The Cycles of Healing.

I don't like the words grieving or loss. If I let myself think like that it is a downward spiral. For me this is a journey of healing, letting go, and creating. However, for me the death of Rene is a huge fucking loss. What's odd is, it is  the loss of something that wasn't real, the future. Something not a given, I had no rights to it, had no real idea how it would play out and yet we call it a loss. Is it a loss? Can you lose something you never had? Can I lose a future that I didn't ever have? It was all make believe at best, and well, this at worst. My journey now is to heal my wound that was left when part of my being was ripped out of me to be with Rene on his journey. So I am trusting the cycle of healing. The fight or flight state lasted about 2 months. 8 weeks of a high like I have never experienced. A buffer between knowing the reality and feeling the reality. But a few weeks ago that started to fade, giving way to a heaviness. I am far more tired and less creative. I feel exhausted and my body is hurting. I am getting headaches, my digestion is struggling and I have a hard time socializing. I am on a very different level than most people and being in energetic happy social situations can feel awkward for me. It forces me to see how different I am now, how sad I am. I can't fake the normalcy, so feel like an alien in some previously enjoyable experiences. But I don't fear it, It's just how it is for me right now. It is a part of my healing cycle.

I have noticed my process is coinciding with the seasons. The accident happened in August and I stayed high for those first two months. The sun was still bright, days were long and warm. I had an overwhelming amount of energy and spent most of my days roaming in the forest with my puppy.

As it starts to get colder, days get shorter and darker. I too have started to come down. My energy level dropped, I want to be home more; sadness setting in. This is an inevitable part of the healing process. A subtle, private and quiet time where I am preparing to separate and say goodbye to my beloved. It is a sad part of the work that must be done. There is no way around this. So through the long winter days I will let myself mourn. To hibernate and gently let myself come to terms with saying good bye. For real, from the depths of my soul and the bottom of my heart. Preparing myself to fully let go, so I can fully live. Right now I feel like part of me is with him, part of me is trying to die so as to be with him. This leaves me in limbo. I can't cross over to be with Rene but while I am trying I can't be fully alive here either. So in the darkest part of the year I will journey through the darkest part of my healing. If I am ever to re-emerge alive I must let go of so much.

Spring will come. Days will get longer, the energy will be renewed and I will be ready for the rebirth. For the next part of my journey. The sweetness of spring is the endless possibility we see in her. Everything fresh and bursting with potential. Leading us into the vibrancy of summer.

Sweet summer, my favorite time, I will be ready for her adventures. For the inspiration she provides and the endless opportunities to play that she graciously offers. I will make it back to long warm days and the feeling of being alive. But first I must meet the winter with quiet reflection, and a heavy undertaking.

This process so seamless in nature. Letting go and creating is a constant. It is our refusal to be in the flow that causes us pain. It is the gap between what is and what we want it to be that burdens us. I must do the work this winter. I must make peace with this part of my life if I have any chance of meeting the summer with the same energy and delight that she will meet me.

We are not separate from the larger cycles of the planet. The moon’s cycles, the seasons, the sun, and the length of the days. We act like we can maintain the exact same lifestyle no matter what is going on around us. Same alarm everyday, same bed time, same routine, same diet. It is kind of narcissistic. While all other creatures adjust to their surroundings we in large part ignore them all together, complain about them, fight them, and work around them instead of with them. We would be better off if we leaned into the rythms of the planet. It is masterful and far more powerful than we are. Even if I wanted to, I can’t fight this heaviness. It is time for me to fall into the winter energy, slow down, settle, and take this time to bid a proper goodbye to my babes.  

Do you have some letting go to do this winter? Is there something you need to lay to rest, to say your deepest most loving goodbyes to? Do you need to hibernate and rest a broken heart, letting it mend? So it can come to play in the spring feeling it's new rhythm, first tentatively as it emerges with the tiny buds of spring flowers. But then in full force joining the strength of the blazing sun.

Don't fight the cycles. We cannot bypass the process, we are not separate, we are intimately connected to nature. She is proficient in what it is to be here. Follow her lead through the cycles of your life as you play on her playground.

~with love