Courage

Did you know that there is no separation between the mind, the emotions and the body?

Grief has found its way into my lungs, and I am sick with the worst chest cold I have had in years. In some strangely comforting way, it is affirming to know that while we are vulnerable to the sometimes extreme vicissitudes of life, if we can survive the trauma that we experience, we then may also have the power to decide how we meet them, what we do with them, and how we evolve as a result.

My beloved Mother left this earth on July 18th and is now peacefully soaring with the angels, magnificent swallow that she is, exquisite and intentional, swooping and gliding, buoyed aloft by purest love and the light of infinite stars. Like a beautiful bell, music itself, her voice, her laughter, her bright eyes, her face tilted up smiling to receive the sun … radiant with excitement, introducing one soul to another, the grand connector and brilliant creatrice, glowing pearl, shining light, elixir of life! This is how we will remember her–these ways and countless more. The people who knew her were each forever changed for the better, their lives and their very selves magically illuminated by knowing her, truly blessed to have been touched by her singular, other-worldly magic as long as they had, and I know that she will be with us always. No language can express the power, beauty, heroism, and majesty of my Mother, Jane’s joyful love, its radiance, quenchless fidelity like a star.

After we lost Robin Williams this week, having suffered from suicidal depression myself in the past and survived by the grace of some inexplicable confluence of events, realizations and shifts— by some miracle, really … my heart, which was already cracked in two, started bleeding.

I don’t know how people survive the loss of their loves-I am just putting one foot in front of the other, and practicing something I have never been good at: asking for what I need and learning to receive it.

LOVE is what heals grief, and I am practicing love in everything I do. I am practicing LIVING. I am practicing giving to myself and everyone around me, the way I know how, the way I know best.  And guess what?! I am afraid, and I need LOVE. Don’t you?!  Who couldn’t use more love?

And I agree with everyone who has been sensitive and thoughtful enough to make the bold remarks in pieces I have read over the past few days in tribute to Robin, that we do ourselves the greatest disservice going along with the tide, this maddening tsunami of passivity that demands that we invest our very selves in the abstract, sterile, removed, over-digitized, “virtual” way that we are seduced into living our lives today. As Russell Brand said in his tribute to Williams, “We live in a world that has become so negligent of human values that our brightest lights are extinguishing themselves? We must be more vigilant, more aware, more grateful, more mindful.”

We must reach out and connect physically, HUG, verbally, over the phone to hear one anthers’ voices and laughter and emotions, NOT TEXT, where everything is mostly inscrutable and subject to our own projections, so much left dangerously up to subjective interpretation—- through the written word, on paper, where we can see the nuances of someone’s energetic imprint, the singular perfume of their personality, their artistry– with stamps and the effort that it takes to get to the post office or mailbox!

We must return to ourselves and pick up the needle and thread.

We must begin anew to weave the tapestry that is the very fabric of our lives–the interconnecting, intersecting lines of color that create the tensile strength that binds us and lets us know that we ARE supported by the loving relationships we invest in, that we can literally “fall into” that hammock of lovingkindness with others that is based in a reality we create.

What is needed here is a little WAKING ENERGY–a little consciousness around how to love, how to reach out, how to hold, how to embrace, and how to let go …

And in this moment, I am getting the strong message that it is time to surround myself in a cocoon of deepest healing love and to surrender to what is … Time to go inside, kiss and hug myself, just be … so that I can restore, so that I can feel the fear and the anger, and the deepest pain and know that it is all okay, that everything changes, that love is all around me and us.

As Lao Tzu once said, “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” And that someone I’m going to love deeply today, is me. How about you?

#staycation #healingbirthday #startanew #loveyourself