The Fertile Void

Exploring the pull to fill what’s empty.

I have more space than I’ve ever had in my life.

Space can feel amazing, but it can also feel incredibly unsettling at first. When the norm has been allowing the energy, expectations, needs, and desires of others to take up so much space within your life, their absence creates an emptiness.

We are deeply conditioned to fill what is empty.

We clean out the closet and then buy new clothes. We reach for food when we aren’t hungry. Pour another drink. Turn on the television. Pick up our phones. Work more, shop, scroll, make plans, stay busy.

Anything to avoid sitting in the emptiness for too long.

But what if emptiness isn’t asking to be filled?

What if it is a magical, fertile space where all that we’re meant to experience begins?

There is something incredibly powerful about the void. The space between what has ended and what has not yet arrived. The clearing that happens when something leaves our lives and we resist immediately putting something else in its place.

When we don’t rush to fill the space, we can discover what actually belongs there.

Maybe less belongs. Maybe the empty space itself is the gift.

Room to breathe, to hear ourselves again, to feel what we actually want. To notice what nourishes us and what depletes us. To become more intentional about the relationships, experiences, commitments, and energies we allow into our lives.

I’ve been exploring this as I grieve the ending of my partnership alongside the complex absence of family relationships. There were moments when the emptiness felt enormous and I noticed myself reaching for my phone constantly. Social media posts, stories, likes, email, Substack. Even checking my bank account seemed capable of giving me a tiny dopamine hit.

Click. Click. Click.

It became almost obsessive on my hardest days. I could feel there was something underneath asking for my attention. Something I needed to feel. Something I needed to be present with. And then suddenly my fingers were doing their own thing and I was somehow buying a new phone case.

Eventually I had to ask myself: What I am seeking here?

Connection.

There have been moments throughout this transition when I have felt incredibly alone. Reaching toward the outside world was one way of reminding myself that I wasn’t. I began recognizing the difference between what genuinely nourishes me and what I use to numb, distract, or avoid the emptiness.

Sometimes what looked like reaching towards others was actually pulling me further away from myself.

I started noticing what happens energetically when I open social media. I can very easily match the energy - fast, stimulating, not enough, seeking, consuming.

The platforms are designed to keep us there. There is always another notification to check, another story disappearing soon, another person to respond to, another piece of information, another metric to measure, a fear of missing something important.

For me, it had become a clear energy leak.

I believed that I needed to be on social media. I need to post and share stories regularly. I need to promote my offerings. I need to stay visible for my business.

I decided to challenge that.

I deleted all the social media apps from my phone. If I want to, I simply do so from my computer. That also means I can’t share stories. I engage on the platforms as I’m called to in healthy, balanced, aligned ways.

So far, a few days in, it has felt really good.

My yoga classes do not seem to be impacted. I’m not noticing a difference in new client bookings. My business has not disappeared.

I feel different. There is more of me available for me.

I’m also becoming much more intentional about who and what I give access to my energy. We’ve normalized being available almost constantly. To our work, our phones, social media, messages, notifications, news, and people. So much of that access happens on external terms. Someone sends a message, an app sends a notification, something appears on our screen, and suddenly our attention has been pulled somewhere we never consciously chose to place it.

What changes when I decide when I enter those spaces? When I decide when I’m available? When access to my attention and energy happens on my terms?

This isn’t about closing myself off. It’s about becoming more discerning about what I allow into my space and when. Not everything needs immediate access to me simply because technology has made that access possible.

The more I question these patterns within myself, the more I recognize how much they have been shaped by the culture around us.

Our discomfort with emptiness is not personal.

We live in a culture that benefits from keeping us uncomfortable with empty space. There is an entire economy built around convincing us that what we have is not enough, what we are is not enough, and whatever is missing can be found somewhere outside of ourselves.

There is very little encouragement to simply be with ourselves. To feel the discomfort. To let something be unfinished. To not know. To want something without immediately having it. To experience an opening in our livings within rushing to decide what should go there next.

Our attention is something companies compete to occupy.

There isn’t much money to be made from someone sitting quietly in the void.

There is a constant pull towards more. More consumption. More productivity. More information. More stimulation. More improvement. More connection. More visibility.

The more disconnected we become from ourselves, the easier it is to convince us that the answer is another thing outside of ourselves.

This doesn’t mean consumption is bad. Technology isn’t bad. Wanting beautiful things isn’t bad. Entertainment isn’t bad. Social media isn’t bad. Connection certainly isn’t bad.

It’s the energy that inspires the action that matters.

A chocolate bar eaten slowly, with pleasure and presence, can be gloriously nourishing. The same chocolate bar eaten because we desperately don’t want to feel what is moving through us can be an entirely different experience.

The same is true of social media, relationships, sex, shopping, food, work, exercise, entertainment, spirituality, and self-improvement.

It’s not about good or bad.

The more useful questions are: What is the energy behind what I am doing? What am I seeking right now? Am I choosing this or am I reaching for it unconsciously? Is this nourishing or depleting me? What might I feel if I didn’t fill this space? What could become possible if I allowed this space to remain open?

No need to become hypervigilant about all things or shame yourself. It’s about becoming more aware and reclaiming our power to choose.

There is nothing inherently wrong with filling space, but it’s worth exploring.

Let ourselves not know what comes next.

Choose from alignment rather than urgency.

Wait for the relationships that meet us.

Allow experiences that reflect who we are rather than who we were.

We might discover that some of the space we’ve spent out entire lives trying to fill was never empty.

It was ours.

Space for our energy, wellness, desires, creativity, purpose, knowing…the beautiful life that is meant for us.

Space for what is truly ours to emerge.