Fire and Rain

Today I went to a "wellness day" at the place where I go for my trauma recovery group. It started with a breath practice for grief, which was difficult, but also useful, and my biggest takeaway from that is that I can let whatever is causing the grief -- in my case being separated from my love -- into my heart. I don't have to push it away, as I have tried to do. I can let it in. So I'm going to keep working on that, the theory being that once I can just let it be there, I'll be freer in the rest of my life.

Next I went to a talk that was supposed to be about the attachment loss experienced by those of us who went through developmental trauma, but it actually wasn't really about that. It was about how to approach yourself and world with openness, curiousity, even-handedness and love. It was definitely useful, and I asked the presenter a question about how to apply it to my situation with the New Englander. I found her answer really helpful. She said that it might be about accepting my love for him as part of my path, and similarly, accepting the pain that comes from the separation as part of my path in this life too. There's something pretty peaceful about that, so I'm trying my best.

The last session I went to before heading to my sister's to pick up my kids was Reiki with a new practitioner -- not the one I usually see. She had two takeaways for me: 1) there's nothing to be done about my situation, I just need to be with it (sounds familiar!); 2) I need to work on receiving.

I picked up some free books on my way out the door, one of which is called The Healing Path of Prayer. I started reading it today, and as I did, I heard this classic on the internal sound system:

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus, You've got to help me make a stand.
You've just got to see me through another day.
My body's aching and my time is at hand and I won't make it any other way.
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I always thought that I'd see you again.

Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun.
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around.
Well, there's hours of time on the telephone line to talk about things to come.
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.

Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain. I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
but I always thought that I'd see you baby, one more time again, now.

Thought I'd see you one more time again.
There's just a few things coming my way this time around, now.
Thought I'd see you, thought I'd see you, fire and rain, now.

I still do think I'll see him, just don't know where or when. In the meantime, I'm hoping to open up some channels that may well have been closed for a while...