Resistance is the Medicine. Flow is the Cure.
Resistance Is the Medicine
Flow is the Cure
Linger with me for a moment in a gentle mountain river. It’s a sunny Carolina summer day. The sky is a beautiful robin’s eggshell blue. It’s 88 degrees with a light breeze. We’re decked out in our tubing attire: river shoes (old tennis shoes), shorts, and bathing suit tops. We’ve lathered up with sunscreen, and we are ready to lounge in our big yellow inner tubes.
The tubing company has informed us about places we can stop to picnic along the way, of places where the water is shallow and our butts might get stuck and drag the rocks, and of where to exit the river to catch the van back to the parking lot instead of floating into the unknown farther downstream.
We’re now at the edge of the water, juggling a cooler full of ice, drinks, and snacks, two big inner tubes, and one small one. You place your tube in the river first, and plop down into it. I hand you the smaller tube and while you secure it to your tube, I place the cooler in it. I then drop my tube in the water and settle myself into it. The water is cool and refreshing, and we are prepared for a lazy, fun, serene day, talking, laughing, floating, splashing – flowing with the water. We tilt our faces up to the sky and float towards the current that will take us downstream. This is the experience we came for!
Flow was my word for 2025. I had an experience in mind. You may be familiar with the term flow state. It’s a somewhat buzzy term and a highly sought after state in the creative and sports worlds. When someone reaches flow state, they are completely immersed in an activity. They are focused and energized and fully “in the zone.”
I chose this word for 2025 not only because I wanted to achieve flow state as a writer and finally finish my book (I couldn’t stand the thought of another year passing by without completing it), but I also chose flow as my word for 2025 because I wanted to feel this energized ease in all areas of my life. I wanted to be wrapped in the pure joy of living, with intense focus. Not waiting for the next shoe to drop, but for the next moment of awe in my day (Awe was my word for 2023), reminding me to be fully present to what is happening now.
Man Makes Plans and God Laughs
Every year, since 2017, I have picked a word for the year. I carefully select each word, wanting a North Star to point me towards how I want to feel and be in my lived experience.
A funny thing happens to me every year with the words I choose. These words become mystical and magical teachers in their own way, nudging me to look at my beliefs, to evaluate how I show up for life, to consciously assess what I want on this wild and beautiful journey.
After a hysterectomy in August of 2024, my mom’s cancer diagnosis in November of 2024, and my loved-one’s continued battle with addiction, Flow was an easy choice.
Resistance is the Medicine
Flow was a Jedi mind teacher, like the legendary Yoda in STAR WARS.
Ask for flow, and you end up wrestling with your thoughts, confronting the things you believe and don’t even realize you believe, and all the things you fear.
I didn’t finish my book in 2025. I made progress, but mostly I got caught up in some beliefs that (I thought) looked like grit and strength.
Like, the book should come last, after I’d taken care of my loved ones and their needs.
Like, a good daughter would take time off work and go to ALL of her mom’s appointments. She definitely wouldn’t miss an appointment to work on the book, take care of her own mental health, or tend to any of her own selfish needs.
Like, there has got to be a cure, a cause, a way to control addiction. I reasoned that if I poured myself into finding that cure, cause, way of preventing my loved one from experiencing any additional relapses, then (and only then) would be the perfect time to write the book. News flash: addiction is medically defined as “a chronic, relapsing medical disease of the brain characterized by compulsive drug seeking and use despite devastating, harmful consequences.” There wasn’t ever going to be a perfect time.
It’s difficult to look at these beliefs now. I have so much compassion for that version of me. She wanted flow but she was self-abandoning and over-functioning and beating herself up with thoughts that were blocking her desire for flow. It all looks admirable on paper, her compassion and love for others, but she was forgetting herself because of layers of beliefs that told her it was selfish for her to think of herself.
Self-awareness is a huge piece of the work that leads to flow. Recognizing all the things we are telling ourselves and the beliefs we hold (often subconsciously) can help us uncover the ways we personally resist flow. It’s hard work though, tuning into the thoughts inside our minds, asking ourselves what we believe, why we believe it, if we want to carry the belief forward, and whether the belief will lead to the life we want to live.
Flow is the Cure
The kind of flow I wanted in my life meant reckoning with a deeper awareness of my inner self and all the ways I was resisting my desire for flow. It also meant looking at all the ways I was telling myself I trusted the divine with my life and yet I was still getting in the big yellow inner tube with a paddle to navigate a river on which the tubing company had already mapped out a safe and relaxing route.
Trust the Process is a slogan I learned in Al-Anon. Al-Anon slogans are short, memorable phrases used as tools to help members focus on their own recovery, detachment, and emotional balance while dealing with the effects of another person’s substance use. Trust the Process encourages me to have faith in the recovery journey, even when progress feels slow or backwards, trusting that a Higher Power will help in due time. Trust the Process can be applied to more than just a recovery journey. Trust the Process can be applied across a life journey.
Wayne Dyer was a speaker and writer on self-improvement. He once said that releasing attachment to specific outcomes and trusting the natural unfolding of life is essential for peace and fulfillment. This takes the Trust the Process slogan further because it encourages me to surrender the need to control (Let Go and Let God, another Al-Anon Slogan), to align with divine intelligence, and that by doing so I will reduce stress and allow the universe to guide me. <–THIS is the essence of the flow I sought to achieve. THIS is a peaceful day in that big yellow inner tube. It requires a lot of trust, surrender, and letting go. Resistance to this is what I found underneath all the self-awareness work I was doing.
→Flow, for me, is about trust, and being open to abundance (my word for 2022) and good things in my life. I think of flow like water, both powerful and soft, able to carve a path through rock or to gently glide downstream. Life requires both; the grit and the grace – and a heaping of faith.
→Flow is choosing to be fully present to the now. It’s when your body is screaming no, not this … why me … why our family … I can’t think … I can’t focus … I don’t feel like doing this, and still choosing to lean into that resistance and be there in that room, at that desk, in the moment fully because no matter what happens you won’t ever get to live that moment again.
→Flow is listening to what that doctor has to say, sitting with uncomfortable feelings and lighter feelings like joy when they come, carving out time and getting words on the page and wrestling with the words and reminding yourself that you don’t want another year to pass without finishing the book.
→Flow is reminding yourself that the only moment you have is the moment you are in right now and vowing to be present for all of it. It’s not going to be perfect and it won’t always look like you’d like, but it’s still your now to be present with someone you love, to build the dream, do the dang thing, to learn and grow, trusting that not only has the divine already mapped out a path down the river of life but the divine is right there in that big yellow inner tube with you.
I hope you will consciously and continually practice coming back to your big yellow inner tube. I hope you will trust the intelligence that lives within you, and your ability to tune into that intelligence and use it to learn and grow. I hope you will be present for all of it.
Journal on it – reflective prompts
If I picked a word to guide me towards the lived experience that I want, what would it be? Why?
What are my goals for the next x (3,6,12) months? What is a word that would remind me of those goals?
How do I want to feel? What is a word that would remind me of this feeling or how to attain it?
What do I want to experience? What is a word that could help me live into this experience?
Who do I want to become? What is a word that could be my North Star, guiding me towards this version of myself?
How could picking a word help me focus and live my life with more intention?
Affirmation
I am here, now, fully embracing this moment.
