Groundless and Free

Heart Forward

A perfectly timed visit. Washing up on the soft shore of my mother’s chest and sister’s cheek brings the first sense of safety and signs of life beyond THIS.

This wild storm that shook me of my own senses, thrashed me amongst cresting swells of doubt and fear, drowning me in saltyocean agony and seemed to be threatening to take away the most important being in my life, the one I’ve come to love so deeply – eternally lost at sea without my favorite emergency boat-mate with whom to adventure.

But weather is weather, and well, the only guarantee is that it never stays the same. Gasping for air, bashed knees and bruised heart, shredded clothes and severed trust, still, I found myself slowly breathing. Oxygen in, Carbon Dioxide out – sweet simple chemistry without which only my spirit and the memories of me would remain. Reaching out my hands I feel powder fine silica sand – the strong soft comfort of my mother, and feel the warmth of an afternoon sun – my sister’s empathetic and radiant smile and trust that the storm I just endured was somehow here for my awakening. Why? Because it happened.

I am being vague on purpose. I am exhausted by the minutia of this story, the constant re-telling of which has only caused it to be more deeply ingrained in my neural networks. I’m ready to re-wire my synapses, to explore what else is possible and to learn to love and accept myself more deeply and intentionally. I have been exploring what it is that I need to feel loved, safe and free to dream with my beloved, and whether or not he is interested in, capable of or willing to meet me in these ways.

I’ve been back in Portland, my home, for four weeks since returning from our three months abroad in Nepal, India and Indonesia. In this time I’ve been seeing a counselor who specializes in the Hakomi method – a mindfulness, experiential, body-centered approach to therapy. I’m learning how to be more mindful of anything from the sensations in my body to the past schema I carry that informs my present, basically I’m learning how to be more conscious. This is not easy, especially in real-time practice. The knee jerk reactions that I am prone to express in states of heightened emotionality or charge are steeped in old trauma that is begging me to be addressed, imploring me to be released and replaced with new healthier stories and responses. This perspective has been essential in helping me to feel witnessed and heard, to receive affirmation that I am not falsely fabricating, I am not making a big deal out of nothing, and nor does it serve anyone for me to continue subjecting myself to this relentless cycle of pain.

Our soul-contracts in this lifetime can be quite mysterious. Why did I come into the world at this time, with these parents, these wounds, these patterns, in this body, what am I ultimately meant to contribute to this world as a result of my collection of experiences? Why all of this pain? Why did I attract this person or experience into my life, and how do I get curious about what it is that we are meant to learn from one another? Because herein these questions lay the keys to our freedom to relinquishing that which would be better left behind.

“My biology is my biography”. This phrase was uttered in passing today in a session with our Mindful Relationship Consultants, from the male counterpart. It struck a bell inside of me. This body, it is a lightning rod for truth, and I carry all of my emotions within it, all of the traumas, wounds, stories, beliefs…they are being stored in my nervous system and it is up to me to bring awareness to the sensations that can help me unlock, release or merely be present to unhealthy or imbalanced ways of responding, communicating or being. Eventually, this mindfulness brings a sense of deep peace, powerful trust and empowered capacity to engage with myself, others and the world around me with less impulsive reactivity and more compassion, joy, kindness, and love.

I have always been a highly empathic creature, and yet still am becoming increasingly aware of the consequences of my actions, the impact of my behavior on others, the power of my presence and my love. It is not an easy path being truly empathetic, being so consistently tuned in to the feelings of others, but I choose it with my whole heart. I’d much rather be ever-more vulnerable, open and sensitive than hardened, closed and numb.

Of late, I have allowed myself to become a less trusting person. This saddens me and I long to reconnect with my younger, passionate self that adamantly believed in the inherent goodness and trustworthiness of people. Somewhere along the way, around age 26, I started allowing suspicion, doubt and mistrust to creep into my consciousness.  It’s no surprise that I began finding people and experiences that reinforced the idea that people are untrustworthy and capricious. I am in the prolonged process of building back my trust for myself and others, of discerning caution from fear, naivete from denial, and belief from blindness. I am learning to attend to myself and how to speak uncomfortable truths and set healthy loving boundaries. I am cultivating my intuitive capacities and learning to listen even more to my heart, to let it be my compass and guide me toward healing and wholeness.

 

Breathe in.

 

Breathe Out.

 

Notice thoughts. Let them go.

Breathe In. Breathe out.

Allow myself to BE.

To be with my feelings and the sensations in my body, without judgement…

Breathe IN.

And Out.

 

…I feel a meditation practice coming on…

 

 

 

29 Years of Breathing Life In

Twenty Nine years ago today, around 1:18pm, my mother bore down with herculean force, pushed me out with the help of forceps and I took my first sweet breaths of life. The forceps were necessary because I had my arm wrapped around my neck, my elbow at my throat I was strangling myself and became lodged in the birth canal, turning blue without oxygen. The doctor stated that if I had spent even a few more moments in this compromised position, I may have had severe Cerebral Palsy, a challenging disability. This fact alone helps me see my life as a miracle and the fact that I have a relatively normal mobile body and am in good health as reasons to feel extraordinary gratitude.

My grandparents were there to film my birth. You see, I was my mother’s 1st child and their 1st grandchild and it was an event that my film-savvy grandfather wasn’t going to miss. Both of them proclaimed that my birth was perfectly timed as they were able to attend church (Seventh Day Adventists) and get to my birth just in time.

My father had been in a near fatal head-on collision with a truck two weeks before my birth and my mother spent her last days of ripe pregnancy, reaching over her full belly to wipe his oozing wounds and nurture him into recovery. I don’t remember if alcohol was involved, but he already had a couple DUIs, and I wonder sometimes how much of this episode of caring-for-other that I experienced in utero influenced my own propensity toward self-sacrifice and co-dependance.

My parents consciously decided to bring children into the world and I have always felt wanted and welcome. Twenty nine years and nine months ago, my mum and dad were on the Silver Kris, a 32 foot drift gill-net fishing boat in the Togiak district of Bristol Bay, Alaska making a living as commercial salmon fisher-people. She was 25, he 28. They were in love with each other and the adventures their relationship provided. My mum’s younger brother was aboard as crew and they’d send him for walks on the beach while they made use of their privacy and the small triangular bunk in the fo’c’sle. Conceived in the stars, I was made from love upon the ocean with infinite cycling tides, flaming-red everlasting sunsets and the salt-kissed winds of Alaskan mystery. She’s in my blood and, though I can’t consider myself an Alaskan, I’ve been going back to feel her course through my veins ever since.

My parent’s relationship didn’t sustain over the years and ended four years after my birth, but I will forever be grateful that their souls swam upriver next to each other long enough to spawn me and my magical little sister. I count my blessings regularly, and most of all, I marvel at my lungs capacity to continue breathing in life. May I be fortunate enough to do so for many decades to come.

Carving Space

I see the sound of your expression bouncing in succession across our crimson walls
You’ve stood tall and smiled wide
Spinning stories where you tried to show that you are more than you were
And the skies have opened your eyes to the pain of obstructed light

There were musings of letting you soar and excel
Of instilling in you foundations of fortitude and awe
But instead you were fed abandonment, neglect and abuse three meals a day and
No one told you the truth: that you were made of the stars and they shone just for you

So you learned to kick dust in the faces of those not keeping paces with the sun
You shouted in crowds just to know it was possible
For your voice to rise above the din and chaos
The books filled with your scribbled ideas and truths became ladders to god

Having a voice had more to do with owning vocal chords than being heard
The louder ones extinguishing yours like a candle without oxygen
It’s no wonder paper and pen quickly became solace and friend

A past filled with tormented creatures
Unknowingly thrusting their agony upon your shoulders
You carried the boulders and eventually realized that they were not yours to bear
Impeded no more by the heavy burden of youth you discovered the sweetness of silence

Solitude became medicine and
People who listened with rapt attention, your sanctuary
Your broad chest a place from which to open arms wide
Letting life in, one heartbeat at a time
Informing the world that it’s OK to be alive
To occupy a planetary place with your existence

The dance floor continues to beckon us with her platform for growth
As we navigate the movement of our voices through each others worlds
And even with what you’ve been given
You are reconfiguring reality and rewriting your future
Carving Space out for your Self, one exquisite astral inch at a time

Alone With Myself

Oriah Mountain Dreamer states as the final verse in her famous poem “The Invitation”:

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

This is a mindmarble I often find myself grappling with and I ask questions like, am I truly enjoying the company I keep? How do I fill my empty moments? Does it matter if anyone else ever knows or observes the fruits of what I do when I’m alone?

I have always possessed a powerful drive to traverse the planet and leave on a moment’s notice. I also have seem to be afflicted with a rabid fear of commitment to anything other than a relationship and have therefore never subscribed to the typical American work week. I acknowledge that I am blessed, and marvel at my ability so far, to avoid the shackles of a full time job. I have been drawn to sporadic jobs where my commitment has a foreseeable end date, flexible on-call work as a Massage Therapist, or jobs that involve short and intense bursts of focused labor like my seasonal work as a commercial salmon fisherwoman in Bristol Bay, Alaska. (Funny that this spell-check doesn’t even accept the word ‘fisherwoman’, as if the dotted red line underscoring the word exemplifies just how rare and unaccepted being a woman in my profession remains.)

All of this is to say that I have had an unconventional relationship with work and time. I have borne witness and the negative consequences of my mother’s 50-80 hour work-weeks, as she was showered with accolades from society for her dedication to the job. I understood, even at that young age, that being a single mother required working a more significant schedule, yet I was noticeably lonely and longed for more quality time with my mum. This is one of the few things today, for which she has regret.  My grandparents on both sides, still healthy and active, continue to put forth the vast majority of their vital life force energy and precious planetary time into their careers, even into their 70s and 80s and look down their nose at my ‘sedentary lifestyle’. One grandma scribed in her card for my 19th birthday, “we can only hope that your choice to become a massage therapist is a step in the direction of pursuing a worthwhile career”.

My only sibling, a younger sister, has also chosen an unconventional life punctuated with significant world travel and a preference for sustainability and living-off-the-land. Yet all her employment experiences have been full time, often in tandem with being a full-time student. My ex-fiancee was applauded for his commitment to working overtime and extending beyond the call of duty at the Monterey Bay Aquarium even when it meant compromising his adrenals and wellbeing. He often complained to me that he had so little time purely for himself.  As I look around me, there seems to be no end of people willing to engage in the standard narrative regarding time and work – that to be a contribution to society one needs to sacrifice the self in service of the whole and that there is more merit in living to work, than working to live.

A welcome result of having mostly had work that allowed me to choose my own schedule is that I have had copious amounts of time to myself, lots of space to be alone and countless empty moments. These have provided great spaciousness for learning, growing, observing and simply being. I revel in languid days of nothingness. It is in those liminal spaces that I come to know and see myself in new ways not resulting from engagement with or reflection from others. Simultaneously, I must admit, where I used to read books, make jewelry, take long moments to loose myself in a painting or write handwritten letters, I now engage with a variety of screens: my MacBook, iPad or brand new iPhone and the occasional movie on my loaner TV.  Is this time productive, life-enhancing, braing-stimulating and emotionally fulfilling? Am I producing anything of worth or being a contribution to the greater world? I have come to see that much of the time I spend alone is self-indulgent and lacking in real contributory activity. I’d like to change this and know that I must fight the habituated responses I have to being alone.

The people who seem to have the greatest sense of fulfillment in life are thoroughly engaged with their communities and are offering themselves so selflessly in meaningful and tangible ways. I don’t see my time with myself as selfish, but I would like to spend a higher percentage of my vital life force energy and precious time giving back to this beautiful planet that has given me such insurmountable beauty and wonder. I want to be of service, to bring more love into people’s hearts, to shine my light bright and true – especially in the dark places, to inspire creative expression and healthy communication and offer my inherent gifts in ways that are well received and powerfully impacting in positive ways. Perhaps then, when I am alone with myself (which would probably be a lot less),  I will be able to truly like the company I keep.

 

 

How do you spend your time with yourself? Do you prefer to be alone or with others? Do you like the company you keep?