Standing in Center

Today I am standing in the center space, the space between the light and dark of my life.  I do not have the strength to do much more than just stand there, focusing on my breath and allowing the waves of the light and the dark flow over me.  And for the first time in months I feel compelled to write about that center space that seems to call me back to it over and over and over again.

I spend my days seeking to choose gratitude for all the amazing things in my life.  I am living a dream of a life in many ways.  I can now walk to work from my new farm cottage that I love.  My work on the horse farm that I love with people and animals who fill my soul can be so life giving most days.  I have children who daily amaze and inspire me just by being the amazing young people that they are.  I have friends and family who support me in more ways than I can name.  I have the freedom to choose new paths of learning and sharing my gifts with the world.  I have opportunities to heal and grow everyday.  Every single day I write in my journal of all the things I am deeply, profoundly grateful for. These are just some of the lighter parts of my life.

Then there are those darker things, those deeper things that are just as much a part of my everyday life.  Many of the new things that I am daily in awe of and bring me joy have only come about since Russell died; some even because of the aftermath of his death.  The farm cottage I adore is only ours because we could no longer live in the house that Russell and I loved; the air is too heavy there for us now.  The adventures, new learning opportunities, and all the growth in my business and personal life have been able to happen because of the financial freedom we’ve had from Russell’s last gift to us in the life insurance money we received.   The reminders I receive like at the memorial walk yesterday shock me again and again as it becomes more real again.   It’s not that I ever forget it’s just that I remember on deeper and broader levels again.   Being in groups of couples can still leave me feeling so awkward and lonely that it is way easier to just stay home most of the time.   The awareness of all the things my kids still have to face as they journey through milestones with just me can knock me to my knees.

For a very long time after Russell died I seemed to have this ability to stand swaying, even dancing at times, in the center space between dark and light.  In those earliest days, weeks and months I was devastated but felt so strong and so in touch with what I was experiencing.  There was an awakened sense about me as I walked and talked through my days.  My writing and my ability to radically stay in this time, this moment sustained me and gave me hope that somehow, someway I would be able to transform my life through my healing and then someday be able to offer that opportunity to others.   I believed that the path I was on was so clearly where I needed to be.

These past 5 to 6 months I have felt stuck in a quagmire of inertia, indecisiveness, and so blah.   Oh I ‘ve had amazing experiences, feel deep gratitude for the abundant blessings in my life, find joy in the little things, but my body, mind and soul have been dark and clogged. It’s as if something poured lead into my very bones and each movement forward takes monumental effort.  I will have really, really good days but then I have days that I simply just can’t – I can’t do anything.

It doesn’t feel like an active grieving that is happening, though I am sure the grieving I am doing for my life coach/mentor who died in March is playing a part in all of this.  Saying goodbye to the house Russell and I loved is part of it as well as memories surface and I close another door on that chapter in my life.  Plus, the fact that my voice, my muse has been quiet as a mouse lately definitely isn’t helping.  I somehow, once again, got it into my head that if I’m not writing directly about my grieving process that I shouldn’t write, at least not here on my blog.  Why or how I got that notion I have no idea.  But it wrecks havoc on me.  My writing works like letting out steam in a pressure cooker. When I can’t write the pressure just builds and builds and builds pouring all of the darker stuff deeper inside of myself.

Maybe what I need to do is simply be gentle with myself and allow myself to be exactly where I am.  Maybe I need to write about all of that as my writing is really about sharing in a vulnerable way how I am trying to live a life of authenticity open to daily transforming and growing; it’s not just about writing about grief though that how I started this journey.  Maybe I need to stop worrying and thinking so much all of the time and just do the things that resonate with who I am right now – not who I was or who I might be but who I am in this time, this moment.

So today I stand in this center space between the light and dark within me and I breathe.  I breathe while I feel the swirly emotions of confusion, grief, longing, fear and sadness.  I breathe while I feel the lightening emotions of joy, hope, desire, love and gratitude.  I breathe as I feel deep gratitude that this morning I could write again.  I breathe as I feel humbled finding words to share my journey, my profoundly personal journey.  When I write I somehow find my way forward more strongly and confidently.

In this time, in this moment I stand here and I breathe!