The Longest Return

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This has been the longest return to center I’ve ever had. I was thrown off kilter in 2009 when Charles experienced cancer. It triggered my every fear and my whole past. At first I didn’t look too deeply at that. I just kept trying to get up, but they were halfhearted tries. I couldn’t get up with my foundation crumbling. All the pain and anger I’d been holding onto since childhood was released into my awareness and I couldn’t deal with it. It took me about five years to finally delve in.

In the meantime I kept trying different things to make money. Again, those too were halfhearted attempts at making a life. Now I’m afraid of trying again. Will I continue to drift? When will I know my whole heart? I do understand now that I can’t create a life with half a heart and I’ve been trying for a very long time to do that…even before Charles’s illness. It’s like I’m only half here. Nothing works very well when you’re not totally present.

It got really bad this year. I’ve been more depressed than I’ve ever been. Well, maybe not as far down as I was at 19, but pretty close. Sometimes I wondered if I should keep trying. I’m tired. But something within continues to rise.

I sit here at the edge of another year, just a couple of days until we cross over into 2019.  It’s been 30 years since I was 19 and my first intense experience of being depressed. Back then I was tired of trying too. But I kept moving forward, and I will continue to do as I step into 2019.

A number of months ago I did a ritual where I stepped through a threshold into my future leaving my past behind. Really I just put the past behind me…it will always live with me. But more and more it no longer colors my present. And that may be what’s different this time. If I can just stand on the edge and wait for the nudge then simply follow it and then do it again and again, maybe it will be different.

In truth, we’re always at the edge of time and space, always looking into the abyss where possibility and mystery live. It’s okay to not know the next step. All you need to know is what you want. All you need to do is wait. And when an idea comes, trust the ground will rise to meet you as you move your foot out over the edge. We build our lives one step at a time. The avenue of our life’s journey exists in our subconscious, our soul. It’s time to release ourselves to its revelation in our lives.

The Witch Understands Darkness

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Our culture has been afraid of the dark for a very long time. Now, as our shadow rises and becomes the spectre of safety and authority, our fear is used against us.

We must begin to welcome the holy darkness, the darkness of gestation and growth if we are to survive this dark age of willful ignorance and fear. We must let mystery have its rightful place. It’s okay to not know. From the darkness of not knowing we can let wisdom in.

Centuries of enlightenment has pushed our soul ever further away and into the last vestiges of dark. The enlightenment was supposed to relieve us of our ignorance. What it has relieved us of is our soul and the necessary darkness that drives away arrogance.

But the witch, she revels in the dark places where the soul thrives. The witch, she dances in and from the dark. Her fire illuminates her soul while letting the mystery remain.

During this season of darkness I remember to dance until I am emptied of all I know, until I return to that original silence, the void that is pure presence. I am still and let the mystery be. My work of becoming begins here.

As the Old Ways Disintegrate Love Will Rise If We Let It

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The past couple of days I’ve been reeling from news of another cousin with cancer, this time breast cancer. She just had a mastectomy and she is young. With two friends and two cousins with cancer and other friends with serious illness, I’ve just felt sad.

But the idea of mastectomy and how women are treated by the medical field just set me off. I’ve been reading about the history of women in the world of magical lodges and spiritual movements, how they’ve been subordinate to men. Women have been subordinate in all areas of life for a long time and it continues.

Then the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings yesterday. So many friends triggered. I’ve been triggered, too. I’ve not been assaulted, but I feel the fear and pain. And the anger. At all of it. Then there are the women I know who don’t believe Ford. They think it’s all a Democratic conspiracy. I can’t even…

Yesterday, a friend mentioned that like the caterpillar that needs to turn to goo in order to become the butterfly, we too as a society need to dissolve the old in order for the new to come into being. It’s not easy. Some cling to the old ways with a vengeance and this is what is causing the most pain.

Right now all I can do is breathe and remember the basic goodness that lies deep within all of us, all of creation. It’s okay to fall apart, to let it all fall apart. Beneath the façade is the rawness of life itself. It is here where we will find the love that connects us all.

The Reminding

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If only the wind could clear my mind like it clears away the clouds, blue sky mind, clear and bright. In those moments you can see forever.

But today, the wind blows and the haze remains until a piece of sad news parts the clouds and for a moment time becomes reflections of the past and I see more clearly than I have for a while. A heart in pain sometimes becomes a heart focused. I see her and I see a life pass before my eyes.

A cousin, more like an aunt, a woman who stepped into motherhood as if it were the most natural thing, is seriously ill. Of course, she was always a mother, her heart open to all.

Memories fill my mind and even the air around me. Time for a moment becomes visible as I see the past clearly.

A new mother in the hospital, my cousin holds her child born with a head full of hair. It probably reminds my mother then of me nine years earlier, the same head full of hair. My cousin, my mother’s niece by marriage, welcomed my mother into the family all those years ago just as we were welcoming this new life.

My cousin gathering us to hearth and home, the whole lot of us around the tree at Christmas or for fun on a sunny, summer day. Ever gathering us. Ever letting us know her heart. Letting us know we were always welcome.

Love found her again and she gathered us to her for her big wedding. The small bush I gave them planted soon after, years later growing strong. Love and life growing strong.

Love never left her, but when the love of her life passed from this world, a little of her did as well. And we gathered her into our hearts.

Her smile holds only a welcome and love. Her love is bigger than her smile could ever let you know. The news of her illness blows through my mind and clears away the clouds. I am reminded how important it is to live and to love. The reminding is a gathering of strength. Again we gather her into our hearts and know she is love and love heals all.

Climbing Fences

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There was something about being able to lift my limbs up and over a fence as a child. The fence wasn’t an obstacle but a toy. As I got stronger and could do it faster. I reveled in my physical agility.

Somewhere along the line, I built up fences, endless defenses to keep out fear and pain. But I also kept out the good stuff. I have loved and I do love, but it must be small compared to what it could be if I let love into my heart to fill to overflowing. But I lost trust and so began to build fences. I looked at the world from behind obstacles. The fences aren’t as fortress-like anymore, but they are still there.

Perhaps it’s time to bring out my inner child and ask her to climb the fences again. Through her eyes as she sits at the top I will see what I’m missing. She will tell me about all the love there is and she’ll also see the pain for she is a sensitive soul. Her tears will become my tears. Together we’ll feel the pain and let our tears become the rising waters that will allow me to float over.

I see and have begun to feel the pain that has taken up residence in the world right now. I can’t let myself forget there is also love. There is always love. It’s tempting to just stay behind my fences, but I have begun to let it in. My inner child must be ahead of me. She is leading me already to just feel it. And it’s not really other people’s pain. It’s mine. And it’s not just mine. It’s ours. To know that is to rescue love from our forgetfulness.

It was so much fun to run around the outside of the house as a kid and not see the fences as obstacles. They had a purpose other than a toy for us kids of course. They stood as boundaries to let others know this was a private space. Perhaps that’s how I can see my fences. They can become the boundaries I need, but they don’t have to be obstacles to my good. I can climb them or let my tears rise up and take me over them so I can feel and heal and as the tears dry, let love be revealed, a love that has lived within all along.