It never ceases to amaze me how spirit brings us people and tools
when we need them the most: I think of them as the Angels of Remembrance sent to remind us that we are being taken care of and looked after.
The day he left, I was wandering down the
main street of Dominical, looking for a place to sit, drink coffee and
work. I didn’t know what else to do to be honest. I was striking out
everywhere, it was too early and no place was open yet. The truth was I
didn’t want to be anywhere public, but I couldn’t bring myself to go
home to the emptiness of the house we had shared yet either. That felt
like instant breakdown material.
Just at the moment when I was feeling
ready to lay down and cry, my friend Carlos pulled up and invited me to
go to his house to ground down and work if I wanted some private space.
He knew how tender my heart was and his offer was the perfect thing at the perfect time. It made me feel instantly like I was being
taken care of, and that an angel had arrived to guide me in my moment of
despair.
Two days later, Carlos cut his foot and I offered to bring
some food to him so he wouldn’t have to walk thru town on it. I was
happy to repay his kindness. While I was there I asked him if had any
good books. I thought it would be nice to have a story around to read to
fill in some of the space. He picked up a book called “Twilight
Language of the Nagual” by Merilyn Tunneshende on the shamanic power of
dreaming. “You might like this one,” he said, so I took it home.
As
it turns out, this is the perfect book for me to be reading. It’s
Merilyn’s story of when her fiancé died and she was left alone in the
world and how she moved from that place of lonlieness to a deeper
spiritual awakening, powerful transformations and a more meaningful
life. Interesting parallel or cosmic synchronic message? No, my
sweetie didn’t die physically, but the process of separation from
someone so dear to one’s heart has parallels to a physical death, and
brings on a lot of similar feelings of grief, loss, regret, depression,
etc. Somehow the loss of parts of oneself that were emmeshed in the
relationship is also akin to a psychological/spiritual death.
The book
has been a huge gift and tool for me and in particular a great reminder
for me of the truth that aloneness is required for certain stages of
evolution to occur within our psyche and our souls. More specifically it
addresses that to bring forth our “medicine” for the world, our
“service” in essence, we often must have a time of loss, solitude and a
certain emptiness, a void that only spirit and our true life’s purpose
can fill, and we must stay present in that emptiness to receive the
depths of our medicine.
Of course this isn’t some
surprisingly new insight or anything. I know and have known, beyond my
aching heart that this is necessary, right and good for me. Even in the
depths of it, there is this knowingness that goes beyond, and that
knowingness keeps me moving thru and having faith in the great unknown!
After all, I am the one who chose this. I was the one who called forth
this separation. It was me who told him I couldn’t be with him anymore,
and wanted to separate, and it was me who chose to stay here for a
month in order to have some alone time to process, heal and regain my
self.
Some part of that makes it easier, I guess,
some part of it doesn’t. But today, I'm choosing to focus on getting
some work done and finding gratitude in still being here on Planet Earth
to feel the pain with the rest of it.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
4-The Hammock is Always Mine: Re-claiming Solidarity
Day 2: Tuesday, April 6, 2010 9 AM
Three hours of meditation, yoga and body healing this morning leave me feeling, if nothing else, more grounded and ready for work again. Ah: work: the drowning place of it all!
The first few days after he left, all I did was work. I worked huge hours writing and working on things that "needed" to get done. I worked to fill up the void, to keep busy and not think about the loss of my best friend, lover and all the lost tossed dreams of our future together that I have tried to pretend didn’t matter, but that have devastated my sense of direction and purpose.
The past three days however, up until the surf session yesterday, I have been trying a different approach: that of surrender. Surrendering to the grief fully. Surrendering to the not wanting to do anything. Surrendering to laying around for hours just listening to the ocean, the birds and the wind. Surrendering to the reality that he is gone, and a part of me has gone with him and will never come back. Surrendering to some possibility that maybe there is a small still voice waiting for me to hear it’s call.
So far, no voice, but in moments, I imagine that I hear whispers in the wind that give me a little spark of hope for some divine message to come in that will change the course of my life forever and bring me into my full bliss again. I am raw. I am cracked wide open thru my pain. I'm like an exposed fruit, ripe, messy and needing to be consumed quick before it spoils or attracts bugs and varmits. I find myself laughing at myself at the sickening delusional state that that kind of hope can sometimes create if we get stuck in it, hoping for a message from God, waiting around for too long to just get on with it already.
Honestly, it hasn’t been that fun to make an effort to not fill up space, but I thought of it as a practice, a discipline to stop and allow what is just to be. For me to lay for hours on the floor or in the hammock, incapacitated by the numbness in my heart actually takes some will power for me.
I'm great at filling up space with work or "doing" when my heart hurts. I've had years of practice at it. It's what my culture has taught me: numb the pain, somehow, with work, with alcohol, with distractions, with pain killers. It's conditioned into me and I am well aware of it.
On some level though, I have had no choice but to surrender to the act of surrendering. The truth has been that I just couldn't do much of anything. My energy was too low. My heart felt so thick, and heavy my body wanted mostly only to be still. Somehow, starting to bleed today gave me some comfort that maybe some of the intensity and aching I’ve been feeling was intensified by the hormonal waves happening simultaneously, so maybe I won’t just keep wanting to cry or die every time I think of him or my own aloneness.
Today, however, I think I’ve passed over a threshold of some sort. I can see the work I need to do for myself more clearly: the Yoga, the healing light that my body needs to fight and win against the mutating cells in my blood, the attention my community service work is requiring to move itself forward, and I am again feeling motivated to work. Of course, I recognize that this could be a resurgence of the same old pattern of distracting myself from the pain. After all it's only been a few days and I still feel so raw. I want to have some hope that maybe just giving myself time to really go deep into the lonlieness, and to go a bit beyond the pain to the soft spots inside is helping me. I know the writing is my medicine right now.
I imagine that this cycle may continue for a little bit longer, but for today, I need to acknowledge that I have indeed survived a whole week without him. I fixed the car when it wouldn’t start, without him. I have gone out for two fun nites of dancing and music and drove home late, feeling no fear of that old beat up Mitsubishi he and I bought breaking down in the desolate dark jungle roads on the way home. Being able to stay out as long as I wanted without his energy pulling at me was divine.
I have only felt scared being in the house at nite alone once, and I think it was more because I smoked a little marijuana, which I rarely do. It was also the same day that the man was found dead by the waterfall, before it was known how he had died. Just the questionable talk about the possibility of someone being murdered close to my home put it too much in the realm of possibilities. I truly am in an isolated, vulnerable place here tucked out of view up on this hill. I went out boogy boarding totally alone and felt safe and relaxed being way out there. I am starting to feel like I can do this solitary woman thing again after all. God knows I survived just fine without a man for a lot of years, and even with a man around, truth be known, it was still me being the strong one and taking care of a lot of what needed to be done. It was one of the more tender and painful moments before he left, when thru his tears he said to me, "I don't know how to do anything, you've done it all."
One week down, and overall it hasn’t been all bad. I’m already re-discovering my own rhythm and my own pace. The long empty walks have been refreshing, and the nature bonding has been deep and sweet, talking to the monkeys and the birds as my best friends. Cooking and cleaning have been easier, as I only have to clean up my messes now, and I’m not constantly looking for things that he put somewhere else. There are no empty bottles in the fridge to mislead me into thinking I might have a taste of something that isn’t there, and the attitude of teenage defiance I always felt like I was fighting whenever I asked for any help from him to clean up or help me with any little task, isn’t in the ethers anymore: halleuij frikkin leuyah!
The hammock is always mine.
In full truth, I’d trade it all to have him back here sharing my life, living, laughing and loving together, but I’m really needing to find some positives today. I need to focus fully on the goodness in this transition if I’m going to pull out of the depression and be of service to this world in any way at all!
Three hours of meditation, yoga and body healing this morning leave me feeling, if nothing else, more grounded and ready for work again. Ah: work: the drowning place of it all!
The first few days after he left, all I did was work. I worked huge hours writing and working on things that "needed" to get done. I worked to fill up the void, to keep busy and not think about the loss of my best friend, lover and all the lost tossed dreams of our future together that I have tried to pretend didn’t matter, but that have devastated my sense of direction and purpose.
The past three days however, up until the surf session yesterday, I have been trying a different approach: that of surrender. Surrendering to the grief fully. Surrendering to the not wanting to do anything. Surrendering to laying around for hours just listening to the ocean, the birds and the wind. Surrendering to the reality that he is gone, and a part of me has gone with him and will never come back. Surrendering to some possibility that maybe there is a small still voice waiting for me to hear it’s call.
So far, no voice, but in moments, I imagine that I hear whispers in the wind that give me a little spark of hope for some divine message to come in that will change the course of my life forever and bring me into my full bliss again. I am raw. I am cracked wide open thru my pain. I'm like an exposed fruit, ripe, messy and needing to be consumed quick before it spoils or attracts bugs and varmits. I find myself laughing at myself at the sickening delusional state that that kind of hope can sometimes create if we get stuck in it, hoping for a message from God, waiting around for too long to just get on with it already.
Honestly, it hasn’t been that fun to make an effort to not fill up space, but I thought of it as a practice, a discipline to stop and allow what is just to be. For me to lay for hours on the floor or in the hammock, incapacitated by the numbness in my heart actually takes some will power for me.
I'm great at filling up space with work or "doing" when my heart hurts. I've had years of practice at it. It's what my culture has taught me: numb the pain, somehow, with work, with alcohol, with distractions, with pain killers. It's conditioned into me and I am well aware of it.
On some level though, I have had no choice but to surrender to the act of surrendering. The truth has been that I just couldn't do much of anything. My energy was too low. My heart felt so thick, and heavy my body wanted mostly only to be still. Somehow, starting to bleed today gave me some comfort that maybe some of the intensity and aching I’ve been feeling was intensified by the hormonal waves happening simultaneously, so maybe I won’t just keep wanting to cry or die every time I think of him or my own aloneness.
Today, however, I think I’ve passed over a threshold of some sort. I can see the work I need to do for myself more clearly: the Yoga, the healing light that my body needs to fight and win against the mutating cells in my blood, the attention my community service work is requiring to move itself forward, and I am again feeling motivated to work. Of course, I recognize that this could be a resurgence of the same old pattern of distracting myself from the pain. After all it's only been a few days and I still feel so raw. I want to have some hope that maybe just giving myself time to really go deep into the lonlieness, and to go a bit beyond the pain to the soft spots inside is helping me. I know the writing is my medicine right now.
I imagine that this cycle may continue for a little bit longer, but for today, I need to acknowledge that I have indeed survived a whole week without him. I fixed the car when it wouldn’t start, without him. I have gone out for two fun nites of dancing and music and drove home late, feeling no fear of that old beat up Mitsubishi he and I bought breaking down in the desolate dark jungle roads on the way home. Being able to stay out as long as I wanted without his energy pulling at me was divine.
I have only felt scared being in the house at nite alone once, and I think it was more because I smoked a little marijuana, which I rarely do. It was also the same day that the man was found dead by the waterfall, before it was known how he had died. Just the questionable talk about the possibility of someone being murdered close to my home put it too much in the realm of possibilities. I truly am in an isolated, vulnerable place here tucked out of view up on this hill. I went out boogy boarding totally alone and felt safe and relaxed being way out there. I am starting to feel like I can do this solitary woman thing again after all. God knows I survived just fine without a man for a lot of years, and even with a man around, truth be known, it was still me being the strong one and taking care of a lot of what needed to be done. It was one of the more tender and painful moments before he left, when thru his tears he said to me, "I don't know how to do anything, you've done it all."
One week down, and overall it hasn’t been all bad. I’m already re-discovering my own rhythm and my own pace. The long empty walks have been refreshing, and the nature bonding has been deep and sweet, talking to the monkeys and the birds as my best friends. Cooking and cleaning have been easier, as I only have to clean up my messes now, and I’m not constantly looking for things that he put somewhere else. There are no empty bottles in the fridge to mislead me into thinking I might have a taste of something that isn’t there, and the attitude of teenage defiance I always felt like I was fighting whenever I asked for any help from him to clean up or help me with any little task, isn’t in the ethers anymore: halleuij frikkin leuyah!
The hammock is always mine.
In full truth, I’d trade it all to have him back here sharing my life, living, laughing and loving together, but I’m really needing to find some positives today. I need to focus fully on the goodness in this transition if I’m going to pull out of the depression and be of service to this world in any way at all!
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