We are here. In the slow waning days of late summer. New crescent moon in the sky.
The sun's fierceness increasingly tempered by low clouds and cool winds. I think about how much I will miss waking to bright mornings, sun bursting into and across the sky. I think about how much my bare skin will ache to feel the heat of the late afternoon sun, and the refreshing cool plunge into water. Memories of the many bodies of water that held our lazy sunbathing sessions this summer come fluttering about my mind, and I feel an impending sense of loss that triggers a contraction of the heart.
I want to grasp on, plead with summer not to go. Afraid of losing the scraps of happiness and contentment found on the beaches of all those ponds, lakes, rivers, and oceans.
Afraid that I didn't store up enough light to make it through winter. I beg; please, please, please, just a little more. More bees buzzing in the corn. More nights spent outside singing to the stars and early mornings welcoming in the dawn. More gathering of friends and lovers, coming together to share ritual, skills, stories, and meals.
But the wheel turns. Summer will fade. Autumn will arrive. The leaves will fall. The cold, wet, darkness will come. No amount of grasping or trying to clench it in my fists will stop summer's fading light. And it is in this truth that my work for this next season reveals itself.
Take This Work to Heart
My heart is the kind of heart that wants to grasp on to experiences that bring happiness, and hold on tight. Pull it close and wrap my heart around it. The child in me forever seeking to make up for her early deprivation. This means for me it can be so very confusing to know when to give space, and when to be close.
The work for me in all of this is to practice loving without grasping or holding on to any single source of happiness, trusting that I am blessed in this life and that there are wells of happiness and beauty all around me. Even in the cold darkness of winter.
To inspire this work I process the practices I've managed to establish thus far.
Breathing it In
This past season has been the season of taking deep breaths and flinging open the doors of this shipwrecked heart, aching for a place to spill out the contents. Searching for fingers that suffer with the same cravings as mine. Fingers that hold the courage to connect with these veins and learn with me exactly what it is that we are made of.
I learned how to hold on to the hope that things will get better. Believing that everything falls apart and at the exact same time it all comes back together perfectly for the next step. But I've seen that my hopes can be weapons and I know that I am still learning how to use them right. Learning how to hope without attaching to outcome. Learning how to keep my doors open even when others close theirs.
This has been the season of learning how to cast light on my shadowy wounds for others to see, and learning how to be comfortable with the fragility of vulnerability and intimacy at that depth. Learning how to deal with the disappointment that came from wanting to take our hearts there, but recognizing that his heart just couldn't and wouldn't go there. Learning how to accept the loss of all he took from me.
There has been much work done this season, and still so much more to do. So much more.
There are still days that I feel like I'm the barely living daughter of a woman and a man who didn't make it. Days that I spend pulling fistfuls of rotten wood from my heart and vomiting up the filth. Days where a panic sets in and I wonder how the fuck I'm gonna make it. But I'm making it. And I remind myself to go easy, to take my time, and that I'm still coming home to myself.
So I'll keep crying my tears of grief and tears of praise, and if you will too then we might have enough to wash each other. Humble hearts, surrendering to the pull. Shocking each other back to life.
I still believe in anchors.
Soundtrack to these thoughts: