(The following includes content that some may find offensive or disturbing).
“Really, you are just dancing yourself home.”
This is the thought that bubbles through in mid-wake, mid-sleep, this morning.
I have been sitting, sitting, sitting, (every day for weeks now) crying and holding space as ages of me come back home. Come back to me. Under the gaze of love I just didn’t have access to, or experience of, for thirty four years.
The pain, the grief, the loss doubles me over.
That wound. That original wound pain that sits at the bottom of me, deep inside my solar plexus; and shoots right through my heart, and throat, and eyes with sharp, stabbing, constricted (shards of glass cutting) pain.
“I was just a baby. I needed a mom.”
The pain of loss of all I loved-the farm, all those I trusted, my school, everything that ever mattered to me-over, and over, and over again; until I gave up, entirely; and, slowly, started to die.
The pain of being so alone since two.
It is endless:
the list.
the residue in my body;
but, most importantly, the loss…the complete loss of self, and disappearance (or non-existence) of a loving connection with myself.
That loss.
And so I sit, and sit, and sit. I sit under the African sun, held by that ancient expanse.
I call my ancestors back, plead with them to protect me; and I see them, I feel them-sometimes two leggeds, sometimes four; sometimes white, sometimes black. Always ancient. Always they come. And they say, and they say-in a circle around me-they say:
“She is ours.”
“We want her here.”
And the visceral, doubling over pain swells into massive wave, on top of massive wave. Over and over (and doubled over), for hours upon hours.
Every day new pain. Every day a different, abandoned and lost age of me comes forth.
Every day, every day, every day.
I am in ceremony.
Sometimes the elders dance and sing around me. Sometimes I dance, in a jingle dress, with a big smile on my face. Beaming. Only six.
I “see” now; see in a way it would not have been possible to see before.
I “see” how I keep (and had to keep) people and myself out of connection with me. I see all the ingenious walls that hid all of my pain, that hid me (and others) from it; from all of the most tender, hurting, needing parts of me. I see: the barrage of “thanking;” and apologizing for and bending, contorting, altering, and filtering of self (the latter out of a sense of protectiveness for, and sensitivity to, others). I see: the endless giving, serving, intuiting, anticipating, holding, listening to…others. Gifts of mine; and, also, ways I can keep me (and others) “locked out” of my own pain and the most vulnerable parts of me. I see it. That, in itself, is a gift.
It, effectively, has kept me from being vulnerable enough to admit the pain, the need (my own); and, most especially, it has kept others out- from ever, ever being able to reach, or touch, or, heaven forbid, meet that deepest part of me. Because if they touched that part, and what happened before, happened again…well, prior to a month ago, I just wouldn’t, or couldn’t, have survived it.
And so I give. And give, and give, and give; and process my pain alone.
That internal wall has started to crumble, though (not with my permission); and the well, the loss; the bottomless heartbreak, and hurt, and abandonment (of every age) has been swelling through all the cracks within me.
And I sit, and I sit, and I sit.
Thank God, I sit.
And love, by pure fucking miracle, has started to drip through.
By complete fucking miracle, as where would I have ever learned or experienced it before.
Yes, it means more pain for what has never been before, and I trust that this is what must be in order for me to make my way through.
I don’t think there is an “other side” to it. I don’t think the well of a lifetime of loss, and grief, and unmet need will ever be “filled.”
However, I do, and am, starting to feel a circle form within, and around me…a circle of love, with all parts. And, yesterday, I saw that little girl on the savanna-her circle of ancestors claiming her as “theirs” (wanting her)-and I got the energy of a rain of love washing over her, washing away all that pain.
Decades of it.
Generations of it.
So here I am, sitting soul-to-soul, with all (or many) parts of me I lost- coming home. Letting the rain come, and come, and come. Tears, and fears, and love, and pain, and pain, and pain; letting it come and wash away, wash away. In a heap. In a ball. In a huddle. On the floor.
I let it wash me, wash me away; as I sing, and cry, and pray.
Lara O