On the other side of Solstice and Christmas, I can sit at my red-bedecked kitchen table to let my mind wander. I watch a raven swoop over the garden, calling to its partner, maybe reporting I’ve not left the daily food offering yet.
I’m mostly feeling grateful this morning. I appreciate I’ve enough wood for the fire, the pump hasn’t frozen, and my solar-charged batteries are still working (even if they are five years old). Among many other things, the generator still starts with the hand pull. I have plenty of food, and I finally have the refrigerator gasket problem glued with gorilla snot in place. Oh, and my phone works.
I’m grateful the yard is strewn only with small branches and tree limbs. If anything big came down, it must’ve happened in the forest areas away from the house and out-buildings.
I have to admit I’ve been the recipient of a kind of magic around this year’s holiday season year.
Did Santa Claus leave me surprise presents under the non-existent tree? Not one bit. Was I visited by the spirits of Christmas present, past, and future? Not as gaseous forms. Only in my thoughts.
In fact, no talking snowmen, magic princes, or oracle-like frogs crossed my threshold.
But there was magic.
During a brief sunburst between storms, every raindrop at the tips of every fir and pine needle sparkled in splendor. Whenever I needed to go for wood or tend to the generator, the rain stopped until I was done.
When I lost my purse on a shopping trip, it was returned to me. When I faced the make-up department in Wal-Mart, a sprightly, young woman happily shared her knowledge and skill in this art I’ve neglected for 30 years without judgment of me or a question of why I wanted to start painting my face now.
Surprise phone calls helped me over some rough spots. Invitations arrived when I needed to go out. Inspiration came when I had to solve a problem.
And in the quiet of the house, I felt myself move with our Earth as she turned on her axis and become part of all life as it shifted and changed through this season of slow growth and rebirth.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
The Puzzle of Loss and Gain
How is it that devastating loss can be freeing?
Fran Brown, my Reiki Master/Mentor of 25 years passed away last year, and a cloak of responsibility to carry on the traditional teachings of the Usui System of Natural Healing dropped across all her students. For me, I also felt freer to express who I really was to the world and stand as a Master with my own gifts.
And when my step-daughter, Linda, died in June, 2009, the turmoil of our 31 year relationship uncoiled. I no longer had to fear the mine-field of our communications or her visits. I did suffer the loss of the only one of our four children who remembered with enthusiasm every holiday of the year, and my birthday.
Since my sister/friend of 30 years moved away, my routine of regular check-ins over coffee have had to be replaced by occasional hour-long phone conversations where her wise comments whisper in my ear instead of from her distinctive face. I miss our routine connections but am finding other individuals popping in irregularly to offer feedback and observations. There are also more spaces in my life where I am on my own to figure myself out without her mirrored vision of me. I’m having to see myself from the inside.
And so it goes with every loss I’ve experienced in 2009: a dance between loss and gain with doors closing and doors opening.
Did all that happen to give me some kind of teaching so as to get me through the loss of my husband this year? As I stumble through my days without him, I feel the weight of the responsibility to keep our hearth and home intact as well as the freedom to do it my way at my own pace. I’m learning what fits for me and what doesn’t.
As I’m facing the loss of the opportunity to celebrate each day with my best friend, I am freed from having to pay attention to someone else’s likes and dislikes, his chosen routine, and the passing flavor of his attitudes and forceful opinions.
I no longer have my sounding board against which to bounce ideas or refine plans. Nor do I have the comfort of companionship and sharing. What I do have are whisperings in my ear, suggestions and reminders I can choose to follow or not. I am comforted by their quiet presence. Sometimes they cheer me on to a new level of confidence, and I find myself having a new experience.
I’m startled frequently by glimpses into a future so different from my past in which I blossom as my own unique flower rather then entwined as a bud around another.
Fran Brown, my Reiki Master/Mentor of 25 years passed away last year, and a cloak of responsibility to carry on the traditional teachings of the Usui System of Natural Healing dropped across all her students. For me, I also felt freer to express who I really was to the world and stand as a Master with my own gifts.
And when my step-daughter, Linda, died in June, 2009, the turmoil of our 31 year relationship uncoiled. I no longer had to fear the mine-field of our communications or her visits. I did suffer the loss of the only one of our four children who remembered with enthusiasm every holiday of the year, and my birthday.
Since my sister/friend of 30 years moved away, my routine of regular check-ins over coffee have had to be replaced by occasional hour-long phone conversations where her wise comments whisper in my ear instead of from her distinctive face. I miss our routine connections but am finding other individuals popping in irregularly to offer feedback and observations. There are also more spaces in my life where I am on my own to figure myself out without her mirrored vision of me. I’m having to see myself from the inside.
And so it goes with every loss I’ve experienced in 2009: a dance between loss and gain with doors closing and doors opening.
Did all that happen to give me some kind of teaching so as to get me through the loss of my husband this year? As I stumble through my days without him, I feel the weight of the responsibility to keep our hearth and home intact as well as the freedom to do it my way at my own pace. I’m learning what fits for me and what doesn’t.
As I’m facing the loss of the opportunity to celebrate each day with my best friend, I am freed from having to pay attention to someone else’s likes and dislikes, his chosen routine, and the passing flavor of his attitudes and forceful opinions.
I no longer have my sounding board against which to bounce ideas or refine plans. Nor do I have the comfort of companionship and sharing. What I do have are whisperings in my ear, suggestions and reminders I can choose to follow or not. I am comforted by their quiet presence. Sometimes they cheer me on to a new level of confidence, and I find myself having a new experience.
I’m startled frequently by glimpses into a future so different from my past in which I blossom as my own unique flower rather then entwined as a bud around another.
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
A Coping Method
Every day, it seems, I’m living my life as if I have, what I can only describe as, a temporary case of selective amnesia.
Let me try to explain this.
Try living a morning or a day so engrossed in what you’re doing you never chance to see a reflection of your face. All of a sudden you pass a mirror and wonder ‘who is that person?’ You realize your hair was never combed or dirt smudges your cheek. Those of us growing older, but who still feel young, are startled by grey hair and wrinkles.
In that instant of seeing ourselves we feel frustration at the disarrayed hair, anger because no one told us we’d smudged our face, or sadness because we recognize our loss of youth. When we were doing and experiencing our life in the ‘now’ is shattered by an awareness of another reality, a different set of details than the ones we were working with. And that’s how it goes for me.
The instant one thing causes a memory to arise, I’m slammed with a sharp energy, reminding me how totally my life has changed.
Each moment of reconnection is momentous and, until recently, I reacted helplessly. I don’t think this will ever really go away, but I’ve devised a plan where I’m protecting myself from the onslaught of unpredictable emotions.
To protect myself from the helpless awareness of how much my life has changed, I’m choosing to change it myself. I’ve donated the 20-year-old dishes and bought a newer, smaller set. The extra leaves to the kitchen table are stored now, and I’ve added a placemat and dried flowers where the Lazy Suzanne once sat. I moved the butter dish to a cabinet, recovered the living room couch, changed the bedspread and rearranged the bedroom. These aren’t drastic actions, but doing them gives me a small feeling of control. I remind myself I’m free to make these choices for myself now as well as make new memories. For now, this is what’s working.
Let me try to explain this.
Try living a morning or a day so engrossed in what you’re doing you never chance to see a reflection of your face. All of a sudden you pass a mirror and wonder ‘who is that person?’ You realize your hair was never combed or dirt smudges your cheek. Those of us growing older, but who still feel young, are startled by grey hair and wrinkles.
In that instant of seeing ourselves we feel frustration at the disarrayed hair, anger because no one told us we’d smudged our face, or sadness because we recognize our loss of youth. When we were doing and experiencing our life in the ‘now’ is shattered by an awareness of another reality, a different set of details than the ones we were working with. And that’s how it goes for me.
The instant one thing causes a memory to arise, I’m slammed with a sharp energy, reminding me how totally my life has changed.
Each moment of reconnection is momentous and, until recently, I reacted helplessly. I don’t think this will ever really go away, but I’ve devised a plan where I’m protecting myself from the onslaught of unpredictable emotions.
To protect myself from the helpless awareness of how much my life has changed, I’m choosing to change it myself. I’ve donated the 20-year-old dishes and bought a newer, smaller set. The extra leaves to the kitchen table are stored now, and I’ve added a placemat and dried flowers where the Lazy Suzanne once sat. I moved the butter dish to a cabinet, recovered the living room couch, changed the bedspread and rearranged the bedroom. These aren’t drastic actions, but doing them gives me a small feeling of control. I remind myself I’m free to make these choices for myself now as well as make new memories. For now, this is what’s working.
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