Twenty years ago today I was cracked open, awoken by the torrent of life spiraling through me in the waves of contractions of the fast and furious birth of my darling daughter, Malea. My belly, a perfectly ripened fruit, had descended into my loins and joined the divine force for this great sunflower to bloom, to be born, on summer solstice.
One year and one day ago I found myself, low and behold, on the shores of Bali, unbeknownst to me, on Her winter solstice, setting what remained of my daughter, her ashes, free into the ocean of love and mercy.
My daughter died and it took me thirteen years to die. I had to die to all of my old beliefs and ways of perceiving and seeing the world. My mind and ego had to die. I had to learn new ways of being instead of thinking, doing and planning, designing and scheming. Everything I thought I was or thought I had was lost. Every time I came up for air another rug was pulled from there reminding me that nothing was solid. The only thing that is consistent is change. I had to see the only way for that rug to become a magic carpet was to let go, let God and believe that the Beloved, the beauty and the magic, was inside of me. I had to learn what was to be a Mother, a lover, friend only to discover that the only true Friend is within.
I was sleeping and had wrapped myself in a cocoon of contrived safety. I had anesthetized myself into a numb stupor on a host of medications, pot and sometimes, to my greatest demise and demons, alcohol. I misunderstood and tried to make my ground solid through the heaviness of my own stagnation. In the paralysis of my sorrow if I tried to dance the music would stop at my broken heart with a wave of grief so deep I would be drowned, gasping for breath under my own tears. When I opened my mouth to sing my breath would seize my heart, choking my throat and my voice would crack into broken sobbing. Better safe than more sorrow.
In the same way I had to surrender to the birth force in order to not be completely consumed by pain, nature’s brilliant and beautiful hormones kicked in and after being turned inside out I had bloomed and birthed a baby.
Today, again, I have been turned inside out and upside down. It is a spiritual birth. Only after surrendering to the Divine’s will the pain has morphed, unfolded and set me free . . . flying, her Soul, my own, flying in Eternity.
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