Love has come home to roost. I´ve had 61 years living with periods of struggle, confusion, and pain, interspersed with such sweet moments, hoping I could be free of the former and stay in the later, yet never succeeding. The pain had me frantically seeking- substances, others, body changes, or external ¨fixes,¨ ready to abandon my uniqueness for any reprieve. Over and over, the true relief eluded me. Achingly I would ponder how both pain and beauty could co-exist? In the constant cycling, I repeatedly asked, ¨why me?¨ Feeling less loved by God, Fate, or Life. Somehow less worthy. My head filled with stories about ¨the reasons why¨ others deserved, but I did not. None of them were true, but they felt true at the time.
I´ve faced death three times, and the last time, getting a serious case of Covid, finally did something. Or maybe I´m just a slow learner. But as I lay in my bed alone, struggling to breathe, I thought, ¨I can´t die here.¨ It wasn´t about a literal ¨here¨ but my unlived life. Since I can be like a dog with a bone, I decided then and there to look at and unflinchingly face everything that was still numbing me to Life and Love. So, I did. And like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, they began to burn off and fall away. My goal though was to become the Phoenix Risen (my company name), freed from cycling altogether.
At moments I was terrified. Then intense joy and aliveness would wash in. Over and over and over, I rode these waves- sometimes with the grace of a Hawaiian surfer, sometimes like a panicked swimmer, thrashing and flailing. What prepared me for this was everything I had faced before, but now with a critical understanding, nothing that occurred previously meant anything about me– who and what I truly am.
And so yes, mastering the habit of resisting “what’s moving through” this body-mind system, and the second habit of building stories about “me” because of “it,” has made room for Life to show up in incredible ways, so far beyond what the old pain-body could believe; at times it takes my breath away.
