Sometimes it is vital to let one thing rest to fully engage in another.
My family has arrived to celebrate the holiday season.
So I am setting everything else down for these next days, to be fully in that.
The art of relationship.
The craft of being fully in an experience.
The skill of sitting in all the delight and tension of being in family.
When I let go of the notion that healing is about being fixed, restored to an unblemished state, scarless and pure, unbroken, then I feel that true healing is possible and available.
I have come to see how constructs of purity exist all around me, and around all of us, and how harmful and oppressive they are.
We are not pure, it is unobtainable. We can strive to be and do better, but purity is a ploy. It is a lie. Worst of all it is used to degrade ourselves and others. It tears us apart as individuals and collectives. It is a form of violence.
Purity dogmas are ruthless and unforgiving. They offer no redemption, only judgment, and punishment.
I embrace the path of being broken open, of being a wounded healer, the way of compassion, integrity, and love.
I welcome anyone to join me here. We all are included. We all are worthy.
I know one thing about light. It returns.
Today is the darkest day of the year.
I notice how I have followed the season. Embracing the dark. The way it leads me deeper in, to places worth knowing.
Darkness then becomes a welcoming. I do not transform it, it transforms me. It shows me what it really is. A place to land, not to escape from.
I can be here, and honor it, what it offers.
The light will return slowly, steadily. I welcome it too.
I see beauty. Intentionally.
I make a spiritual practice of it.
I adjust my eyes for it.
It is my faith.
It keeps me afloat.
It fills me with wonder.
To be here living in this beauty.
I am a part of it.
You are too.
Getting clean.
That means a lot of different things.
Today I did laundry, vacuumed, mopped.
Tomorrow, more laundry and bathrooms.
I am getting my house extra clean for holiday guests. As much as I rail against it, I care what people think.
Coming clean. Owning all that I am, quite often a set of contradictions. I am coming to terms with that.
I am trying to do writing that comes clean.
I am an addict. I use various things. Addiction is not about the thing I am using it is about what I am numbing, what I am escaping.
That is step one in getting clean.
My daughter stands at the cooktop carefully considering the frozen dumplings she is cooking.
She lamented that she is not old enough to cook. I disagreed. 12 is old enough to do so many things. I let her use the gas stove. Fire.
I think about how scary it is actually to let them become grown, independent, self reliant.
My son comes home from college tomorrow. I will breathe easier when he is here back under my roof and I can try to assess his state of being. Not that I think I can undo anything he may have chosen out there on his own. I know that, but it does worry me, it stirs my fear.
We want to keep our kids safe, but we can't if we want them to know freedom.
Freedom is not safe. Freedom is risky. Freedom is dangerous.
It is reasonable to steer them away from recklessness, but I even wonder about that.
When does our pursuit of safety become oppression?
Where is that line?
I say I want freedom. Am I willing to give it as well?
I realize that my writing these days may come across as bleak, a downer, brooding. It may even bring to mind a descriptor I truly dislike, "pity party".
I am finally at a place in my life where I can say, maybe it is, so fucking what.
I am going through a cavernous depression. I use the word cavernous because it closely describes the feeling for me. Hollowed out, cold, lonely, pulled away, withdrawing.
It is not that I am devoid of happiness, or contentment, or gratitude, but right now other things are prevalent, needing my attention.
Sadness, grief, uncertainty, loss, transition. These bring me to the cavern, the dug out place, a temple of heartache.
This temple is not unholy, quite the opposite. It offers great and sacred riches. But we can't unearth them when no one will come help tend the fire. It is too painful to stay the vigil alone.
I am not suggesting we languish there.
I am suggesting we do not defile or defame these states of being and run away never looking back, or even looking at all.
Take the time to look. To be curious. To be there. To know that place. Light a fire, gather your people and tell the stories that live there. Write your name on her wall. Give her some respect.
It isn't that I don't want to talk about happiness. It is that I do not want to make happiness into cheap fodder, the bland currency of life, the common, basic, drivel.
Happiness, and not just happiness, but joy, ecstacy, jubilation, along with sorrow, grief, despair, all the depth and nuance of human experience, deserves better than that.
