Say yes to adventure, even when you are not quite sure how to start. Say yes to the journey because maybe, just maybe declaring the start of the trip will somehow make the path appear. Say yes, because until YES is bellowed loud, it seems like it all could get canceled anyway. Say YES because YES reveals how we tell ourselves no all the time.
No sooner than I came out with my healer’s dream, I found myself a little stuck.
Now what? I wondered.
And suddenly, in the treatment room, during my own acupuncture session, the what appeared. My healer’s journey starts with myself and with a wound so big and huge that it threatens to swallow me and my sweet little dream up in it.
Its the wound that I keep so neat and tidy, underneath a flesh colored bandaid. I have hidden it from so many, especially those closest to me. I have covered it over so neatly and prettily that I was able to ignore it, pretend its not there. I fool everyone around me too.
Saying yes and deciding it was time to start making things happen is what ripped it I wide open.
Its the hurt that comes from my belief that I won’t get my needs met. It is the ache that results from the belief that I will always need to settle for something almost nice enough, and be content with it. It is the soreness in my heart where I tell myself that I should take my portion of happiness however small and say, “Thank you very much”, That I should not ask for too much (that I won’t get it anyway) and that good girls aren’t greedy.
For so long, I have been afraid to ask for too much. Afraid because I thought that I wouldn’t get it anyway and the disappointment would be crushing. Afraid because I thought that I would be scorned, laughed at, ridiculed for daring to believe anyone would give me what I need. “Can you believe she thought she was so (deserving, smart, lovable, worthy?” I hear them chuckle. I am afraid that if I dared ask for my dreams to come true, the abundance in my life, the goodness and richness and beauty would all evaporate. So I sat in gratitude for what came my way and told myself not to dare think about asking for one stitch more.
Over the years, I have disguised this wound from so many, and even from myself. The wanting and the believing that the wanting will never be satisfied left me feeling like I had a giant hole in my gut.
I have mis-used the language of Buddhism to console my little wounded heart and to keep it in check. I would think about desire and suffering and attachment and translate their lessons as “Don’t bother to dream too big girl” I tell myself. “Those dreams are not for you. Give up your wants and desires. Simply say thank you for what you have.”
In an effort to swallow disappointment I stopped asking for what my heart wants and needs, and I called it “contentment”. In order to prevent myself from being attached I gave it all up and told myself I didn’t deserve it.
Teasing out the difference between this burying of my dreams and seeking true contentment seems to be my work right now. To be honest it seems like messy stuff and I feel as though I am stumbling along gracelessly.
Yet, I believe it is possible to live in the moment, awake and present to whatever that comes my way, to find joy and happiness in the messiness of now without promises of certainty. But I also believe that living this way does not mean that I need to turn a deaf ear to the whispers of my heart, the ones that beckon me on journeys, and call me toward my dreams. I can play in their possibilities without attaching to them. I can chase the butterflies, without attachment to catching them. I can ask for what I need to start this journey. I can ask and I can believe that it will show up without being attached to what that looks like.
I know I am brave enough. (she says with a gulp)
I think it starts with YES.
This is the time of year that finds me in the garden. Every morning, I am distracted from my march out the door by an inspection of flower beds. What has come up? What new thing is showing itself? What new beginning has announced itself? Max always has to yell from the car, “Mom…Mommmmm……Come….on…We are going to be late.” I am dreamy as I stumble to the car, unable to take my eyes off the soil. It is fascinating to me–this explosion of new life.
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Yet, when it is time to work in my garden, I find that the majority of the work is about clearing. Removing. Pulling up weeds, tilling the soil, turning over the ground. Clearing the space so that something new and beautiful can grow. I spend so little time actually planting. No, most of my work is about picking up dead leaves. Picking up the sticks brought down by the rain. Pruning the azaleas and the roses. Cutting back. Cleaning out. Sweeping up. Creating space so something new can be born. Isn’t this really the work of a gardener?
There is a spot in my garden where I usually plant annuals. Impatients or pansies–something that will immediately add color. This year, for a variety of reasons I don’t understand, I decided not to do this. I bought a couple packs of seeds, checking only that the light would be OK. Without paying much attention, Max and I dumped them onto the freshly tilled soil. We raked over a bit more soil and waited as it rained.
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This week our beloved housemate is leaving us. Its hard to believe it is so, but it is. It is an occasion of excitement for it marks a wonderful new beginning for her. Our home was a safe place of refuge when she needed it most. Our house was a transition. But now she has all that she needs to make it on her own–legal status, a job, resources, a community. The apartment half a mile down the street, up high on the top of the building, with the tiny kitchen and big windows, it is the right place for her to be now. It is the first home she will call her own. And this is a miracle. Something new is being born for her.
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And I know that something new will be born for us too. My dear friend Kaiya tells me that the Universe abhors a vacuum. When space is opened up, something new will grow. And I am holding onto this truth fiercely. It is a great comfort.
As we transition from housemates to friends, there is an ache in this empty place in our heart’s house where she used to be with her lilting African voice and the smells of her yummy cooking, in the place where she used to look at me with eyes that really saw. And yet, I know that out of this emptiness something new will grow. Letting go makes me sad and if I am completely honest, the mystery of what will grow up in this place makes me a little uncomfortable. But it is a discomfort I will sit with. But I have long ago given up guessing. Whatever is next will surprise me, that is for sure.
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For weeks now I have been churning on these thoughts, in the garden, with the moving boxes. I am feeling it in other places of my life too. Colleagues are moving on, our organization is transitioning, friendships that are dear to me are tranforming. I know that in my heart too something is giving way, releasing, letting go. I am letting so much go so something new and marvelous can be born. It is sad and scary and also full of wonder…
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I am drawing on the lessons of my garden. If I clear the space, something beautiful can be born. There is a cycle to this life we live, a cycle of letting go of what blossomed and filled us last, clearing the space and waiting with an empty patch of soil.
I feel I am stepping into an empty field, freshly tilled. I am saying yes to whatever will grow here in this open space in my heart, in my life. Yes without knowing where it will take me. Yes without a plan. Yes without knowing what the next step will be.
Thirteen miles in three and a half hours. By some ancient standards that might be making good time.
This is what I think as I sit in traffic, inching along on a very small stretch of a 300 mile quest to Connecticut. These thirteen miles are neither here nor there. They are somewhere in between, but they are exactly where I am and I am simply there.
There is a lot to see that maybe I would have missed at 60 plus miles an hour. Even on the Delaware Turnpike…at night…in the dark of the new moon. There is a lot to see even though its not remarkably different. But it needs to be seen I suppose. We all need to be seen.
There is some reason I am here, I tell myself. And I mean it. And I feel not impatient, even as I am a little achey. Somehow knowing that I am exactly where I need to be makes it peaceful if not perfect.
So, I play my ipod, a silly Russian roulette, spin the wheel and let the Universe decide what songs we will hear. I discover that the Universe prefers Ry Cooter and the Reverend Gary Davis and Pavement which I think is kinda funny given that I am stuck on a long black stretch of Pavement and this is apparently what I am meant to see.
I giggle to myself when I see a sign warning us to slow down for the construction. I wonder if we really could go any slower, me and my fellow travelers. Then I learn we can, and we do. Thats when it occurs to me that once upon a time someone might have thought that having gone 13 miles in 3 and a half hours was making good time. Its all relative.
There is no exit. The metaphor is not lost on me. We are all of us trapped here–on this stretch of a journey that some might say is painfully slow but maybe is the right speed afterall.
I am thankful there is no Pollyana ending. I have not found any greater meaning in the traffic. I didn’t find a long lost friend in the car next to mine. There was no missed accident, at least I don’t think there is. I don’t have any aha moments that explain the traffic, the slow car, the endless stretch of wet dark pavement. Whatever I needed to learn is subtler, simpler and I am not sure I can even articulate it.
I am here. Nowhere else.
I am somewhere in the dark. Stuck like so many. Creeping along and moving but always exactly where I am. I am moving, always moving. I feel my chest rise with every breath. I feel my leg tap out the rythym of the song. I feel my arms stretch up as I try and relieve my tired back.
Thirteen miles in 3 and a half hours. By ancient standards I was making good time.
If I had more than 5 minutes to write I would write a story about emptiness. About how hard it is to clear out all the junk and just sit. How the minute I feel that empty feeling I feel the need to fill it–with what…with chatter, with stuff, with something distracting, with color and music and flashing lights.
If I had more than 5 minutes to write I tell a fable about a girl who is trying to stop doing and create wide open spaces in her heart. A fable about what happens when you don’t rush to fill it with something comforting but let the universe instead decide how to fill the open spaces. But maybe it wouldn’t be about a girl. Maybe it would be about a bowl. Or a ditch or a cow.
If had more than 5 mintues to write I would spin a tale about how the universe abhors a vacuum and will fill it up with love if we just are patient enough. I would reflect though that we often are even quicker to fill up the hollowed out places in our heart with junk substitutions for the love the universe is cooking up for us because the emptiness just feels so…empty.
If I had more than 5 mintues to write I would confess that I feel chained to the constant practice of emptying my life–that I am so unpracticed and I am so quick to clutter, clog, fill. That I am realizing that I am being given practices every day, that so much of what I see are challenges are just opportunities to practice letting go, being empty, sitting still. That every day I do it for a little longer. That it makes me uncomfortable and weezy and a little dizzy but I am doing it anyway.
For the last 4 years, since becoming a single parent, I have always felt as though I was within something like 20 paces of falling off the edge of the cliff, the cliff that marks my the boundaries of sanity.
At first it felt scary, to be so close to falling apart. But then I realized that 20 paces is really quite a ways a way. After awhile it felt quite comfortable. Even as I knew that it could all unravel quite quickly, I knew that it most likely wouldn’t.
There are times when I move closer, within 10 paces or even 5 of the edge. Those times initially felt scary too. The wind is stronger here and I can smell the dangersous dropoff but I have survived moving so close so many times that it feels old hat. I know 5 paces is still 5 paces and one step backwards is all that is needed to get me back to 6.
But lately, the last week or so, I have been perched with my toes curled up against the edge, gripping with every last bit of strength—channeling it all down to the tiny muscles in my pinky toes. Its not a trauma that pushed me to the edge. Instead I am just the daily business of keeping it together, through winter, through Max’s latest bouts of separation anxiety and the flu, through the battle with a house which is slowly falling apart, dissolving into a pile of broken toys and popcorn crumbs and dirty laundry and dust, Four years of trying so hard to do the work of two parents, to build a community that fills the holes in our hearts, of striving and working and being solution focused. Its got me worn out and in my exhausted stupor I stumbled like a drunk to the edge where I stand now, holding my arms out for balance and crying out “Whoa…”.
The other night as I was dropping off Max’s playdate, and running to the store to pick up the M&M’s Max needed for a graphing project, I thought if I don’t ask for help I am going to fall apart, literally, figuratively. Asking for help is hard and while I feel I have pushed past all my fears and the taboos that I carried, I still wince when I need to ask.
And truth, unlike the help I needed in the past the help I need now makes me feel so much more vulnerable. I didn’t need a babysitter. I don’t need someone to cook me a meal or give my kid a ride. What I need is a hug from someone who loves me, who sees me, who isn’t trying to change one bit of me or hope that I am someone other than I am. I need someone to appreciate me, celebrate me, tell me why they cherish me. Oh…and I need someone to sit on my couch and drink a glass of wine while I clean, cause I need to restore order to this house and I have been having a hard time settling. I need someone to help me settle.
I wonder if I can whisper wishes so precious and vulnerable out to the world? Can I ask my community to fill in this way? Even just a few people–my closest and dearest friend or two? Is it too much? I know these are needs that so many of us have unmet. If I ask, do I give permission for others to ask too…Do I open up a door where we all start unsurfacing our most vulnerable needs exposing them to the air where they can be met? Or… do I risk creating resentment and hurt during a time when everyone is so stressed, by the economy, by illness, by their own demons that feels so much bigger than my exhaustion.
Post script: I wrote this piece last week but never posted–The frantic pace of being stuck kept me from making it to my blog. And then I asked. Not wide and far but within a very tiny circle. And like a magic carpet that request swept me away to safety. I will continue to ask, because I know how easy it is to know that perch and when I am ready I will write what I learned along the way.
I looked in the mirror today and I saw an old woman. It was the first time it has happened, or maybe the first time that I allowed myself to see it. But I saw it in my eyes. These eyes are tired, with lines and bags. These eyes have seen too much. These eyes that have seen so much.I wonder when it happened, this getting old. Was it when I was taking out the garbage or running out for milk? Was it when I was sobbing because it feels like the whole freakin’ world has cancer? Was it when I was mourning my marriage?Did it happen when I was chasing my child across the park, laughing at how fast he has become? Did it happen as he dragged me across the ice, pulling me along, “Faster mama, lets skate faster?” Did it happen as I fed my beloved neighbors, as I kissed my friend goodnight, as I whispered grateful thank yous to the moon? Did it happen as I sang and danced, danced years away. Did it happen when I got the heart stopping phone call? Or when I collapsed in exhaustion? Did it happen the day that I fell in love? Or the day I fell out of love? Or the day I realized that love never really dies and falling is neither here nor there?I feel so young and unpracticed. I feel like a tiny baby girl, still so new in the world. Sometimes I feel so damn vulnerable and naive. I can’t believe these eyes are mine…these old woman eyes.
Sometimes it seems the world is falling apart. The economy is tumbling, fires are raging, people we love are fighting for their lives. In the thick of it all, fighting our way through the smoke, it seems that we should be content to take pleasure in the simple things.
Today at Quaker meeting, a man stood up and remarked that sometimes even the “so-called simple pleasures in life”, spending time with family, loving your children, sitting in silence can be the most complicated and messy. His words rang true for me, as tried to steady myself from a a week, a month, a heck a season that has been a bit of a roller coaster ride.
Simple is apparently not always easy. I am finding that true in a thousand different ways. Its real work to simply stay present. Its real work to simply be. Its real work to stay rooted to the earth, to keep my feet on the ground, to not get caught up in either worries or dreams.
Simplicity, authenticity takes courage. It means daring to speak the truth. It means pushing past fear. It means giving up wishes and visions and hope. It means allowing ourselves to be boiled down to the core of our hearts, distilled down to our very essence. In order to truly be present to that which simply is, it means letting go of all illusions of what might be in a few years, months, or even minutes.
Love, friendship, family and beauty: they are messy, difficult, and even tedious. Opening up to them, really opening up, means being attentive to the voices in our heads and the stories that we tell–the ones that say we are not good enough, or that they are not good enough or that really it is all about to fall apart anyway.
Being simple, embracing the simple, takes practice.
Something came over me last night. It was blown in by the howling winds, the ones that roared and growled and shook the trees. I didn’t see it coming, still don’t know where it came from. This must have been me at 13, sulky and petulant with a little bit of sass, pushing back and out for no good reason. Completely uncomfortable in her own skin. Ambivalent and wavering and not sure of what she wants. Not sure of where she is going. Not even sure why she is here.
I normally have a pretty good sense of the why and how of my moods shift, and what is going on in my heart. I normally know why I lose patience or feel frustrated or want to be alone. I normally can explain and hold it all in tenderness, but this time I can only shrug my shoulders. Somethings just are beyond explanation.
I sat on the couch in silence in this space when I was interrupted by Max, sleepwalking. He was panicked and calling my name. “Mama,” he cried looking right at me, “Where are you?” “Right here mijito…right here” I replied.
Three times I had to call him, to wake him up. Three times it took to wake me back up again too. The me that feels like me. He climbed into my lap and I held him close up against my chest, happy to have found us both. Happy to be home.
It never fails to surprise me. It creeps up on me and shocks the hell out of me. Just when I think that I have become fearless, just when I think I have overcome my deepest darkest fears, just when I think that I have done my soul work and gotten an A+ on the lesson, then I realize how terribly scared I still am.
Does it ever end as we peel away, layer by layer the protective walls we put around our hearts? It seems that no matter, how much work I do, its still there, more and more subtle but there. This fearfulness.
Shortly after my marriage failed, I found feng shui. After suffering such a devestating loss, after feeling so adrift, after realizing there was no security in this thing called marriage, I found a sense of control and order. If I could just eliminate the clutter, if I could place the bamboo just so, if I could figure out the flow of energy in this house I could be safe. I spent long hours, arranging, planning, sorting…and desperately holding on to a vision that my life would be OK.
At other times, it would be my job, my money, my community, my life as a mother, my writing and creativity, my spiritual journey, even this blog… a long line of things that made me feel anchored and safe. One by one I transform each into a security blanket the thing that would keep that fear at bay. The fear of being here. All. Alone.
And over and over again I would learn, the more that I grasp at these things, the more they slip through my fingers like water, proving to me again and again that while each one of these things delights, my security comes from none of them.
They are false idols, lined up in the temple of my heart–I deify them and doom them to failure. They will not save me. Over and over again I learn that really, its just me. And my faith.
Yup… in the ends its just me. As rich as my life is, there is nothing to grasp onto but what is here in my heart and my faith. No matter how hard I try, I cannot be anchored for life is a river and it is sweeping me along and carrying me, pulling me moving me. And that scares the hell out of me.
But make no mistake. This is not a sad or desperate post.
Because I am breathing sweet free air of liberation. I can stop looking for the thing that is going to save me. I can stop waiting for it to delivered and come along. I can stop fearing that it will all disappear if I say or do the wrong thing. I have it, have always had it, will always have it, right here in my heart.
I am the thing that saves me.
I am so unpracticed at this way of being.
So I will stumble along and when I trip, I will reach for something to steady myself but when it disappears into thin air I will not feel the bruising crash of my body slamming down, but the steadiness of my hand against the ground. Catching myself.
Driving home from Tai Sophia the world looked completely different. Snow had fallen on Tuesday and yesterday a freezing mist had settled in. The whole world looked white and shrouded in mystery. The landmarks on my trip home were completely obscured, changed, transformed. A journey I had taken so many times had become new again.
This winter I have been sitting in silence alot. Sometimes I look up and find that I have sat on the edge of the tub for 10 minutes completely lost in the quiet. I light the candles on my altar and just pause. I have dove into the unknowing this winter, into the mystery of my life and I feel a little like I am swimming in frozen white mist. It is so beautiful and even though I am traveling on a well-tread path, my life, once so familiar feels completely transformed and different.
This winter, I feel as though I am coming home to myself. Is it the old friends who are finding me, reminding me that the me I am becoming, is the same me I have always been? Is it the comfort with which I am trusting the voice that rises up in me and helps me know that I knew the answer all along? Is it the dreams I have had of water and rapids and wise old women who speak through their hearts. Last night I dreamed of darkness, a warmth, I dreamed of arms cradling me and of music, sweet music hushing me to sleep. “Rest, little one,” my soul whispered. All will be well and all manner of things shall be well.
I know that soon, the seasons will turn. Usually at this time of year I am itching for spring. I am dreaming of long lit days and camping and evenings by the pool. I am climbing out of my skin with the waiting. But not this time. I am overtaken by the moment.
Two nights ago Max and I went out to buy a pair of gloves. He had misplaced his last pair. For the last several weeks we have paired together mismatches and made due but when he no longer had a right handed glove that fit I knew it was time to break down. Shocked, that even as the snow was falling all our local stores had no gloves. There were plenty of bathing suits and sun hats and baseball gloves for purchase. When I asked the nice man about where to find the boys winter gloves he looked at me like I had 3 heads–as though he wanted to say, “Hey lady–the whole world is waiting for spring. No time to think about winter anymore.” I shook my head and we went out in the snow empty handed. Apparently sitting in winter, embracing it to its bitter end is a revolutionary act.
I was a bit agitated as we drove off, as we searched at store after store. “Why?” I kept asking my seven year old as though he had all the answers. “Why can’t we just sit with winter? Why is everyone in such a rush to let it go?” Something has shifted in me. I have come to love winter.
We finally found the last two pairs of gloves left on a clearance rack in a store in Silver Spring. The last two pair of gloves. I was tempted to buy both, because of the way Max loses his gloves. But we only needed one and I wondered if someone else would be thwarted by the fact that the whole world seems to want to operate on fast forward. I took my chances and we picked up just one pair.
I am embracing the hush of the last few weeks of winter, the evenings when we have permission to sleep early and wrap ourselves in covers and dreams and music. I am embracing the mystery of winter, swimming in winter white.
