Before I post again, I needed to stop to offer a huge thank you to the many people who have stopped by this blog, emailed, called, or facebooked in the last few days. Your kind, loving, beautiful words are a gift.
The overwhelming emotion for this week has been great gratitude for the gift of Jenni that we all shared, that indeed we all continue to share. Jenni lives on in all us, whenever we reach out to stranger, whenever we are courageous enough to be raw, and real, when we speak truth to power, when we find humor, grace and beauty in the most difficult of situations. Jenni lives on when we hug our children, when sing at the top of our lungs, when we make our art (whether it is with paper, dance, music, paint, fabric, clay or words). Jenni is with us when we cry at night, when we worry about our babies, when we contemplate the suffering in our homes, our communities, the world. Jenni is with us when we giggle with our girlfriends, when we pour “a cuppa” and sit for tea with our sisters, when we tell our stories over and over again in the hopes that we will find healing there. If we follow our stories, we will find as that in the end, there is only love–love so big and messy and wide and deep. That was the lesson of Jenni.
I have been holding a small moment of silence over here for Jen, until she be laid to rest. But now it is time to keep doing what Jenni and I enjoyed doing together–writing, connecting, watching, witnessing, living and growing.
I will. I will. I will. Everyday I will.
Will you?
So many of the notes in our holiday card have wished me a happier, easier year in 2009. While I have been touched by the friends who have recognized that this year was a big year, and challenging year at our home I have also been a bit confused. Looking back I feel nothing but gratitude for this year, for the gifts and the growth. Does that sound too Pollyanna? I don’t mean it to be…And its not that I am denying the difficulty of what we have faced this year. There have been real ups and downs.
Its true that 2008 has been a year that has felt a little bit like spiritual boot camp–but truth of the matter, I like I have been whipped into a new shape. Now that I am through it I can’t imagine where I would be without these trials. Sure, I hope 2009 brings us lots of blessings, but I guess I have stopped trying to define what “blessing” look like.
Still, this whole mental exercise, this questioning why friends thought our year might have been “tough” led me down a trip down memory lane. It lead me to this blog–which I so often don’t go back and read. Its lead me to want to post here some of the posts that captured my poignant, even if they were impossibly difficult moments in 2008, the ones that make me bow my head in gratitude, some of the moments that were teachers and and now, old friends. To honor them, these moments and acknowledge them before I bless them and let them go.
Thank you 2008…Thank you for the sweet gifts of laughter, joy, love that I experienced in your embrace. And thank you for the lessons, the growth and the opportunities you gave me to dive deeper into my own heart’s wisdom.
- A Good Year: The reappearance of my dear Jenni’s cancer called on both of us to question how we would live if we had only a year left.
- Somebody Loved: My divorce hearing in February called me to look back at the journey of love I had been on with Juan, and how at the end of all this mess, I really found myself.
- Everyday Magic and the Gift of Wings: A reflection on what happens when the Universe is in charge
- Rum, Serendipity and the Lass…:An ode to faith, the magic in the universe, the gift of friendship and things working out exactly as they should
- Transition : What happens when the bottom falls out and when things get turned on their head.
- Real: What Max taught me about seeing and being seen
- Held: My birthday card to myself.
- Things that Go Bump in the Night: On fear and facing it
- Stay:What I learned about winter when I finally settled in.
Saturday afternoon found me in the country. I sat in the breezy sunshine with an amazing and powerful woman and I watched while horses ran about in a pasture and Max and her children climbed trees and swung on swings. I was there as the first step of my year’s quest to explore what it would mean to become a healer. We talked for awhile about tuition and student loans, grad school schedules and homework, the difficulties of working while going to school and the financial viability of setting up an acupuncture practice. The data was useful but I still felt adrift, a little scared and completely at a loss for how I am going to make this dream come true while working and being a mama.
I asked her how she decided to become a healer. She told me that she was sitting on the couch one day, praying, meditating and wondering what it was that she should do with her life. And then, suddenly, and she just knew it was something she should do. She said that day she just opened her heart to it. She didn’t question or fuss, even though it required moving halfway across the country. She just heard her heart whisper its dream and she obeyed it without question. There was no process. There was just a decision.
I am always amazed when I meet people who listen to their inner wisdom the very first time it bubbles up. Who take the dreams in their own hearts seriously. Who don’t think but act when their heart, their soul, their own inner voice of God starts to nudge them. I am in awe of those people who know what it is that their hearts were meant to do and can just fearlessly leap into the void and trust that if they only do it, all will be well.
Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just leaped, joyfully instead of hemming and hawing, weighing facts and figures. I wonder what it would feel like to just run, spread my wings, open my heart and let go. I wonder what it is to just trust that voice inside — to know it is stronger, smarter, wiser and truer than any of the other facts, opinions and experts I seem to want to consult. I wonder what would happen if I could float in that place of radical trust and not question the how or the why or the when but just to go with what is.
I wonder what would happen in this world if we could all feel free to leap so joyfully into our dreams–the things our hearts somehow seem to be calling us to do. I wonder how the world would be if we could all just recognize our bliss and follow it, unafraid.
My dearest Jackie, who breaks all the rules, brought me a birthday gift tonight. This rockin’ Celtic T-shirt fits me like a glove, and resonates at exactly the same frequency of my little Irish soul. I am never taking this shirt off!
The words around the heart say: Like all things that are precious to us, we tend to keep our emotions under lock and key. Love itself is far too beautiful a gift not to share with everyone.
After a dinner of perfectly grilled kebabs, kick butt fish stew and the best carrot salad this side of north Africa, after a homemade ice cream cake that beat any other I have ever tasted, we sat in a circle and they, my beloved tribe helped me to create my list. My list of things to do before I turn forty. What’s beautiful about this exercise is that in adding an item to my list they pledged to do something (big or small) to help me get it done, to be my a co-conspirator, an angel to assist me, to hold my hands and jump feet first with me into the wild and messy river of my life.
In the spirit of love for them, in the spirit of my love for this life, I embrace this to do list, this plan. I hearby pledge to wrap my heart around these items and sink into the joyfulness of them.
- Take a kayak lesson on the Potomac
- Learn to throw a pot
- Perform at an open mic night
- Sing a duet with sweet Andy McD
- Learn to Irish step dance
- Go see Step Afrika
- Take Max to see Sweet Honey in the Rock
- Start to build my Goddess garden I have been dreaming of
- Paint my living room and hallway
- Create (and dare I say perfect) a gluten-free pizza dough recipe. (Homemade pizza and Eric’s homemade bread are the only two things that will tempt me off my healthy gluten free path. This gets me 50% of the way there! )
- Explore acupuncture and my calling as a healer
- Start that girls’ (age 8-11) knitting club I have been talking about
- Ride a roller coaster
- Stay a night at the Purple Fiddle
- Learn to swim
- Run a 10K
- Learn to count to ten in three African languages
- Finally master the f’in F chord
- Teach Max to knit (my sweet boy added this to my list, saying he would help by doing the learning!)
- Go out to hear live music at least ten times (this is an easy one which just makes me feel productive!)
- Figure out how to live migraine free
Wanna jump in with me? What do you think I might do in this crazy wild messy year before I turn 40? Lets do it together.
