Reflections
Life is understood backward, and lived forward.
An astrologer and linguist I love to follow spoke this about these days: “Before we move forward, it’s essential to look back. The food we eat to move forward grows from compost, after all.” This week of interlude has included moments of digesting the year–it was imperative to digest, to compost, to transform what was so that something new can grow in the year ahead. Those experiences we carry forward either as build-up and trash OR that which is old and dead becomes the nutrients, the fertilizer, the nourishment, the very cells of healthy future life.
2021 began with high hopes and expectations for a year better than the one before. It couldn’t get worse, right? Except it did. 2021 held for me, and I’d dare say for the collective global community as well, a dark night of the soul. A dark night is a season of facing your darkness and finding light only after moving entirely through it to the other side. One author describes it as, “(It’s) a sacred initiation into the underbelly of the soul that will make you feel cursed and blessed at the same time.” It was more than just a sadness. I might describe it as peeling layers of calloused skin until you get to the most tender, raw fragile flesh of the soul. Just when I thought I’d come through to the other side, another layer presented itself and back into the exfoliating dark I’d go. So while in this email, I’ll spare you the details (warning: some may come as we traverse through 2022) what’s beautiful about a dark night is that gems are produced from the pressure.
These are the pearls I'll carry forward:
THOUGHTS MANIFEST | It isn’t words or actions that create reality, but thoughts. Thoughts expose beliefs, so thought-work became the most important work of the year. Time after time, over the course of the year, proof that intentions become reality both surprised and delighted me and destroyed and devastated me. “I want to be big-hearted, full-hearted, wild. Unconfined, undefined, accepted or rejected matters not because I am free. No longer caged by her cage, his cage, or my own,” I wrote early in the year. It was these thoughts, then written in ink, that became the theme of the year, the work of the dark night. I didn’t know what I was asking for. How it might come about, but it manifested itself powerfully.
I AM NOT WHO NOR WHAT THE WORLD WANTS TO TELL ME I AM | Over a decade ago, I set out to break some cycles within my family’s lineage. It was an inside job. As I became aware of beliefs, relational responses and an emotional landscape I didn't want to continue in my own life, I decided to just stop doing them and not pass them on to future generations. (things like jealousy, external approval, codependency, etc) This year, the wounds literally came to the surface. I had to face them. Others had to look at them. I wore them on my flesh. On my face. Healing is still happening but I cling to the truth that I am not the conditioning of my culture, and this work will work forward and backward through the generations.
I AM CAPABLE | I am capable of climbing mountains, of moving them, of creating something that affirms a sense of self and autonomy and proves the worth of myself and what I put out into the world. Mid-year, I took a hiking trip and that was the question I went to answer. “Do I have what it takes?” The answer before the adventure had always been, “don’t ask that question.” The answer I found in the wilderness was a resounding YES. I am more than capable.
LOVE CAN BE FOSTERED, NOT CONTROLLED | A years-long process of softening the heart walls and this year has been like learning how to walk on new legs. Boundaries became the language of love as I sought navigating the newness of emotional awareness. Shutting down/numbing was the old way, but new tools have allowed for new ways of feeling.
BIOGRAPHY IS BIOLOGY | Speaking of hard hearts… As the emotional walls came down, I discovered my actual heart—the muscle itself-–had hard walls. The story you live becomes expressed in the body, sometimes very literally. Running and supplementing entered my regimen in order to continue the softening.
TRUST THE GOODNESS OF PEOPLE | We purchased a house in 2020 with the idea to open an AirBnb. It was a project of creative expression and joy and we couldn’t wait to share it (and our blossoming hometown of Ashland) with the world. After a year of remodeling, decorating and thinking of every last detail, we have been welcoming people to participate in our fantasy home. We haven’t met most of our guests, but they’re all still guests in our home. Thankfully, all have enjoyed the space and treated it even better than if it were their own.
FIND PEOPLE, PLACES AND PRACTICES THAT ARE ANCHORS | When the boat gets rocked or when you’re afraid of the dark, have practices and people to grab ahold of who hold you right back. My people know who they are, find yours. My places have been the woods, my mat, the water. And my practices were a daily morning prayer, the ritual of making coffee and burning incense, and this–writing.
AND MY PRAYER FOR THIS YEAR…
I began with an analogy of the earth. Compost. Decomposition. But I want to shift the metaphor to one of the mysteries of the ocean.
I pray this year produces pearls. That every experience, every trial, every simple or even mundane moment can be transformed from grit into something of beauty in its simple luxury. I pray this year is full of abundance and treasure. I hope for some of the extravagant, luxuriating kind and for many more moments of pure joy in its simplicity.