Each time someone we value and love leaves their earth suits a little of us hitchhikes with them to wherever it is they are traveling to.
I have been experiencing this firsthand once again and it is a surreal and tender time to say the least. One’s mind tries to contain such a loss and there is no container vast enough I’m discovering.
It’s not being able to hear his voice, “Hey cuz, it’s just me, checking in to see what’s new?” Our shared childhood history, his memories of my brother, my mother, our grandparents and family time have traveled with him and I’m left scrambling for pieces left behind in his very wide wake which remains behind.
There are no shortcuts, I cannot outrun this, I know, believe me I understand this and I hear in my meditation time a gentle voice who whispers, “Stay just a moment longer.” Often in those moments where I did not bolt IS my healing.
As long as we love, we will experience loss, whether it’s a beloved human and or animal. I gaze at my almost thirteen year old mini Aussie and treasure our time as I understand what is around the corner. Almost as if I’m trying to prepare my heart, yet I know that is an impossible task to do. I’ve tried before and actually it works against me as it takes me out of the present moments that life is offering.
My healing once again if found submerged within nature. Muddy knees and epiphanies a term coined by Janine Benyus, the author of several books, one of them being, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. She says, “Nature runs on sunlight, uses only the energy it needs, fits form to function, recycles everything, rewards cooperation, banks on diversity, demands local expertise, curbs excesses from within, and taps the power of limits. In other words, nature relentlessly creates conditions conducive to life.”
I understand now why I’ve always actively sought nature as it’s a primal place where I belong and feel fully alive. In our third, third of our lives my husband and I purchased several acres of land in rural Upcountry on the island of Maui. When most are simplifying and downsizing I believe our souls led us here. Travel is not as alluring as it once was, thus venturing outside mimics a vacation that requires no packing and only asks that all of our senses remain wildly open.
Baby birds finding the bird baths for their initial first splash, spiders tirelessly weaving the most intricate webs, butterflies savoring our flowering trees, dragonflies coming out of hiding as the warmer months beckon their return. Trees bearing oranges, mangoes, avocados are plentiful and all nature asks of us is that we work alongside of one another. Trying not to overpower her and take notes of how she has been holding our world since the beginning of time and doing an adept job until humans thought otherwise.
In this season of loss I am most humbled and grateful for how faithfully and securely nature is holding me close to her breast. Beckoning me to listen to her heart and calibrate my breath with hers. She is ever present and is quite the show off these days bringing abundant surprises to see if I’m noticing. Oh, I am, I am and forever grateful for this place that can hold my shattered, broken and messy heart. She welcomes me home with each step I take out into her vastness and breathtaking beauty.
“I’ve decided to be patient with the parts of me slowest to recover, and you should be with yours. New life doesn’t always cooperate with the calendar. Some sorrows hang onto winter longer than we wish. But when they bloom, boy do they.”
~Jen Hatmaker
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