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!”

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)

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.

If Not Now, When?

When you die, God and the angels will hold you accountable for all the pleasures you were allowed in life that you denied yourself. ~Anonymous

My mom died last fall.

I sat by her hospital bed for a week as she lay dying. It being the south, all manner of relatives, blood and otherwise, streamed in and out of the hospital room and told long stories about Mama's life. My sisters and brother and I laughed buckets and cried rivers. The wonderful pleasures of drawn out southern tales, uninhibited laughter of aunts and cousins, and platters of fried chicken rose from the same deep life spring as the grief for my mom dying hour by hour in her white gown.

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.

First, the Bad News

First, the Bad News: Pleasure won't protect us from pain, death, loss, or illness. Pleasure cannot inoculate us from our own pain or the pain of the world. Pleasure isn't a magical amulet we wear over our hearts to prevent them from breaking.

Opening our hearts and souls to pleasure guarantees that our hearts and souls will be open to pain, too.

But wait, all is not lost.