I have been busy fighting of bee hordes trying to bore into our home's pointing and bitchy wasps nesting in our patio furniture so spring must be truly here.
So how am I doing? Friends have been checking in on me and I feel loved. Very loved.
But I also feel like I am being kid-gloved too. As if I am fragile or precious.
To be fair in the past I have been brittle after emotional devastation. So my good friends wonder, rightly, which jack-in-the-box they might be having to deal with.
It was running me down a bit. I felt a tremendous need to show everyone I was right as Raine. And not because I am doing better, which today I thankfully am, but because I didn't want to see the hesitation in their responses. As if I need to prove I am not going to go all "crazy" again.
I wanted to show everyone that this isn't like 2006 and my big PTSD battle. That this is grieving not depression. That I am having a hard but manageable transition. And all of that is 100% true. But I selfishly worry that I am being watched for signs of mental breakdown. Judged as broken. When truthfully my friends and family aren't engaged in those judgements at all. They love me and want to know where I am.
Then today I was told that my processes written here were helping friends with their own pregnancy loss.
I am gob smacked! I am humbled beyond words. And my choices of words became very important to me. My need to cut away the niceties and the concerns about what someone might be thinking were gone.
I need to say to that family- I love you and I am so very sorry.
And you don't have to grieve alone. Unless you need the privacy. Respect what you are feeling and be honest about what you need. We who love you can handle it.
I tend to be a dolt sometimes. Its takes a clue by four or seven for me to get it. And I was keeping to myself lately and I was feeling like I needed to be 'better' by now. "We who love you can handle it!"- my clue by four of the day.
The one overwhelming thing I have learned this year is how many of us suffer quietly and alone. We soldier through thinking we have to shield others from our pains and losses and the rawness of our living.
Fuck that! We need less concern about seeming to be okay, when we obviously are not and more safe places to express pain and loss and confusion without gut checking to make sure we seem put together and reasonable to others. Lately I've been gut checking and it's not even needed.
I love you. All the parts that make up being you right this minute. Let's love together and laugh together and cry together and whist respecting each other's boundaries support each other. You don't ever need to hold back for me.
And P.S. I really don't hold truck with astrology (probably because there's math involved) but this Grand Cross, retrograde, hey you kids get off my damn lawn crap needs to end. So much loss and heartbreak in the first quarter of the year.
2014 was to be my year of balance. Then a much wiser man than I reminded me balance is active and moves through space. It's not a static point like holding one's breath but motion forward like a tight rope walker. Constant readjustment in the moment that allows us to move forward without falling off the dang rope.
Absolutely this is my year of balance! And today I learned that my big top routine can and is making a difference for others. That notion shook my rope more than I'd ever imagined. I am humbled and honored to share my life with you this way. I never dreamed I might be benefiting others.
When you're reaching up trying to pull your head above water that other hand you reach downward to help someone else is more important sometimes than your first breath of air. My friend Jenni taught me that and much more. I simply followed her example.
Who's hands are you holding on to today? What difference are you making? Do you know how powerful the day to day living of your life can be? You might be very surprised by the answers you find.
