Unhurried

on a Tuesday morning

The front door clicks shut, and the house falls quiet. My husband is walking to work, my kids are already at school.

I sink into the midcentury green couch that you see all over coffee shops these days, sip my coffee, scroll Substack.

Exhale.

I pause on my friend’s meditation. Mindful Mother #4: Heart Meditation - by Kristina Tucker

She promises 8 minutes to center, release, and receive.

Why not?

Normally, I shy away from meditation because I’m scared that in the stillness I’m somehow going to be found out, or found lacking.

This Tuesday morning, though, curiosity beat out fear.

I put down my coffee cup, and pressed play.

She led us in a breath prayer. With a tiny, niggling doubt that I should be spending my time doing something more productive, I chose to breathe in patience, breathe out urgency.

Breathe in: patience

Breathe out: urgency

My shoulders released, my fists relaxed. As I settled in to the natural rhythm of my breath, I was overwhelmed with a sense of love and peace.

Aly, you deserve this unhurried time to pour into yourself, I thought. And for once, OCD or my inner critic or whatever you want to call it, didn’t object.

I believed it. Yes, I deserve to be unhurried.

Unhurried. I don’t think I’ve ever thought of myself in that way, or even aspired to be unhurried.

I always thought a lack of hurry equals a lack of hustle equals lack of passion, intention.

Unhurried and complacent were practically synonyms in my mind. Both bad words.

But when I think of my favorite people, what I love about them isn’t their hustle or hurry, but their presence, their ability to slow down, to live at the pace of their own limitations. I don’t find them complacent at all, but deeply attuned to the things that matter.

Can I be that presence for myself?

Can I model that presence for my children?

As I let myself pause and lean in to Kristina’s words, another word popped up for me: precious.

Something precious (myself, my life, my children, and even my artistic darlings) cannot be hurried or hustled into existence. Something precious deserves time and space. The chance to develop at its own pace.

When the video ended, I stayed on the couch a while longer, soaking up the silence, sipping my coffee, to do list forgotten.

How much trust does unhurried require?

At the very least it requires a separation of accomplishment from identity, from worth. I don’t think unhurried means a lack of motion, but more so a commitment to not rush through the motions. To choose to be at peace with my pace. To not fill the empty space with busyness just to avoid boredom or frustration. To fight against the greed of always wanting more boxes to check. To let the paint dry between projects.

Can I do that?

I am learning.

I think about that Tuesday morning a lot. When I am tempted to manufacture urgency to feel important, when that nagging fear tells me I should be further along, my purpose and days more defined, I come back to that breath prayer:

Breathe in: patience

Breathe out: urgency

And even though my kids never saw me that Tuesday morning, sipping coffee and going slow, I think it matters.

I hope I can be one of those special people for them: able to be present and slow down, at peace with my pace, deeply attuned to the things that matter, unhurried.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Peace."