What are your Tethers?

Finding that which ties us to ourselves...and some tortoise content

Often, if I am able to take a walk outside midday, it’s the same walk.

I head uphill, follow the narrow sidewalk over the mountain stream that sneaks between houses, wave to the perennial porch-sitters, loop back down past Reggie the tortoise and the little free library, and then take a quick jaunt to the walking bridge over the waterfall. The whole thing takes 10-12 minutes.

Today, I decide to skip the headphones so I can listen to my thoughts (not something I’m always up for). The thoughts are loud. I think about my knee, which is giving me very aging-related pain vibes. I think about parenting and some things from the past week I’d do differently. I think about family, money, work. Also, because it’s 80-something degrees and I am sweating and it’s supposed to be fall, I think about climate change. Reggie seems to be loving it, though, and I probably need the vitamin D, so I don’t dwell on it.

When I reach the waterfall, I stop. It has rained (finally) and they’ve let out the dam a bit, so the water is loud. Almost loud enough to drown out my thoughts, at least for a moment. When I came here in my early postpartum days, baby in the carrier strapped to my belly, I would close my eyes and imagine the womb. Her, back home in mine. Me, back home in Mom’s. Safe, connected, held.

And then today, a treat: I spot a great blue heron basking in the waterfall spray.

My heron friend

I smile at my luck. He—or she—is a rare visitor, at least on these lunchtime walks. Immediately, I look behind me to see if anyone is passing by, eager to share my delight and pay forward my noticing. But the heron and I are alone. I don’t see him fish, or preen, or take flight. Other than a few subtle turns of the head, he is completely still, letting the water tumble vehemently behind him. And of course, he reminds me of the “secret” heron in the landscape painting in our living room—the one that has forever endeared me to what might otherwise be a flat, unremarkable scene. In that one minute I stand on the bridge, 25 different muscles soften that I didn’t even know were tensed.

As I complete the circle back to my doorstep, just about 12 minutes after I left, a single word comes to mind: tether.

It is experiences like this that are tethering me to sanity, wholeness, myself in the midst of a life, a society, and a world that feel uncontrolled, even dangerous.

Other things that have felt like tethers in the past few weeks have been:

Sitting in the rocking chair on my porch.

Going apple picking at the same farm with the same friends for the fourth or fifth year in a row.

Finding myself talking to an old friend on a river beach, reenacting a scene from when we first met over twenty years ago.

The “5 Things” journaling practice.

What, then, makes something a tether? Something that ties us to ourselves, keeps us from getting lost in the chaos? Here are four characteristics that I’ve identified of the tethers in my life:

Sensory.

Tethers are things that can be felt, seen, heard, tasted, or smelled. They are somatic, embodied. At least some part of them engages your physical body and reminds you that you are a human inhabiting an earthly environment. On my walk, I felt the effort of movement in my body. I felt the temperature of the air. I saw the people on their porches, heard the pounding of the waterfall. I watched the heron and even imagined how he felt, standing so close to the water’s spray.

Familiar.

I think true tethers always have an element of the familiar. They feel like home. Your mind and your body know what to expect. There is recognition. I walked a route I’ve walked hundreds of times before. I didn’t have to think about how to get home. I knew where to look for Reggie, how much flow there’d been in the waterfall last week. I knew to check the heron’s favorite rock.

New.

At the same time, a tether can’t only be familiar. It can’t be so rote that it’s unconscious. Some element has to be alive, changing. It doesn’t have to be dramatic. For example, how are the clouds different today? Who’s out on their porch, and who isn’t? Are there any new books in the little free library? And of course, there’s the spark when something changes in a way that feels special, like seeing my friend, the heron.

True.

This is a bit esoteric, but a tether needs to feel true. It is tying you to what is real. What does that mean? It could be highly subjective. The experience is not performative. Something about it is resonant. When you see or hear or sense it, you gain a little bit of clarity. Things come into alignment. For me, the waterfall has become a reminder of the mother-connection, and of safety. It cues my nervous system to relax. And the heron is like a wink from Mother Nature that I’m on the right track.

Crazy clouds on another neighborhood walk

Tethers cause our bodies to go oh, yeah, and ahh, yes. They say, “At ease, soldier.” They wake us up and remind us that we are utterly alive.

I asked myself whether there is a difference between a tether and a ritual. I don’t think they’re congruent, but they overlap. Rituals can certainly be tethers, but not all tethers are rituals. We need both.

Why? Why do we need them? Why do they feel good?

I’m still sorting this part out. I’d love your input. I know there is neuroscience, and also divine magic. We humans are funny in that we have evolved to live so much in our heads, creating complex societies and inventing and destroying our way into oblivion. But we are also animals, and we have a lot in common with trees, and birds, and mycelium. Tethers, at least as I have imagined them, are what tie these disparate parts of us together. They yoke the concrete to the meaningful, the spiritual to the earthly.

Tethers shake the dust out of the sheet of life and remind us what we were made for. We were made to live here, now. We were made to find meaning in the mundane. We are wired for connection. We are wired to look for the “true” and the “real.” And—I really believe this—we were built with a capacity that matches the needs of the world.

What are your tethers?

Tell me in the comments.

And now for a cup of tea.

With light, life, and love,

Devon

Now everyone make like a heron and stand on one leg and stare at TUA’s newest subscribers, vtgoddessmama and Mary!

A Reminder

Held: Navigating the Journey into Motherhood starts in just a week on October 10th! If there is a new mama in your life who is hungry for, well, tethers amidst this crazy life transition, please send them my way.