No, it's not original, but it does sum up what I'm trying to do. See, I've spent a significant amount of the past year and a half looking either backward or forward. Given that our family motto is "Be Here, Now" it is quite possible that I've strayed somewhat from that ideal.
Life has a funny way of teaching you lessons you don't always appreciate in the moment. How to Resistively Leave Expat Life With Your Sanity (Somewhat) Intact. How to Lose a Parent As an Adult When You Still Feel Like a Child. How to Fail Miserably at Segmenting Your Grief and Anger into Appropriate Time and Place. How to Believe in the Law of Attraction and Still Manage to Attract Crap.
Don't get me wrong. Those are all excellent titles for my forthcoming book. Seriously.
What this post is really about, however, is both the act of letting go and the pause of standing still. Resistance is an easy stance. Protective and dangerous all at the same time, but comforting and reasonable, too. My heart has been bruised and desperately wishing for and remembering the shape of my former life felt like balm to that ache. Conversely, plotting the future, feels like control. Except it isn't.
Last month was the one-year anniversary of my Dad's death and it sucked far more than I imagined it might. I planned to feel sadness. I didn't plan to feel like I'd been flattened...all my bravado, plans, ideas for grief ripped right out of me. I was shocked to find myself both physically ill and filled with anxiety, anger and fear. My body felt foreign. My brain would not shut off. And my grief gave me a smack-down. Who was I, to think I could fit it all into a few special, private, alone in the desert moments? Who was I, to imagine grief as a process with so little place in life?
So...the past month has been one big Time Out. I had to tune in and could not circumvent the path I'm on for one second longer. Sleepless nights, panic attacks, crying jags, explaining my pain to my sweetheart of a husband and children who, yes, live with me and are used to always capable Mom. I'm doing alot of things toward regaining balance and equanimity...focusing on excellent nutrition (no caffeine, limited sugar (no refined foods) and alcohol, targeted supplements, yoga, acupuncture, SLEEP & rest. I began journaling again (a long instilled habit that I gave up during some other difficult times in my life...which made as much sense as walking naked in an ice storm.) I'll probably see a therapist (in fairness to my children and husband, who, as loving and understanding as they are, do not desire careers in psychotherapy.) Most importantly, I'm allowing myself to feel things as they come. To let them wash through me. To breathe in and be still.
And it's working. For this place I'm in RIGHT NOW. For this life I'm living in *this* moment. A life that is full of love as much as it also has pain. A life I am lucky to have even when it appears to be stalled in an awkward, uncomfortable place I'd rather avoid. I've remembered that those places are growing places. Emerging places. Pain and fear like a cocoon I forgot I'd had a loving hand in weaving.
While I have decisions to make and dreams to dream and places I'd like to go, I've decided to not be attached so much to the outcome. Instead, to be Open. To let in Grace. To acknowledge and release.
In this way I get to lovingly say goodbye to my Dad and all the things I wish he wouldn't miss. In this way, I get to hold on to the love and forgive the rest. In this way, I get to sweetly remember our life in India without living in and clinging to a past which served us so well but cannot possibly serve us now. In this way, I get to stake a new claim in my self and life here. I don't mean that all of this is a done deal (and here can mean anywhere). No. Consider me a work in progress. Grief in Life. Often with a ton less grace than I aspire to.
As it turns out, this is my inaugaral post on the new blog. I've been sitting on it for months. Unable to continue posting on the old blog (http://www.wherearethefischers.blogspot.com/ )but unsure of my direction. I'd planned a simple introduction, an explanation of who we are and what "The Conscious Wander" means to me. In a way, this post says it exactly. Except of course, I'd meant to be funnier ;-)
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