Swimming in the deep

These days I find myself swimming in the deep, dark waters of my life   Silence, caving up, and living in the dark places seems to be what I am most drawn to.  I come up for air and light in little bits and pieces.  But overall hiding away the dark places is what I am doing the most. These dark waters seem to draw me in with promises of peace and quiet.  I get lulled by the steady, silent movement of the water around me.

But these dark places aren’t really that comfortable for me.  Here in these places that are so dark there is almost no light I feel rudderless, almost incapable of movement and without words. I definitely can feel directionless as I try to see through the dark into creating a new framework for my life.   Starting new things, setting new goals, and taking action seem near impossible here.  Even as I write this though I begin to see a little bit clearly to what I need to do.

In these dark places I have been in for several months the musing words that have acted as fairy dust to magically guide me on my path have simply not wanted to come out of me.  Partly because I so desperately want to write of the light, the powerful, the strong ways in which I can move forward.  And these things haven’t been what I have been most feeling so I haven’t been writing as much.  Writing of the dark places has seemed so depressing, so defeatist that instead I just don’t write.  And I am learning that when I don’t write all of those thoughts and feelings jumble up inside of becoming like a heavy weight forcing me down into the dark.

What I have been starting to do is read back over my early blogs from last year. As cuckoo luckoo as that time was for me I allowed myself to speak it all.  And that letting go of worrying about what I was saying and what others would think was part of what gave me the power to stand so firmly in an open, breathing space in which I allowed myself to love myself and those around me so openly and completely that I could not only breathe in the dark spaces I could dance there.  I embraced the gifts of all the pieces of me.  This embracing all of myself and letting go of the twisted up expectations of myself to be something other than what I am in each time and in each moment is the true path I must step onto right now.

On this day a year ago I wrote about the Kraken and the Butterfly Dragon, both mythical creatures with wisdom to share with me.  The Butterfly Dragon is something my heart longs to fly with and I find great joy in thinking of her.  The Kraken is something I have tended to avoid or warn others of when I feel her arising inside of me.  However, it is this powerful creature of the deep who I really am swimming with these days.  Avoiding her, pretending she isn’t there, and trying to shove her away from me only causes me to sink deeper into the dark.  Instead the call from my soul is to listen to her wisdom about what the dark, deep waters of myself have to share with me.   There are things that I need to listen to that only Kraken can tell me.

Being in the darkness doesn’t mean that there is no movement.  That’s what I’ve been experiencing as I try to shove these places out of my head and heart, instead trying to shove in new things just to grasp at straws of light.  I’m slowly beginning to realize it isn’t the dark that keeps me still it is my resistance to the dark and the messages this place wants to share with me.  The more I resist the longer I will remain in this place in a state of inertia.

If I can take a breath, let go and trust my inner Kraken she can guide me through these dark places with grace and power.  She is an amazing creature capable of great speed and precision when the time is right.  She is quiet, fast, patient and very, very strong. Waiting in the dark is a way of patiently storing up her power until it is time to move.  Staying attuned to the world around with all of her senses Kraken can feel her way through the dark.  This is what I am being called to listen to, at least part of the message she has for me.

I committed early on in my grieving journey to speaking my story because it was healing for me.  I wrote because I had to or the thoughts, feelings and words would somehow eat me alive.  I didn’t worry about what others would think.  I just wrote from my heart and my soul and lovingly tossed my story into the air.  Somewhere along the way these last several months I have started worrying about what others think so much that I stopped being able to see, hear and feel my story speaking within me.  I’ve allowed worries about if others want to still hear my story to close my mouth and mistrust my writing.

In doing this I have created a cage around myself that I dropped down into the darkest places within.   Kraken is swimming around this cage wanting to release me from it.  She wants to open that cage and teach me to swim again in my own knowing.  She wants me to glide through the dark, deep places of myself with ease and trust that these places are as much of my story as the places of light that I fly in with Butterfly Dragon.  I need to listen to and honor it all to truly live an authentic life.  She wants me to learn that being in the dark doesn’t necessarily mean I have to stay motionless or speechless.  Being in the dark simply means I have to learn to move and speak in a different way.  She wants me to learn that there is beauty and love and hope in the dark places too.

So I open my cage, the one I have locked myself in, and I rest there opening myself to listening to Kraken.  I take a deep breath, open my eyes and prepare myself to fully trust and love myself again.  In this time, in this moment this is my story.  I share it for me, to heal my heart and to honor me.