Devotion over consistency

The trunk of a large tree with a long split up the middle. It’s Autumn and the trees are barely there, some yellow.

I always intend to show up with my writing, with my newsletter, on social media consistently, and I started off this year with this real desire to do this in a way I hadn’t before. As my children grow I'm grateful that I can see glimmers of new capacity and I wanted to lean into that.

Then I caught flu for the second time within a two months. It completely floored me, I was in bed for a week, I'm now coming into week 4 and slowly I feel like I'm returning. The virus has lingered and I can feel it, in my body, in how I feel, in my ability to be fully present to my work, my family and everything else I hold.

And this is it, I may have the desire to be consistent, and it is still a desire. But I am human, and very far from consistent. I cycle, I'm impacted by the seasons, the weather, the food I eat, motherhood, how well I sleep at night, what's going on in my life and the world (and there is so much going on in the world) - so much impacts.

As always it's the nuance in the words we use, it's the undertones that we need to listen to. For me consistency has meant that I show-up no matter what the cost, that I need to be available all of the time, that I need to push in some way, it's also been tied with success, in order to be successful then I have to be consistent.

This I no longer believe to be true. I am consistent, but in a different way to what I've known consistency to mean. I am dedicated to a few things in my life - my family, my friends, my relationships, my work - actually more than a few things, I care deeply. And I continuously show-up in this way - for this goodness, for the necessity. It may not look like the definition we're used to of consistency, but I'm very much here, I am dedicated to this life and lifetime, and to my work. You could call it devotion.

I love unpicking the meanings of what we've been conditioned to understand about life, about the way we live, and even who we are. There's so much undoing that needs to be done. So I’ll let consistency and devotion sit side by side as I return to my writing, as I return to my beloved newsletter.

Originally written for Sunday Soul (my newsletter) on 23rd February 2025. Published here in November.