What this summer taught me about having capacity for living.
Going into my surgery this summer, I had a very clear intention: I wanted to make choices based on what was nourishing.
I knew my body was going to be doing an enormous amount of work behind the scenes, even when I appeared to be doing absolutely nothing. So for those first several weeks, I wanted as many of my resources as possible going toward healing.
Simple enough, right?
Except I quickly discovered that doing what’s nourishing isn’t always the same thing as doing what’s easy, comfortable, or even what I want to do. I know this intellectually, but it’s always different in real time.
And sometimes it meant staring at a dishwasher I was perfectly capable of unloading and deciding that apparently this was now someone else’s problem.
I’ve approached my life this way for a long time. I go to the gym to lift weights because I know that type of movement supports me, even on the days when my couch makes a very compelling counterargument. I meal prep because Future Heidi is much happier when Current Heidi remembers she will eventually need to eat. I make choices all the time that aren’t necessarily nourishing in the moment, but support the bigger life I want to live.
This summer just put the whole thing under a magnifying glass.
I Thought I Was Making Room to Heal
For weeks, healing really was the priority. There was no clever life hack around it. My body had undergone surgery, and a tremendous amount of my available energy needed to go there.
But as I started feeling better, something interesting happened.
I didn’t immediately fill the space back up because I couldn’t.
Slowly, I started noticing what else could live there.
I started collaging again. Reading just for fun. I took naps. I let myself sleep later some mornings instead of rigidly getting up at 6am because I had decided that was the only way to have enough time for myself. I had more energy to reach out to people. Mike and I went to costco on a school night, and I noticed that I wasn’t exhausted by the end of it.
One day I was walking Walter and realized I wasn’t watching the clock.
If you have ever walked a dog who believes every blade of grass contains ground breaking news, you understand the significance of this. 😂
Normally there would be some point where I’d think, Okay buddy, wrap it up. We’ve got places to be.
Instead, I realized we didn’t.
Sniff all you want, Walter.
Somewhere in all these very ordinary moments, I started realizing that what I’d created wasn’t simply more time.
I had more of myself available inside my life.
Maybe This Is What Capacity Is For
I talk about capacity a lot in my somatic work, and it’s easy for that conversation to become about how much we can handle or can’t.
Can I stay present with this feeling? Can I tolerate discomfort? Can I move through stress without becoming completely overwhelmed? Can I hold a boundary when someone doesn’t like it?
Those things matter.
I’ve become increasingly interested in another side of capacity:
Do I have enough of myself available for the life I actually want to live?
Because I don’t want to build capacity simply so I can tolerate increasingly difficult circumstances. I don’t want to become so resilient that I can squeeze three more things onto my calendar and call it growth.
I want capacity for living.
I want energy for my relationships. For creativity. For my work. For walking around my neighborhood and talking to people. For making homemade eggnog with my neighbors because apparently that’s something we’re discussing now.
I want enough room to follow an impulse that says, I’d like to know this person better, instead of immediately calculating whether I have the bandwidth for one more thing.
I want Walter to sniff.
None of these things are particularly impressive on paper. But that’s sort of the point.
A life is made out of these things.
Having Time Isn’t the Same as Having Room
Before surgery I had room, and did plenty of things I wanted to do. I had hobbies. I saw friends. I spent time with Mike. I walked my dogs. I rested.
This summer, I started feeling it in my body in a more expanded way.
I could feel it in the softening of my tissues. I wasn’t being carried through the day by the pace of everything around me. I wasn’t always thinking about what was next or how much time I had before I needed to move on.
Instead, it felt like I could lock arms with life and move at a pace where I could experience it. Drop into it. Into the yumminess of it.
You can have dinner with someone while part of you is already preparing for tomorrow. You can take the dog for a walk while watching the clock. You can technically have an evening off while mentally carrying six things that still need your attention.
The activity is there.
But are you?
That’s a different question.
This summer gave me a very literal reason to stop carrying so much. There was a surgery date. There was time off. There were physical limitations. There were things I simply could not do yet, regardless of whether my brain had some very persuasive arguments about why we should be able to.
I didn’t have to conceptualize spaciousness.
I had to live it.
And in that experience, I started discovering what spaciousness was actually for.
The Experiment Now Is Bringing My Life Back In
I’m not interested in living permanently in a post-surgery bubble. I love my work. I love my clients. I love teaching. I want community. I want travel, time for creativity, deep and meaningful relationships, dinners, projects and all the things that require energy from me.
The experiment now isn’t How little can I do?
How do I welcome more into my life without losing the spaciousness I’ve created?
That’s a very different relationship with capacity.
It means I’m paying attention not only to whether I can do something, but to what doing it asks of me. I’m noticing what gives energy back. I’m letting my schedule have edges. I’m asking for clearer participation in all my relationships so I can show up fully for.
I’m also discovering that support doesn’t always mean adding something.
Sometimes support is removing something I no longer need to hold.
That has become one of the bigger lessons of this season for me. My calendar looks a little sparse compared to what it used to look like.
And yet my life feels incredibly full.
This Is Containment
This is where Containment in the Rhythm of Engagement is becoming much more tangible for me.
Containment isn’t about keeping everything tightly managed so nothing spills over. It’s about creating enough support, structure, and space for what matters to actually have somewhere to live.
Sometimes that’s a boundary. Sometimes it’s rest. Sometimes it’s asking for help, changing the structure of your work, protecting an afternoon, feeding yourself before you’re starving, or recognizing that an empty square on the calendar is allowed to just… stay empty.
Revolutionary, I know.
Support gives us resources. Our edges help protect them. Capacity gives us more room to participate in the whole messy, interesting experience of being alive.
Maybe that’s the part I’ve understood differently this summer.
I thought I was protecting my resources because I needed to heal.
I was.
I was also discovering what becomes possible when all of me isn’t already accounted for.
There is room for play.
There is room for connection.
There is room for curiosity.
There is room to hear myself.
There is room to change my mind.
There is room for Walter to conduct a complete forensic investigation of a shrub.
There is room for me in my own life.
Right now, that feels like a pretty good definition of capacity.
Not how much can I hold?
How much of me is available for living?
