Where to start?...
This weekend, perhaps...
Saturday the 21st was a New Moon, reminding us like Spring that there are always cyclical and expected times to start over, anew, carrying the wisdom of our past and yet unburdened by it. Like the fertile green life and seedlings popping up in my garden, there is a new life that awaits and an old one that is slipping away. Here in North Carolina, there are still signs of winter, still a few barren brown trees...but not many. The signs of my own inner winter, they still remain as well.
There is the grief of a marriage lost, for over these months my husband and I have been separated, in therapy, out of therapy, and out of love. There are divorce papers to sign and lawyers to settle with. There is my body, so clearly connected to my mind, that has also shed too many tears in the form of dramatic weight-loss and now an autoimmune hyperthyroid. (The thyroid represents the manner in which we metabolize the world, and for me, it has all been too much.) Yet here I am, ready. Like the New Moon.
A blank page.
White Space.
Beginner's Mind.
Open Mind.
Open Heart.
There is a scene in the second chapter of Eat, Pray, Love where Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing and praying in a pool of tears...on her bathroom floor. I have been there. Feeling "weary in the way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees." I have been there. She described her marriage and husband as "my lighthouse and my albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable that leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving." I have been there.
It is certainly not the script I would have written for myself. Or my son. I was raised in a nuclear family, and I intended the same for him. I INTEND the same for him. For I have not lost faith in love or the institution of marriage. The statistics are out there and they are certainly grim for second marriages, but it is because many do not take the time to learn and own the lessons of the first union. This I am doing--in therapy, intuitive & shamanic counseling, reading, journaling, and most importantly in meditation, pray, trust & intention. I will resurrect and I will be more available for a pure sweet love. This I know, as clearly as I knew the young boy coming to me years before he was conceived. He is one now. And a true gift. A living Buddha, living Christ reminding me that what matters is compassion, kindness, and surrender to the tides of life. There is something bigger at hand than my small wishes, expectations, judgements, Ego or will.
I surrender & accept, with the hope of the season and the wisdom of this beautiful Chinese proverb:
My barn having burned to the ground,
I can now see the moon.
