Full of Grace

Most of y'all know I like to have an old TV show that I missed the first time around queued up for when I need a little background noise and an alternative plot line to the one in my own life. I generally like storylines on the lighter side since there are so many feels in the real world for me. My latest Netflix show is Dawson's Creek. It's pretty unremarkable, which means it doesn't slow down the chores I do while I watch. And dang, do I have a lot of chores to do.

After being gone last weekend and being super busy all week both of the last two weeks, I feel buried. Buried by laundry. Buried by weeds. Buried by dishes.

As I work to unbury myself, I am grateful for the company of Dawson and co., especially when this song came on in the background:

The winter here's cold and bitter
It's chilled us to the bone
We haven't seen the sun for weeks
To long too far from home
I feel just like I'm sinking
And I claw for solid ground
I'm pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
Oh darkness I feel like letting go
If all of the strength and all of the courage
Come and lift me from this place
I know I could love you much better than this
Full of grace
Full of grace
My love
So it's better this way, I said
Having seen this place before
Where everything we said and did
Hurts us all the more
Its just that we stayed, too long
In the same old sickly skin
I'm pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
Oh darkness I feel like letting go
If all of the strength
And all of the courage
Come and lift me from this place
I know I could love you much better than this
Full of grace
Full of grace
My love

Love Sarah McLachlan. So grateful to be in a space where I had all of the strength and courage to both lift myself from the place I was in, (a place filled with grief and loss and regret and stagnancy) and to allow myself to be lifted.

Both are necessary for movement, in my view...

Sweet Surrender

Went to hot yoga today, and the teacher sang us this beauty in savasana:

It doesn't mean much
It doesn't mean anything at all
The life I've left behind me is a cold room

I've crossed the last line
From where I can't return
Where every step I took in faith betrayed me
And led me from my home

And sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

Take me in, no question's asked
You strip away the ugliness that surrounds me
(Who are you?)
Are you an angel?

Am I already that gone?
I only hope that I won't disappoint you
When I'm down here on my knees
(Who are you?)

And sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give
(Who are you?)

And sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

Super appropriate Valentine's song for me this year, because I really do feel like I have surrendered to my current circumstances -- single, with lots of non-romantic love in my life, and a still-in-process letting go of an old love:

Don't understand
The touch of your hand
I would be the one to fall
I miss the little things
I miss everything about you

It's quite an experience to love someone as much as I love(d) the New Englander and then not spend your life with him. It helped me move through so much old sadness, and it's propelling me forward in the writing of my memoir, which is really exciting, especially because that's helping me prepare for/create a love that is just as sweet but more sustainable...

Fear

Yesterday morning in the car, I was listening to an audio book by one of my favorite teachers, Eckhardt Tolle. The book is called The Art of Presence, and he made a statement that really struck me: "all aggression is linked to fear."

When I feel angry or aggressive as I have over the last few days, it's really uncomfortable. I don't like it at all. As I wrote about earlier this week, I feel much more comfortable with the pure expression of grief.

At the same time, I know that the anger is there for a reason, it just takes me a couple of days (or sometimes weeks, years or decades, depending on the anger we're talking about) to recognize it and let it speak what it is trying to say rather than taking it out on everyone and everything around me. As another of my favorite spiritual teachers, much less famous but no less wise, reminds me: "I let my anger teach me." Yeah, grudgingly, reluctantly, I do.

And when I heard Eckhardt tying it to fear, I began to ask myself what, exactly, I'm afraid of, and through this process I realized a couple of important things.

But first, the fears that I identified:

1) I'm afraid that my love will not be okay without me
2) I'm afraid that my love will be okay without me
3) I'm afraid that I will never stop wanting to be with him, but won't be able to be, at least for a while and maybe never again, leaving me with this horrible feeling of wanting for as long as I live.

That might sound a little dramatic -- especially that last one -- and it looks dramatic to me, seeing it in black and white, but those were the fears I identified.

Now for the realizations:

1) None of these are actually problems in this moment, and that's all I really need to worry about. Granted, that leaves me with what I am feeling in this moment, which is this crushing loss, this undoing of the rhythm of my daily life, and of my kids' daily life.

2) All three of those fears can't possibly come true, and there really isn't one that I couldn't live with, especially since I know the horribleness of this feeling is temporal; it will fade in time.

As I was working on this post earlier today, I searched my blog to be sure I hadn't already used this song, and I stumbled on this post, which contains a really hot picture of my love and me, setting off a crying jag for yours truly. But like the third time I was awoken in the night this week, I decided to do something different than I have been doing with these feelings.

I decided to call a friend in the midst of it, to tell her I didn't want to be alone with this grief anymore, that it was too big for me to face by myself, and I knew she could understand it. She didn't pick up, so I left a tearful message, and amazingly, I felt better just having left the message!

When I talked to her later, she said she was so glad I called, and that she could hear a shift in my voice as I shared the depth of my pain in my message. And I felt even better after we talked. Pretty cool, and I feel pretty lucky to have friends with whom I can share my pain. It doesn't really lessen it, but it sure makes it easier to bear.

As does staying in the now, and trying to feel things when they come up without attaching any story to them. That's hard to do, especially, I think, with fear:

But I fear
I have nothing to give
I have so much to lose
here in this lonely place
tangled up in our embrace
there's nothing I'd like
better than to fall
but I fear I have nothing to give

I love Sarah McLachlan, and this song is so beautiful. But it's interesting that it's the one that came up for me today, because I honestly think it expresses the fears of my love a lot better than it expresses my own.

I wish Wisconsin wasn't such a lonely place for him, a place where he felt he had so much to lose. I wish he felt able to give more of himself, to let me in more, to decide, once and for all, not to do it alone. To trust love. But once again, I can't control these things. And probably the harder I tried, the less likely it was that we would ever find our way to a mutual, totally psyched to be spending our lives together, yes, even in Wisconsin (for a few more years), place.

Which is why I understood he needed to go, and why I have to keep working at letting him go, with as much grace as I can muster, trying not to let fear overwhelm me.

But god, f%#*ing damn it, I miss being tangled up in our embrace...

Ice Cream

I've been neglecting my blog of late, and I don't have a lot of time this eve, but I gotta get back in the game. Plus, as it turns out, when you spend the better part of a day in bed with the ipod on shuffle, you're gonna have a lot of contenders for songs with which to mark it.

But this is the one that has lingered, perhaps because I gave up caffeine, alcohol and refined sugar for Lent (not because I'm religious, but because I love a good cleanse):

Your love
Is better than ice cream.
Better than anything else that I've tried
And your love
Is better than ice cream
Everyone here knows how to cry

(Especially me -- I'm a big believer)

Your love
Is better than chocolate
Better than anything else that I've tried
And oh love is better than chocolate...

Don't know if I've ever been more grateful for this truth. In the past, chocolate has been the hardest thing to give up, but this time it's sugar.

I guess that's because my sugar intake was ramped up pretty far over the last couple of months. On a recent afternoon, I found myself making a peanut butter, chocolate chip, and marshmallow sandwich for lunch. If that's not my body beggin' me for a cleanse, I don't know what is!

Angel

After spending a ton of time yesterday eradicating lice, I was feeling a little woe is me on this morning's drive to an appointment to have the basal cell carcinoma removed from my nose. Skin cancer, lice -- enough already!

And then I heard this beautiful song playing in the background while a mother told the story of her child dying of cancer, and it was right back to the gratitude attitude for me:

Spend all your time waiting

For that second chance,

For a break that would make it okay.

There's always some reason

To feel not good enough,

And it's hard, at the end of the day.

I need some distraction,

Oh, beautiful release.

Memories seep from my veins.

Let me be empty,

Oh, and weightless,

And maybe I'll find some peace tonight.

In the arms of the angel,

Fly away from here,

From this dark, cold hotel room,

And the endlessness that you fear.

You are pulled from the wreckage,

Of your silent reverie.

You're in the arms of the angel,

May you find some comfort here.

So tired of the straight line,

And everywhere you turn,

There's vultures and thieves at your back.

The storm keeps on twisting.

Keep on building the lies

That you make up for all that you lack.

It don't make no difference,

Escape one last time.

It's easier to believe in this sweet madness,

Oh, this glorious sadness,

That brings me to my knees...

Good Enough

In my boyfriend's absence tonight, I had the good fortune of a date with a good friend, one with whom I can discuss in an intimate manner the ways in which, though we sometimes feel otherwise: we're good enough mothers, our kids are doing good (well) enough, and our husbands (partners) are good enough too:

Hey your glass is empty

It’s a hell of a long way home

Why don’t you let me take you

It’s no good to go alone

I never would have opened up

But you seemed so real to me

After all the bullshit I’ve heard

It’s refreshing not to see

I don’t have to pretend

She doesn’t expect it from me

Because my man and I are still in the honeymoon phase, I can relate more closely to her feelings about her marriage of thirteen years with feelings I remember having about my ex-husband than those I have about my current relationship, but on some level, we decided, being ok with something means deciding that it's good enough.

And the truth is, one human being can never make that decision for another. I can hear my ex-husband's pleas when I told him I wanted out of our marriage coming loud and clear through these lyrics:

Don’t tell me I haven’t been good to you

Don’t tell me I have never been there for you

Don’t tell me why

Nothing is good enough

But it wasn't good enough for me. And though I had to wade through some very lonesome terrain to get where I am today, I could always hear the universe singing some version of this verse of Sarah's beautiful song (written for an abused child):

So just let me try

And I will be good to you

Just let me try

And I will be there for you

I’ll show you why

You’re so much more than good enough...

Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

I can think of at least 5 reasons why this song came up on my internal shuffle this morning:

1) Like the electronic variety, sometimes my own shuffling mechanism seems to get stuck on a particular artist;

2) Spending time with my Aunt and Uncle this Thanksgiving, I heard how the cousin who lost his wife when I lost my friend is doing, which brought up the many songs I shared with her, this one included;

3) On my brother-in-law's new 55 inch television, I was exposed to larger-than-life NFL for so many hours on end that I'm still thinking in football metaphors;

4) I can think of no better way to describe what I'm doing, and really, what all of us are doing in this life when it comes to learning to love than fumbling towards ecstasy; and

5) Sarah's lyrics are as close to an anthem as I can imagine for where I am on my own path at the moment:

All the fear has left me now

I’m not frightened anymore

It’s my heart that pounds beneath my flesh

It’s my mouth that pushes out this breath

And if I shed a tear I won’t cage it

I won’t fear love

And if I feel a rage I won’t deny it

I won’t fear love...

Forgiveness

Over the last few days, I've been dealing with some really uncomfortable feelings that came up in an exchange with a loved one. And as I so often do, I tried to deal with those feelings in some way other than just to feel them: set conditions, create distance, etc. I then began to feel remorse for the way I'd reacted, remorse that insisted on hanging around even after I'd asked for and received forgiveness. Which is when I realized that maybe the person I most needed to forgive was myself. Because even when we behave in ways of which we are not proud, we usually have a reason. And when the reaction is out of proportion to the current experience, often it is because it carries with it anger, fear or pain from a previous experience.

Grappling with all this, I went to my beloved youtube and searched "Forgiveness." That's how I found this beautiful song, by this equally beautiful woman who was nice enough to keep me company throughout much of the 90s:

And you ask for forgiveness

You’re asking too much

I have sheltered my heart in a place you can’t touch

Don’t believe when you tell me your love is real

Because you don’t know much about heaven boy

If you have to hurt to feel

Besides just being really lovely to watch and listen to, this song has a couple of nuggets that resonate with me. One is her line about not knowing much about heaven if you have to hurt to feel. I've been there, and I've watched (and still watch) others who are there, and it's such a painful place to be.

The other nugget is related to why it is so difficult to get out of that painful place of needing to hurt to feel -- and that is sheltering one's heart in a place the one who hurt you can't touch. To some extent this is important for self-preservation, but on another level, it is only when the heart softens that it is in a position to feel love...