Hello friends and family:
I managed such an active summer, after my 2-week workshop in Colorado, visiting San Antonio and having a lot of fun with John, Amanda, Anaiah, Zaiah and little Sophia. Ok, honestly, I have to say, I wore myself out! Those little ones are hard for me to resist. Story time at night, and them most nights, curling up in bed with me. We overflowed onto a mattress on the floor, well, Zaiah moves around a lot at night!
Holding the littlest one was my greatest delight. She would go from squirming and crying and moving her body in ways as if to wring herself out of such a small space. Then she would look around with stark wonder in her eyes. I felt her thinking, “Wow, just wow!”
After getting home and back to work, within a few weeks, Auntie Colleen (Michael’s sister- one of them) came to visit. I had her stay in my room and we got to watched her dance tango here locally and showed her around a bit, but she was only here 4 days before I got COVID! Yikes. She did move onto the sofa and we all wore masks and she helped me call the doctor because I had no voice. So then I had to stop work for around 10 days, and get better. I improved pretty fast, since the docs recommended anti-virals and I took them in time to have my symptoms go away quickly.
There is nothing like being sick to make me to face things hanging around in my psyche, hidden beneath busyness. I felt trapped and downtrodden. It is hard to face letting go of what I think defines me. Aka, my ego as a qigong teacher, mom, nana, etc. (oh, yeah, and wife too). I felt the dread of entering into the fall season, echoing my experience of two years ago when Michael took his last serious downturn in health.
I don’t want to go there again, last winter I was a lot sicker than this little spin with the COVID. I felt a darkness creeping, creeping around within me. And then, as is my habit, I asked for help to navigate this unpleasant swing. I hear these words in my mind:
“Luxuriate in this time, it will allow new ideas to form. Open windows – open doors for the new. Do not worry, it is handled. But listen, LOOK, SEE, write, BELIEVE, and CHANGE. How many people are thankful for an illness? You can be too! “
I answer this in my mind, probably with my proverbial hands on my hips. “OK OK, how can you be so positive when I feel so down!?” In truth I don’t even know who I am talking to.
I hear more:
“This is all part of the Great Grief that covers people, nations, and things. The grief ALL want to avoid the one all can and should FACE. There is an over-reaching inclusive grief of being separated from loved ones, and from love itself – even love for the true self.”
If I am honest, I know this feeling of separation is always there. Part of me knows God loves me, but part of me doesn’t really believe it. Was my past relationship with Michael used as a block or a safety against the feeling of aloneness? I hear more.
“There are unimaginable corridors of grief out there! The grief that you experience has you thinking things are taken away from you. Everyone suffers many losses in a life. They can however, be viewed as losses or as gifts and an opportunity for transformational change.”
Is there a way to bend time and reshape our own realities? What truly is real and everlasting?
”Don’t believe the stories that you are lacking. Consider now that you have it all, all the love from day one to now, nothing is lost! Don’t tell yourself the story that you just keep losing and there is just depression going forward. Pray every morning: ‘I love myself, I give myself permission to fill up with what gives me joy and wonder. And, I set my focus on the unfolding miracles in life, to be looking for them daily.’”
And so life continues… and I feel it is up to me to make it an adventure or, something else. My sister-in-law Colleen is my inspiration – to her life is by nature an adventure!
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