You Say Its Your Birthday. 74 and Rollin’

What gates I have passed through? What disasters have I survived? What choices have I made along the way?

The relationships with various men fall away and no longer are visible in my rearview mirror. The monstrous pain and dysfunction of my parents has been removed tediously and laboriously from my green lawn of the present. I went after that deep rooted gnarled old deadness with crowbars, shovels, therapists, ayahuasca, meditation, chanting, writing, performance poetry, reading, seeking teachers. I went after that living deadness taking up space in my life with every tool I had and gladly adapted new tools as I found them.

The near death experiences, the operations, the marriages and divorces, the sobbing into the nest of my fetal position pillows for years, the waking to screaming in the night of visions whose appearance alone re-traumatized me have been part of my journey.

And it all falls away. The forgotten, the shadowy memories, the scars along my body are all then. This day is now. August 20, 1944 I came here to this life.

I am 74. I did it. I survived. I did not succeed the times I feebly tried to kill myself. I did not stay with the light bodies that took me to a beautiful place of ease. I did not become bitter or angry or dress myself daily in the uniform of a victim veteran and go out armed to the teeth on the street.

a step at a time

I have abided. I have learned to abide. As events occur, I simply live them. The moments of joy are not something I plan, or go after. They show up. When I sit with a person and do a channel reading and I see them connect to that thing which has them imprisoned, I feel so grateful. Every single thing. Every single thing in my life has been on purpose. I see that now.

I can help those that seek me out because I understand so much about the unintended accidents of living. It is not because I was skilled or wise that I can sit with others and help. It is because I was so fucking stupid, obdurate and slow to learn that makes me a gifted healer. I can say, “Yep. I did that. And I did it five times. I did it for 20 years.” Immediately others feel better. Immediately others feel hopeful.

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And they are right. It won’t. I am the best bad example they could find. It gives them hope.

Today, I have reached 74 years of age.

I should have died as a child with my broken bones; with my father smothering me with pillows as he violated me. I should have died as a child with my father shooting a gun at our backs as we ran. I should have died as a teenager driving Chuck A Nut drive with a mad man who turned the car lights off and drove down the wrong side of the deep space blackness of night. I should have died when I took the sleeping pills, or when I had cancer, or when my bowel twisted and was about to burst, or when the car was totalled on the mountain highway, or when I hemmorhaged and lost half of the blood in my body and went to the after place.

I could have died when I joined the Peace Corp and changed my mind. My husband and I sat in a bar and watched the live feed of an Eagle Scout shooting into the group from the tower on campus. Among the 11 people killed were the Peace Corp volunteers being sent to raise chickens in India. It was our group. We would have been there.

And what of the doorways that I walked past without even knowing that some choice or movement of fate kept me in the hallway of life? It is unnecessary to know anything.

I have survived. I have grown. I have benefitted from all of the lessons. And once in a while the beautiful deep joy of being on purpose as one who can help others arises.

Today, I am strong, healthy, at peace and so deeply connected to my spirits and the earth. I am grateful for the lessons. I am grateful for my meditation practice. I am astounded at the transformation that my life has been.

What next? Well, it won’t be bland or average… I can tell you that. I came here to get my double PhD about life. I came here to learn.

Learning my boundaries: country of self

I am constantly bumping into my limitations. There were days on end when the heat and smoke and working seven days a week were teaching me my capacity. How long can you go in a state of optimistic, accepting calm, woman? Hey. Let us find out.

When I stepped on a mass of dry twigs and three (so far that is the number that shot out of the resultant infection in my foot) shards were embedded; when my right eye stopped seeing clearly; when I found it difficult to breathe, I slid into a deep down knowing that the world was a crap lined cave of granite imprisonment. I forced myself to do the hours of work to prepare for guests every day but I settled for a grim existence.

stressors teach us

It makes me think of the experiences of my ancestors. The city is a fortress but it is surrounded by the invading hoards that have cordoned it off. No relief is in site. So for generations (on both familial trees) stoicism and indifferent detachment from one’s own suffering was the key to survival. I shift into “lock down” mode. I shift into disassociating mode.

Evidence of this arises frequently. After, I couldn’t see… I allowed three days to elapse before I got to the opthamologist.  Because the thought that something was happening to my vision was terrifying me, a person who is highly visually acute; an artist; a gardener, I buried it deep. Because my foot had an infection and stepping on it was painful, I just sat more. It was two weeks later that I showed it to my daughter and she suggested I actually soak it in epsom salts to encourage it to eject the intruding darts of lavender formed into weapons.

It was only when I sat with my counselor and explained some of the symptoms I was experiencing in my body that I heard her say, “Do you think you could be disassociation?”
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When the number and type of stressors I am experiencing ramps up, I go into lock down. I tell myself that the way out is to simply work harder on meditation and not see the events as negative. And then all hell breaks out. The bottom gear in my humanity is always blaming myself for my humanity.

no air

I have soaked my foot until all three pointy stick weapons were released by my body. I have begun to eat more salt to make sure my heart pumps blood to my eyes. I have once again made an effort to reach out to others to connect and not shut myself into my tower of protection.

And as I hang the laundry, once again, on the line I think about how my intention to build habits needs to be reinstalled… like failing software. Shut down the entire system. Then reboot and reinstall.

It is not like a war. The ground I am conquering is not myself. I am not a foreign country that needs harrowing and rebuilding. I am a garden. And weeding frequently, with love and conscious attention is working. Softly on the ground. Softly, softly on the ground.

Moth in a jar

And then the grief comes. And then the smashing into the glass side of the jar comes. And then the understanding that the body needs to be protected comes with the churning frustrations.

The Okanagan summer is unfolding like it has for the last couple of years. Flakes of cancer causing burned trees were landing on my deck last night. The temperature has gone up to 35 to 38 degrees for days on end. And the relentless cleaning, laundry, greeting and waving adieu to people is sending me into a pattern of lower energy. I am trapped by my debt, I say to myself. I am prisoner to a seven day a week job. My low blood pressure leaves me feeling as if I am dragging around dead oxen draped over my shoulders like a mistaken fox stole.

And my practice is being used to inflict yet more sadness upon myself. “You should be….,” I say.

My right eye suddenly became so blurred I could not see out of it. The eye doctor after using five machines and two kinds of drops declared it an “occural incident.”

I have run out of gas; no longer driving on paved road; in the weeds; at my limit. And as is my way, The Overseer is lashing my back. “You have not worked out.”

And so I attempted to move through my list and download new software on my second computer. After four hours of different servings of failure from the possibility menu… I felt bereft. The urge to cry was there but I had the mother voice telling the Overseer that it was stress and now was not a good time. Let it go for now.

I put on the bionic air filter next to my bed, turned on both small air conditioners upstairs and soaked my foot. It isn’t strange at all that after four months of going barefoot on the lawn with joy, yesterday I impaled my arch on a lethal stem of lavender.

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Turning to Netflix which is my teddy bear soothing ritual, I watched Ricky Gervais evicerate various people. It was calming. Watching someone else spew out the anger I hold inside myself is quite validating to me.

I know somehow I will solve the growing list of technical dark caves I have walked into. I know somehow I will learn to operate these systems. But yesterday… yesterday I had the urge to shave my head, tear off my clothes and go into a forest with a wooden bowl and a roughly constructed fork and just forage.

The victories were not greeting with fanfare. I didn’t cry myself to sleep. I didn’t eat a bag of cookies. I didn’t buy some outrageous piece of clothing I will never wear and I didn’t work frantically to prove to myself that everything was in my control.

Slowly, slowly, I am learning. Gay Hendricks calls these times of mysterious failures as reaching the upper limit. My airbnb is in the top ten in Kelowna. I am fit and strong. My friendships are blossoming. My blog has gone past the 70 thousand subscribers mark. And my gigantic debt for buying my freedom from a poisonous relationship is whittled down to under the cost of a car now.

It is an upper limit problem and I am practicing patience. The heat does not help me. Pollutants in the air do not create a supportive environment. Waiting it out is the wise decision at this point. And as always, trusting that I am growing even when it feels like I have just been failing. Increments, baby. I say to myself in my loving mother’s voice. Step at a time.

Being human is never a rose garden. Or maybe it is and it just needs judicious tending. Watch out for the thorns.