Hey {{First Name | there}},

This past weekend, my family got out on the Upper Iowa River. I planned the whole trip last minute on a Wednesday. Booked the campground, booked the river trip, and told my husband after the fact.

He was surprised and said, “Thank you!”

I felt called to the river.

But making the decision felt like a gamble. I've been recovering from acute Lyme disease. I’m still on antibiotics. My experience with attacked my central nervous system, which takes longer to recover from. I’m supposed to be resting.

But my reality is that I have two young boys. And I knew that staying home, trying to rest, and managing them with nowhere to go was also an energy cost. A draining one, that feels pretty lose/lose.

What I was gambling on was that getting out, being in nature, sharing an adventure as a family, would fill us up more than it depleted us. That the trade-off was worth it.

So I booked it.

Except when I looked online, there were no tent sites available. Just one RV spot. I almost just took it and hoped for the best. But the fear of getting all the way up there and then being turned away made me call instead. The woman on the phone said she couldn't do the RV site for tenting, but she had an overflow tent site available. You couldn't book it online, but she'd do it for me right now if I wanted.

I wanted.

Then I called about the river trip. She wasn't sure if they’d be running trips. The river had been low. She'd have to call me back the next day. When she did: the river was a go, but no kayaks available. Only canoes.

I'd been picturing kayaks. We've never been in a canoe together as a family.

I said yes.

I booked that trip knowing that on Monday I had a meeting that could change the shape of my work life. A major contract I'd been building toward for months. The decision on whether to hire me or not was being made on Friday. Monday's meeting was just when I'd find out.

So I spent the weekend on a river knowing the answer already existed somewhere. I just didn't have it yet.

And I thought: the decision is made whether I go camping or stay home. Whether I rest or adventure. Whether I spend the weekend anxious or present. The river was already moving. I might as well be on it.

Then Monday morning (today) came. I ran my morning in good energy and taking care of things as needed. I set my intentions around receiving whatever came, trusting that I was held, that my needs were met, that I didn't need to control the outcome because the outcome was already decided. I felt ready.

And then I opened my laptop and saw an email from my contact saying, “sorry I missed you, please reschedule if you'd still like to meet.”

I was shocked.

I checked my calendar and saw my mistake. I had written down and planned my morning around the meeting’s end time (?!?!?). I missed it completely.

I emailed an apology and rescheduled for the next day. He wrote back gracious, professional, the door still open.

But I was flooded with shame.

This meeting has been so important to me. How could I miss it?! Like what in the literal f***?!

It’s one thing to miss a meeting because a kid gets sick, or a storm coms through and messes up the WiFi. That's easy to release.

This, though, felt like a siren going off in my head.

This was not an act of God. This was my mistake. Something I could have avoided. Something I should have controlled. And the fact that I messed it up brought up a lot of questions for myself.

That kind that pulled me right back to the center of causation.

What have I done? What does this mean? Am I sabotaging myself?

That's when the river came back to me.

I've spent the last year doing a lot of work on nervous system regulation through somatic practices. This has included, among other things, a lot of breathwork, intention setting an visualization practices. Within these practices there is often a whole framework that says: when you're open and receptive, good things come. And I believe it. I've experienced it.

But I've also been sitting with a question underneath all of it. What happens when hard things come anyway? What do we do with that?

I’ve never been satisfied with answers people have given this question. And many ignore it completely. But I didn’t have a better answer myself.

So, like many, I’ve oscillated between believing in the power of expansion and then feeling guilt and shame when the contraction hits.

The river was calm and clear.

We put the canoe in and mostly floated. Barely had to paddle. The water did most of the work. I was prepared for it to be hard, and mostly it wasn't. It was just beautiful.

Limestone bluffs. Colonies of bank swallows flying in and out of their burrows, while little babies peeping their heads out. Fish darting around as we glided past them.

Every so often the river changed. Little rapids where we had to actually paddle and the canoe rocked. Obstacles in the water that my husband and I had two different ideas about which direction to go. Shallow spots where we scraped bottom and had to get out and drag.

And then you're back on the calm river.

What I kept noticing was this: the logs were already there before we arrived. The shallow spots, the rapids, the bends. All of it was already there. The river was already moving at the pace it was moving. We weren't controlling any of that. We could paddle to steer a little, correct our direction, slow down or speed up slightly.

But the river was the river.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

What we can actually influence and what was already in motion before we show up.

One of my first thoughts when I got sick from the Lyme disease, before I even knew what it was, was that I'd done something to cause it. I'd just done a deep breathwork session, gone back into birth trauma, and my body responded hard. I thought: I did this to myself. I went too deep, too fast, and now my body is paying for it.

Except Lyme doesn't work that way.

It was already in my body. Three to thirty days before symptoms show, they say. The tick, the bacteria, the whole thing already happening before I ever started processing that stuff. I didn’t cause the sickness.

The river was already moving.

Here's the tension I've been wrestling with.

I do believe that how I show up matters. That there's something real in the practices. The breathwork, the intention setting, the nervous system regulation. I've experienced it. When I'm open and receptive and flowing, good things come and I meet them well. I think it’s life changing.

But there's a trap in that framework if you're not careful.

If your openness and receptivity are what bring good things in, then what does it mean when hard things happen? When you get sick? When you miss a meeting you've been preparing for? When the river gets rocky?

The trap is symmetry.

If I created the good things by being in the right frequency, then I must have created the bad things too. The Lyme disease becomes something I manifested. The mistake becomes my subconscious sabotaging my own abundance. Every obstacle becomes evidence that I'm blocked, off-path, not healed enough, not open enough, not ready.

That is an exhausting way to live inside a framework that was supposed to be liberating.

What I think is actually true, what the river showed me, is that it doesn't work symmetrically. Openness and receptivity help you meet what's coming. They don't control what comes. They don't explain every obstacle. The rapids were already there. The shallow spots were already there. The Lyme was already in my body.

What my practices give me is not control. It's capacity. The ability to stay in the boat when it rocks. To not catastrophize the rapids. To paddle when I need to and float when I can. To still see the beauty and enjoy the water even when the kids are losing it in the back of the canoe.

It helps me meet whatever comes my way. The good things and the hard things.

The river is going where it's going. I get to choose how I'm in it.

A friend of mine has told me more than once that she thinks I'm a powerful manifester. And every time she says it, something in me twinges.

I've been trying to figure out why.

I think it's because I don't actually believe that's what's happening.

When I get a vision, when something pulls at me, when I feel called toward something the way I felt called toward that river, I don't think I'm drawing it in. I think I'm seeing something that was already there. Something true about who I am and what I'm made for, catching the light for a moment.

That's not manifestation. That's foresight.

The difference matters to me. Because manifestation puts me at the center of causation. If I can draw in the good things, then I'm also responsible for the hard ones. The Lyme. The mistake. The rocky stretch of river. It all becomes about me and what I did or didn't do.

Foresight is different. It's not that I'm creating the river. It's that sometimes, when I'm quiet enough and honest enough with myself, I can see a little further down it. I can sense where I'm meant to go. And then I can do what I can to get there, trusting that the desire itself is pointing me somewhere real.

The river is still the river. I'm just learning to read it.

Near the end of our trip, the kids fell apart. They were hot and tired and done, and we didn't know how much further we had. My husband and I were paddling with haste and I worried that all the fun we had was going to be overshadowed by a meltdown that just might tip us all in the water.

And then we saw the double bridges. The landmark we'd been told to look for that meant we were almost at the end.

Both boys fell asleep almost at the same moment. I think the feeling of hope that we were almost there made them feel safe enough to relax and give into sleep. My older son leaned against the side of the canoe. My younger one curled up on my lap.

My husband started to say something about the nap timing being off, that our youngest wou;dn’t sleep in the car and now he'd be thrown off for the rest of the day. I understood the logic. I've made that comment myself a hundred times.

But I just said, “Trevor, look at this.”

This last quiet bend of the river. Forested on both sides. Still. My kids asleep in a canoe, which I never imagined would happen. Me, still carrying Lyme in my body, holding a sleeping three year old on the water.

It was beautiful, peaceful, and a great way to end our river trip.

I couldn't have planned that moment. I couldn't have controlled my way into it. It only arrived because we stayed in the boat through the hard part and kept our eyes open when it got beautiful again.

That's what I want from the inner work. Not control. Not the ability to manifest outcomes or avoid hard stretches. Just to still be present when the beautiful thing arrives. To not have missed it because I was too busy trying to manage everything into place.

And I have evidence that I'm gaining that. Because the moment I realized I'd missed the meeting and the shame spiral started, I was able to act immediately. Respond honestly. Reschedule. And before five minutes had passed, I was already starting to write this essay. It was like the missing piece of the puzzle that made everything click. Manifestation vs. foresight. What we control vs. what we meet. The trap of symmetry or white and black thinking. All of it just landed.

It was my mistake today. But it's my choice whether I let it take up a week of shame or whether I use it. Transmit from it.

The contract decision was already made on Friday. Whatever I hear tomorrow, it was decided before I ever walked into that meeting. Before I missed it. Before I rescheduled.

The river was already moving.

What I can do is stay in the boat. Keep my eyes open. Trust that the desire pointing me forward is pointing me somewhere worth going towards.

And when the quiet stretch comes, let myself be there for it.

Warmly,
Jennifer

Creative Current is the podcast I just launched with my friend and creative partner, Jess Schimm. We talk open-book style about our relationship with creativity and all it brings up in our lives. I love it so much. I trust you will too.

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