Sitting with Sadness

Sadness breaches the glassy stillness
like a humpback who has been traveling
for miles without a breath

again, you return
or is it only more
from where the last tsunami
came?

from a different epicenter, perhaps
or maybe the same
does it matter?
it all seems to wear the same coat
of desperation, of pain that is indescribable
because of its depth and
lack of physicality

"I don't know how you do it" he says
in reference to the needles and the burning
and the ropes and the beatings
that I mention, I request, I crave.
I said I didn't know either
but on second thought, of course I do.

Where emotional pain can be made physical
there is relief in the knowledge
that all things physical can and will pass.
There is a palpable
beginning
middle
end

Not the continuous breaching
of drowning whales.

There is grace in trusting the process of
emrging emotional pain into the physical.
Grace in trusting another with your body, your process, your pain.
Grace in trusting enough to be held, and
Grace in recollecting yourself when the container gives in under the pressure.
We are all only human, after all,
and some of us push harder than others.
Some of us go deeper than others.
Some of us expand greater than others.
Some of us are too loud, even for our own comfort.

It is grace that can hold us.
It is the ocean and the sky that can take it
that can hold us all.

Sadness enjoys the writing. It is learning to paint with words.
It is learning to leak gently out in small manageable breaths.

So on the surface, I may seem sadder longer.
But perhaps this time, you won't be frightened off by the explosion,
cowering in your own fears of inadequacy,
thinking "Shit, I can't hold THAT!"
Instead you can be quietly concerned in your own spare time,
stroking your ego into thinking that you may have something to offer.

Just to let you know,
I will take what is useful.
I take care of my own.

I trust myself.
I trust my process.
I trust that the label of "Crazy" exists for your benefit, not mine,
to make you comfortable and separate from what you long to ignore...

...but more on that, later.

Labeling makes Sadness even sadder.
It shows Sadness unacceptance.
It shows Sadness that you acknowledge her
as something incomprehensible, unacceptable, wild.
Boo on labeling, especially the label of Crazy.

Ouchness.

Sadness, what else would you like to share with the world?
Yikes, fear? Brokenheartedness? I am so gentle and fierce
I am so many dualities, all crossing in the center.
I am seeking integration between grief and love.
I am confused, getting tripped up in the process,
when I stumble, and hit the ground, I cry out of frustration.
Seeking flow and grace and a peaceful heart.
I pray, I stand up, I keep moving.

My life is full
of processing.
The large, complicated doughnut that I am.

Please don't fret, Mom.
Please. Have faith in me and my process.
Sadness is not a death sentence, like it seemed to be a decade ago.
You have raised such a strong, committed, loving daughter.
I may do things with my life that you would never imagine or wish for me,
but it is mine to live, and I follow only the voice of Spirit
and our ancestors.

Sadness mingles with Love and Grace on occasion,
when she is well enough to receive visitors.
They share a laugh and a good cup of tea,
in light and peaceful laziness.

It is 11:11. Think happy thoughts.

Breaststroke Meditations

So I think I got a handle on the chest pain. At least for now.

I had another session with the fabulous acupuncturist today, and we came up with this: that the grief that was being released (gratefully) was simply overpowering my typical fiery joy. Perhaps the movement of grief was also pulling chi away from Earth, the deficiency resulting in the increased anxiety I had been feeling for the past three weeks. The deficiency carried through to the heart again, coupled with the grief release from the lung, causing the chest pain.

To be honest, I just took a wild stab at processing it all within a 5E model. I've got to let my acupuncturist off the hook. He actually told me to quit analyzing it and just tell him what was going on (which is exactly what he should've done).

I was having a hard time being present for the session today. There was a part of me fighting the treatment, leaving my body, wanting to leave the room, to not get better or move on.

I attribute a bit of that to the two Guinesses I drank last night at the bowling alley. That was the first time I have drank in well over two years, and it made me nervous that I was craving alcohol that way. I packed them both down, and barely felt it. It's been a day already and I'm still doing good. Sweet! I suppose that was helped along by the triple dose of NAC and B-vits I took upon coming home, along with the 5 glasses of water I downed that night. But the numbing effects of the alcohol carried over into today's session. At one point, I was getting needled essentially in my armpit, and it wasn't going and wasn't going and wasn't going, and then I realized that I was so far away from my body that the guy could've punctured my lung and I wouldn't have noticed. I had to catch myself and invite myself back into my body. As soon as I came back home, the needle tugged and the point released. But it all really came home when I got the needle in the middle of my inner wrist. Like sudden divine inspiration, all of the sudden EVERYTHING got clear and present and real again. It felt miraculous.

I went home and just sat in silence for about twenty minutes then crawled back into bed for a hour-long nap. It's a struggle to get up because once again I've let my place get all piled up and grubby. Grrrr. There just doesn't seem to be enough time or energy to get everything done.

Anyway, I made it over to the gym for some laps and sweating before class. God, I love swimming. Doing the breatstroke is like flying. It's like I'm an eagle soaring through a stiff breeze. No surprise that Eagle is the animal that has come forth to help carry me through this grief-relief process. Everytime, and I mean EVERY time I go to acupuncture, my practictioner and I always see a bald eagle soaring around outside. We've both been seeing them on occasion outside of treatment as well. It's great because we're both so giddy to see them.

So Water element, coming after Metal, is giving the grief somewhere to go, in my eyes. But that's not why I swim. I swim because I love it. It's quiet, meditative. My body is surrounded in secure, cradling pressure. I can push myself as hard or slack as I want, I can daydream, I can breathe deeply, I can process, I can pray. I did all of that today. As I pushed off the wall and soared through the water, grabbing it with my hands and shoving it past me, pushing myself through, feeling every part of my self, gliding to the surface for a breath, I felt a relief that I had been waiting for for three weeks. I couldn't believe how long it had been, how bad I had let it get. The self-disgust, the self-loathing, the insecurity, the abuse I suffered at my own hands. At what point did I forget that I am made of light? Where did I get stuck between the words "I am" and "a miracle"?

I'm so grateful for this healing, and the pain and process that led me to it, scary as it was. My perceptions of this lesson was that when the going gets tough, pray harder. And I got a new list of things to pray for.

A piece of poetry:

"Hopeful I raise my bow and release my heart into the night sky. I'm aiming for the stars, and maybe I'll hit one. More likely, I will find the dark matter, and be graced another opportunity to embrace the shadow of the universe. Either way, I am a better person because of my efforts."

PS: I adjusted my first neck all on my own tonight!!!! It was so amazing, because it came from a very instinctual place.

Answers and Expectations

I just realized this morning that my head is full of answers.

For the longest time, and still to this day, I have always asked questions. When I hear someone claim a phenomenon, my first impulse is to ask "Why?" of "What if?" When I was little, my mom even went so far as to limit the amount of "Why"'s I could ask before I had to ask another question. At some point, I must've realized that some questions "don't have answers" (which really means that the person I was asking didn't know the answer) and that some questions were not going to be answered anytime soon. Sometimes questions were answered with more questions.

I was, and still am, simply trying to make sense of this world. Seeking answers. Trying to convince myself that it was safe and worth it to stick around. Looking back on my life, I can see that my entire young adult life was spent seeking answers to the plethora of questions I had about the world I was seeing and what it was telling me about myself. So many questions about what was going on inside of me, inside of my head and my heart. From counseling and psychiatric hospitalizations in high school and college, to a degree in Neuroscience, to working in group homes, to becoming a naturopathic physician.

And the answer always depended on who I was asking.

If it was a psychiatrist, usually the answer was related to a idiopathic biochemical imbalance of neurotransmitters that is likely genetic in origin and can be regulated through the new latest and greatest expensive creation of mankind. This particular one helped me lose a lot of trust and faith in mankind, research, and modern-day society in general. That whole system, from my perspective, is based upon the patient giving up trust in themselves for trust in what's ultimately a higher power, yet its a higher power comprised of the same perfectly fallible human beings that the system's trying to treat. It implies a judgment and a power differential, one that says, "You're more crazy than I am" I say Horse Shit.

If it is a shamanic practitioner, the answer might be that I've lost multiple soul parts during the course of my life and the gaps were filled in by whatever resident spirit or energy was lurking about at the time. I may have also been invaded by other energies in a more forceful manner. Now my soul needs a clearing, some extraction work, and then the soul parts need to be called home and placed back in my body. Then I must parent them and reintegrate these parts into the soul, for they have been gone a long time and aren't familiar with the new older version of me. Again, there's the giving up of power, but it seems much more temporary. This time, there's more emphasis on the patient working towards health. The reintegration process encourages things like counseling, craniosacral and massage therapies, and basic attention and awareness paid to whatever came through for you in a soul retrieval.

If it's a Sacred Contracts counselor, perhaps then the answer is about introducing and integrating the twelve archetypes that agreed to accompany you throughout this lifetime as you carry out your life purpose.

If it's a mental health counselor, it's about tempering the moment into self-reflection, regardless of what happened in the past to whom by whom in whatever fashion.

Despite having all of the aforementioned treatments, I still have moments of tremendous anger, or grief, or giddyness. I still have days of foggy-headedness and irritability. I still can't seem to follow a healthy diet or exercise routine. I have the expectation that somehow I can be fixed; that when I achieve optimal health, these things won't be experienced. I have the expectation that I'm not an endless vat of sorrow, or mania, or unbridled emotion of any sort. I have the expectation that I can be explained.

SO.....what if:

I am not fixable.

I am not broken.

I am in optimal health.

I experience things like anger and grief and giddyness.

I am an endless vat of sorrow.

I am an endless vat of mania.

I am an endless vat of unbridled emotion.

I cannot be explained.

What if I broke these expectations, and loved myself anyway?