What is healing? There are times in our lives when things don’t make sense when we’re wracked with pain, confusion, or exhaustion, when we think we are in a dead-end. I certainly felt this when Chris died. Everything familiar, that I loved and took for granted was shattered, and I was left to make sense of the broken pieces. When the shock started to wear off, I heard the voice of the inner healer, calling me to let go of old stories and ancient wounds.
I remember the healing began when I faced what I didn’t want to face — the reality that my beloved Chris was dead and wasn’t coming back. What felt like the good news at the beginning was that even though Chris had taken his last breath, he still felt so close to me that I almost couldn’t miss him. I could nearly feel his presence physically, and sometimes, when I found myself wracked with grief, I wondered why I was so sad when he hadn’t really gone anywhere.
But he had. He was dead, and eventually, I had to accept that simple but uncompromising truth. There were many levels of letting go before I reconciled myself to the obvious. Chris was gone, as was the old life. Nothing would be the same again.
There was no easy formula for my healing, and it had nothing to do with fixing my life or curing my grief. In time, I felt myself wanting to be free of the grief but still not wanting to let go. It was an internal civil war that absorbed much of my energies. I feared creating a new life when I didn’t know how I had made the old one. But something about naming the fear opened the way to my healing.
It was a slow, steady, creative process connecting all my parts — my body, mind, and spirit- and all the wounded and glorious parts I had carried for my whole life. It was about becoming whole, integrated, courageous, vulnerable, authentic, and innocent. Sometimes, it felt like I was getting worse before I got better, and other times, I thought that I had finally moved forward and then found myself back at square one.
Just before I realized that it was time to start looking for a stable home where I could set down roots after my ten years on the road, I knew I was stuck. I couldn’t dream. I couldn’t imagine moving forward. So I did an exercise.
I pulled out three sheets of paper. On the top of the first, I wrote In blue, “Letting Go.” On the next in red, I wrote, “Taking Up.” On the third in green, I wrote, “Planting Seeds. On each, I listed at least a dozen responses to the prompt.
I wrote, among other things, that I wanted to let go of being a gypsy as Chris and I had been, having no responsibilities and being an outsider. I wrote that I wanted to take up sharing my gifts in leadership, story-telling, and awakening. I wrote that I wanted to plant seeds of being grounded in the earth, finding a home, and finding my place again in a community. I finished writing and put the papers away in a safe place.
Almost ten years later, I have looked at what I wrote. Almost everything I listed has come into being, and I didn’t even know I was following a plan. In my Shalom days, I taught, “Trust the Process.” That is true, and I did, but it also doesn’t hurt to dream.
What are you needing to let go of, take up, and plant seeds for?