I want to stand in front of
the cream + sugar bar
at the café
as long as I want,
stirring and staring —
watching the swirling liquid
dance however it wants to —
as if me standing, stirring,
and staring
was my own dance.
The man behind me
clears his throat and I remember
that not everyone wants to dance
with their coffee
in a café.
So I smile and slide left
and keep stirring.
Most days I wonder how alone I am in the feeling that often I’m not sure I can trust myself in relationships. Relationships of any kind, even my relationship with myself.
For nearly a decade I’ve been intentional about falling back into myself, believing that Me is in there somewhere — if only I can allow the obstacles and barriers fall away. I’ve broken cycles handed down to me from the women in my family. I’ve sat with compassion toward my younger, less aware self and forgiven her for what she couldn’t have known. I’ve grieved what feels like lost years of potential life. I’ve offered myself new narratives to replace the phrase “lost years.” I’ve released trauma from my body with the help of food, Yoga, meditation, and other nourishing daily routines and choices. I’ve surrounded myself with people who love and see me. I’ve said no to people and things that I need to say no to, without putting them out of my heart.
Yet even in my safest, most loving, and cherished relationships, I feel prevailed upon / coerced by / sweet-talked by my old ways.
I feel insecure and afraid. I wonder when the people I love most are going to leave. I neglect important conversations because I’m afraid I’ll crumble if others disagree or push back. I yield to the self-minimizing narratives told to me that still linger in my head. I withdraw. I disconnect. I run away, afraid. Simply put: I have developed habits of forgetting to trust mySelf and the infinite potency of unconditional Love.
All of this behavior has been reinforced over several years and feels very much a part of me, of who I am. But simply put: These things are not Me.
Maybe one of the first things we can do to become more in touch with our true nature (and therefore trust ourselves more) is slow everything down – take moments to connect with our breath, to become more intimate with the rhythm of our pulse, and to just sit in the Observer’s seat – watching things pass through us instead of letting them become part of our identity. In this kind of intentional space, some things will get quieter and calmer and different things will start to arise. Don’t be afraid.
What we notice may be wordless at first. Perhaps we will witness what the body knows, or begin to see colors in our mind's eye, or maybe we will recall some old memory. These thoughts and feelings have become attached to certain kinds of experiences and this is what anchors us to our emotional identities, which we have come to believe is the Self.
Securing time to pay attention in this sacred space where we sit as the Observer is the first step to disentangling some of our more complicated feelings from the events that occur as well as how we perceive ourselves in the world.
No matter how graceful or clumsy it feels, time and energy spent disentangling the old things from the now things so that the possible things can emerge are valuable. This is inner revolution. The first step to experiencing such a transformational force is believing the process is viable.
###
What is one thing you can begin to practice every day that helps you slow down and allow yourself to be an objective observer of the beautiful You that you are? How will you relearn to trust yourself? Is it paying attention to just your breath for 5 minutes a day? Is it to write yourself a love letter? Is it to take a walk and pay attention to how the birds play and bask in the sun and never seem to ask, “Am I worthy of this sunshine?” Is it creating a mantra to repeat to yourself or maybe even pin it up on your wall to remind yourself of who you really are?
Love and trust feed and nourish each other. Offer yourself both. You are worthy.
One year ago today, I biked 24 miles, putting together the small number of incredibly vague clues I had, determined to find the exact spot where Carmen was last alive. And I found it. I had so little to go on. I listened to what I’d heard, went into his mind, and thought like him. I dipped into the deep waters of him and connected with what I knew. And I found it.
On the way, I collected a small bunch of wild goldenrod as I rode. Every time I’d see some, I’d pull over, pick one or two, and put it in my bike basket, then keep riding. When I had enough to suit my desires, I tied it all together with a piece of long, sturdy grass.
When I jumped on my bike that day, one year ago, I hadn’t ridden my bike more than a mile for a couple of years, I think. Toward the end of that 24-mile ride that day, I thought my legs would fall off. I could barely keep pedaling. But something inside of me kept pushing and burning and moving me – something spiritual and unexplainable. Something born of Love and mystery and passion and connection, and something stemming from a need as deep as wanting to know someone is out there looking for you.
When I did find the spot, there was a deep sense of both connection and loss. Knowing him, knowing Love, knowing grief, knowing I had found what I was looking for while also knowing I never wanted to be looking for such a thing. I sat there silently for a long time. I remember the sound of crickets, the wind blowing the trees, and gently flowing water. I remember the feeling of my hot tears making a silent path down my face. I was sitting with him again. Some part of him was still there, maybe waiting for me to come. I could feel him. And I knew that’s why I’d ridden there. I needed to feel his closeness. And nothing could have stopped me that day from finding that spot, finding that moment with him.
One year isn’t a very long time. Well, it is and it isn’t. As another grieving friend of mine said recently, time splits in two when these things happen. Everything is ripped in half, into “before” and “after.” All of my “before Carmen” days have a certain texture and hue to them. Knowing him made my life more rich and full of illumination. The “after Carmen” days have taken me to a certain kind of dark underworld where fire is changing me. It is painful. It is purifying (I trust). It is transformative.
The loss of Carmen’s physical form has made me primarily realize two things: 1) When you open your heart to someone and they go away, it is an absolutely terrifying thought to open your heart again, and it feels much safer to hide and keep it all closed up; and 2) It’s important and challenging to remember that opening your heart is how you found and connected with this person in the first place, so even in the midst of the unbearable burning sensation you feel inside that tells you to close up, opening yourself to Love and be Loved is why we are here.
I know death. I am intimately familiar with grief in a way I never had been. But Carmen is the first person who has truly taught me that death cannot stop Love. If Love isn’t unstoppable, unconditional, all-powerful, how could we possibly love someone even after they die?
Many days, I am a woman in a sorrowful state. But that’s not all I am. I have a lot of emotions and I choose to feel them. Sometimes they feel like trying to move through the thickest mud or trying to see clearly through a hazy liquid. But being able to feel my emotions, observe them with a sacred kind of honor, while not feeling obliged to let them take me for a ride … this feels like why I’m here.
It is the most powerful, yet-unknown-to-me, unpredictable emotions that teach me that I have a capacity for all things in the universe to exist inside of me. I value honesty and it is important to me that I relate honestly with my emotions. This honesty scares me, but it makes it more natural for me to be able to go into the darker places of myself and not feel like I have to stay there. As Rilke once wrote: No feeling is final.
So as I sit here in Carmen’s boxer shorts and write this, I remember (and hopefully remind you of) something very real: When we stay open; when we let Love be our primary animator, motivator, and meaning-giver; we flow. Openness allows the currents to come and go as they are meant to, and we can be alive. Even when it hurts, Love is the most expansive force out there. So let’s Love.
flower work
is
not easy.
remaining
soft in fire
takes
time.
(nayyirah waheed)
One of the things I’ve noticed that an increasingly digitized world has changed for us is that we “like” a lot of people’s images, quotes, thoughts, announcements, etc. that they put in their online posts, but how often do we “like” people in their physical presence or in other concrete (non-digital) ways? Even with those friends with whom we share our deeper, more well-considered thoughts, feelings, observations, and reflections, how often do we tell them we enjoy them and what they’re sharing? It’s so easy to click that little heart on social media because it doesn’t really require any vulnerability on our part. We’re not even looking the person in the eyes. It is a little to no risk situation to express this small gesture in the online sphere. What makes it harder to do this in real life?
I recently read a book that was entirely made up of interviews with the author’s closest friend who was in the last days of his life. He had lived an enormously rich life — bursting with robust unconditional Love practices, awakened perceptions, spiritual intelligence, and heart. As is natural in the last days of one’s life, he was uniquely reflective. At a certain point, their time talking naturally guided him to reminisce about people that were special to him. He told a story of one of their mutual friends with great warmth and said, “She simply sparkled.” The author responds to this by writing, “I wish she could have heard him say that about her. He would have never told her that to her face. But it was so loving and warm the way he said it. She would have loved it.”
And this made me think: Why do we wait? Why don’t we tell the people we like or love that we like or love them? Why don’t we offer words of appreciation or enjoyment to those we appreciate and enjoy? What are we afraid of?
We sometimes experience regret (which I like to call, “delayed insight”) when we lose someone — to death or another way — and we haven’t told them all the things in our hearts that we wished we would have. We put off expressing these things, perhaps imagining that we can do it later. But sometimes we lose the chances we have and we are left reflecting them to others or just to ourselves.
But I would like to spark a tiny, personal revolution: Don’t wait. Tell people in small, heartfelt ways that you appreciate them. You can write a letter, you can share in person when it feels right. Offer a compliment. Share a tender observation. Do a small, kind act for the person. With warm eyes, smile. Make eye contact, for that matter! You don’t need to overthink what you say or do because then you may not do it. Just go for it.
Go ahead and like someone in real life. May we keep discovering what is possible.
