I listened to a talk by Jean Houston on Gaiam TV today and was moved tremendously by one observation she made in particular. She noted that each of us gets wounded during our life times, and that if we live long enough, we become so full of holes that we ultimately become holy.
My own life has taught me that my wounds will ultimately diminish or enrich me, depending largely upon whether I meet them with a closed fist or an open heart. I’ve also come to understand to my amazement that an ordinary day can be transformed from the mundane to the holy not so much by what happens during the course of it, but by what questions I choose to ask of myself when I first encounter it.
Michael Beckwith urges us to ask the following three questions each and every day.
How can I grow?
How can I give?
What can I celebrate?
I’ve found that every morning that I ask myself these three questions and then commit to living the answers by the end of the day, my life is so much more likely to be experienced as the profound gift that it is.
The sky is grey today. My boots crunch and my body tenses when I first step out into this frigid January morning. I move slowly, huddled against the cold, still baring the gravity of grief and the weariness of long nights with too few exits and too many echoes.
Getting out of bed took little effort yesterday, my mind was alert, my movements fluid, and the sun was shining. I breathed a sigh of relief, finally able to recognize the promise of a morning without my mother in it. I didn’t have to force myself to leave my house, and I jogged and jumped and danced during my water aerobics class. My body felt light and graceful. It was going to be a good day.
Someone began to sing, “these boots are made for walking” and I cheerfully joined her in song, hands on my hips and legs lifting high. And then my eyes met those of a woman who is older than my mother and the pain slammed into my chest without warning. I was breathless as a memory consumed all of my oxygen. My young and sexy mother is singing that song while I prance around her in my imaginary boots. We are pointing at each other, warning that “one of these days these boots are going to walk all over you.” In that moment, all was perfect. The depression had not found her, she was cancer free - healthy, happy, and ALIVE. I was safe.
My eyes filled with tears and to my horror, it occurred to me that I could start crying in a public pool surrounded by perfectly nice and normal women. I took a deep breath, clenched my jaw, called upon my well practiced will, and pulled myself together.
Rumi wrote that our lives are like guest houses. If my life truly is like a guest house, then grief, an unwelcome guest, has settled in for the time being. I cannot move out, and there will be no eviction. And so, If I’m to avoid structural and collateral damage, then I’ll need to make accommodations. Grief, I will make a place at my table for you, but I will not feed you. Instead, I will infuse my cooking with love and gratitude and nurture my family with them. And I will stop wasting energy trying to lock you out, instead, I’ll open all of my windows and invite beauty in.
My walk is complete. I return to the home that I now share with grief, close the door, absorb the heat, and resolve to not long for spring, but to listen to winter…
The Winter of Listening
“No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.
All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.
What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.
What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,
what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.
What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.
Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.
Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.
All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.
All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.
All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.
And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.
So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.”
As a therapist who walks beside others who struggle with depression, and as a woman who has endured its devastating blows myself, I’m all too aware of what overcoming it demands of us. We are required to hold on even as our grasp weakens, overwhelmed by dread and hopelessness. The pull of life insists that we get up and face the day when all we really want to do is cover up our heads and refuse to come out. And we are called during our long dark nights to recognize that those voices (all too often the loudest and the most convincing) that repeatedly remind us of all the ways that we have been wounded and taunts us with our failures, disappointments, and of the vast array of dangers that surround us, can not and must not be trusted. And when almost every fiber of our being seems to be shutting down, we are challenged to acknowledge that the gaping wound inside of us is also an opening – one that is capable of ushering in as much possibility as it does pain.
Dancer and wisdom keeper, Gabrielle Roth, who died from lung cancer this past October, just one month before my mother lost her own battle with lung cancer, wrote that in many shamanic cultures when someone sought a medicine person because he or she was disheartened or depressed, it was common for the sufferer to be asked one of the following four questions:
“When did you stop dancing?
When did you stop singing?
When did you stop being enchanted by stories?
When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?”
As I sat yesterday in the gloaming, mellowed by the sweet territory of silence, I asked myself those questions. And as I waited for answers, memories of my mother floated in and out of my consciousness. As a child she created entire universes within the magic and mystery of her own imagination, enchanted her husband as a young woman by belting out country songs about cheating hearts and lovin eyes, and captivated her eldest daughter with tales of an abused and abandoned little girl and her faithful dog, buddy. My mother taught me so much with her stories, and it was both the bitter and the sweet of her own life that offered up multiple lessons regarding how to live, what’s important, what needs to be let go of, and what’s essential to remember.
And at this moment I am remembering one of my favorite stories of my mother as a child. She was five years old and it was her first day of kindergarten. My grandmother was helping her get ready for school and she was both excited and terribly anxious. As her mother combed her fine brown hair, she peppered her with the following questions.
“Can I come home if I miss you too much?” she asked.
“No. You need to stay until the school day is over,” her mom replied.
“Can you come and visit me?” she bargained.
“No. School is for children, not for mothers,” answered her mother.
“Can I sing in school?” my 5 year old mother asked hopefully.
“No Brenda. You have to be quiet and listen to your teacher.”
“Can I play?” she asked tremulously.
“Only at recess. You go to school to learn,” my grandmother explained.
“Well, can I dance?”
“No Brenda. You have to sit in your seat,” her mother responded firmly.
“Well,” the tiny child sighed, holding her skinny little arms over her head as she started to twirl round and around, “then, I’d better dance now.”
And I see her in my minds eye still, almost fifty years from the time that I first heard this story, and feel my soul reaching out to the child that I came to cherish almost as dearly as I loved the mother that she would grow up to be, and I am smiling and I am weeping now as I imagine her yet again, swirling around the kitchen, pig tails flying, dancing.
Both Gabrielle Roth and Brenda Byram are with us no longer but their legacy lives on – dance. Dance even as your heart breaks, dance even as your body bends from the terrible gravity of grief, dance even though your stomach aches and your heart trembles. Dance. Dance while you can….
I have been in Florida for the past month and plan to remain here with my mother until she dies. I find very little time for writing these days, for little else actually other than caring for her and my father. I am firmly planted here by my mother’s side although my thoughts and heart wander quite regularly back to Maine where my husband, daughter, grandchildren, friends, and clients go about their lives. I send them love and hold them closely in my heart. There is a great deal of both holding on and letting go happening in my life right now.
The following is a poem by Reverend Safire Rose sent to me by a wise and wonderful woman whom I feel blessed to know. I hope it touches you as it has touched me.
She let go. Without a thought or a word, she let go.
She let go of the fear. She let go of the judgments.
She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.
She let go of the committee of indecision within her.
She let go of all the ‘right’ reasons.
Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.
She didn’t ask anyone for advice.
She didn’t read a book on how to let go.
She didn’t search the scriptures.
She just let go.
She let go of all of the memories that held her back.
She let go of all of the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.
She let go of the planning and all of the calculations about how to do it just right.
She didn’t promise to let go.
She made no public announcement and put no ad in the paper.
She just let go.
She didn’t analyze whether she should let go. She didn’t call her friends to discuss the matter.
She didn’t utter one word.
She just let go.
No one was around when it happened.
There was no applause or congratulations. No one thanked her or praised her.
Perhaps one of the greatest reasons I was drawn to become a psychotherapist is that I’m a lover of stories. Storytelling isn’t only an ancient art form and a means through which information and wisdom is shared, it can also be a powerful source of inspiration and healing.
In a speech entitled, “Politics as Spiritual Practice” Larry Robinson, former Mayor of Sebastopol California observed, “Stories tell us who we are and where we belong. They give meaning to our lives and to our suffering. In an age of fear and uncertainty, people are hungry for a story which shows us a way through the current darkness…Story has the power to bring soul back to the world.” And so from time to time, I’ve decided to share one of my favorite soul full stories with you.
Gifted poet and speaker, David Whyte, was visiting Brother David Steindl-Rast one evening after a very long and stressful day at work. Whyte had been struggling with whether or not to leave his job and pursue his calling as a poet full time and shared with brother David that he was absolutely exhausted.
I picture the two David’s in a warm and dimly lit room, wine glasses held loosely, and a book of Rilke’s poems resting on a low table between them. The poet’s broad shoulders are slightly slumped, his dark head bent, and his wise and loving friend is leaning in slightly towards him as he very gently shares the following, “You know David, the antidote to exhaustion is not necessarily rest.” Whyte tilts his head and shifts his position slightly as something not yet definable stirs quietly within him. “The antidote to exhaustion isn’t necessarily rest,” he repeats slowly. “What is the antidote to exhaustion?” Now it’s Whyte who is leaning forward, entirely receptive to the gift some part of him already knows is on its way. “The antidote to exhaustion,” brother David responds, “is whole heartedness.”
And while it was not me who asked the question, not my own exhaustion and depletion that called brother David’s response into being, it is my own soul that stirs in response. “The antidote to exhaustion is whole heartedness.”
I haven’t written a blog entry in over a month, the longest I’ve ever gone without writing. Sadly, inessential activities (like this blog) have been overshadowed by my mother’s cancer and my daughter’s illness, and the lion’s share of my life energy is being poured into sustaining hope and tending wounds.
The trajectory of my mother’s illness is too final and predictable to contemplate, while the weight and course of my child’s suffering is crushing and unknowable. It seems that we have set upon one of those night passages that Sue Monk Kidd observes can “blister the spirit and leave us groping.”
As I tentatively feel my way through a murky shadow land, I remind myself that the whole of my life is still abundantly blessed with love, and sweetness and light even as it requires me to be stronger and wiser than ever before – demands that I do/think/feel more than I have ever done/thought/felt before. Even though it insists that I. must. become. more.
Julia Cameron reminds us that “creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness.” For over two decades as a psychotherapist I’ve witnessed so many transformations that were initiated by heartbreak and cultivated in darkness. And while there have been times when I could hardly bare to look into the depths of despair and suffering, I am especially grateful for them now, each and every one of them, because I have seen with my own eyes and heart what we are capable of surviving, overcoming, and becoming. Because I have seen, I can believe.
Diane Ackerman wrote in the New York Times, “A relatively new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life. In the end, what we pay the most attention to defines us. How you choose to spend the irreplaceable hours of your life literally transforms you.” A message well worth reminding ourselves of daily.
I’m a major fan of Yes! Magazine , of Margaret Mead, and of the power of music to both inspire and instruct. Whle purusing Yes!’s archives, I came across a wonderful music video by Kathryn Mostow inspired by Mead’s famous quote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” I invite you to watch the video, and allow yourself to fully absorb the beauty and the hope…
I think the following, written by Pema Chodron, is particularly relevant today.
“The whole globe is shook up, so what are you going to do when things are falling apart? You’re either going to become more fundamentalist and try to hold things together, or you’re going to forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as you go along.”
I am a risk averse planner who is working very hard to embrace Chodron’s wisdom. As more and more falls out of my control, I am learning to let go of old expectations, fears, and unspoken demands that things go a certain way in order for me to feel safe and secure. I am striving to keep my mind and heart open to new realities, new challenges, and new possibilities. And the more I am able to do this, the more it seems I’m able to feel a powerful “YES” rising up from a very deep place inside of myself, moving through and beyond my anxiety, my uncertainty and my fear….
When we encounter times in our lives that disorient us, frighten us, or wound us, we generally view them as unwelcome interruptions or unfortunate detours that have been inflicted by some outside force, or are the result of our own misguided actions. Seldom do we recognize that the discomfort that we’re experiencing may in fact be originating from a very deep and wise place inside of ourselves that is calling to us. Calling for us to stop and to listen, to explore the meaning and purpose of our lives, and to assess whether our actions and choices reflect what is best for us and in us. A voice that calls us to answer the question, “is the path that I am on now one that will constrict or enlarge me, hollow me out or deepen me, distract me or teach me, harm me or heal me?”
