Emergence by Tangee

I’m struggling to quantify the experiences of the past few days.  Typically I find writing to be the easiest form of expression, but revealing this is proving to be something of a challenge.  I am still conflicted about what happened and what it means.  Perhaps it is best to simply tell the story and let you draw your own meanings and conclusions from it.

Let me say firstly that I find it very difficult to deal with certain emotions.  Grief, anger, pain and sorrow are particularly hard for me to experience.  I’ve spent a great deal of time learning how to avoid feeling these things.   On the rare occasions where I have allowed these feelings to surface, I’ve found the resulting loss of self-control to be intolerable.  This is not to say that I am a cold or detached person.  I am very warm and loving.  I make friends easily and find my place in social groups pretty easily.  I am almost always the counselor or the care giver.  I say these things so you will understand the absolute bewilderment and horror that gripped me when I found myself on my knees in my living room, forehead pressed into the carpet, weeping and wailing and screaming for MEANING on an otherwise perfectly pleasant Tuesday afternoon.

Nothing precipitated this explosion of emotion.  No one said unkind words to me, cut me off in traffic, or otherwise made me feel less than.  It was an average to fair day in so far as interactions with others might be measured.  However, honest reflection tells me that I had been carrying a very heavy load of grief, anger and sorrow about my mother’s cancer and the impact it has on my life and our family.  I was angry she had hidden it from me.  I was angry that I had uprooted my urban life and given up my place on a waiting list for a loft I really wanted because I felt it was more important that I be near her during her illness.  I was sad to have lost that lifestyle and had not grieved for the possibilities.  I was angry with her siblings, who called me constantly, and made me feel like I was not being as forthcoming with information as I should be and I was angry at them for not being here with her.  I was sad that my son’s visit had been brief and that he had chosen a college so far away from me.  I had been carrying these things, refusing to feel these bad feelings, for weeks, if not months.  

So, when I found myself on that floor, demanding that the Source tell me my purpose, I was shocked, amazed and amused.  If I had the attention of the Divine- why was I asking about myself?  Why wasn’t I demanding a cure for my mother?  Why wasn’t I demanding that her siblings be nearer?  Why wasn’t I demanding that my son decide to go to college in the state where I had a mainline to EVERYTHING and I wanted to know what I was supposed to do with my life?  Was I really that selfish?

And, so, rebuffed by silence, I picked myself up off the floor and went about my evening as if nothing had happened.  I phoned some friends and discussed what I thought was my first nervous breakdown.  I went to bed, exhausted, perplexed and more than a little pissed off.  The next day I woke up and found some chakra meditations with my i-phone.  I lay down upon the very same floor I had been screaming and crying on the night before and relaxed.  I meditated for an hour and slept for an hour longer.  I visited my mother.  I picked up a friend and drove out to a sacred site.  We chanted and prayed and shared.  I climbed up on a massage table and let two energy workers lay hands on me- something I’d never allowed before in my life.  And while I lay there, listening to the music and feeling the warm hands on my skin, I felt all my anger and grief and anxiety and sorrow slip away.  I began to hear a story in my head.

The next morning I woke early and wrote an entire book in under an hour.  I thought it was a miracle- the answer to my calls for guidance!  Only now do I recognize the true miracle: I let go.  The space that had been occupied by all that hurt, and the energy I had been using to keep it contained was transformed.    Where there once was grief and sorrow and anger, there was now the voice of the Divine, a connection to my Source, and a feeling of absolute certainty.  If I could wish one wish for you today, it would be that after reading this you decide to sit back, examine your uglies and then let them go.  Let go of your burdens and use your hands to hold onto your dreams instead.  That space inside you was made for something bigger, better and far more beautiful than anger, grief or sorrow. 

 Just let go.

~ A wyld womyn called Tangee