Yesterday was my mom’s seventh angelversary: the seventh anniversary of her passing from this world into the great unknown.
And all is well.
Better than well, actually. Because the aliveness and vitality of this time of year now overshadow the 2014-2015 memories of dying and grieving.
The month of May, once again, is more about life than death, partly because of my flower friends: the whole parade that begins with daffodils and in the past couple weeks has included lilacs, lilies of the valley, and irises. Every spring, they show up and reliably and unknowingly support me and gladden my heart.
At the end of my mom’s life, flowers, friends, and family are what mattered most. That year, I made it my mission to surround her with flowers and news of what was happening in the flower world. When she was strong enough, we walked around the house looking at her flower beds, and I hoped she’d be able to see some of her flowers bloom. The flower parade was how I measured time that year.
When she wasn’t strong enough to go outdoors, and her universe narrowed down to the sofa and coffee table in the living room, I showed her my photographs of flowers. I also kept vases of freshly cut lilacs around her.
The rest of my flower memories of my mom were much happier ones. All my life, she had flower gardens. She wasn’t much of a nature girl in other respects, but she loved tending to her flowers. Memories of my mom and an abiding connection with her come strongly through flowers.
Lilies of the valley: Tiny fairy bells with an intoxicating fragrance that transports me instantly to my childhood. My swing set was right next to a flower garden that featured lilies of the valley. The memories are so strong that they could convince me the delicate blooms lasted all summer. But that’s just how big an impression the fragrance made and how closely I must have studied them after my mom pointed them out to me.
I also remember the joy of picking some for my mom, who loved the fragrance. What joy to be a young child noticing a flower and seeing it as an opportunity to make someone happy. Picking it. Feeling the anticipation of gifting it. Seeing happiness brighten the recipient’s eyes and spread into a smile. Do you remember?
Yesterday morning, my mom’s actual angelversary, I woke up knowing exactly what I wanted to photograph.
The morning she died, after leaving the hospice house, I drove straight to the labyrinth – my sacred refuge – and was greeted by irises. They were there for me that morning, uplifting me, and they are here for me every May 27th.
I didn’t pay much attention to flowers while my mom was alive (until the last few years of her life). That was her thing. For my dad, it was birds. Those are the languages in which they speak to me even now. The first messenger was irises. From day one, irises were there to connect me to the goodness and beauty in the world when I needed it most.
And so I immersed myself in photographing irises on my mom’s angelversary and reflected on how her love of flowers had become integrated in me and how it has awakened me in many ways and deepened our connection.
The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presence, they slip out of visible form into invisible presence…Though they cannot reappear, they continue to be near us and part of the healing of grief is the refinement of our hearts whereby we come to sense their loving nearness.
It feels to me that when we engage or connect with something our dearly departed one loved, we draw them near.
After photographing the irises, I walked the labyrinth and declared inwardly something my heart had known all along: All of my flower pictures are dedicated to my mom (except for water lilies, which are my thing.) When I photograph flowers, there is no separation between myself and my mother’s essence – which has become part of me. It’s almost as if I can see through her eyes.
Which is why all is well seven years later. And I make lots of photos with flowers.
Here we are in the uncharted waters of December 2020. It was dark when I woke up this morning at 6:45 and checked in with my heart. What’s going on in here? What’s the weather like inside this heart?
It feels a little weary, to be honest. Weary from one encounter after another over the past several months with people I assumed were “on the same page” and seeing the world through a similar lens, only to discover that’s not the case at all.
I remember back in March when we absorbed one shockwave after another as we moved into and adjusted to shutdown mode. It feels a little like that. But this time, it’s more about digesting realities about the stories we’re buying into that have solidified throughout the year, and how to be in relationship with one another when those stories differ radically.
I keep reminding myself we’re in uncharted territory, and everyone is doing the best they can. I try to catch myself and shake off the seductive stories before they have a chance to settle in. Daily.
Earlier this year, things were moving so fast, and it seemed every week served up a different theme. At some point, themes didn’t seem to be so much of a thing. It just felt increasingly chaotic. But now I’m feeling another theme arising. In a nutshell, it feels like our country is divided into perceptions of government/authority being either protective or controlling. Maybe that’s a huge overgeneralization. But it was what I saw when I stepped into my heart yesterday and asked the question I ask many times a day: WTF?
The theme I’m digesting now centers on rebuilding, reconnecting, and caring about people who see things very differently. How to live in a world with so much difference of opinion and clinging to compelling narratives. (Are they fact or fiction? Or a mixture of both?) How to live in a world in which it seems so many people have been drinking the Kool-Aid, so to speak. People who would think the same of me. People I’ve known and respected for a long time. And still do.
Even though I catch myself repeatedly, to have that reaction in the first place… This is new to me. It’s an adjustment, a revelation. And it’s often uncomfortable. In this heart of mine, connection is more important than being right. So I listen and try not to offend. I try to understand what’s below the beliefs and find some kind of caring beneath it all.
Sometimes it can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re a “feeling” type. And if you’re not getting enough sleep.
The Power of Presence
When we get hijacked by emotions, awareness (a.k.a. mindfulness) gives us options. This happened to me when I was driving home yesterday. Realizing I was hooked in an addictive storyline that I called out as “romanticizing”, I surveyed my options and decided I could take a deep breath and blow it out, blow it along, release what doesn’t serve. Then it wouldn’t get stuck in me like fluffy seed fairies dispersed into the air looking for a place to land and take root.
The breath can be really powerful like that. It can blow those story seeds along, saying Not Here. With mindfulness, we can notice what’s going on and choose the seeds we allow to grow in our garden and what to do about the stubborn, subterranean root and rhizome systems that started a long time ago.
With mindfulness, every moment is an opportunity to choose what’s most important and what’s best (which can change). We can choose to get stuck in a limiting personal narrative or to step out of it. We can choose to drop down into something much deeper: a field of being I call Presence.
Dropping into presence actually saves a lot of time because you realize what is and isn’t ultimately important, and a lot of stuff you thought was important just falls away. Here, fresh ideas, insights, solutions, and perspectives are accessible. And lovingkindness.
I sense that all the division we’re experiencing in the world around us at this time and confusion about who or what to believe is ultimately calling us inward, to our our deeper wisdom, which is very, very different than sorting things out in our head through thinking and analyzing or being brainwashed by media. (If you haven’t watched The Social Dilemma, I urge you to.)
Asking for Help
When we are caught up in the lower, addictive energies of a storyline, we also can ask for help. Especially when we’re tired and don’t have the energy to drop down deeper.
One evening this week, before falling asleep I asked for help. I had gotten triggered and was having trouble getting unhooked – like when those prickly hitchhiker seeds get caught on your clothes, and it’s really hard to get them off. Authentic movement (which is a new thing for me) has become my go-to for releasing and expressing emotional energy. But I was too tired to dance or meditate that evening. So I sent out an earnest S.O.S. to Unconditional Love (spirit guides, angels, ancestors, higher self, etc.). And I ended up having a very interesting dream.
I dreamed I was able to cross the border and visit Eckhart Tolle in his home in Vancouver. We were in his living room, which was modern and spacious. I was drawn to the patterned flooring, which I found lovely. I told him I was grateful to be in his Presence (“with a capital P”), meaning the pure presence coming through him.
I woke up feeling I’d received an energy upgrade in my sleep! I felt totally different.
Then I wrote down the words going through my head and put them on the image that came to mind.
The image is of the octagonal apex of Inner Light Lodge at Light on the Hill retreat center. I spent the past few years doing a lot of inner growth work in that building with my Hidden Treasure tribe. As I worked on the image, I noticed the roofing of the protruding structure was very similar to the flooring in my dream – which took it to another level, literally!
So we can ask for help. Help that I’ve learned is always available if we can open ourselves to it.
Step out of the storyline, drop into presence, and see what’s there. Ask for help when you need it. This is my advice for these times, which I give myself daily.
What’s the weather like inside this heart? Feels more like peace now…because the energy was channeled into these words.
May we all find constructive ways to channel and release the energies coursing through us. And inspire one another to connect with our deeper wisdom and compassion, which is so much richer than any personal or collective narrative.
Sometimes I hold back
Because I don’t believe you want
To let go of your comfortable distractions
And awaken.
And then I feel lonely
Believing you’d rather numb out
Than risk being intimate
With what is most important
And with me.
It feels like rejection.
And it hurts.
So I put my imagination to use
Creating stories
And have become quite the storyteller.
But it’s not enough, is it?
Crafting stories around illusions
And assumptions of smallness:
Yours and mine.
It’s not how I want this life to end.
What vulnerability causes us
To give up so easily on one another
And to be content with this longing
To love and be beloved?
This longing for connection.
Can you see?
The scared, wounded part
Is not in the way.
It is the way
From longing to the belonging
Each of us seeks.
I only take in current events in small sips. It’s all my sensitivities can handle. Touching in briefly a few times a week is plenty for me. I don’t watch the news at home, but when I go to the gym, headlines flash on multiple television screens, from different sources. But it’s pretty much the same: angry-looking heads and talking heads talking about why everyone’s so angry, sandwiched between commercials designed to make you feel not-good-enough without whatever product or service they’re selling.
From where I stand, it looks like a lot of unmet needs creating lots of fear and suffering. We are the walking wounded, walking around wounding, whether we realize and intend it or not. We’ve all been hurt in some way and often don’t even know how we are wounded and what deeper longing lies beneath the veneer of our various cravings, addictions, and aversions.
My mother was an appearance-conscious stewardess during the golden age of flying, and I experienced a wound in childhood that set me up for a life of self-consciousness and suffering. She couldn’t possibly have foreseen how deeply her words – intended for my benefit – would hurt me. She, too, had been wounded, in a different way, and I have tremendous compassion for her. The person who wounded her did so out of their own woundedness. And so it goes. It’s the human condition, what we’re given to work with and evolve from.
How would our view of others and our interactions with them – the quality of our hearts – change if we could see people as walking wounds crying out: Love me! Assure me that I’m good and worthy! Even the ones who seem so full of themselves.
How would our relationship with our self change if we could see our own wounds as being rooted in innocence? And if we could see the wounds we’ve inflicted on others as being rooted in ignorance rather than inherent badness?
Have you ever held a baby in your arms and soaked up their radiant innocence?
Have you ever been held in the arms of someone who sees that in you and loves you unconditionally – perhaps a grandparent? If this person were around, what would they say to you now? What do you most need to hear? What would set your heart free?
If Love could speak, what would s/he say to you? And what difference would hearing it make in your life/heart/mind/relationships?
Well, I did a little exercise (inspired by author Elizabeth Gilbert) that you can do, too. I reached out to Love and then wrote down what Love said to me. It went something like this:
I’m right here, sweetheart. I will be here for you No matter what you look like Or how much you weigh. You don’t have to try to be More special, successful, Popular, or prosperous. There’s nothing you need To be or do To be worthy and beautiful And forgiven for everything You’ve not forgiven yourself for.
I will never abandon you. There’s nothing I need from you, And there’s nothing you could do To lose me. I’m with you When you get stuck In the painful trap Of conditioning and fear And fall short of who You want to be And find it so hard To accept yourself.
When you lose sight Of who you really are, I remember and hold up a mirror So you can catch a glimpse Of yourself as I see you And love yourself enough To draw healthy boundaries And shine. But I also hold you dearly When you feel too tired to shine. I’m here when you stand tall And when you fall.
When you are in need, Call upon me and hear The words I whisper constantly Into your heart: You are not alone. I see you, and you matter. You don’t have to prove your worth; You already are enough. I am always here. You can draw strength From me.
I’ve reread these words several times since channeling them and realized two things. First, what I’ve tried to do and be for others (the mirror) is exactly what I most needed, myself. Second, this is exactly how I feel about my four-year-old granddaughter and what I’d want to say to her every day for the rest of her life – though the third and fourth lines would be different and address her own inevitable wounds.
I’d be willing to bet that these are the words my own grandmothers would say to me if they could. And that makes the words very real. Not just some wish-fulfilling fantasy but a message that grandmothers and others who are capable of loving in the purest, most unconditional sense would want to imprint on dented hearts.
The good news is that we can fill ourselves up from within so we don’t walk around so needy. So we can love ourselves and others better. It’s a form of activism that feels important to me.
How would the world and each person in it be different if we reached out to Love every day and heard what we most needed to hear before even leaving the house or interacting with anyone else?
What would Love say to you?
P.S. – The night after doing this exercise, my mother came to me in a dream for the first time in quite a while. In the dream, we hugged for a good, long time. I felt her love and warmth, and surely she felt mine. It was the first time I’ve experienced a dream-hug with my mother (who passed away nearly six years ago). And it was wonderful. Totally filled me up. I went through the day shining brightly and radiating love.
We can do this.
And if you’d like to hear the words Love spoke to me, then listen here. I recorded this for you.
This morning, I intended to write about a completely different topic, but then this came. Perhaps because someone needs to read it.
Winter Solstice occurred late last night: the moment at which the sun was farthest from the Northern Hemisphere. This is the darkest time of year, and although it might not feel like it, the light has begun to increase, little by little, each day going forward.
It makes me reflect on the darkest days of my life, my own dark night of the soul following my mother’s death, when so much was changing.
I’ve grieved my share of deaths and losses, but the worst feeling of all was not following the call of my soul. That’s what made this dark chapter even harder: I allowed my light to dim.
On the surface, it might sound like avoidable suffering. (Why not just follow your soul?) But I understand now that there were some soul lessons I needed to learn before I was able to move forward, and life delivered the perfect circumstances and teachers. The perfect storm.
Sometimes my conditioning and desires were too strong, and other times I wasn’t able to access my power for whatever reason. There was a lot of fear and an underlying sense of unworthiness that kept me feeling and living small.
And so the journey became one of taking back my power, baby step by baby step, just like the light begins to return ever so gradually at this time of year. Sometimes it was two steps forward, one step back. But I learned not to beat myself up for the step back and focus more on the steps forward.
I began creating inspirational quote pictures that I’d put where I could see them every day. They were messages from my deeper self that I hoped and prayed would take root. The images were of places and moments when I experienced a sense of empowerment. I read and recited the affirmations every morning and kept them with me wherever I went.
Some of them stayed with me for a long, humbling time. But eventually all were replaced by new ones.
I prayed for help and guidance from my Higher Power, spirit guides, and angels. And I received it. Sometimes it was strength. Whispers of inspiration. Or the vision of a being of light standing at the edge of the Forest of Forbidden Thoughts and Fantasy when I began to think a thought that didn’t serve my soul and my healing. Other times it was physical injury: falling down the stairs, finding a tick on me, smacking my mouth on a space heater, health issues.
If I didn’t listen to the more subtle calls, I got smacked with unambiguous, physical wake-up calls. But I was grateful nonetheless because, after all, I’d requested help. My deepest yearning was to follow the call of my soul and undo a great deal of conditioning that didn’t serve me. And that’s the kind of help I got.
In the beginning, freedom seemed unattainable. My greatest hope and strength came from others who had found their way out of their own dark places. From their examples, I knew liberation was possible.
Some who were in similar or worse circumstances also were catalysts for healing. I empathized with their pain and wished they could be liberated from it. In doing so, I realized I wasn’t alone or unique in what I was experiencing and also was worthy of liberation from suffering.
To reiterate: What I know now that I didn’t know back then is that there would be assistance every step of the way. Assistance I never could’ve dreamed of: Feeling drawn to take Reiki training and to say yes to any number of new possibilities that showed up. Some of the possibilities had been in my orbit all along, but I hadn’t given them attention. Until I was ready. Really ready to transform my life into something greater.
I learned that when you feel really stuck, you might be on the brink of unprecedented growth.
Now I look back with so much gratitude for the journey because I’ve come so far from that dark night of the soul. It’s not the end of the road. You always can go further. But the journey from the darkest days to where I am now was the greatest leap in consciousness I’ve experienced my entire life. (And I’ve spent my life as a spiritual seeker working with a guide, so to say that is a really big deal.)
I learned the importance of self-love and burning in a fierce love (not blame, not hatred, not regret) everything that doesn’t serve me. I’ve learned there is a source of steadfast, unconditional love I can call upon when I need it, when I’m not feeling strong enough. I’ve learned that when I need it most, there is a circle of loved ones around me whose love still reaches me from beyond the grave. And behind them is even more love. Beings of love and light. I’ve learned to source my life from that great love and to see myself through the eyes of unconditional love.
I wish this for everyone who is suffering. Because it’s possible.
From the darkest days, I found the brightest light. The journey required lots of patience, forgiveness, and love. I became disciplined with regard to the thoughts I would and wouldn’t allow myself to think, and learned that mindfulness of thoughts paired with compassion forms a mighty superpower that can be used to benefit ourselves and others.
I’ve shifted from seeking validation from others to generating it within. Can you imagine how different our world would be if more people – including world leaders – made this shift and didn’t walk around needing others to fill their empty holes?
I offer the story of my journey to encourage anyone who is experiencing a dark night of the soul to keep going and have hope. And to encourage anyone who is supporting someone through dark times not to give up on them, no matter how many times they stumble and fall and could be left for dead. I’m not suggesting anyone should be a doormat and try to save others. (I learned that lesson the very hard way.) Healthy boundaries are essential. I’m just saying: Maintain an attitude of hope and unconditional love, and trust their soul’s path. If there’s nothing else you can do, send love and light.
And give it to yourself, as well. Let any self-judgment burn up in that fierce love. Allow yourself to receive the love and light that seeks you. Learn to receive it. You are worthy.
The only way out of the darkness is through love. As love grows in you, it pulls you along and gains momentum.
Do not fear the darkness. It’s where you will learn to shine your brightest light. Individually and collectively, that’s what the darkness calls forth from us.
