Molly has been thinking about safety. Not because she particularly planned to.
It arrived in the backyard.
A strange man appeared behind the house yesterday and stayed there for a few minutes. Maybe he was using the bathroom. Maybe he was using drugs. Maybe there was some completely ordinary explanation for a man suddenly materializing in the easement to her backyard.
She doesn’t know.
All of this has gotten Molly thinking about safety again. Again being the operative word. Because she has experienced a stalker over the past year, so the subject of personal safety isn’t exactly a theoretical exercise for her nervous system.
But interestingly, this isn’t really where the exploration began.
A new friend she made on Substack, Cat in The Living Room, has been carrying a thread about safety, fear, and the nervous system.
Like a proper curious cat… Molly is pulling on it. Listening. Comparing the ideas to her own lived experience. And eventually she had one of those moments where the brain goes:
Wait a minute.
Fear and safety might not be the same thing.
Obviously they are connected.
But Molly experiences them differently. So she is chiming in. Which, in itself, is part of the experiment. Because speaking up about an experience is an act of courage.
And that brings Dolly Parton into the room…
“You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.”
-Dolly Parton
Molly likes this one. It is wonderfully uncomplicated. Fear does not necessarily stop her.
Take water.
Molly is afraid of water.
Deep, dark water in particular.
The ocean. A lake where she can’t see what is underneath her.
Drowning.
That’s fear.
She knows what fear feels like. She recognizes it when it arrives. There is no great mystery. She can navigate it. She can be afraid of something and still decide to experience it. And that seems important. Because Molly has spent plenty of time of facing her fears.
Molly is not afraid of being seen for who she is. She has spent plenty of time expressing herself regardless of judgement. Fear has never completely succeeded at shutting down her authenticity.
Safety, however, seems to be doing something different.
When Molly doesn’t feel safe, she notices that her expression of life begins to shrink.
She doesn’t want to dress up.
She doesn’t want to go out in public.
She doesn’t want to have conversations with neighbors.
She doesn’t necessarily want to sit outside.
She doesn’t want somebody passing by to stop and try to befriend her.
Her life starts becoming smaller. And that is what has caught her attention. Fear feels like an experience. Safety feels like a condition.
Fear can arrive, be recognized, and perhaps even be carried along for the ride. A lack of safety feels more like the background environment is changing.
The nervous system starts paying attention to what is happening around her… constantly… instead of simply participating in what is happening within her. And suddenly Molly is wondering if safety is actually part of the foundation of her authentic expression.
Which brings her right back to the Ground Sphere.
Because the purpose of this week is Time on Earth. Molly wants to explore time on this planet. Not clock time…
Earth time.
The seasons.
The lunar cycles.
The repeating patterns.
The strange choreography of being a human creature on a spinning planet while somehow keeping track of Tuesday. But underneath all of that is a more fundamental question:
What allows a human being to actually inhabit their time on Earth?
Because time can pass without being fully lived. And expression can exist without being fully free.
Her husband's work with children gives Molly another lens. Before children can really learn, there has to be enough safety in the environment for learning to happen.
The nervous system needs some sense of calm. Then attention becomes available.
Then curiosity.
Then learning.
Then expression.
Then growth.
And maybe adults aren’t so different… Maybe safety isn’t the opposite of courage. Maybe safety is part of what makes courage possible.
That brings Dolly back around again.
“Find out who you are and do it on purpose.”
-Dolly Parton
That one lands especially well for Molly because purpose is at the center of the work she does. Purpose is not simply something she thinks about. It becomes the organizing principle.
Drawings.
Maps.
Questions.
Experiments.
Observations.
A whole growing body of work about time and how humans experience it.
She wants to find out who she is and do it on purpose. But what happens when the environment doesn’t feel safe enough to do that? That is the part she is interested in exploring. Because she doesn’t think the answer is to eliminate fear.
Fear may always be part of the human experience. She can be afraid of the water and still get in. She can be afraid of being judged and still express herself. She can be afraid of failing and still make something.
She can feel fear and move.
…But safety seems to be asking a different question.
Not:
“Are you afraid?”
But:
“Do you have enough ground beneath you to live freely?”
And perhaps that is why safety belongs in the Ground Sphere. Ground is where a person stands. Ground is the place from which the rest of the journey begins.
Perhaps Molly should have known this subject was still part of her journey. Last winter, when the stalker situation became serious enough that police and the courts became involved, Molly’s adult daughter gave her a book.
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker.
At the time, the title felt almost too perfectly timed. Fear had become something Molly needed to understand… from the inside.
Fast forward to this week. Molly and her daughter are reading Women Living Deliciously by Florence Given together, and there it is again.The Gift of Fear gets an honorable mention in an entirely different book that Molly just happens to be reading this week.
Then there is Cat in The Living Room carrying her own thread about fear, safety, and the nervous system. Then there is the strange man who appeared behind Molly’s backyard. And then there is the ongoing court case connected to the stalker.
Suddenly the subject isn’t exactly knocking anymore.
It’s standing in the backyard.
Molly can’t help but notice the synchronicity of it all. Fear has been given quite an entrance. But perhaps this time the question is shifting.
Maybe it isn’t only The Gift of Fear that Molly needs to explore.
…Maybe it is the Gift of Safety.
Because if fear teaches a person to pay attention, Molly is beginning to wonder what safety makes possible after that attention has been awakened. Perhaps fear and safety both need to be grounded.
Not fear eliminated.
Not safety guaranteed.
Grounded in experience. Because Molly wants to fully inhabit her Time on Earth. And there isn’t actually an endless supply of it. Less than a century, give or take.
A finite number of seasons.
A finite number of moons.
A finite number of mornings
…in which to wake up and decide what to do with the day.
She doesn’t want awareness of danger to become a life organized around avoiding danger. She wants enough safety beneath her feet to be able to live with courage.
To put herself out there.
To make the drawings.
Write the words.
Walk outside.
Be seen.
…And keep experimenting with what it means to be a human being on Earth.
She doesn’t need to become fearless. She doesn’t even think fearless is a goal.
She wants to be brave. But bravery needs somewhere to stand.
Maybe that’s what safety is…
The place from which expression can emerge.
The inner conditions that allow curiosity, learning, creativity, authenticity, and courage to come forward instead of spending all their energy monitoring the environment. And perhaps that is the real question underneath this week’s Earth Cycle.
If Time on Earth is finite, how does Molly create enough safety to fully inhabit it?
Not perfectly safe. Not protected from every strange man, loose dog, unpredictable human, uncomfortable conversation, or bizarre plot twist the universe may toss into the backyard.
Just safe enough…
Safe enough to take the risk of being fully herself.
Because Molly doesn’t want to spend her Time on Earth waiting for the world to become completely safe. She wants to discover what safe enough feels like... and then have the courage to live from there right now...
