Originally posted Sept 27, 2007
Tonight it rained. I sat in wonder and listened to the sound of the rain against my windows. I stood out on the front steps and let me feet get damp. It has been such a dry summer. The rain smelled miraculous and hopeful, the harbinger of good things. Life giving and cleansing. Just what we needed.
Nighttime in Rio, just after the storm passed
I have thought alot about my trip to Rio –the one I took two Octobers ago. We took this photo our first night there. Eddie’s friend, an ex-pat who had settled in this magical city, had taken us for a walking tour and showed us his favorite spot, a park across a lake from the hustle and bustle of this city. A rainstorm rolled in suddenly, unexpectedly, catching us on the wrong side of the park. It fell in sheets soaking us all as we ran for cover under some trees, laughing. I laughed harder than I had in months. At that moment, laughter bubbled up unexpectedly, as unstoppable as the rain. It was so absurd and silly and joyful. We were dressed to the nines for a night out on the town, with water running down our noses, with my chic outfit dripping and misshapen, my “oh-so-Rio” sandals squishing and making ridiculous noises. It was the funniest thing ever to be in Rio in the warm rain. I jumped in a puddle and lost my shoe. Pretty soon we were all laughing because I couldn’t stop laughing
I had felt so heavy and stressed when I got to Brazil. I was at the height of my financial panic and I had just started to wrap my heart around the idea that Juan was not coming back. I arrived at the airport after flying all night with only $20 American and a three day training to run in Spanish. I went to the cash machine at the airport to take out money for taxi fare and found my account was overdrawn. My cell phone was out of batteries. I had forgotten my credit card at home. I had no idea what I would do next. I went up to the money exchange counter and cashed in my $20. I hoped it would be enough to get me to the hotel where I could regroup and figure out my next move. I thought I had hit rock bottom. I felt so alone, like such a failure. To keep myself from breaking down in this strange city, I repeated a mantra “It is going to work out all right” and then I added a fervent “please” and threw in a prayer for good measure.
The taxi fare was exactly what I had in my wallet.
I got to the hotel and they told me my room was already paid for. I slept a heavy deep dreamless sleep. I woke up to find lunch. A a friend of a friend living in Sao Paolo who had come to meet me. A fully charged cell phone and a Dad on the other end able to wire some cash to get me through the week. And best of all when Eddie arrived that evening he had two airplane tickets to Rio.
Four days later I was standing in the rain in Rio, laughing as the water poured over my toes and ran down my fingers. I remember thinking that the rain washed some of my grief away that night, just let it slip right away and run into this lake, leaving me feeling a tiny bit lighter and ready to start healing.
originally posted August 2007
Its rained a little everyday now. Not all day, just a bit. Enough to drive us all indoors for awhile to pop popcorn, or eat lunch inside before the sun comes out from behind the clouds again. And I have too admit, I have been a bit draggy and gray myself. Not all day. But I’ve been a bit more tired and grouchy than last year. A bit more foggy and tired.
Last year, my first year at the lake it didn’t rain at all. It was a picture perfect week—for both of us “the lake” and me.
Last year, the lake and I, we were like new lovers putting on our very best for each other. Every day I woke full of energy to witness her brilliant sunrise, the glassy stillness of the water at daybreak. Every day she sparkled, all blue skies and sunshine while I dwelled fully present in the marvel of every hour—“Look how lovely the trees look in the 2 pm light—how different from the way they looked this morning.” “Oh! The air smells so beautiful right now? Does it always smell so clean here on a Tuesday?” And every night we stayed up late together the lake and I, a chorus of thousands of grasshoppers playing along with the soundtrack of the restless waves rocking the boat knocking it against the dock, as I lay on my back on the green green grass and counted stars with my son.
But this year we are sure of our love for each other and so we are no longer pulling out the stops. I am too tired this year for sunrises. I wake well past dawn when the lake is already busy with swimming and kayaks. The nights are not always clear and bright. The grasshoppers are not always singing. And sometimes this lake she is even gray and choppy. And sometimes we both rain a bit.
Now don’t get me wrong…The lake is no less lovely to me. She is every bit as beautiful and peaceful as I remember. I am seeing a new side of her and finding new beauty in the rain rolling of the pines or the reflection of the dark clouds on the water. Furthermore, I am enjoying my time with my cousins twice as much as last year. There is a rhythm and a comfort this year—a routine that feels like it has always been this way—us here on the lake. We feed each others children and pick up our conversations exactly where we left off last year. There is not so much to catch up on. We can just look at each other and smile—holding hands while we watch our children play at the waters edge, helping gather each others books and towels when the storm clouds come.
And this comfort I think is translating to my relationship with these magic surroundings. The beautiful spot I call the lake–she knows I will come back each year a faithful pilgrim. And I too know that she will be here for me next year, a resting spot for my tired bones. This lake and I, we no longer need to impress one another. We are in that phase of a new relationship when you can relax and let a little of your imperfections show. I am really not that much of a morning person. She is not always sunny and bright. But we will love each other nevertheless. In sunshine and in rain. And that love is in the end better than a vacation full of sunshine.
Hearts are funny things.
They carry in their memory, the echo, the footprint of every kiss, every caress, every sorrow, every hurt. Hearts remember like elephants–they remember blissful freefalls and hard impacts. Each of these memories lives in the tissue, wordlessly. There is no language but the muscle memory is clear and rises up through our hopes and our fears. I have come to believe that hope and fear is nothing but those old memories living on and through in our hearts.
For hope is nothing more than a search for something we may have lost somewhere between the time we left the great blissful stage of oneness and now. And fear is nothing more than the scar tissue left from a loss–The acknowledgment that maybe just maybe our beloved will disappear, that our hearts will stop feeling this love, that it will all fall apart, forever.
This past year for me has been a year of yearning. I couldn’t name it at the time, but now standing apart from it somewhat I can see. My heart beat stretching between hope and a sort of fear.
I had always associated fear with anxiety–that somehow fear meant that I was in a deep scary place. But looking back now I just see that fear is the other side of the coin called hope. Even in my happiest yang-i-est, sunniest days that hope fear combo was ever present.
As I fell head over heels in love with my tribe this year, the people in my life who make my life so rich and full, I found my heart so full of a cocktail of hope and fear that at times the bursting feeling felt so distracting. With every perfect moment that passed I felt my heart holding on to, hoping that that perfect moment would be followed by many many more just like it . As each perfect moment passed, I found my heart fearing that if I let go of this moment I may never see another just as lovely. The clinging and the hoping and the attaching that this is how it would be forever…always like this…That was the beat of my heart. Expand into hope, contract into fear, expand into hope and not even realize it is happening. Bumbum…bumbum…Silently unnoticed like my own heart beat.
Looking back though I can feel how much energy this hope and fear sapped from me. Looking back I can see what it cost me, this yearning. I can see with 20/20 hindsight.
A series of things have brought me to a place where I can observe how hope and fear play out in my heart, in my soul, in my hardest moments and my best days. A series of things have happened that showed me that hope, fear and attachment do not change anything. The universe spins. The world evolves. Moments come and dissipate and change and we cannot hold onto any of them no matter how lovely or how frightening. The moments dissolve seemlessly into another and no amount of hope or fear is going to change the next one from coming.
Letting go of hope and fear seems to be my soul’s work these days. Seeing how omnipresent it is, recognizing that every time I think I have let it go, I uncover a new layer, more subtle, less stark, but there nonetheless. Letting go of hope and fear means truly letting go of my attachment to the outcomes. I wonder if I ever really can let go of all my attachments. I seem to think that if I can just let that last layer burn away that my heart might be finally be free to expand outside the confines of all that hope/fear scar tissue.
Max and I are cleaning out our car. No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, the car has become a moving dumpster. The back seat is full of cereal crums and broken toys and half empty water bottles. Papers that were once too important to throw away are now so faded that we cannot read them, shoved in corners, tucked under the mats. Pollen and dust and old salt from winter. No matter how frequently we tackle the car there are some things that are just stuck–like gum on the bottom of the shoe, hard to scrape off.
We take the cleaning of the car seriously. It is metaphorical for me, fresh starts, clean space. A clean car means we don’t need to apologize when carpooling. A clean car means we don’t need to ponder how out of control our lives seem to be spinning every time we get into the car. And so we empty and vacumm and spray and wipe, this time more thoroughly than normal, but still there are so many layers of dirt and grime. At 10 am we need to call it a day. We have other things to do, this level of cleanliness–this absence of junk and crumbs, this state of significantly less dirt is going to have to be good enough.
Good enough. It is a phrase that can send me spinning in so many directions.
For one relief. As a child, there was no such thing as good enough. Things were either clean or they weren’t. The were right or they were wrong. I spent much of my youth desperately trying to get it perfect with the understanding that only 100% complete would do. When I first tried to wrap my brain around “good enough” it felt like a cop-out. But the truth was I was slowly killing myself with my perfectionism, dying an early death each time I failed over and over again to make the mark. One day, I found myself meditating on the phrase, “I am enough”. As I did, a seismic shift registered right there in my heart and suddenly love for my tender self, love for the part of me that would never be perfect, love that had been locked away and withheld began seeping out of the fault lines, like magma. When I could finally embrace good enough, at work, at home, even in my friendships and relationships I could relax and just be. Good enough are words that give me permission to just exist and know that it is OK, that all will be well. All manner of things will be well. Good enough saved my life.
But there is a shadow side to “good enough”. Now I see that it is its own prison. I see so much suffering in my life…suffering that comes from when people settle for “good enough”. I see it in the far away look in the eyes of the woman who has settled for a good enough marriage, and as a result feels a piece of her soul is lost, unexpressed, dying. I see it in the hollowed out gaze of the friend who is stuck in a career that is going nowhere and has nothing to do with his creative self. I see it in myself sometimes. when I cheat myself, not finishing something that I have labored long at, when I walk away from something before it is complete, when I avoid the hard work of seeing the truth in my heart, when I tell myself that the life that I am yearning for is so unattainable and the life that I have now is just fine. Good enough gives me permission to throw up my hands and tune out. In those moments “good enough” is not a relief, it is an excuse for giving up, stopping and just going to sleep.
What then is the balance point –how can we be in the place where we le to accept what is, to let go of yearning all the while avoiding being stuck in the place where we give up, give in, and stop moving, stop growing, stop trying. Where is the balance point where our souls are free to seek, grow, blossom into what they are without being held back by the belief that where we have landed is “good enough” and therefor we can safely slumber, turn off, tune out and Stop. Moving. Forward.
Whatever that place is, it has nothing to do with my car, and I think sometimes that maybe that is the point. Good enough applies to the things that are unimportant, small, silly. Good enough doesn’t apply to things like hearts and soul work? Or can it? Or is it a matter of degree? That somedays, it all just needs to be good enough, but in our next breath there is a potential for expansion? Or it it just a matter of staying awake? Being able to be content with whatever life throws at us, all the while staying awake to whatever potential and possibility may unfold. I don’t know that I will know the answers. I don’t know that I will ever figure out it out.
And maybe the fact that I am asking the question and seeking the answer is really in the end…Good enough.
Max and I went bowling tonight. It is one of our favorite things to do. In the space of the drive home, the sky turned from bright dusk to the most amazing shade of dark. The sky still lit up from a sun which had refused to set was transformed by smoke grey clouds. “Look Max,” I said, my voice quivering with excitement. “It is going to storm”. And then lightening in the distance turned the sky hot pink and fat rain drops fell.
We talked about hurricanes on the short ride home. Max had heard about the ones hitting Texas and Mexico and was worried. Did we ever get hurricanes here? What happens in hurricanes? Why are they dangerous? What is the difference between a hurricane and a thunder storm? I told him the story of the hurricane that hit our area when he was just a toddler. It was not a fierce hurricane and we were far enough inland that we faced a weakened beast but it was still scary nevertheless. I told him how we lost power for a week and how trees were uprooted and how the park looked completely different and we had to find new ways to get into town while everything was rearranged.
The sound of rain can always give me pause, hold me still. Rain, when it comes like this, strong and steady, with wind and thunder, feels magical to me. I listen for the subtle differences in how the rain sounds, on my roof, on the trees, against the window. The thunder and lightening that announced this storm have passed but the rain continues, filling rain barrels, restoring gardens, washing away soot, dust, pollen, dislodging leaves and broken tree limbs and making it all clean and light.
Max huddled under the covers at bedtime tonight. “I am scared mama” he whispered over and over. I wrapped my arms around him and snuggled him tonight and promised him that while he was frightened, no harm would come to him. Storms can be terrifying but they are ultimately good. Storms can clean us out. Storms can make us new again. Storms can make messes and can radically change the landscape of our hearts but storms fill up the wells and give new hope to crops that looked long gone.
I recently had the chance to see an amazing documentary film that will be making its theatrical debut this September. Trouble the Water is a stunning piece of art that not only captured the horror of Hurricane Katrina, the raw injustice that exists in our country and the tragedy caused by the incompetence of the US government but also documented the miraculous transformation of two individuals. It was simultaneously a story of great despair and great hope, of death and rebirth, of facing horrible horrible pain and finding that not only survival but that life blossoms in surprising and amazing ways in the aftermath and that we keep coming back.
This is a theme I keep coming back to, over and over again. Whenever I go through a period like this I have trouble naming my experience, putting it into words. I always have trouble until the rains come and then I know, “aha…yes of course.” The drama of the thunder and lightening have passed, the rain is still falling, softer but steady. I can feel my the landscape of my life transformed. Still the same town, still the same space. But the dead limbs and old trees have been removed. I can feel more light streaming in. I can feel the dust swept away.
I am washed clean of the clutter and am left only with myself. New as I have always been. Transformed into myself again.
May the rains falls soft upon your fields tonight.
I haven’t been writing much.It seems that there is a shift going on in my life and I am not quite sure what to make of it.
It feels rather big and quite small at the same time.
After all, nothing has changed and yet everything seems to be changing.
My life feels so very much the same, but I feel new. And yet I feel as though I am really who I always was. And recognizing myself from long ago and realizing I had been there all along.
I don’t know how to write about it. And yet I don’t know how to write about anything else.
So I do my laundry. And I make dinner. And I play Uno with Max and read books. And I go through stacks of paper and finally take care of a thousand things that just last month seemed not worth doing.
Many of the events that are precipitating all these shifts are not the stuff of publication. Some are quite small, like streams that gently shape a mountain side over time. They are so mundane. Others have been earthquakes, shaking my very sense of security. They leave me feeling vulnerable and exposed.
Sometimes I feel like I am on the edge of some big deep breakthrough, but really, truth be told, most minutes I feel like I am wandering around in the spiritual desert, arriving at the same lesson over and over again. I feel like the last month or so has been a kind of spiritual boot camp.
Over and over, in big and small ways, I keep being called on to trust. To shed fear. To open up to love at whatever the cost. To operate not from a place of hurt but from compassion. To hold it all lightly, even when it feels so heavy. To claim my power and then to be unimpressed with it and let it go. To establish boundaries but let love flow freely across them.
To stop asking “what next?” To stop asking “why?” To stop seeking and spinning and hoping and wondering.
And just be.
Empty.
Speechless.
As a storyteller I don’t know what to do with the silence. The long stretches of quiet. Except to honor the stillness and to know that some stories are meant only to be whispered to God. And that soon, other stories will come to me. To let the fields go fallow for awhile and trust that I will write when I am ready.
This past Sunday, Odette threw a dinner party at our house. She called together some of the dearest members of our tribe to thank them for planning a fundraiser to support her girls. We pulled out dresses and dusted off the china, put a white damask cloth on the table and filled the house with flowers. As everyone started to arrive it started to pour…a heavy summer rain, the kind that washes funks and bad moods away. We drank beer and wine and gathered in the kitchen, all of us crowded in that tiny space leaving the rest of the house empty. As the lights flickered and the power threatened to go off, I pulled out candles and placed them next to the good dishes and half- hoped for the intimacy that an outage would bring.
And then Odette called us around the table. We stood there all of us, adults and children. We held hands as Odette bowed her head and began to say a blessing in her mysterious and beautiful language, a blessing over the food we would eat, a blessing over strangers who had become family. I opened my eyes and looked around the circle. And I took a mental picture and burned it into my heart. A circle of community. A table loaded with food. An endless cycle of giving and receiving.
And I knew that for all the shifts and changes and silences and spiritual deserts and breakthroughs, I have all that I will ever need. And no matter where I explore, I will arrive back here. Home.
Recently I was found.
An old dear friend reached out to me from across the wide expanse of years. We were young and dumb together, he and I. We had had many adventures–real, crazy adventures and wild emotional ones too. But that was long ago and we haven’t talked in years. We had grown up, found love, formed homes, started families. Life got busy and we drifted apart.
During the years when we were close, our relationship had been an anchor. We passed long letters back and forth over sea and land. He was in the Navy, I was teaching in Texas. Those letters kept me afloat during two very difficult years when I was far away from home, far away from love, far away from even myself. He kept me grounded, kept me reading, kept me thinking, kept me breathing. We talked about everything. We often disagreed. But no matter how spirited the debate, he saw me, really saw me for who I was, and adored me for all my imperfections. He was the first person who loved me who didn’t minimize my flaws. That is powerful love.
One New Years Eve, over 15 years ago, in a city hundreds of miles from where either of us lived he found me, sought me out to slip his arms through mine. As I lay my head on his shoulder and told him secretes, I knew that I would love him forever, that he would always be dear to me. Always.
At one point in the height of being young and dumb we had a bitter falling out. I can’t remember now any of the details or the circumstances. But I do remember the sadness, the loneliness of realizing that something profound had shifted in my life, of feeling a veil had been lifted and that I was left with life, stripped bare. Without him. I ached intensely. I was angry for I was sure that I would love him always but this did not feel like love. We stopped talking for what felt like a lifetime. The silence was so loud.
After a while though, no matter how intensely I felt the loss of him, I found that I could sit with the memories of our friendship, sit with them without anger at his betrayal. I remembered all the ways he saw me, all the ways he knew me, cherished me, even if he couldn’t understand me, even if he no longer could appreciate me. And it became clear to me that no matter how big or intense the hurt, the love I had for him was big enough–big enough to hold it. Big enough to overshadow it. Big enough to balance it. Big enough to bless it. Big enough to let it be. Because I had been seen. He saw me.
By the time his letter of apology came in the mail, by the time he found me again there was nothing but love left in my heart.
Our relationship changed after that. It would change many times. Not for the worse or even for the better. It just was, as we were, growing up. There were hurts. There was laughter. One day I sat on a park bench with him in New Orleans. I was teasing him about some girl he was dating, some girl he would later marry but the edge in my voice betrayed me. I looked down at my shoes, maybe a little embarrassed. “I just want you to be happy” I said to him. “Do you?” he challenged me in the way that only he could. “Do you really? Or do you just want me to be yours?” I was, like I often was around him,dumb struck. I just kept looking at my shoes.
But later that night I sat in a rocking chair on my friends porch in the Garden District rocking myself and looking up at the big old moon. “Happy” I whispered to the warm Louisiana wind. “Happy”. I sent my wish out for him. And for the first time I took into my heart the reality that love does not mean attachment and love often means walking away, setting boundaries, saying goodbye.
Of course it wasn’t really goodbye. Because love kept bringing us back in different ways. There were a few Sunday mornings when as I lay in bed with Juan, watching the political talks shows the phone would ring. He was watching too. Or he had news. About a clerkship. About a girl. About a death. He came to my wedding, driving through the rain from Manhattan. As he stood there with the woman who would be his wife he looked at me, and I looked at him and we both smiled–for he saw me, he saw me exactly for what I was. Happy. Messy, imperfect but happy. And it brought him joy.
But life is a busy thing. Careers, children, houses that are too big, budgets that are too small. We no longer had time for penning long letters. Sunday mornings were full of chores, and work. There is a Christmas card, maybe two and then silence. But this time the silence came so gradually I didn’t even hear it. Its been at least 5 years since our last communication–It was around the birth of his son. I sent a congratulations. He sent a thank you note. And then it was quiet.
But he found me.
Truth is he always does.
And he found me at the perfect time.
At a time when I needed to remember that love, true fearless love, is big enough to hold any hurt, any betrayal. That in the end love is always bigger. That forgiveness is but an affirmation that love is more important, mightier, stronger. He walked back into my life exactly at a time when I needed to remember that fearless love changes, morphs and may appear to retreat but never really dies. That love is not equal to attachment but that love always finds you when you need it most.
He is coming this way, my dear old friend. Passing through town this month. And he says he wants to see me. He always did see me. And when he does I will slip my arms round his waist and lay my head on his shoulder for a moment and see him too.
When I was a little girl, I used to dream of flying. I dreamed I was running along the top of the hill behind my elementary school, the hill where we used to go sledding, and that I would throw my body into the wind and it would catch me and I would fly.
I loved that dream. Every now and again I have a similar one. I dream that I am running and that I throw myself into a void, off a cliff, into the wind and I am lifted and that I soar.
I thought about this dream all day today as I contemplated this big word of the day TRUST. Ever since I was a child trust has been my own person Mt Everest, my own Rubicon, my biggest worst.
It is amazing to me how trust is so multilayered. How we can trust someone with our bodies but not necessarily with our thoughts. How we can trust someone with the key to our home, but we are not sure we will ever give them the key to our heart. How we can trust someone with our safety, but not necessarily our souls.
How we can trust a little and convince ourselves that we are trusting completely.
What does it mean to love fearlessly? Truly fearlessly. To really trust completely. Do I trust anyone completely? Do I even trust myself completely?
I think if I did it must be like flying.
I think it must be jumping into the wind and knowing that I will be carried.
I think it is the trust that the wind is strong enough to lift me.
In my dreams I never test the wind. In my dreams the air does not need to assure me that it will catch me. In my dreams I leap unafraid and I soar free. In my dreams I fly and I am carried to places I had no intention of traveling to but I trust the currents and the air and I know where it is going is somehow right–always right. And I know that my landing will be soft.
I know I am being called to fly. I feel it, the currents beckoning to me. All that is left is for me to throw myself on the mercy of the wind. And it comes down to this–whether I can lift my arms and trust the unseen forces to lift me higher and higher into the life I am called to.
Whether I can trust.
I have been trying to write for days now about the experience of turning corners, of coming back home, or starting to grow a little lighter. I have been trying but words have been escaping me, so profound and deep and yes scary this experience is, this coming home to myself. I don’t know how to write about something so big.
I stayed for days in a dark quiet place, knowing that the reason I was there was that I was facing a great big fear–the fear that is my great foe, the monster that lives in my closet and hides under my bed. I felt that if I could stay there in the dark and not hide under the covers, if I could stare her down, sit with her and maybe get to know her that maybe I would just finally get rid of her. And so I did. I sat with the fear of being abandoned. I sat with the fear of being left vulnerable. I sat and I sat. And I felt the fear flood me and fill me and rise up into my throat. I had no energy for triumph or overcoming. So I just sat.
And then, the day after the full moon, as the moon started to wane, a tiny light started to grow in my heart. A light that allowed itself to spark when a friend invited me out to a swanky party and I allowed myself to say yes. Coming up for air and being with my dear ones, allowing them to express their love in the simplest of gestures–shared scotch, stolen conversation, a late night walk–it a gave me peace. It whispered to me that I knew the way home. I did. I really did.
The light grew stronger over the weekend as I sat at the pool, flanked by two of my favorite guys. One who brought me a latte, fresh from the coffee place down the street, another who loaned me his magazine, played with my child and brought me bottled water. I noticed that though I had not left my chair for hours, all my needs were met and I felt held, cradled in the simplest manner, like a child.
It grew the night I ate two dinners. One with my child, his friend and mine. To strangers we must have looked like we were a family on a Sunday night outing but we were pieces of three families merged into one. We were family–just not the nuclear kind. We were my family. We were out but I felt at home. Later that night I ate the best steamed mussels I have had in a long time and salad from a neighborhood garden, roasted asparagus and ripe yellow tomatoes–I was not hungry for food but I was for the love with which it was prepared, the pleasure with which it was plated just for me, there spontaneously. I ate it with a side of laughter and a bit of girl talk and felt a bit brighter all the while.
Two days ago I sat at an acupuncture appointment and told my partner in healing, my beloved teacher and guide about my descent into the fear of abandonment and my humble return home. She sat quiet for a moment, contemplating what I had told her and then she asked me to think about something while she left the room. She asked me to think hard and to answer from my deepest darkest place. She asked me if it was OK to be needy.
By the time she got back tears streaked my cheeks. I wanted to say yes, for when crisis has rocked my world, I have appreciated those who sheltered me and took care of my needs. I wanted to say yes because I loved to be there for those who needed me, their neediness was not a burden but a gift to me–a gift that allowed me to be my best self.
But I couldn’t say that it was OK for me to be needy. Because in the end, I want to believe that I, and I alone am all that I need. Needing others, allowing them to love me meant that maybe they wouldn’t and I would go without. Incomplete.
I wanted to believe, I needed to believe that I could do it all on my own–that I would never need to depend on anyone again–that I would never need fear abandonment. That I could pull the covers over my head and make the monster disappear.
She looked at me with great love in her eyes but her voice was stern and strong. She essentially said this: Meg, when you give and give and do not allow those who love you to give back to you, when you take care of the needy but do not allow yourself to be needy in return, you rob your community and you set yourself out of balance. And the universe is going to kick you in the ass to set it right again. You need to receive love and if the only time you are going to allow yourself to be loved is when you are recovering from a crisis then you will be hit with crisis after crisis. Its just that simple.
The thing you need to do to heal is simple but not easy: Allow yourself to be loved.
Allow yourself to be loved.
It is so easy for me to love others, it is so easy for me to see the beauty that they bring to the world and to appreciate it for the rough, cranky and imperfect gift it is but frankly if I am completely honest I have a lot of doubts about whether they will love me in return. Not because I don’t see myself as loveable but because, perhaps I doubt whether I can count on them to rise to the occasion of loving me completely.
I trust myself to love them, but I do not trust them to love me back. I dance around the doubts, while I make excuses for my dear ones–all the reasons why love, fearless true love is hard. I tell myself all the reasons why I shouldn’t expect it while I prepare myself for disappointment. I tell myself how hard it is for them to see me completely. I compensate in my mind and in my heart for all the ways I anticipate that they will let me down.
I really sell my dear ones short.
And yet, every time I need them so many of them rise, rise, rise to the occasion. Not all of them mind you, but the good ones. The ones I call tribe. They always do in the smallest and simplest of ways. A shared drink, a sweet song, a movie ticket, a tea, painting my toenails, making me a salad, making my bed, bringing me a latte, loaning me a book, telling me a joke, sending me an email, a phone call, a secret whispered message while lighting a candle for me. There are the big ways too–the ways so big, and wide and open. They rise, they always rise.
And if I am honest, they rise everyday whether I need them or not. And maybe the one who fails to see completely is me. Maybe it is I who fails to see them and how they would cradle me if only, if only I let them.
And it is this, this simply complex and impossibly easy thing, that is blocking me.
As we talked, as I struggled to wrap my head and heart around her words, as I struggled to understand how I failed my loved ones by not allowing them to love, the most amazing thing happened.
Over her shoulder a rainbow appeared. It stretched fully across the horizon and filled the picture window. I stopped her mid sentence and told her to turn around. We both walked to the window, with mouths agape and gazed at the rainbow. And then, we witnessed a second rainbow hover over the first. It was a miracle, nothing I had ever seen. It was brilliant. It was perfect.
That pair of rainbows stayed with us through the rest of my appointment. As she took my pulses and inserted needles. As I lay on the table, I gazed out the window at its brillance. It was a message, a punctuation mark, a song, a miracle. It said YES. It said WHAT SHE SAID. It said TRUST. It said OK, DAMN IT IF YOU NEED A SIGN HERE IT IS.
As I drove home I was sure that I was changed forever. And in some ways I suppose I am. But in other ways I see how this fear is sticking with me still, how stubborn I am. How hard it is to let go of fear. How this journey does not end at the rainbow, but how the rainbow is just the beginning.
Tonight, the one who loves my child so dearly got another lecture from me about how he needs to let me know if its getting to be too much, this adoration, this affection, this responsibility. He looked at me with patience but I could see he was tired of this conversation and I saw in his weary face how I was selling him short again. How I was doubting how much he could love. How I failed to see him with his big heart for what it was–big and wide open. How scared I was that his love for Max would change. How scared I was that if we asked too much of him, his love for us would change.
And I asked myself, can I trust my dear ones to love us completely? Can I trust them to see me and still stay? Can I leap unafraid into their arms? Can I really do that?
And I thought about the phrase, FEEL THE FEAR AND DO IT ANYWAY. And I wondered if I could? Really. What would it cost? Everything and nothing and everything again.
I don’t know how to end this post. Because I don’t know how to write about coming home. It don’t know how to write about something that feels so big and scary and beautiful and bright. I don’t know how to end something that speaks only about beginnings.
So I will just begin again. And begin again. And again.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always —A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be wellWhen the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.-TS Eliot, The Four Quartets
I am so out of tune.
The whole world is waxing, growing more yang, full, ripe and bright. As we march forward to the solstice the days stretch infinitely long. As I looked into the summer sky I saw a moon growing fat and fire flies dressing up the lawn with their shimmers. It seems as if the whole world is getting ready for a party, a celebration, and explosion of life.
But I am waning, growing yin, dimmer, diving deeper into myself. I am touching dark places of my heart. The places where the shadows lurk. The places where I am still and silent–where the air is thick and heavy and smells a little like cedar and crushed pine needles.
I have not gone quietly to this place. I have fought this whole waning cycle. I have kicked and screamed and railed against the rain, and the cold and the quiet. I have yearned for connection and have reached out into the darkness pleading for the light and the energy and the bubbling up of joy. I wanted to sing in the sunshine and dance and blossom and expand and I fought the contraction with every ounce of energy I had.
Then, yesterday I got some upsetting news. Its news I don’t want to write about here only to say that it was distressing and stressful and opened up old wounds, wounds I thought I had long ago healed. I found myself reliving abandonment all over again–the feeling of losing my heart, the panic of losing control. I felt vulnerable and weary and alone. And suddenly I embraced the yin for there was nothing I wanted to do but go away and pull the covers over my head, drink chai tea and slip away into the dark of a new moon night. It was as though my soul knew I needed this quiet to deal with what would happen and was preparing me for it all along. It all suddenly made so much sense.
I am swimming in the yin, letting it wash over me. I am grateful for the silence for it asks nothing of me. I am counting my breaths now, keeping my heart focused here on the now for it is all I have afterall. It is all I can do, just breathe, and I have noticed that my breathing, even in this space, can sound like music. And I am thankful for the absence of noise, community, busyness and bustle.
The distressing problem will be solved. I am not worried about that. The wound on my heart, the one it opened up–it will heal, I am certain of it. And the seasons, they will turn again. Of that I am sure.
It may be days, or weeks or months but I will expand again. I will be yang and joyful and bright. I will light up the sky like a June moon. But for now I am a waning moon, growing dim and letting the world rest and be still.
