Deeper Waters

I wrote this on Sunday.  Woke up on Monday thinking “this is way too far from my usual writing.  This won’t meet my readers where they are.”

Then I remembered the last post.  How it felt like a risk and how your response was massive - I received so many emails from readers resonating and thinking along with me.  I wrote this,

"Soon I am making the passage to a neighbouring lake.  New waters to inhabit, new creatures to swim with. I will go deeper this time - it is cold down there.  But no hooks.”

And many of you said you wanted to come along.

Here we go.

I spent the weekend on retreat and a fight with myself that has been going on for some time became explicit.

Some truth was revealed to me - obvious, clear truth.  The details don’t matter so much as I saw the revelation and I knew it in my bones to be true.

And I hated it.  I didn’t want it to be true.  “No! No! I hate this! I hate this!" I shouted.

On the encouragement of my teachers, I let myself resist.    I spoke to my medicine, to my revelation. I told it how I couldn’t handle it.    How I didn’t want it. How I wanted to go back to my everyday life. My familiar story.

Giving the resistance its time gave me the space to say to myself, “Alright then, who is it that doesn’t want this?  Who is resisting the plain truth? Who can’t let go?"

I know her.  I live her every day.  She can’t let go.  

She is a concept.  A face I see in the mirror.  A body I care for in all its aspects.

A psychological progression through the life cycle.  A story of healing.

A natal chart, a spiritual progression.

A clinician, a writer, a clinic owner.

A cat mom.

A friend.

She is an idea of a woman.

An actual one but mostly an idea.

A collection of moments I have gathered into themes.

Striking if not a natural beauty, brave, strong, rigid, busy, smart…  I have it all sewn up. This is me. I am doing this. Next, I will do this.

And I do love myself.  I love my journey. This love came over time.  I don’t knock it one bit.

And she….  she’s not the point.

She’s something in my mind.

My heart, my solar plexus, my womb… they know the way.  

This weekend I found out that the heart and the solar plexus and the womb will be my way out of the hell that is seeing my own insignificance.  “My”. I mean the woman in my mind. The heroic story I still go to more often than I’d like.

Do not get me wrong.  Listen carefully to this piece:  First job - know your own significance.  Don’t jump ahead on this one. Love yourself up with all that you have.  Heal. This takes a long long time.

And at this point, I have to let go of her.

To love her but not own her.

To love her but not be driven by the story of her.  

The domination of the mind must end.  The mind is not in charge. It leads us so far from home.

Oh, it leads us so far away.

It beguiles.  

It distracts.

It excites.

But it leads us so far away.  

The purpose of my life is to follow the breath.  To follow my heart. To follow the guidance of my fertile womb.  

I trust in the freedom of this.  I have experienced it. Danced it.  Allowed it.

We have everything.  And none of what we thought.

We have it all.  And none of what we set out to do.

I’m still fighting for this woman called Alison Crosthwait.  Fighting to continue the narrative over here. It’s a great story.

I’ll go in and out for the rest of this life.

And I do know where freedom is found.