Emerging

Today I write from a place of feeling like the existential Drano is finally making its way through my pipes and allowing me to come back to myself.

What were there blockages?

So many.

Family death, family crisis, pandemic and all the chaos surrounding it, the country my heart lives in with our adult children, family and friends appearing to implode.

After my brother was found dead at the beginning of October, my mind/body needed a bit of a break from the death project to do my personal work. Not that it will ever be complete– as those who've experienced close loss know– but there was personal space that needed to be made to respect the process.

As I prepare to release the next podcast episode which is the first episode of season three, I feel myself becoming energized again by sharing through the project. It's a welcome return.

Do you ever find yourself wrapped in magical thinking after you've experienced a huge blow or all the sticks have broken the camel's back? Thinking, there then. Phew. That won't happen again. 

But the thing is "it" does. That's what was going on when this brother died. There was so much already happening in the world and in our family and death reminded me that it waits for no one.

So now, emerging from the darkened self-care cave, my eyes squint, I tentatively look both ways as I ease out, hoping I can avoid walking in the path of another barreling bus being driven by a crisis that isn't following the rules of the road. 

I long for a reprieve from "the hard."

Then I feel tremendously guilty as my loves are working towards a year of a severely limited lifestyle because their fellow citizens cannot find it within themselves to pull together and work towards a solution. 

Survivor guilt kicks in on this hill in New Zealand.

Who am I to be feeling the hard when others have so much to carry?

I remind myself there is no competition for who holds the most or who is having the hardest time. 

Right now, in this small window of time when Mr. 16 is with a friend and there are no demands but dogs looking at me, wondering when they will be fed, I take a moment. 

I pick up the keyboard and feel a full body exhale; a welcome home.

I organize the episode for the beginning of our third podcast season (to be released next week) and feel the energy behind listening to this transformative story from a mom whose 21 year old son died after an eight year odyssey of brain cancer; the beautiful-horrible of it all. So many lessons in this episode.

I see the miniature horse out of the corner of my eye and hope he does not kick the glass window and awe that I have horses in my garden; that I am living this life.

Thoughts of the personal losses and challenges breeze through my mind and I say to myself, yes, that is also my life. What will I do with it?

Today I shall rise.

(find out more about the podcast on the page labelled "podcast." please consider subscribing so you don't miss any of these moving stories, you can find it on your fave podcast platform: The Death Dialogues Project Podcast)                                            

too-muchness

I come to you, once again humbled by Death, and how we can wake up one day and find that this day will be a day where everything changes.

Right now, this day, we are approaching a crossroad of potential change.

Those traumatized by previous outbreaks of violence will be trembling with worries of civil unrest and deaths, holding rational fear of what the coming days might bring.

Being told that the covid crisis is "turning a corner" while seeing the statistics of infections and deaths rising and watching as, one by one, countries in Europe begin to reinstate more safe guards to protect their citizens creates a shaky foundation for us as individuals.

It does not matter what side of the political fence you are on.

It does not matter whether you've been unaffected by covid or have had covid or have loved ones who have died of covid, and it doesn't even matter if you don't believe covid exists. Your body-mind knows. 

Your soul knows and at some level registers the pain of the collective.

If your family is like mine, there's been no damming of the stream where crisis floats along during these times. 

Life still happens. 

People still die; my family had another family member die recently.

Stress still becomes a weight too heavy to carry at times. I'm hearing stories of people struggling to cope on the daily.

And beautiful babies continue to born; as we had happen in our lives in mid-October.

The thing that we are not talking about, the elephant in the room is the "too muchness" of the last months. 

When we are living in the midst of a futuristic dystopian reality, that we could never have imagined–– pandemic, civil unrest, inconsistencies from leadership, rampant hate–– there is little room to hold our personal life-changes and stressors that arise.

We need to all recognize that on the scale of easily handled to too-muchness: all of our systems are registering too muchness. 

Again, whether you acknowledge it or not, your cells feel it. Your soul feels it.

Today could be the day you get the phone call that changes your life forever.

Would your foundation be strong enough to hold that news?

I encourage to look around at your day to day life and find the spaces where you can squeeze moments of pause in.

Making space within the moment. 

Connecting with what sets your heart on fire.

Sitting in a space that overwhelmingly replenishes you and serves your own and the greater good.

The antidote of too-muchness starts very small.

It can be as simple of taking a moment to regulate your breathing . . . maybe adding a thought if your mind continues to race about the external stress.

Find playlists of relaxing music that resonates for you, occasionally taking five minutes to just listen and breathe with it.

Remember love.

Send love to all of those you adore, here and in the beyond, with each exhale and feel their love coming to you on an exhale.

Give yourself space.

And be gentle with yourself.

If you are not feeling overwhelmed at times, you are not human. Let yourself feel the big feelings. 

Mindfully attempt to create a structure that provides your cells, your soul and occasional respite.

Take good care.