Embracing the Darkness

It’s all part of this human journey

I have been feeling the darkness that is part of life lately. It descends and drapes over me, feels familiar. I am learning to acknowledge and let it be.

I think that the temptation to run from darkness is strong within us, that it can frighten us with its depth and heaviness, that we can become afraid that we may never find our way out.

Aging seems to bring this on more frequently these days, at least for me. I am acutely aware of the swift passage of time, of mortality’s call approaching ever closer, of the ending of things. I feel the losses all around me. I have lost family, friends, those who held pieces of my past that no one else ever will. Former roles and self-definitions are gone. A sense of the coming future is gone, with the ever-growing reality of an expiration date.

What has been happening to our country and the world provokes even more grief within me. Loss of things that I somehow did not think could be lost finds me in despair and wandering around in circles in my own mind and spirit. There is new trauma added every day. I have no answers for any of this, just deep grief.

I wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts about all of this with the feelings washing over me. I have been working to breathe into this, to have faith that I will come through it yet again, reminding myself that I have come through it before. But sometimes I wonder if this time will be different.

I am very grateful for life and for still being here. Part of that gift for me is to try and experience all that is going on within me, to honor it all as part of this journey.

I see my body changing, new pains appearing, and I cope as best as I can. I am never sure what to try and ask my doctor about, and what is simply part of this path of aging, this path of mortality, this walk toward our inevitable death.

I see that patterns that I have struggled with in my life have never really left me. I embark on new adventures, try to learn new things, try to engage and participate in life as much as I can, try to honor that I am still here. And yet, issues that I thought that I had worked through are still within me. I am beginning to realize that these are in my core, that they have been with me for as long as I can remember, that they are hard-wired. I finally realize that for me, I will not suddenly become free from them (as part of me had fantasized that I would once I worked through it all). No, they are part of me. They have helped form who I am. They have been my internal voices of caution that took a harsh tone to try and stop any further pain.

But life has pain. That comes with the admission ticket. We all have it, our own version, our own story, our own battles, our own hero or heroine’s journey with its tasks and lessons.

Some of my own personal battles

I have never been confident, have easily given away my power to anyone I thought was somehow better than I was, who I thought knew more than me, had more rights than I did. I learned this attitude toward myself very early. I say that not to blame, but to understand how this has been built into my core.

I immediately can take blame for things. I can feel less than others around me. I can compare myself and be tempted to hide, thinking I may fail because I am not adequate in whatever cruel measurement I may be using at the time. It feels like being swallowed by a river of mud, pulling me down into the dark depths.

So, now I try and say to myself …let me learn about these depths, since they seem to be clamoring for my attention. I marvel at others who do not have the issues or fear that I bring with me to almost everything. I know that they have their own battles, as do we all. But I still marvel at their confidence, their assuredness, their apparent comfort with and belief in themselves.

Being exposed has felt dangerous for me in the past, and it is a hard fight to change the pattern of living from that history and fear.

And yet, as I approach what is closer to the end of my time on this earth, I wonder if I might be able to let go of responding automatically to the fears and harsh voices within, if I might add a voice of self-advocacy (even if it’s very shaky) to the chorus within, if I might really try to live more fully and expose more of who I am, if I might try to believe in myself, even if forced and feeling unnatural, if I might take that leap into whatever unknown that I am facing with a bit more belief that I can do this. Dare I believe that I have the right to try, that I am not less than, that I am ok, that I have a right to this precious life. Yes, I have made mistakes and have regrets, but that this doesn’t make me a total failure. Can I finally learn that forgiveness can also apply to myself?

Could this be one of the major lessons?

Maybe this is the ultimate lesson..to learn self acceptance, to realize that the journey is not to get rid of faults and issues, but to admit them, accept them and learn to work differently with them, to learn patience and kindness toward myself, to learn that I will be leaving with a lot of what I came in here with. Maybe I can accept that I will not have mastered it all. that this life has not been a test that I either pass or fail, but rather an experience to be learned from, to be lived, to be embraced in both its light and darkness. I can embrace my own light and darkness. I can learn to let go (more) of the regrets and should-haves and could-haves. Dare I allow myself to love who I am, faults and all. I can begin to see that coming full circle to who you have always been is ok, that you don’t have to figure it all out by the end. In fact, the end can bring more questions than ever. Perhaps we learn to be comfortable in the land of I-don’t-know, and realize that this not-knowing is part of the journey, part of the task, to learn to live with this all, but to live none-the-less, to claim our right to be here fully with all of our faults, lumps, and bumps.

It’s time to tell ourselves that we deserve to feel love, especially from and toward ourselves, so that we can let our final words be Thank you for the bittersweet beauty of it all. Thank you.

The Grace of Stopping

Giving ourselves the gift of time to stop and breathe

I woke up not feeling my best the other day. I am retired, so I have the luxury of not having to follow any routine or call off from a job, and I am very grateful for that. I realize that not everyone has this option, but I wonder if we can find different ways to give ourselves permission to stop, breathe, and simply be.

Often it takes not feeling well to give ourselves this kind of time and gift. We need that. But I think that there are other times when our soul and spirit may feel unwell or like we need a break from everything, where we can take stock of how we are feeling, how life is going, what we might need at that moment.

I gave myself permission that morning to stop. I had some coffee, felt like I needed to rest more, and took myself back to bed. I grabbed a book, snuggled under the covers, and let myself read, snooze, read, snooze, and repeat as needed.

When I had enough of that, I got up and had some nourishing food, moved slowly around the house, and felt the wonder of stopping time for a bit, stopping the schedule, stopping the list, stopping everything… and just living. What a concept, to take breaks and simply have time to check in with our souls and ask how we are.

Thoughts intrude, of course. Judgments rush in. Messages and name-calling come uninvited…stop being lazy, you need to get things done, at least do one thing on your list, stop being so indulgent. I resisted. What, I wonder, was so scary about doing nothing? What was so awful about that? Would my world really fall apart if I checked out for a day? I didn’t answer the phone, didn’t work on emails, didn’t do, do, do.

Apparently, I survived this frightening experience. Indeed, it was such a marvelous gift. How much of a wonder it is to really take time for oneself, to stop, breathe, allow each moment to unfold, ask myself what would I like to experience next. Do I want to walk in the woods? No, I decided, it was a day that I needed to stay home, rest, take care of myself and allow healing to occur.

How little, I think, do we really check in that deeply and consistently with ourselves. How little we dare to actually give ourselves the gift of an entire day. How little we give ourselves the gift of allowing the experience of nothingness. What might we find there? What might we be afraid of? What might we be surprised by? How can we meet ourselves and confront what we might run into?

I found that I had been tired, not felt well for a bit, but had kept pushing through, and had needed to rest and nap more than I realized. At the end of that day, I felt rested in a way that I had not allowed myself to experience for a long time. Things didn’t fall apart, nor did I. Rather, I came together with the parts of me that needed my attention, that needed to be pampered, heard, attended to, taken care of. I needed to be my own parent that said it’s ok to stop everything today just because.

What a treat. The next day I felt ready to get started again, to get back on schedule.

There is a calmness that comes with knowing that you can be intentionally alone and with your own company …that you can care for and about yourself, that you can stop and be with yourself and face what is inside you that you don’t have to run from everything, that you can stop and take stock of where you are, where your life is, how you feel.

There is a peace in knowing that you are enough. I am not saying that we don’t need each other and our families, chosen or otherwise, but to know that we can be completely alone with ourselves and say I am here for you. Rest, I will take care of you. It will be ok. You are ok, and you deserve to stop. You are enough just as you are.

It has taken me a lifetime to learn this, finally, and has been one of the gifts of aging for me. Maybe I can pass along this gift to others…to remind us that we can stop and breathe. Stop and rest. Stop and check in on ourselves. Stop, breathe, and be.

The Bittersweet Joy of Elderhood

Growing older brings gifts of pain and joy, sometimes in the same package

Growing older is not easy, not always what we might want, but can bring such wondrous gifts if we stay open to it all.

It is yet another holiday season. They come so much more quickly now. Sometimes the days can feel long, but the weeks, months, and years fly by.

I have reached the age of 72, and am grateful. I hope to have more time left, but none of us really know when that last day will be. I want to live each moment as fully as I can. I want to inhabit each second, each breath, each achingly beautiful sunset, each connection, each gift of living in this temporary body that we have been allowed to borrow for a time.

I have no family close by and none far away that I really relate to on any kind of daily level, not having grown up with them. It’s ok. I have memories and I have families of choice, which are such exquisite gifts. I have chosen for the last several years to spend most of my holidays alone, which felt right at that time. I would perhaps take a walk in the redwoods or sit home in sacred solitude with cherished memories.

This past Thanksgiving, I chose to accept a gracious invitation from some friends to go to a movie. The 4 of us sat in the theater, enjoying the experience of being together on this day of gratitude. They don’t know what gifts they gave me with this invitation. I felt a part of this group, accepted and welcomed and genuinely invited to be a part of their holiday ritual. I will treasure that always.

We watched the movie, enjoyed our reactions to it together, and then went our separate ways. It was enough, and it was good.

This is one lesson that being around longer has taught me … that I can make room for some connection and can also keep sacred space for connection to myself that I only feel in solitude. I can have both and hold space for both in my heart.

I will join them for a movie on Christmas. I look forward to that.

Growing older brings so many gifts. I can look back and see the lessons, the loves, the losses, hold the grief and love (always connected for me), sit quietly in this moment realizing that there will be a last moment, this realization being much more real at this age. I see the changes in my body and try to accept and modify what I can do as needed, while still working to maintain what I can along the way. I see the changes in my face and work to love each new phase, realizing that I have not truly appreciated each look until it is in the past. So, maybe I can appreciate the face that I have today.

I feel my heart and soul opening and being increasingly sensitive as I continue on this life path. I feel tenderness more, moments of connection more, loneliness more, and the exquisite joy of each breath. I am still alive. What a wonder that is. I breathe the air and am part of this sacred earth and the circle of life. I feel so blessed.

And I appreciate my chosen family of you, readers who are gracious enough to read what I may write and sometimes even take the time to respond. That means more than I can even begin to express. You get to hear my deepest parts. It is such a gift to be able to share that with you and to have those parts of me seen, heard, and even sometimes responded to. Thank you.

I appreciate this day. I will go to the gym and do what I can and really try to not compare myself to others or even to my former self. I will prepare nourishing meals for myself. I will sit quietly and read with my twinkling Christmas lights on and the fire going. I will cry into the sacredness of the moment and my being able to be a part of it today.

I will take a break from listening to the constant ache of our world today, the pain that cuts so deeply. I will continue to contribute, fight, and protest where and when I can. But, for today, I will grant myself a break, time to simply breathe and be, to appreciate the gift of life, the gift of aging, the gift of feelings, the gift of it all.

I Don’t Need to Feel Important

But I do want to feel significant

We can spend our lives searching..for purpose, for meaning, for love, for answers to our questions. Society gives us ideas about what is important, what we should strive for, how to make a difference and fulfill our potential.

But we can get lost in the search for that elusive purpose. It fades, we fade, everything fades.

So, what do we do?

I realize that rather than being important, I would cherish being significant, even for a few moments, in the lives that I may have touched. I mean significant in that I was seen, saw them, and that we connected, significant in terms of moving into others’ hearts with perhaps an act of kindness, a word that they may have needed to hear, a touch that says more than words can convey, a steady reliable presence, a memory that brings a smile when they think of me.

To be a smile, to have been noticed and part of someone’s life…that is significant. To have been in someone’s heart, even for a moment, that is significant.

And, as I continue to age, I have come to realize that I need to be significant to myself. What do I want to do with this brief time that I may have left? What matters?

I want to still contribute, to volunteer where I feel called. I want to reach out to others with kindness so that they can breathe more easily for a moment in time, to touch their soul and have them know that they are safe with me, to share what lessons that I have learned with those that may be interested in what I have to share. I want to let them know that they are not alone.

I want to feel and live in my own soul and know that I matter, that I am still here, still alive, still able to breathe, to feel, cry, laugh, and love, perhaps in different forms than when I was younger, but to love, nonetheless. I want to finally validate my own personal history, what I have been through and to appreciate that I made it to here and now. I want to hold my heart and soul with tenderness and love, to be present for myself, as I try to be for others, to be the love that I have been searching for all along, and to find, with poignant bittersweetness, that the missing piece that I have long been searching for has always been inside me.

I will write, because that is where my voice feels most comfortable expressing itself. I will paint, because that is where my Self with no words comes out. I will cry, because this earth and all its creatures, trees, pain, joy, birth, and death, are wondrous, awe inspiring, and worthy of sacred tears.

I will live, until the last moment, because life and time are precious. I will keep using my voice to fight for what is right, keep loving amidst the hatred and division currently being sown in our land and in the world, keep setting boundaries to my love to protect and safeguard it and yet spread it where it is needed, especially to those who realize the sacredness of it and who will cherish it.

Finally, I am learning to cherish my own love, life, and self. I am learning that I deserve to be significant…to myself.

There is Healing Yet to be Done

It’s time to heal those old wounds at a deeper level

I have been having memories and feelings from my past and from my entire life come up more as I continue my path of aging. I finally stopped and began to listen, rather than judging myself for ruminating and dwelling too much on things gone by.

Maybe, I thought, there are good reasons that all this seems to be coming up so intensely right now.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the self-judgments about not wasting time worrying about things long gone, about needing to let go, about moving on, about not obsessing. Judgments and negative critical inner voices abound. They always have lived in my head.

So, maybe it’s time to get curious with them, to ask them to talk with me.

I have had losses lately, as we all do. They come more frequently as we age. I wrote about one major loss for me lately, the loss of my elephant friend.

I wanted to explore within myself and go a little deeper with the pure pain of this loss, the loss that seemed to hit in a different way and depth than human loss. What was this, I wondered.

I came to realize, as I lay awake at 3am one morning, that this was a relationship where I felt totally accepted without judgment, seen without comment, observed and felt without advice, and included in breathing together at that moment in time.

I do not go into the past to assign blame, but rather gather up my younger self and hold her, embrace her, understand her, and love her. As an adult, and now especially as an elder, I think it’s time to give her what she has needed from me all along, to finally let her know that I am here, that I hear her, that I acknowledge the pain and hurt that she felt, that I feel her aloneness and can now step in to fill some of that empty space inside of her that has been with her for so long.

The empty space is one that I learned to look outside of myself to try and fill, which never worked. That emptiness cannot be filled from outside or from others, but must be filled from within, from self and from whatever that spiritual connection is for each of us, both inside ourselves and with the Universe. For me, it can be filled with things like connection with the trees in the forest that can bring me to tears, or the connection with animals that makes my heart smile and their tails wag or their internal motors purr.

Some of my background

I was an only child of immigrant parents who were trying their best to do what they could to give me a better life than they had. And they did. But they had their own deep wounds, and those are passed on through the generations as each layer tries to heal a bit more.

I came from the time when children were to be molded, to be seen and not heard, to be told who they were and what they were supposed to do. And as a girl, I was taught to look to a man for definition of self, to look forward to embracing motherhood and all the roles.

Except that this didn’t fit for me. And that was not ok in my family. My mother never forgave me for abandoning her to go away to college. The truth is that I felt like I was suffocating at home and fought tooth and nail to get out of the house, and ended up, in my sophomore year at college, having to support myself. And I did. I knew that my very life, my core, was at stake. I had to save myself.

I learned to look for other relationships to try and get love. I looked for a career where I could earn my right to exist on this planet. I tried to be what I thought was a good person. I tried to fit in. But I didn’t.

I had no children. I am ok with this decision. I doubted my ability to parent and thought that I would once again become part of the enmeshment with my family of origin and then forever lose my separate identity.

I chose partners who were sometimes familiar with the pattern of not really hearing or listening to me. It was what I was used to, what I was trying to heal, trying to get things from someone who might not have been able to give that to me. This was in no way their fault. These were just choices made from our mutual wounds that are often destined to fail.

The pain is still there and asking for my attention

And now I lay in bed sometimes and feel that little girl within me. At this age, I can feel embarrassed about this, but it’s real, and she is there, asking to be heard, seen, protected, and held.

I have been isolated quite a bit since retiring and have been curious about that. Now I see that it has taken that long for that child part of me to trust and to come back out from deep inside me to tell me her story, my story.

My story is one of feeling alone, not heard, not seen, not accepted. And the painful part is that I learned to continue those judgments toward myself, to see myself as not good enough, as wrong and defective somehow, as needing to justify my existence, and as needing to try and shape, bend, and twist myself to try and meet other’s expectations, causing me to abandon myself.

Enough. I would say to that inner little girl still so very much inside of me…I am here, and I will hear you and listen. We can be alone and quiet for as long as you need. I will keep you safe. If I make a mistake, I will catch it as soon as I can. I see and remember and feel your pain and deep loneliness. You have been lonely for me. I am here, finally.

I can’t change the past, but I can learn from it. I can now learn how to give myself what I need. And this can help me be better able to be with others. As I feel nourished, I can give more authentically.

Becoming my own grandmother

I think that maybe I need to be the grandmother to myself, the elder, the one with wisdom of an even older generation, without the mother-daughter dynamics getting in the way. The elder wise crone can perhaps give more of what the child within needed then and what I need now…an elder, a wise woman, a soft place to be comforted and loved without anything getting in the way of that pure love.

I can now love myself into safety and wholeness, finally, heal the layers of grief, and begin to take care of all the unfinished business. There is healing yet to be done, while there is still time.