Two weeks ago, in the very moments that one dear friend lay dying, the most extraordinary thing occurred.
My phone rang. And I said hello.
On the end, from an airport city very far away, was an old friend, an old love, the one who had held my hand as I passed from innocence to knowing. It had been over 20 years since I last heard his voice which now sounded both familiar and strange. We talked light heartedly as I drove toward home, catching up on the basics of life, until his flight was called, until I pulled up at a neighbors to pick up Max. We would talk again we promised. I felt a circle drawn complete in the sweetest of ways.
I picked up Max. I talked to Jackie. I went to the grocery store. I came home and checked email. And then, only then, I learned that my friend Jenni had died, ending at long last her long painful struggle with cancer. As I wrote down time she had passed away for my journal, I did the math and realized that as I was saying a hello to one I thought I would never talk to again, another I held dear was saying goodbye forever.
And I held that simple fact in my heart. For days, I held it.
*******
This fall I have been learning about letting go. I have been mourning my friend Jen for so long, but I have been working through other changes as well. I have been letting go of old habits, letting go of my favorite defenses, letting go of my most cherished stories. Our foundation has been wobbly as the cornerstones of our life have been, one by one, shifting, transitioning, creating space. Its been hard, scary, at times heartbreaking to see things I loved so much dismantled. As we have managed the bumps and the inevitable fear, I have carried around a mustard seed, convincing myself that I only needed a tiny bit of faith. Stumble forward onward onward–a path would appear that would make it all make sense.
One day, I asked my soulsister Kaiya, “What ever happened to the burning bush? It would be very convenient to see one, you know, with a booming voice and everything. It would be lovely for that voice to let us in on the plan. I am all about the small and subtle, don’t get me wrong, but these days I am feeling so dense and tired and lacking in faith that I would like someone to please let me know what this is all about through something as concrete as a burning bush. It would be a great comfort.”
*******
I don’t think that phone call was a burning bush. But I do think it was a bell. A bell telling me that there is no such thing as goodbye. No such thing as forever.
Nothing is ever really lost. No matter how far away, no matter how long past, no matter how faded-it is there, tranformed perhaps, but accessible in some way, at the end of a ring, a simple as saying hello.
Every year it helps. I sleep in the woods. Long deep sleeps to the sounds of crickets and bullfrogs, with the breeze rustling the tent. It helps me transition.
This time of year is hard. I long for the internal space of autumn and winter but its always so hard to let go of the big beautiful bountiful round juicy summer–the late evenings at the pool or hanging out on a porch watching fireflies and sharing wine, the spontaneous community that seems to erupt when we are all out in summertime. I am a social girl and I am drawn round the fire of summer, the stories, the laughter, the adventure.
It is always so hard to let it go, to exhale that gorgeous summer and breath in the autumn coming round the bend. It feels like a loss, as though I lost the way and I am now somewhere else–not where I need to be. The fall always feels like a tumble.
But sleeping under the trees, it puts me right. The early dark, the migrating water birds singing their goodbyes, the leaves that are already starting to turn–it all whispers to me that this is exactly where need to be–this moment, this space. This letting go is the gift.
Saturday was the “end of summer” camp out at the pool. Max had been waiting for this moment all summer long. The thought of swimming in the pool until midnight tickled him, the thought of not having to leave his precious pool when the day was done. Though we woke up to a sky full of grey clouds, as we ran our errands the sky started to clear, the sun peaked out, then finally burst out in full hot humid August glory. A perfect night for sleeping poolside. We breathed a sigh of relief.
As the day turned to evening though, as I lounged at the pool, it suddenly felt cool. At first it was a welcome relief from the August heat but then it started to warn of a change in the weather. I looked at my neighbor lounging next to me. “It will blow over” I said. He nodded solemnly. We checked the doppler map on my iphone just to be sure. We saw the storm coming straight at us. “It will blow over” we said nervously, already feeling the crushing weight of the children’s disappointment looming. “Let’s stay”
As we started to cook dinner we felt it, the few drops of rain. “It must be from the trees” we speculated. The lifeguards kept the pool open. No thunder, no lightening, its fine. Too early to call it a night. “We could always go home” we rationalized. “But not now, let’s stay. Its bound to blow over.”
A few hours later we were huddled in the gazebo. A few families had left not wanting to set up their tents in the lashing rain. The rest of us shared food and drinks and told stories and laughed while the kids slid down the hill in the mud and rolled around like little pigs, jumping into the pool when the life guards deemed that the rain was not too heavy. “It will blow over” I laughed over my wine. “Maybe not until tomorrow but it will eventually. It always does.” When it slowed down enough to start the campfire we wiped off chairs and huddled around the warmth, breathing in the magic and saying, “Yes…we knew it would blow over.”
It was after midnight that a showered and exhausted Max was tucked into his sleeping bag, snuggled up against a night totally unexpected, but thrilling never the less. I whispered to him the only mama wisdom that seemed to matter at that moment.
“We should never be afraid of the storms. They carry us to places we never would have journeyed, if only we are brave enough to stay.”
“Its all bullshit”, I said as I slammed the pots into the sink. Tears dripping down my nose. Nothing had happened, so the tears seemed absurd, but maybe that was the point.
Big shifts are taking place in my heart but they are so small. They are the kind of changes that can only be captured by the words…”and then she grew up”. I am finding that unlike the divorce or learning to parent, or discovering my community in this round of the adventure there is no drama. There is no crescendo or aha moments. There is no story worth telling. I keep asking her, my teacher, WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO. She smiles at me and says this time there is no doing.
This time there is just me–learning to feel unconditionally loved–learning to love myself as fiercely as I love my tribe. Learning to be my own rock without letting that rock become a wall. Learning that I can drink my fill from a bottomless well–there is no needing to ask permission or earn my way there. Its is there for me–and it is there for you too.
Learning to receive love…Its not about doing anything at all. Its simply about being.
This can be excruciatingly difficult. And I can’t explain why. Giving up all the stories about why I can’t or don’t deserve or shouldn’t try…Giving up the conditions…”I will be lovable/worthy/accepted when…”, it can set a girl in a tizzy. Its a series of explosion that is knocking down a life time of rules that somehow made it all safe–that set up the game–and gave me a plan. Its pushing my buttons. I am resisting in every way I know how.
Getting rid of the doing as a condition of being loved. It can drive a girl to exclaim that its all bullshit and slam some pots into the sink and wash them.
And then, with tears and pots both dried, there is nothing to do but admit its probably not bullshit afterall.
Sitting in meditation a lot here this week. And simply settling into a practice of doing nothing big or bold or magical but rather simply what needs to be done–Folding the laundry. Sweeping the floor. Paying the bills and shredding the papers. Shopping for groceries and putting gas in the car. Returning the library books. Going to the pool and coming back home again. Going to work. Eating. And kissing Max goodnight.
And noticing, tiny, almost imperceptible shifts that feel like earthquakes…
How do you open up to the love of the universe? How do you stop the endless tap dance that insists we need to hit the performance marks to be loved? How do you give yourself permission to settle into the lap of the world and be held? One breath at a time. Just one breath at a time.
The first time I was aware of it was almost 20 years ago. I was standing in a friends living room in Georgetown, a hoity toity DC neighborhood. I was visiting from Houston and talking to a woman I knew in college at some friend’s engagement party. While I told her about my experiences as a teacher she told me about becoming a nurse. And in the pit of my stomach I knew. “Yeah…THAT’s what I should have done. That should have been me.” I was flooded suddenly with awareness and knowing–a sense that came from almost nowhere that told me I should have become a healer and with a slight sinking feeling rarely experienced by the young, I felt I may have missed my calling.
As the years went on, this uncomfortable feeling returned in the most unlikely of times and places. Long before I would even consider having a child, I became obsessed with midwifery. While I excelled at my chosen career, while my work felt meaningful and important, while I felt I was making a mark somewhere good and important, I never felt 100% at home. I began to dream of healing of the most ancient kind–the wise women healing of our ancestors.
I read everything there was to read on the subject of birthing babies. I pinned down any midwife who would talk to me for hours while I asked thousands of questions. I searched through catalogs and plotted training and career paths and dreamed in unrealistic and silly ways about how I would one day join the league of those who hold space so something beautiful could be born. I called it my fantasy career–and spoke about it longingly as the thing I would do when I retired or when I was old and grey. I spoke of it as the thing I might try if I could do it all over again.
But it never let me go, the crazy notion that I am meant for something else. It popped up its head in countless ways. Even when I wasn’t taking this life seriously, it was dreaming me.
About 2 years ago I realized that it was less about birthing babies and more about birthing hope. It was about being with people through their dark days of pain and touching them with compassion and giving them permission to heal. As I emerged from the fog of my own divorce and a battle with migraines and what some had called chronic fatigue, I knew it was about witnessing birth of a different kind.
Over the course of years, of healing from my own hurts–both physical, emotional and spiritual, I have explored various modalities. Western medicine is truly miraculous but I am drawn to the old ancient healing traditions, like acupuncture. These have touched my life in ways that feel down right miraculous. I started out going for my migraines. While we have made progress with my beastly headaches, the reality is that something else has shifted in me within that treatment room. I have felt fear drop away. I have let anxiety drift. I have woken up to lessons in my life. I have been able to settle more into the present. I have felt my body and spirit shift together to a place of more wholeness.
As I have witnessed friends and loved ones suffer from pain of all sorts, my hands have itched for needles.
The uneasy disquieting feeling has turned into an alarm. It has become a child tugging on my sleeve relentlessly. I want to be there to help hold the space so others too can let go of their pain, heal their souls and bodies. I want to help women and men alike birth, not babies but their better healthier selves. I want to hold space so something healing can be born.
I know, with all my being, that this healing work, is what I am meant to do. Yes. There. I have said it out loud. Its scary to declare it to the world this way. Especially since it seems so impossible, improbable, impractical.
For the last 10 months or so I have started to adjust my thinking to hold the possibility that maybe I could really do this in some way shape or form. For the most part I sat quietly with these dreams, speaking them outloud only occasionally, only tentatively. I tenderly rocked the vision of me as healer like a sickly newborn babe. I wasn’t sure she would thrive, but I held her close to my heart and nursed her anyway. She has now grown to the point that I know she will be healthy vibrant…and dare I speak it…real.
Standing between me and training as a healer is a mountain range of challenges. The one that looms largest, looking unscalable and impassable is the mountain that represents at least a couple of hundred of thousands of dollars to pay for tuition and to support Max and I while I study. I have no idea how or where these resources will come from as I struggle to make ends meet every month without books and school. Even if I could find the cash for tuition, I have no idea how I will add studying to an already overcrowded life of fulltime work and single parenting. I know major changes will have to occur in my life to make space for this dream but I can’t quite figure them out. I see the path but truth be told, I have no idea how the hell I am going to get on it.
At another time in my life, this lack of clarity may have caused me to give up in despair, resigning myself to my almost good enough life with my good enough career and the choices I have made to this point. I would have held my knees close to my chest and told myself that it is enough and I should be happy with my beautiful child, my lovely community, my meaningful work. But this is now and I am no longer content with resignation. I am feeling fierce and warrior like, even though I am not exactly sure what that really means.
I know I am a healer and that it is only a matter of time before I can acquire the tools of my trade. I am declaring the start of my journey, even though I can’t quite see the path ahead. And somehow, declaring it here feels important for reasons I don’t really understand. But I am trusting this instinct and my need to tell you this story.
How is it going to all turn out? I have no idea. This story is an epic mystery. Will it happen on top of my current career, along side it, in place of it? How will I stitch the resources together? Where will I end up doing this work? What is the Universe going to require of me? What pound of flesh will I be forced to pay? What blessings will find me on the way? What marvelous and scary destinations await me?
I can’t wait to find out.
If you too are curious how this all turns out drop me a note in the comments here or by email at meg at megcasey dot com. As I set off on this journey however slow or rapid it may be, I am seeking a community of fellow travelers who will help me navigate this path and who will hold me accountable to this life that is dreaming me.
The other day I was standing in my friend Maureen’s kitchen. I can’t remember exactly how it came up but I remember distinctly saying this, “You know, these days I find myself mostly doing things that I am not very good at.”
Gone are the days when I filled my spare time with things I had done for years, things I felt naturally talented at, things that made me feel accomplished. Dance, knitting, baking, my work. All these activities left me feeling like an expert, good about myself. Smart. Strong.
Instead I find that I am spending my time exploring things that are new. Things that make me feel wobbly. Things that make me feel a little scared. Things that are hard and that I can’t seem to master no matter how long I work at it, but things I need to do, or things I love to do, or things I simply just want to do.
I may be attempting to make some headway on the disaster that is my house, trying to demystify being organized with a tornado for a son who inherits his habits from me. I could be slogging away at guitar, working my way through muffled notes and sloppy rhythm, trying to loosen up my stiff right hand, while strengthening my weak left one. I find myself wobbling around a skating rink, going round and round, trying to avoid an embarrassing spill. Or singing really rough harmonies that sound slightly flat. I may be trying to bake without wheat flour, or garden in the shade. Or I may be sitting on my cushion desperately trying to quiet my mind or on my mat working my way into a pose.
These days I feel so unpracticed at everything I do, I am such a beginner. And make no mistake, its a role I embrace. For so long I was so scared to try anything that I didn’t think I would be good at. I let a lot of opportunities to try new things pass me by for fear of looking dumb. I thought I wouldn’t be able to enjoy something if I didn’t master it and if I thought there was little chance of mastery…well…I just let it go. But now, I am beginning to love doing things just to try them out without any pressure to succeed. Just to experience them. Its hard and it requires a whole new story of myself to protect my little eager heart, but I am bit by bit embracing it and feeling my life deepen.
I never would have embraced this “beginner’s lifestyle” if motherhood hadn’t forced me.
I plunged into the sea of beginning, when I became a parent. I went from being an accomplished, confident and completely masterful woman to a beginner in every way shape and form. It was all so new. I was so unpracticed, even the simplest things seemed impossible: breastfeeding, changing diapers, getting those little shirts over those big heads, getting out the door on time, taking a shower. In the 36 hours of my labor I transitioned from being an expert to being an outright, brand spankin’ new beginner.
What I came to believe was that even if I didn’t know how do to something, I would and could learn if it really was important enough. After weeks of showing my breasts to complete strangers I finally figured out how to feed my child discreetly even while waiting in line at the grocery. I could dress Max with one hand and sip an iced latte held in the other and could change a diaper in under 10 seconds flat.
But truth be told, the minute I mastered anything in this parenting gig, the minute I thought I had motherhood down and had begun to feel “good” at this new job, I was sunk again, thrown once more into the land of change, and mystery, and exploration without a map. If the last 7 and a half years have taught me anything, it is the inevitability of trading in mastery for mystery.
This has been accentuated by the fact that I am a girly girl mom raising a boy’s boy son. In addition to all the mysteries of child development, I have had to immerse myself into the secret life of boys. Without a partner to turn to to say, “You handle this,” I find I need to delve into topics I never would have imagined that I would need to explore, let alone master
Which leads me to “safety yellow” colored jock straps. Or rather, the choices between yellow mesh gym shorts with built in cups or yellow cycling pants with built in cups.
Max is starting a hockey program on Saturday. He has been counting down the minutes until I finally let him play. While I made him really work to earn the chance to play, truth be told, I was so excited that he was embracing a sport I knew. I thought that maybe, my own wobbly skating aside, I would get a pass on the beginner thing this time. That finally, he would enter a phase where I could skate along on information I had mastered long ago. That I was getting a long deserved mom’s rest in the stands where I could comfortably discuss the icing calls with the veteran hockey moms from game 1 on. Better yet, I could feel an expert again-if not at playing hockey, then well…at watching hockey…and being a proper hockey mom. In fact, I might be able to tell a few of those other moms a thing or two about off-sides and slashing and holding and all that.
I was beginning to get used to the idea that I could finally rest my weary little ego in the land of mastery. That is, I was resting until I got the email. From my darling and helpful good guy friend. The one who keeps me informed about guys stuff I need to know. The email from the friend that knocked me off my high horse and informed just how little I really knew. It was the email where he started to fill me in on jock straps.
Apparently there are all different kinds and I as a parent will have to help Max choose. He needs a special hockey jock strap which is different from the one his karate teacher had ordered him for that sport. Apparently the standard issue hockey jock shorts are safety yellow. Talk about a mystery… Yellow? Safety yellow? Its been hours since I learned this and I am still baffled. Why on earth, do they make them yellow? I mean, they are hidden, beneath black or blue or red hockey pants. Yellow bike helmets, I get it…but yellow underwear? Is it to make sure they don’t get thrown in the wrong pile of the wash? I have no idea and am not sure that I will ever know. But it simply a sign, a little laughable sign from the universe that even in the area I thought I would have down, I just don’t know how much I don’t know. And that there is no way to escape swimming in the land of beginning. There will always be a mystery.
So I am setting off, yet again, on another uncharted adventure. Me, my son, his yellow penis protecting underwear and I. I get to practice all over again, the art of being a beginner, of starting from ground zero, of knowing nothing and plunging in anyway, of just giving it a go and seeing where it leads. We always start right where we are completely new.
As for the whole mastery thing, well, I still would like to believe that one day I will get it all down. But truth be told, the richness of my life these days is coming from embracing the mystery. Parenting has taught me that in ways that are humbling and funny, sweet and torturous. And it will teach me over and over again.
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.
My life is full of magic. Just ask St Anthony. When I was a little girl, I lost everything. My father still talks about how I lost my blazer in 4th grade. I lost my homework, I lost my money, I lost my way. I spent a good portion of my early life looking for things. In college, my roommate Cindy would tell me it was time to go to dinner a full 10 minutes early because she had to build in time for me to locate my id and dining card. Somewhere along the way, in desperation of some sort, someone taught me the St Anthony prayer.
St Anthony, St Anthony…please look around, Something is lost and Can’t be found…We are looking for (insert name of thing we have lost here)
This frantic looking for something lost, sometimes it feels as though it is my destiny, or maybe my curse. I am a seeker. Always looking for something that has slipped through my fingers. Always thinking that the thing I need is somewhere else, somewhere hidden, somewhere far away. Over the last few years I have found the St Anthony prayer to work remarkably. I don’t know whether it is a little trick which triggers my brain to remember exactly where I put the lost thing, or whether it is truly a magic calling spell or whether a lovely saint with a bald head and the baby Jesus in his arms intervenes…but does it matter? For now, no matter what I have lost, it turns up no sooner than the words to the prayer slip out of my mouth. I have come to believe that the magic is that I am starting to trust that it never was really lost to begin with. It was always exactly where it needed to be and I just needed to open my eyes to see it. The St Anthony prayer is the key that unlocks that faith in my heart and opens my eyes.Lately I have been spending lots of time looking for other things I thought I had lost: the meaning of it all, love, my sanity, balance. I feel like that woman who is frantically looking around for her glasses which are right on top of her head. Seems like a little trust is in order…Trust that these things are right where they are meant to be and that all I need to do is open my eyes and I might just see them. The lesson is stop seeking and simply look. Its always there. Right in front of you.
I have been dreaming lately–really dreaming. Wild, Jungian, image-rich dreams that glisten as though they are painted with glossy paint. I wake up each morning and lay in bed, mentally kissing and blessing each of the strange and wonderful characters who have floated through my night world, who are the map-makers, the ones who are teaching me about the silent, unexplored places of my crazy healer’s heart.
There is a baby girl, a toddler, who I walk with, hand in hand along the banks of rivers and streets. While I am tentative, she will skip on the slippery rocks. When she falls I pull her out of the water , but she protests telling me just how beautiful the river really is.
There is the healer man, who looks a lot like a friend’s husband now long moved away. It is so hard to get to him, I always struggle, facing obstacle after obstacle to meet him. I will spend what feels like hours trying to connect, the path is always crooked and jumbled and exhausting, and I am so frequently derailed and stuck. When I reach him finally, he always walks me back to where I started, talking to me about the five elements, and deep knowing and the people that he and I love.
There is the crazy political consultant who is so frantic and stressed that she does not realize that I have snuck into her house and am an imposter, there is the shop keeper of the book store, a magical man who knows the secret incantations but will not tell me, assuring me that they will not work unless I discover them myself. But my favorite, my favorite of all these wild and wonderful fairytale friends, is the headless grandmother.
She has appeared in my earth dreams, the ones with golden lighting, the ones when I feel grounded. She sits at the edge on an armchair throne and holds court. She is adored by everyone but I know that I am her most beloved. She watches me work the party, the smiles, the kisses, the stolen glances. She knows what is in my heart, even before I tell her. She knows, and even though she has no head she smiles.
In my last dream she took my face between her hands and smushed it the way only a grandma can. She pulled me in close and whispered to me, “My precious beautiful girl, sweetness is coming to you…It is coming soon…in the span of one year . I see it” And then she blesses me by squeezing my hand. I don’t question her one bit. She is the wisest person I know. Without a head to muddle her, with only her heart to guide her, I know she alone knows the truth and I find deep deep comfort in her presence.
I have been told that according to Jung we are all the people in our dreams. If that is true, my headless grandmother must be my wise old woman self: the one who knows just because she has been through it all before, the one who knows becauses she has no use for a head with all the mess that logic brings. The one who knows because she holds all the wisdom of this wide open heart of mine.
This week I have kept her close, mentally closing my eyes and holding my hand in her wrinkled bent fingers. Her “oh-so grandmother” string of pearls resting on her royal blue sweater on the place around the place where her neck would be. I have kept her close and felt her smile, her caress on my hand while the rain has fallen and the wind has blown.
To you and to all the people that you are: the wise, the frantic, the healers and the children, may you sleep tight tonight in the embrace of a grandmothers’ love.
