But using the word “journey” implies movement, so I take another step and focus on “there WAS ONCE a time…” and allow myself, my body, to feel the passage of time. The changing of the people I claim as family. The miracle of finding those who also claim me as their own. Yes, there was once a time. It has passed. What remains is to be brave and step into what is, now.
Late Autumn is, in the words of Maia Toll, a “time between endings and new beginnings, the liminal space within our own heart is most easily accessed.” Toll encourages us: “Give yourself room to dream into this deeply mystical season.”
The transition from womb to world is not a singular moment. The fetus is biologically preparing for that event months before it happens. They are prepared to bond with their mother differently once born. They do not expect that the nourishment they have received for 9 months will suddenly not exist. They do not expect to be permanently separated from their mother.
At first, I had the Trinity: three habits I treated with a sanctity warranted by the level of importance to my life. Then I had the Core Four. The list grew from the Sacred Seven to 11 to 12 to 15…When it worked, it was a beautiful thing. When it didn’t… well, let’s just say it was counterproductive to creating a life of harmony balanced with my core values.
Grief is like an ever-present fog. Sometimes it grows wispy and light, and the ache attaches to a sense of beauty and awe. That familiar painful knowing that this world is magical precisely because it is fleeting. Other times, it sinks low and heavy, making it difficult to navigate the day, replacing wonder with the weight of absence and loss.
In her sermon titled We Shall Go Forth, Reverend Lo from the Unitarian Universalist Church in Eugene speaks of wanting to build a wall of lamentation, a place to help with “the inlay of compounded fractures and compounded grief in our lives. There’s something about that ritual of writing down one’s prayers or wishes, or even the things one wishes to let go of or release, and placing them in the cracks of a wall.…
Begin the day by landing it My morning begins with the vibration on my wrist. 4:45 am my watch gently shakes me from sleep. It will not stop until I tap it. Usually, I do so with my eyes mostly still closed. I am not awake enough for ritual. This is instinct, this is habit. This is routine. 4:50 and the moon starts to glow on my nightstand. Not the literal moon. A lamp I’ve…
First and foremost, the transition into awareness each morning. The knowing that I am breathing and alive. And that when my eyes open, I can still see. Blurry though it may be some days. That next to me is my amazing wife and that we are waking into a life we have dedicated ourselves to building together. For the morning flurry on workdays because we each have work to get to and enjoy spending our…
Like a convention of drunks, we weave our way from car door to church door, navigating islands of relative dryness among seas of sunken grass and slippery clay. The women struggle with sinking heels, even while working hard to maintain the appearance of not working hard at all. I remind myself to care about staying clean, to quell the impulse to puddle jump and become one with the filth. Mamita’s tight grip on my upper arm reinforces the reminder.
and guns and moving the furniture in front of the peg-board wall displaying his collection of knives. With the green recliner creating a barricade in front of the bayonets and machetes, she stops in the hallway and stands there, not moving but not quite still either. Like she’s part of a cadre of soldiers on the battlefield nervously staring each other down, waiting for the signal that sets chaos into motion. Only whatever enemy she is facing, it’s not visible on the field.