Phoenix

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Last Wednesday I had a session with an amazing healer right when I thought I couldn't go another step in this life without something major happening to lighten the pain I was experiencing in my heart and soul.

I had hit a wall and wanted to be done feeling heartbroken and sorrowful, uncomfortable in my own skin and completely terrified by the future. I'd been feeling bitter and resentful, too, when I thought of how my life, when it comes to loss by death, seemed to be the reverse of what we think of as the normal progression. Instead of becoming an adult first and then seeing both parents die and then living a long life and then watching a spouse die, I'd already seen all three foundational people leave this earth in terrible ways by the age of 35. I couldn't (still can't) imagine the rest of my life suffering through more losses than that. I just felt done. I wanted to trade in my heart and soul and life for another one. A do over.

I wanted to feel happiness for others who had both loving parents and a loving life partner. I wanted to feel gratitude for a beautiful sunset, my furballs, art, music, comedy, nature and all the other things that normally make my heart happy, but nothing was getting through the veil of sadness.

The healer saw me at the point at which I could no longer hold my shit together, even in public. I was a trembling, sobbing heap of sadness.

In my sessions with him, he told me that his spirit guide knew that Dave hadn't passed all the way over into the spirit world. He was stuck in the middle void because we were connected with an energy cord, a heart cord. He said that for both of us to go on and do what we needed to do, the cord would need to be severed. He also said he'd seen my soul pattern and that it was the Phoenix. A challenging soul that had chosen a life of suffering only to rise from the ashes and heal, first the self, and then the earth herself. He said I was an Earth healer and that the pain of the earth as we abuse her was my pain as well. I was here to help her in some way.

Now, to hear this and not dismiss it immediately is a testament to how vastly I've changed since Dave died. Before he died I didn't even really understand what a chakra was, or pay one iota of attention to healing arts, or the afterlife much less soul patterns and heart cords. I would have instantly dismissed this sort of information as quackery.

I no longer dismiss anything. Especially if it brings me healing, peace, or answers of some sort. I don't even care if any or all of my healing is because of the placebo effect. The result is the same. I feel better. I don't think much beyond that.

The sessions I had with him were intended to melt away the protective shell around my heart, keeping me from truly living and severing the cord keeping Dave in that middle ground and me stuck in so much pain.

I can say that since then, I've noticed the following (and I'm feeling extremely cautious about any and all good results since it's only been a few days and I know the tumultuous nature of grief and depression so well)...
1. I feel more able to feel. Both good and bad emotions are flowing a little more through me without crippling me.
2. I can enjoy food more than ever.
3. I am, almost without thinking about it, doing chakra breathing exercises and visualizing/meditating for the first time in my life. Meditating had always been incredibly uncomfortable for me and I'd have to force myself before.
4. My voice is stronger and there is a light in my eyes.
5. I feel more present.

I'm still not sleeping really well and I still have a tremor in my arms and hands that stubbornly won't go away but I'd say for the last few days I've felt more alive than dead and that's new for me.

A discovery I've had since the healing is that I've never allowed myself to throw a really good ANGRY fit for the loss I've experienced and the pain I've felt. When faced with adversity I get small and quiet and cry. Reacting that way, I disappear into my pain. Somehow, a new righteous anger has displaced a little of that and I've been feeling that it's also replaced some anxiety. Instead of disappearing into the pain and sadness, I felt larger than it for the first time.

I've felt more powerful than I can remember feeling in a long time, if ever. Also, more than a year ago, when I first sold my house and moved to Portland I became briefly obsessed with the phoenix bird. Some of my computer passwords contain the word phoenix and I considered a phoenix tattoo for a while.

I guess maybe I really am a Phoenix. Rising from the ashes isn't for sissies.

My Chakras are Messed Up

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When I quit my job after Dave died, it was for good reason. I had to move or stay isolated out in the middle of nowhere. Anyway, I didn't have it in me to continue to teach. It was too much for me to both teach and grieve.

Starting from scratch, job-wise, has been a test of my personality for sure. Having a steady job that I'd done for over a decade helped me feel settled and anchored in my life. It gave me an identity.

I've fought this lack of identity off and on in the last two years. A part of me gets that it could actually be seen as exciting that I'm starting over. I can technically do whatever I feel like doing (as long as I can continue to provide for myself). The rest of me longs for the security I used to feel. I thrive on security and routine.

And that's where I start to get in my own way. Instead of feeling okay with seeking out that which I love, doing that, and then seeing where it leads me, I fall back into the concept of "I need a job. Any job" and I begin to panic and then feel paralyzed and do nothing. I've put feelers out for a few part time jobs, but no leads yet and I'm vaguely relieved to not have to go through the interviewing and newbie routine at this time.

I've also played with going back to school over and over again since I resigned. Each time I hold one of these possibilities in my mind to see how they make me feel - I feel nothing but mild dread to numbness. Nothing in me says "YES". Is that fear talking or are all the options I've considered just wrong for me?

I saw an intuitive healer the other day. After she closed her eyes to connect to the divine for about a minute, she opened them and said "There is death all around you." Then she said "Someone died recently. Your mom?" After I corrected her and told her that yes, my mom died, but not recently, she went on to describe my chakras.

The crown chakra at the top of our head is supposed to be the place from which we connect to the divine. She said mine was like a storm, black, chaotic, crackling with lightning. She said "You cannot connect with anything bigger than you because you are in so much pain". She said my third eye chakra was "a flatline", meaning there was no way to get in touch with my intuition right now. Too much healing to do.

I don't have any actual experience with chakras. I can't see them or sense them. I have barely even read about them. I don't even yet know how I feel about intuitives or their powers but I was willing to give it a shot.

What I do know is that if I do have chakras, they probably do look or function as just she described them. I'm not able to connect to my intuition or a higher power because of the pain and grieving I'm still doing. So how the hell do I know what to do next with my life?

I understand that there is so much power in just doing. Taking the next step, even if you don't know what that actually is. That I could find a job, any job, if I tried and that I'm not trying that hard. I know that I'm getting in my own way when it comes to working, or at least believing that I can work again.

On the other hand, there may be a part of me that understands that my whole being - heart, soul, body, ALL of it - is under construction. And until the scaffolding is rebuilt (when will that be?!) I might have to think of THAT as my job. Beating myself up about not being back in the working world is intensifying my pain right now and I don't need that either.

I suppose what's really hardest for me is to feel purposeless and unproductive and to long for an identity again.

I feel like I'm taking the easy way out by not pushing myself to do something.

But I am doing something. I'm taking tiny steps. They're tiny because I'm just learning to walk again. When Dave was alive I could leap forward. Now I shuffle along, making progress too gradual to see in my daily life. There isn't a checklist I can work my way down to get me back to where I was before he died. It won't work that way. I'm not the same person.

I'm going to be okay and I'm going to find the right path, including in my career. I'm more than what I do for a living.

One day when I'm working full time again, who knows. Maybe I'll wish for this kind of freedom again.

Right now though I'm stuck and I feel like I'm blocking my own way. Though, maybe that's for good reason. Something in me knows I need a rest.