The Grace of Change

No Shit, No Flowers

The Wonderful Husband received an generous gift from a landscape design client several months ago: 6 bags of aged, weed-free steer manure. Wow.

A gift, you ask?

Well, yes, in the right context ;-)

Several weeks ago David and I were happily putzing in the garden. One thing led to another, and in two shakes of a mockingbird’s tail (as Mama used to say) we were digging in the front and creating a real garden there for the first time. We transplanted hellebores, violets, and maples from the back garden and, along with still-potted plants David had collected over the years, created a lush new landscape.

What a gorgeous garden we created! As I’m writing this, I’m looking out on a lushness of blossoms: crimson rhodies and azaleas, creamy dogwoods, chartreuse hellebores, purple labrador violets.

We mixed said manure in all the new beds. I’ve never used bagged manure in a garden, and I was surprised to see and smell how, er, recognizable it was.

As I was digging, I remembered a client many years ago in Big Change. Elaine was a gardener, too, and we played with metaphors from nature to help ground her grief and deepen her trust in the cycles of death and rebirth in nature and in life.

One week Elaine came in all smiles, a miracle given the depth of her losses. “Melissa,” she grinned, “I’ve found the key!”

Big Questions to play with

I just remembered this handout from years ago. I used to give this to participants in transitions retreats I used to lead. I'd hand this out and ask the women to breathe into all of these questions for a few minutes and notice which question most spoke to them. We'd then go around a circle and each woman would ask her favorite question into the Mystery living at the center of our circle, and the center of our lives.

One of the gifts of life transtions is that we get to be like adolescents again.

(Yeah, I know that doesn't feel like much of a gift ;-) ). Remember those all night dishes in high school and college where you talked with your girlfriends about The Meaning of Life? Being in big transition invites us to ask questions of ourselves and our lives we haven't had the time and inclination to ask in a loooong time.

In transition, it's NOT about knowing the answers to the questions.

We can't. The answers will come in their own time. What's important is to simply be with the questions in a soft and curious way.

The Light That Can Shine Out of a Life

A client gifted me with this poem last week (almost, almost as good as chocolate). She is in the midst of a tough divorce. Beauty and love have always been guiding lights for her, and Mary Oliver's poem "Singapore" brought her back to the grace of a light shining out of misery. Thankful, like Oliver says, that the world is not only pain and logic.

Singapore

 

In Singapore, in the airport,
A darkness was ripped from my eyes.
In the women’s restroom, one compartment stood open.
A woman knelt there, washing something
in the white bowl.

 

Disgust argued in my stomach
and I felt, in my pocket, for my ticket.

 

A poem should always have birds in it.
Kingfishers, say, with their bold eyes and gaudy wings.
Rivers are pleasant, and of course trees.
A waterfall, or if that’s not possible, a fountain
rising and falling.
A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem.

 

When the woman turned I could not answer her face.

To Enter Life, Be Food

Today is the fourth anniversary of my mom's death. I miss her sometimes so much my bones hurt. This poem helps me remember that all of my life - the grief as well as the joy - is food for the great feast of life itself.

The Way In

 

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,
and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.

 

~ Linda Hogan ~

 (Rounding the Human Corners)

Looking For Trouble

When I took ice skating lessons in my thirties, I met an older woman who was having a ripsnorting time falling on the ice.

Intrigued, I asked Karin why she was having so much fun looking like a fool.

She grinned and replied, simple: as a rank beginner she felt more alive than she had in years.

Say what? There I was busting my gut proving to the world and myself that I was competent and powerful. Why in tarnation would anyone be happy to be so visibly ignorant?

When I took ice skating lessons in my thirties, I met an older woman who was having a ripsnorting time falling on the ice.

Intrigued, I asked Karin why she was having so much fun looking like a fool.

She grinned and replied, simple: as a rank beginner she felt more alive than she had in years.

Say what? There I was busting my gut proving to the world and myself that I was competent and powerful. Why in tarnation would anyone be happy to be so visibly ignorant?

The Pace of Grace

"No, we can do it ourselves. Why would we need a guide? Let's just hike in and get to the beach."

So I said to The Wonderful Husband and Equally Wonderful Daughter in Costa Rica, the night before our jungle hike through Manuel Antonio National Park to a deserted beach. 

Fortunately for me - and them - I got overruled.

The next morning Miguel, our guide, led us through the jungle. It certainly helped my overruled self that he was so cute. When I whispered this to Elise, I got an exasperated hissed "MOM!" and an eyeroll ... ICK: how can mothers even THINK about cute guys?

Defeated by Constantly Greater Beings

I read this to my Bastyr University students about midway through the Life Transitions and Initiations class. Many look at me like I'm crazy after I read it - they just don't get it.

I think that's what I like about the poem - I just don't get it, too. At least the "small me" doesn't. I like to think of triumphing over things. This poem turns that on its small obstinate short-sighted head. Maybe being broken open by big life transitions has a much larger context?

When we win it's with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.

What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.

I mean the Angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament:

when the wrestler's sinews
grew long like metal strings,

he felt them under his fingers
like chords of deep music.

Whoever was beaten by this Angel
(who often simply declined the fight)

went away proud and strengthened
and great from that harsh hand,
that kneaded him as if to change his shape.

Winning does not tempt that man.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively,
by constantly greater beings.

~Rainier Maria Rilke

Pleasure, Grief, and Eros

This week is my mother’s yahrzeit, the first anniversary of her death.

I’m crying a lot, at unexpected times: swimming up from a night dream in tears; seeing our Japanese maples fire up in all their fall glory; hearing my mom’s dusky voice while I’m driving on the freeway.

I thought I was done with the grief of her. I was wrong.

The Big Yes

My 20 year old daughter’s going away in a week. Far away (South America), and for a long time (almost a year). And totally on her own.

I’m so proud of Elise, and so excited for her. She was awarded a grant to simply travel and learn. She’s a beautiful, independent, deeply caring, smart, artistic gem. Elise wants to make a difference in this hurting world, and she will.

And it’s so hard for me to let her go. I’m in grief up to my eyeballs. I’m scared for her, too, traveling by herself in a world that clearly does not have her best interests at heart.

Wow. I thought I was “over” empty nesting. But no. Sunday morning I heard a song on Prairie Home Companion called “Letting Go,” about a young woman leaving home, and about the young woman’s mom. Oy. What a poignant, beautiful song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ns9491xhS0 (WARNING: If you’re a mom, don’t listen minus hanky in hand.)

David and I were getting ready to meet his mum for brunch. As I listened to the song, I put my head down on the kitchen counter and sobbed. I couldn’t stop crying. My heart was breaking with her leaving, which it’s been doing frequently this summer, this summer that I’ve been falling in love with her all over again.

David called his mum and explained we’d be late, and why. She understood.

I feel like I’m back at Mother and Child Square One all over again.

Sisters, I admit I hesitate to write this to you. After all, if I had my act perfectly together, would I be stopping every so often to blow my very red nose as I write this? If I’m such a hot spit teacher and life coach, shouldn’t I be bypassing this to tell you something uplifting and inspirational?

I suspect not.

I remember my mom telling me how after we kids would visit her, she’d spend the next day picking. Up. And. Putting. Down. Random. Objects. In. The. House. All. Day.

If she were here (she died two years ago next month), I’d be telling her how broken hearted AND excited I feel for Elise, how blindsided by this fierce and tender love for my daughter moving out into the world.

And I imagine her nodding, saying, Yes, in her husky voice. After launching four children and outliving three husbands, she really got the Big Yes. The Big Yes to love, and all that love brings.

She wouldn’t be exhorting me to be sassy and upbeat. She’d be gently reminding me to say Yes to what’s most important, no matter how hard it might feel in the moment.

If there’s one gift passing 50 has given us, sisters, it’s about having the guts and grace to say a Big Yes to life, unconditionally. No holds barred.

And this Big Yes to life is about saying Yes to it all: not just the postcard sunsets and smiling babies, but Yes to our grief, our insecurities and anxieties, our heartbreaks.

This Big Yes isn’t about being imprisoned by our feelings or wounds. It’s about living a life large enough, big-hearted enough, so there’s space for it all, even for the no’s we say, even for the ways we run from ourselves and our lives.

I offer you the no’s I’m saying this morning:

• No, I don’t want Elise to leave
• No, I don’t want her to grow up and away into an increasingly insane world
• No, I don’t want to acknowledge being old enough to have a grown daughter

All these no’s. All this messiness of being human, deeply loving other humans.

I stop for a moment, take a deep breath, and feel my heart stretching wide enough for all these no’s to rest inside, rather like exhausted little children just needing a safe place to curl up for a while.

And then I realize there’s nothing the Big Yes can’t shelter.

Wow. The whole luscious mess of being 54 (as of last week). An all-of-the-above, rootin’ tootin’ messy woman. A woman who’s got a heart wide enough at 54 for grief AND grace, fear AND love.

Maybe the Big Yes space is the right place for me to be launching Elise from.

Maybe the Big Yes space is where I’ve always wanted to be, the open-armed and wide-hearted assent to the meaningful messiness of my life. Not the Hollywood Version of my life, nor the Perfect Coach and Teacher version, but this. Right here. Right now.

And so I find myself, once again, dancing naked with that crazy Zorba the Greek on that wide sandy beach, celebrating the Divine Messes that we are. That I am right now, so excited for my daughter, and so broken-hearted to see her go, and so scared about the world she’s going out into.

As I dance on this beach, sisters, I realize this Big Yes is really all I need, ever, to keep dancing.

Care to join me on this sandy dance floor?

I’d be honored.

Thought Weeding

There I was on my couch reading the Moon Guide to Costa Rica. Kabobble the cat curled up in my lap. Late afternoon sun streaming through the big maple outside. Rich smells of Phad Tai being cooked for dinner by David the Wonderful Husband. And Yours Truly dreaming about swimming in tropical waterfall pools in Monteverde...

All of a sudden I was drowning in a choppy ocean of anxiety instead of floating in a forest pool. Kabobble sensed my tension, looked up at me in alarm, and leapt off my lap in search of more tranquil pastures.

Heilige Scheisse! What happened, Batman?