Grief

is present. Has been. Grief has colored this year, continues into the next.  When my grandma died, I spent a year hovering on the underside of happiness, and I remember that now, I know it well, the sense of unable to reach joy because the hurt is deep and powerful and strong and needs to be honored with a full place setting.

Loss: the shape of a relationship, time time time with that person, comfort and a hand to hold in dark moments. A home, another home, another. Patterns. The hope of what a new job might provide. Parents within reach. The hope that a disappeared friend might reach back out. Traditions. More hopes. Control. Heat. Choice. Options. What I most wanted, and most needed.

Grief brings growth, both forced and invited. I am within that. Alone when it most matters to be connected. Angry at the people most dear to me. Trying to find the strength within to feel and express it all, rather than shrink back into dynamics that continue to hurt, rather than pretend to be someone other than me.  I read somewhere recently: "The need for love has more survival value than the need to be genuine. This sacrificing of genuineness in the service of getting love is very painful and crazy-making, but it keeps us alive."  I have been turning that over and over in my mind.

What is Present

Movement and stillness. Voice and silence. Tactile sensation and its absence. Being witnessed and being unseen, being deeply listened to and being unheard. Witnessing, listening; disengaging, blocking.

My explorations bring me here; my curriculum unfolds. I am present, a beginner again and deep in a journey.

I find myself moving away from words, into the body. Even the visual art I do is about movement, sound, tactile sensation. (Also color.) I am relieved to not be holding space for others, to be my own teacher, to be able to seek the teaching and teachers I need, to be able to cocoon.

I may not share.

Stretching and Typing

I'm learning to stretch in the new space... learning to touch the edges and leave a mark, learning to stretch out where all I can reach is air.  About three weeks ago, in the middle of making a donation, my laptop decided to die, and then the hurricane came to delay receiving the new one I had chosen, and so I have spent the past few weeks limited to electronic words one letter at a time.  Have I ever been so glad to be able to touch-type my brain onto a screen again??  New laptop is under my fingertips now and I feel a release, a gratefulness, for wordspeed and impermanence.  Meanwhile, I needed other ways to communicate, to express emotion, to discover and understand what was going on inside, to move through.  And so I began stretching, and I turned to music as my guide... and as the music played, I responded... through my body, through voice, through words, through color and shape.  Markers in hand began turning my bedroom walls into a visual journal, and as my body and being inhabited the space created by that music in this moment, truly became present and responsive, I became able to let go of CD after CD, knowing they had been listened to fully and were no longer needed in my life.  I pare down, trying to find the essence of the music I do still need.  Trying to feel into what has yet to be said.  Trying to feel what speaks to me as prayer.

In Three Years?

I'm in the new space, unpacked, adjusting to new sounds, new movement patterns, space to stretch out.  I'm not quite stretching yet... I feel like one of those newly-uncaged animals who has forgotten how to move, or doesn't trust that the freedom is real.

Yesterday as part of a panel discussion at work, someone posed a question about what would have to happen in order for you to feel fully satisfied and fulfilled three years from now, personally and professionally. I've been pondering. And what's coming up for me is the personal stuff.  Relationships, community, different ways of inhabiting dance and movement and touch, art-making, ritual. A shift inside myself that I can't articulate or explain, just feel the cusp of and trust in its process. Trust, and hold the space, and trust some more.

The Rare Gift of a Slow Transition

During the years I was in college, I once describe the train trip home from Philly to Connecticut as "the rare gift of a slow transition."  That phrase has been resonating again lately, as I shift back and forth from timelines externally and internally determined and I notice the effects of each.  Transition at someone else's pace, in someone else's control, can be traumatic; simply being able to make your own choices around timing, make room for your emotions as they arise, can turn the same transition into something healing and natural.  I've been experiencing a little of both.

This morning, I wake early and thoughtfully move through my space, reflecting and taking down items one by one, carefully placing them in a protective container, imagining how they may contribute in shaping a new home.  I ask myself, what do I need for this to continue to feel like home for as long as I am here?  What do I need for the coming week, month, months?  How do I create and re-create refuge among many moving parts?

This morning, I notice the sunlight through the window on a white swath of wall, on specks of dirt, on pillowcases.  I notice hunger.  I notice absence and presence.  I notice how this--where I am going, how I am going--is both what I want and not what I want.  I notice how I am beginning to create a cocoon alongside an inviting space, and I feel the tension and the difficulty and the rightness.  How do I want to engage with the world and engage with myself?  I think the question implies another one, what do I need to engage in that way?  And I think part of that answer includes safety, and safety is a quality that is so individual and so rarely acknowledged that way.  And thus we circle back to the rare gift of a slow transition, a transition that allows for feeling into safety at each step, for responding accordingly, for arriving whole.

Still Wrestling with Speaking

Went through a couple of weeks of high-consequence -- small actions might have huge lasting repercussions. Felt like I had to be quiet and careful. Hate that feeling. Just as that was approaching its end (and not knowing for sure if it was the end), had an unpleasant encounter that shone a light on unearned trust -- I had previously spoken too much, in the wrong place. My entire body now is rebelling... fevers, sore throat, aches and chills. Sometimes I wish I could wear a suit of armor, yell into a room filtered by safety. It is so hard to figure out where your voice is truly welcome, and how to navigate when speaking up is an unwise risk. Maybe it's hardest when you finally know what safety feels like, and then you are losing her and feeling the gaps.

All the big stuff in my life is shifting this year, all of it.  The big outward stuff is outweighed by the big inward stuff.  You must be excited about X, I keep hearing.  No.  Because it means Y and Z, which hurt, and that hurt is still bigger.  X is a coping mechanism.  X is survival.  X is a stressful game of whack-a-mole.  X is a consolation prize.

Where can I say that and be heard, and be safe, and have company in those feelings?

Movement

Last week I took myself on retreat, a return to a place I had found and chosen and retreated to last summer.  Last year was about deep listening within, about growth, about solitude, about finding my next book.  This year was about recognition, noticing, feeling into layers, resting.  My art is shifting.  It is about movement now, about space, about sound; it is about the interplay between what I have always done and what my body is fidgeting or eager to do; it is about how solitude dances with interaction.  I am finding deeper truth beneath the words, in the places where articulation and communication is harder, slower. 

Sometimes we fall into habits, responding to others before we can really hear ourselves.  In shifting my ways of expression, I begin to hear the quieter needs and desires. 

I begin again to notice.

How do we take a retreat and bring it back home?

I think retreat helps us answer and reanswer this question: how do you want to engage with the world and engage with yourself?

We bring a retreat back home in how, each day, we live our answer to that question.