nature of the feminine, has offerings for us through her BEINGNESS. If we attempt to shape her beingness to suit our system, we reject a profound gift. If we shape the system to honor her beingness, the gift infuses the entire system.