As you read this, I’m on a road trip to the Grand Canyon with my husband. I’m going to say goodbye to my dad who was killed in a skiing accident in 1979, when he was 50 years old. I was 21.
My big brother, 25 years old at the time, was with him on that Colorado mountain. My dad, an expert skier, must have crossed his tips while going fast enough that he died from brain trauma when he hit a tree. (Nobody wore helmets back then.)
I never saw his body, which would have been awful, as injured as it was. My mom, from whom he was divorced, wanted to save my sister and me that pain.
No body at his memorial, just an urn of ashes covered by a brocade cloth.
And then my traumatized brother and his friends took my dad’s ashes to the Grand Canyon, where they scattered them on his favorite trail.
My dad was here, and then he wasn’t anymore. My dad was alive, and then he was simply gone. No real goodbye. No closure.
For several years following his death I would catch a glimpse of him – driving a car going the other way, usually.
His death didn’t seem real. It still doesn’t, in some ways. Even now, more than 41 years later, I’m crying as I write this.
This week’s road trip is to close that open loop, finally. Five days on the road for one day on that trail, so I can sit with my sweet brother, for a little while, where he scattered my dad’s ashes.
My family learned from this experience of aborted grief. My mom realized pretty quickly that she’d made a mistake. When my grandpa died a few years later, our first stop after the airport was the funeral home, where my mom watched as we said goodbye to her father’s embalmed body.
And when Mom died a premature death from cancer at 63, my brother and sister and I insisted on an open-casket visitation before the funeral.
Saving someone else from pain, saving yourself from pain, doesn’t work. Open loops are energy drains. Pain avoided inevitably turns into unnecessary suffering. Ungrieved dead loves are burdens you don’t need to carry.
Face your deaths. If it’s a dead person, grieve them. If it’s a dead dream, grieve it. Then cross it off your list.
Grieving what’s dead makes room for resurrection. Holding on to the dead things keeps your heart and hands closed. If your heart and hands are closed, you can’t catch the new thing that wants to be born.
Grieve what’s dead, and move on. As blessed Mary Oliver advises, “Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away. Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.”
To be continued.
Photo credit: An unknown backpacker in a parking lot on the Sierra Nevada Eastern Slope in August of 1972, probably.
PS. Subscribers to my newsletter will be the first to know about upcoming events, such as pop-up workshops and online retreats. Subscribe here, and thank you!
Resurrection is a discipline. We live in a Good Friday world – patriarchal, consumerist, capitalist, colonialist. This world needs our Easter selves – hopeful, irrational, bursting out of the tomb, aspiring to love and kindness. Here are three poems to support you in your practice of resurrection.
Very little grows on jagged rock. Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are. You’ve been stony for too many years. Try something different. Surrender.
Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
Let grief be your sister, she will whether or no.
Rise up from the stump of sorrow, and be green also, like the diligent leaves.
A lifetime isn’t long enough for the beauty of this world and the responsibilities of your life.
Scatter your flowers over the graves, and walk away.
Be good-natured and untidy in your exuberance.
Mary Oliver, from The Leaf and the Cloud
When your eyes are tired the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb tonight.
The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.
You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness
Today is Maundy Thursday, the beginning of the Triduum, the three holiest days of the Christian church year. These three days—Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—are the crux of the matter, literally. The story of Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection are the heart of the Christian story.
Even if you’re not Christian anymore or ever, these three days are the heart of your story as well.
Death and resurrection are the way of things. We were born to die and be reborn over and over until our physical selves can’t hold us anymore. We suffer when we resist this basic truth—to be an Earthling is to be constantly dying and rising again. Change isn’t linear or always pretty. To be alive is to die and rise again, over and over, messily, imperfectly, gloriously.
As we grow, change, and evolve, we will find that we need to shed our too-small skins. I feel like I’m shedding my skin like a snake these days. Dropping identities and stories left and right. Shreds of (metaphorical) tissue-thin skin fall off me constantly. I feel messy, imperfect, and maybe just a little glorious.
This is the Easter story. This is the human story. This is our Earthling story. Jesus’ story is our story. Jesus’ death is our death, and when he rises again on Easter, he rises for all of us. He shows us the way home.
This excerpt from the last pages of my novel Lost and Found (available for free download here) describes a dream of Martha, my peregrina hero. In her dream, Martha integrates cut-off parts of herself, sheds her now too-small skin, and becomes a new creation.
Martha wakes up before sunrise in the albergue in Foncebadón, a few kilometers down the mountain from La Cruz de Ferro. She lies in bed listening to the sounds of pilgrims waking up and getting on with their days – the rustling of convertible pants and water running in the communal bathroom. She’s tired of writing. She’s tired of thinking. Today she only wants to walk in beauty. She yearns to shed this old skin that keeps her small and tired. She feels the pinching of the chrysalis. It’s time to emerge. She feels the pinching of the too-small skin. It’s time to shed. The snakeskin is a more apt metaphor than the chrysalis. She feels more like a snake than a butterfly. She feels low to the ground and slithery and heavy, not light and airy and floaty. She feels powerful. And beautiful.
Last night’s dream floats into Martha’s awareness. In the dream, she enters a cave in search of something she’s lost. In the cave is a cage full of children, all about seven years old. They’re girls, and they’re mangy and crazed. She’s frightened and repulsed. They look up when they see her, all except one feral child who’s sitting in the corner, muttering and chewing her snarled hair. Like refugees, they crowd to the chain link fence that encloses them and reach out their hands to her.
Martha’s heart sinks. She doesn’t want to know this. She doesn’t want to know these children are here. She doesn’t want the responsibility of knowing they’re here. What is she supposed to do with them? Clearly, they can’t stay here, and now that she knows they’re here, it’s her responsibility to take care of them. Her cheese is falling off her cracker. She feels unhinged, because she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that these girls are parts of herself.
That one’s Courage and the one over there is Creativity. Those two are Imagination and Intuition. There’s Playfulness. The feral one with the snarled hair, the one sitting on the dung heap in the corner, muttering and biting her fingernails, is Rage. She sees Desire and Tenderness, too.
Martha feels a hand in hers and looks down to see clean and tidy uncaged children surrounding her. These are the little girls who have been with her all these years – Worry, Anxiety, and Fear, and the sturdiest of them all is Sadness. They’ve been faithful companions, and they tell her they’ve missed their sisters.
They tug on her hands to show her where the gate is. They tell her that her job is to let their sisters out of the cage. She’s safe and it’s okay. It’s time to shed the skin that keeps them in. It’s time to tell the truth and to acknowledge the sadness, yes. But more than that, and even scarier, they want her to let them rest a little. Sadness, Worry, Fear, and Anxiety would like to share the burden with Play and Anger and Courage and Imagination.
They understand this means Martha won’t feel in control anymore. The parts of her who want to explore and create will take her to places she didn’t even know existed. They won’t let her stay small and quiet and hidden.
Fear says, “Martha, I’m tired of steering you and keeping you safe. How about you let me share the load with my sisters? I know you’re scared. You’re scared that you’re going crazy. You’re not crazy. You’re brave. You’ll be even braver when you let Courage out to play with us.”
“How do I love them?” Martha asks Sadness and Worry. “How do I take care of them?”
“You know how to take care of them,” says Hope. Where had she come from? “You’re compassionate and strong, Martha. You only have to let yourself be reborn.”
“Here,” Hope says, and unlocks the gate. “Come out,” she says to the caged girls, “and let’s take care of Martha.” The little girls come out – some with shouts of joy and some with trepidation – to join Hope around a pool. The pool is surrounded by ferns, mosses cling to the wet rocks, and steam rises from it.
The girls slowly and reverently help Martha disrobe and lead her to the pool. They gently urge her to lie down in the warm water. They stroke her and rub her and sing to her. Martha realizes they’re rubbing off her old skin. They raise her up and walk her to where the sun is entering the cave. They rub her dry with soft, thick, warm towels. Her new skin is thin and porous. Martha feels both raw and incredibly strong. The girls rub her new transparent skin with oil, still singing.
Martha sits down on a granite boulder and opens her arms. One by one the little girls crawl into her chest. Martha is big enough to hold all of them now. Last to crawl back in is Hope. She reaches out and hugs her mom as she returns where she belongs. Martha looks inside her heart. Hope and the little girls are playing in the grass by the side of the desert creek, watched over by their vigilant guardian.
Fully awake now, Martha emerges from her sleeping bag. Her dad’s bunk is empty. She wants to mark this metamorphosis. She digs out the scissors in her foot care kit and goes to the garden of the albergue. Her only companions are the chickens. With the scissors made for cutting bandages, she cuts off her hair so it’s sticking out about an inch all over her head, like a halo. A messy gray halo. Hair is all over the ground. Birds will use it for nests. In this windy place it will blow away before lunchtime.
Whatever your faith or spirituality, I wish you a blessed death and rebirth.
May we trust our hearts. May we trust God, whoever and whatever Holiness is for us.
Happy Easter!
Love, Barb
Image: Jed Holdorph, 16 May 2014, Camino de Santiago
These pilgrims are on the first day of their Camino. They think this is the hardest day. They think that if they can do this ridiculously grueling day, they’ll be in good shape. They’re almost certainly wrong.
The first day of the Camino de Santiago Francés is about 15 miles long, an average day on the Camino. That’s hard enough for new pilgrims. What makes it especially hard is the vertical gain followed by an equally steep downhill, over the Pyrenees from France into Spain.
My husband and I walked the Camino’s 500 miles across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela in 37 days, averaging 13 miles daily. As many pilgrims do, we started our Camino in St. Jean Pied de Port at the foot of the French Pyrenees. We walked up and up and up and up, all day, to Col de Lepoeder, the top of the pass through the Pyrenees, a vertical gain of more than a mile, then down the other side.
Jed and I, being Oregonians and used to mountains, didn’t find the uphill particularly difficult. It was the downhill that got me. By the time we arrived at the Roncesvalles albergue (albergues are special hostels for pilgrims in Spain), my feet and ankles were in agony. I took off my boots to find bumps, bruises, and blisters that persisted for the entire 37 days we walked, and for months after.
Some pilgrims choose to skip this traditional hazing ritual, and start instead in Roncesvalles on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. (Or in Pamplona, as the heroine of my novel does.)
I knew the first day would be hard. I knew what to expect. I thought that making it across the Pyrenees in one (admittedly bruised and battered) piece meant I had this thing licked and it was all smooth sailing from here. I was definitely wrong.
Why?
It’s a thing Seth Godin calls “the Dip” in his book of the same name. Teachers call it the “messy middle.” Wayfinder Life Coaches know it as “Square Three.”
The basic principle is this: anything worth doing becomes muddled and hard at some point. This is “the Dip.” There comes a point where the first blush of enthusiasm has worn off, the goal is still a very long way ahead, and the journey becomes a slog. This is when people quit.
Let me say that again: any important goal, anything worth doing—education, relationships, parenthood, your dream job, learning to play the guitar, walking 500 miles across Spain—gets hard at some point.
The first day of the Camino was ridiculous. The first week continued to be physically gruelling, but walking The Way of St. James was still fresh, new, and interesting. I still felt enthusiastic about this bananas thing we were doing.
But Day 10? Well. By then I was tired of suffering for no apparent purpose. Tired of sleeping in communal dorms and washing in communal showers and walking on bruised and blistered feet for miles every day. I had lost my enthusiasm.
Most pilgrims who quit the Camino don’t do it in the first week. No. They quit in the middle. They hit the Dip and they don’t have the resources to keep going. (This is why the Camino is a pilgrimage, not just a nice walk in the Spanish countryside. You meet yourself—who you really are and what you really want—on the Camino.)
The Dip is when you decide if this thing you committed to doing is really something you want to do. The Dip is when you choose, or not, to keep putting one foot in front of the other because the destination waiting for you at the other end is so amazing that it’s worth this suffering.
The Camino de Santiago Francés is 500 miles long. Most pilgrims take 30 to 40 days. That leaves a long time in the middle where it really is just putting one foot in front of the other, because Santiago is still hundreds of miles down a very dusty road.
The goal seems unreachable. What you’re doing seems loco. I mean, come on. Really? Walking somewhere when you could drive it in one really long day? What’s up with that? It’s crazy. You’re tired. You’re dirty. You’re sore. It’s just not a rational thing to do.
Many of the things we deeply want to do aren’t rational.
The Dip is real. Know it’s coming. Expect it. Prepare for it. Make a plan to navigate it. If you know you don’t have the resources to get through the Dip, don’t start.
This is the choice I had to make. Walking the Camino for Jed wasn’t going to cut it. I had to do it for me, or not do it at all. I had to walk my own walk, or not walk at all. I was going to end up hating my husband if I continued suffering for him. I had to choose the Dip. I had to commit to MY Camino. I had to say, “I’m doing this, for me.”
What got me through the Dip? My husband’s dogged determination. Companions on the Way. The hard-core mystical energy of a path that’s been trodden by prayerful, strong people for a thousand years. My coaching skills and practice working with my thoughts. Walking one day at a time and celebrating my progress, slow as it felt. Marking intermediate milestones: Pamplona, Burgos, León, El Cruz de Ferro, every mountain pass. Two experiences of the Holy that told me I was where I needed to be.
PS. If you’ve read this far, you’re a dedicated blog-follower. I’d love it if you’d subscribe to my newsletter, which will soon replace this blog completely.
There’s a thing you want to do, or believe you should do, or are being told you need to do, and you just don’t get it done. What’s that about?
When you’ve had an item on your to-do list for weeks or months or even years, and it just gets heavier and heavier, saps more and more of your energy and confidence, what’s that about?
When you just aren’t getting the thing done, is it possible you’re not just a lazy dumb slacker? Is it possible that you’re being wise, rather than just stupidly afraid?
There are plenty of wise reasons for not doing a thing.
Maybe this is a thing you shouldn’t do. Maybe it isn’t yours to do. Maybe you’re not ready yet. Maybe you really do need more information. Maybe you decided to do this thing when you were a different person – a naïve person, a more easily influenced person, a person who didn’t yet know what she wanted.
Maybe you’re just not ready to accept the changes this dream entails.
Maybe you have other priorities just now, and this thing isn’t as important. Maybe you’re not afraid of doing the actual thing, but of the overwhelm you’ll feel if you take it on.
I think we judge ourselves for not doing the thing we say we want to do. We jump to beating ourselves up for feeling afraid, or being lazy, or just not having what it takes to reach our goals.
But what if the reluctance you’re feeling isn’t stupid fear, but wise resistance?
How do you tell the difference? Here’s one way that works for me and my clients.
1. Bring to mind that thing that’s nagging you. That thing you’ve had on your list for so long. That dream you’ve been yearning to make real.
Really inhabit this possible future. Let yourself, in your imagination, live into the reality of doing the thing. Give yourself time to fully be there.
2. Notice what’s going on in your body. (Yes, there’s the body again!)
There you are, having run the marathon, written the book, gotten the divorce, cleaned the basement. Whatever your thing is, you’ve done it.
3. How do you feel? What’s going on with your breath? What’s going on with your belly? What’s going on with your neck and your shoulders? What’s your expression?
Do you feel light or heavy? Do you feel warm or cold? Do you feel relaxed or stressed? Do you feel open or closed?
What we’re looking for here, when you’re in your body imagining having done the thing that’s calling you, is whether you feel fundamentally expanded or contracted.
4. If you feel mostly expanded, opened up, lighter and warmer, these are signs that you really do want to do this thing. To create this thing. To make this dream into reality. Your reluctance is mostly stupid fear. And you probably want to move beyond your fear-based obstacles.
On the other hand, if you feel mostly contracted, colder, tighter, and heavier when you’re imaginatively inhabiting the future where you’ve gotten your thing done, these are signs that this thing you’ve got on your list should be crossed off, if possible. Your reluctance is mostly wise resistance.
Your body is telling you the truth.
Now you know if your reluctance is mostly wise resistance or stupid fear, and you can make an informed choice.
You have three options: do the thing now, commit to doing it later, or let it go.
So what will you choose? Will you intentionally put that thing in a “parking lot” and come back to it later? Will you let go of it for good? (I suggest ritualizing your letting go, so the thing feels well and truly done.)
Or will you choose to work with your fear, go beyond it, and finally do your thing?
If you’ve concluded that you really want to do the thing now, keep reading.
I’m developing a four-session coaching package devoted to getting your thing done. This package is focused on doing just one thing. It comes with pre-session focus and alignment questions, between-session check-ins, science- and soul-based tools and exercises for every step of the journey, and lots of private time with me.
If you’ve ever wondered if coaching is right for you, this is a perfect way to find out. Because this package is under construction and so tightly focused, I’m offering it at a super low rate for a limited time.
Imagine how good it would feel to get your thing done. Then go here for more information and to schedule a free, no-obligation clarity call. I look forward to connecting with you!
And if you’d just like companionship for 30 minutes or so to work through the process above, I’m here for that, too. Contact me here to schedule.
An espaliered apple tree at the Chicago Botanic Garden
You’ve probably seen them. They’re often apple or pear trees, planted right up against a wall, limbs twined onto wires so they’re flat against the wall. The trees still bear fruit, but they take up much less space.
I used to admire them. Such pretty trees splayed out against brick walls. Now I feel sorry for them.
What would that feel like – to want to grow, to bud and fruit, but instead to be trained and pruned, wired and flattened, so you didn’t take up so much space and you look beautiful? How handy for the gardener – for his tree to be small and orderly, but still produce fruit.
The tree herself is still wild, yearning to grow, to stretch her strong branches up to the sky in search of sun. To be nourished from her deep, wild roots. To feel her leaves unfurl and buds form, and to feel the power of forming fruit.
And along comes a gardener (all the gardeners shown espaliering apple trees in my web search appear to be male) who thinks, I’m gonna make me a tree that still gives me fruit but that is well-behaved, by golly.
So the tree is pruned and wired and trained for maximum fruit production and minimum encroachment into the gardener’s territory.
An espaliered tree is an apt metaphor for the contrast between our social, culturally-constructed selves and our true wild nature.
The wild tree is our true nature – our essential, instinctual Self gifted to us at birth. Those wires and pruning and snipping off of anything that doesn’t fit the preference of the gardener, well, that’s the false, social self at work.
We all have false, social selves. Personas. They’re the costumes we wear to fit in, get along, stay safe, and make others happy. They’re part of being human. Our social selves are necessary. They keep us out of the street and out of jail. The trouble comes when we aren’t able to choose when to wear them anymore – when we forget that we’re wearing a disguise. Then these selves become rigid, too-small skins. Trapped inside them, we slowly suffocate.
We all wear masks in order to go along and get along and navigate the culture we’re in. And thankfully we all have, somewhere deep down inside, who we truly are: that elemental, essential, instinctual wild Self who carries our knowing, our purpose, and our passions.
For many of us, there comes a time when we realize we’ve lost touch with who we really are, at root. We realize we’ve let ourselves be espaliered – pruned, flattened, trained in straight lines. Beautiful to the eye of the gardener, for whom we’ve produced abundant fruit. We exist for him, and not for ourselves.
At this point, unlike the tree, we human women have a choice. Choosing to remain espaliered has its rewards: shelter, warmth, less risk of damage to those precious limbs. Many women will choose to remain safe within the castle walls.
Others of us will come to understand that to remain espaliered is equivalent to choosing death. We will pull ourselves free from the wires and away from the wall. We will return to our wild root stock. We will become feral, unsafe, free-ranging and open to the elements. We probably won’t produce as many apples, but other rewards will take their place. Wild birds will make their nests in our newly-craggy branches. Fierce badgers will den in our roots.
We will be who we are, again. We will be becoming who we’re meant to be, again.
Here’s one way to feel the difference between your social self and your essential self. (This is a riff on the Body Compass, a foundational tool for Wayfinder Life Coaches and their clients.)
Imagine yourself as an espaliered tree. Become the tree. Feel the wall at your back. Feel your limbs tied to the wires running in straight lines. Feel the urge to send out unruly shoots. Feel them snipped off by the gardener. Feel him admiring your rule-following prettiness and fertility. What do you notice in your body? Choose three words to describe this feeling of being espaliered.
Now take three deep breaths and shake your body. Move the energy of espalier through your body and let that shit go.
Finally, imagine yourself as a wild tree. Become the tree. Feel your wild roots deep in the soil. Feel your sturdy trunk. Feel your strong limbs spread and stretch for the sun. Feel new shoots sprout all along your limbs. Feel your leaves unfurl and your buds form. Feel the buds solidify and become fruit. Feel the fruit become heavier and heavier. Feel the birds build nests in your limbs, and the badger make a home in the space between your deep, sheltering roots. There is space for all. What do you notice in your body now? Choose three words to describe this feeling.
Which tree feels stronger? Which tree feels more powerful? Which tree would you rather be?
When you’re living and making choices from your social, culturally-constrained self, your body will tell you. You will feel more like the espaliered tree. And when you live and make choices rooted in your wild, essential Self, your body will feel more like the wild tree.
Did you try this exercise? I’d love to hear about it. Contact me here or leave a comment below. Thank you!
PS. I’m transitioning to sending email newsletters rather than blog posts. If you’d like to receive fresh content as well as information about my latest offerings, please subscribe. You can subscribe on the form in the sidebar here. In my newsletter, I go a little deeper into one of the four touchstones I use in my work with clients, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further.
I’m convinced that healing happens as we make four simple shifts. These shifts aren’t rules. They’re more like touchstones. Truths. Signposts along the way of integrity. They’re not linear, but rather a spiral unfurling. They’re my attempt to “systematize Mystery.”
More soul, less façade. To orient ourselves more and more to the truths of our hearts and souls, and less to others’ expectations.
More acceptance, less resistance. To accept and celebrate the ever-changing nature of being embodied on this earth more and more often, and resist life’s inevitable changes less often.
More intention, less reaction. To choose our thoughts with intention more often, and become caught in our emotions less often.
More creation, less victimhood. To actively create our lives more often, and less often behave as passive victims of other people, circumstances, or “fate.”
Supporting my clients as they make these four shifts is the core of my coaching. These shifts are simple, but that doesn’t mean they’re easy. And we have to know where we’re starting from to get where we want to go.
Moving the dial on these shifts requires awareness of what’s happening in our bodies and our brains.
Powerful, lasting change begins with clearly seeing, acknowledging, and being with our current reality, and loving ourselves no matter what we find when we tune into ourselves.
My clients and I begin every session with a few minutes of tuning in. We stop, we feel our bodies, we breathe. This tuning in is non-negotiable.
Here’s a simple two-minute awareness practice. You can do it anywhere, and you won’t need any special equipment. Don’t complicate it, or try to excel. Just do it.
1. Stop what you’re doing. Take three breaths, Feel your feet. 2. Scan your body for sensations. 3. Whatever you feel, simply allow it. Let the sensations be what they are. 4. Sit with yourself for two minutes.
Do this practice as often as you remember. Set a reminder on your phone, if you want to. Journal just a few words about what you find, if you want to. Pay attention to any patterns you see, if you want to.
That’s it. That’s all. This simple awareness practice, just coming home to your body for a couple of minutes, is such a powerful place to start making important shifts. Your body is your life. Your body is a gift. Your body tells you what’s true and real and alive.
Your body is your connection to your soul. Your soul is your connection to meaning, purpose, and deep joy. Everything starts with your body.
You might find as you do this practice regularly that you become aware of emotions and thoughts. If you do, you can jot them down if you want to.
All change, for conscious humans, begins with awareness.
I go a little deeper into one of the four shifts mentioned above in each newsletter, and suggest a practice, exercise, or journal prompt to explore it further. I value your feedback.
I’m collecting everything I’ve written about these four touchstones into a short e-book. Your responses and questions will help me make that book clearer and more useful. Contact me here or leave a comment with your thoughts. Thank you!
PS. I’m transitioning from a blog subscription to a newsletter, in order to serve my readers better. Please visit my website and subscribe to my newsletter to continue to receive posts. Thank you!
