October 5th, 2021.
It's almost like I don't want to be okay again.
I have lived a year without my mother. One year becomes two. And before too long, you just can't believe how it's been so many years.
One year holding a gong in one hand and a mallet in the other. The gong is heavy and sometimes I ring it, sometimes people look toward me and I feel seen, and then people look away and I feel alone, I am the only one carrying this specific weight.
Can I put this weight down and resume the pace from before? No, I can't shake the feeling that there's going to always be the ringing in my ears, that whenever the noise dims down I'll be left with the hum of the gong of the grief and nobody else will so I will strike the gong again with a mallet because it is there.
Here I strike my gong! My mother is dead! My mother is dead! Look and see! Know I am bereaved.
I invite my writing pattern to change a little bit, if I feel like it. I am grieving the old pattern of family gathering. My whole calendar year used to pivot around me working and living out "my life" until embarking on a pilgrimage back home, but now I am home, but it's not really here anymore. I am living with my dad and it is not really home, he and I are in the wilderness. We might as well be living in a jungle, comfortably mind you, but still just as far away and unsure of where to go next as the woods.
Perhaps this is enough, perhaps this is what my dad has been working for all his life and I get to sit atop his stoop with him and gaze on the horizon.
I do not wander much. I stick to my regular haunt. I am still shaking from 2020, the wildfires looming over Portland, the death of my mother, the collapse of my family into a new configuration, stopping work, and returning to work. Still, I am anxious to still feel the heat of my youth, and eager to make sure my young body has a chance to speak and express and dance and explore before even the rowdiest of songs cannot bring a rise out of me.
I am resting, recovering, and curious to know when I can reach out and touch the world around me again.
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I stopped working for three months. Bereavement Leave. The whole time I asked myself the guiding question of "what am I doing with this time?" What will I look back on and say about these three months? What am I creating in myself by giving myself permission to rest in a busy world that's on fire? What seeds am I planting and what will I harvest? What will be harvested in me, if I am the soil?
I entered into my time away from my job with the word "Alignment, Congruence, Integrity" inscribed above my door. I set an intent to enter into a chrysalis in Montana, to dissolve in Tacoma, and emerge in Seattle.
I thought I would emerge in Seattle in September, but perhaps I am still simply dissolving for a later emergence. Spring, maybe.
One of the strange treasures I took away from this time was that perhaps there is a different kind of belief than I was taught about. Can the belief in science and belief in God be different SORTS of beliefs? Maybe there is a faith at the root of us which is always unshakable because it is always alive as long as we are. Does noticing different KINDS of belief supports a different WAY of being? A different way of relating to each other who believe things differently?
When I think about my life today, after all I've worked through in my time off, I ask questions like:
- Instead of a favorable outcome, can I adjust my ambitions to the purpose of setting a pace?
- What are the elements of my "pace"?
- What are the knobs and throttles which are in my control?
- What is the measure of "too fast" or "too slow"?
- How much of my measure of "too fast" or "too slow" is rooted in beliefs formed around experiences I have in my body?
- IF beliefs are related to values, how many of my beliefs are anchored to values I believe I SHOULD have, as opposed to beliefs that I have chosen because they align with my values?
- What beliefs can I change?
All of this flitters and floats around me as I re-enter "the grind". I care about my work, I care that the clients come to our company with energy to build infrastructure that their clients and stakeholders will benefit from. I appreciate that I am entrusted with their livelihood in their process to the development of land.
What is my intention? To wake, to snack, to love, to work, to grow, to hold space for those around me to grow, too.
On my walk today I consider this sentence:
"To close with integrity, to open with curiosity, and to boldly hold space for the integration of self-inquiry."
