Author: Jean

I used to be a person who got stuff done.

That came after the time when I was an abject failure, a loser, a criminal.

My life was over, then it wasn’t.

That is when expectations came marching in. I started marching. Fell in line.

Get things done. Once you get those things done, do more things, bigger things, better things.

I just finished sweeping the floor, now I will fold laundry. I get some things done.

But these days I don’t get me done.
I am not even sure what that means anymore.

Who am I?

Really, I want to go out deep in the woods, away from the world and all its doing, and be done.

But today the laundry.

Even to signal the completion of this post, I have to click on the word “DONE” with a check mark in front of it.

Today is the full moon.

I am drawn to ceremony. I have always been a nature mystic. I call it that not because it fits perfectly, but because of a lack of language. As a child it came as deep resonance and knowing, it did not and does not fit into the small container of words.

Today I light candles and sage, visit the river, bow to the earth, whisper my deepest prayers for healing and awakening.

I ask to be guided towards the manifestation of my highest good and my deepest healing.

Many people laugh at such notions, and I don’t care.

None of my spirit and what I know I belong to has anything to do with anyone else.

I do not push anyone toward anything. I am only trying to find myself.

I pray to the sun, moon, stars, heaven and earth, because that is the way that arises from my nature.

Today is the full moon, a day of manifestation.

I only wish to manifest more of myself.

Simple, pure, true.

We can hide from so many things. We can even hide from ourselves.

We can bury things out in the backyard, or way out in the woods, where we think they will remain forever.

Things once hidden come calling. Someday.

Truth telling is hard work, and it is slippery. Truth changes. It is hard to get hold of, and as soon as I think I have it, it shifts like the light and shadows in this room. The arc of story is not fixed. It is moving, just as the light of day will move through this space, into darkness, and back again.

I wonder what I am hiding, from others, but more from myself. I know some things, I can touch them. Others are there, things forgotten, neglected, things denied, things that hurt too much to exhume.

So they wait.

Movement is life.

That is a line from a poem I wrote in anticipation of my son moving away to attend college.

If the heart stops beating, blood stops flowing, lungs stop expanding and releasing, we die.

Since my son was born we have moved, and moved. 5 states, 3 countries, 2 continents. 8 homes in 18 years.

Each time we move is like dying and being brought back to life. It seems like it gets harder each time now. It takes so much out of me.

I love to dance, to run outside, to hike forest trails, do yoga, swim in a lake. Movement calls to me, and I go to it. It is a powerful agent of healing in my life.

I have been in this house nearly 5 months now. I force myself to my healing movement practices. My heart beating, blood flowing, lungs expand and release.

But in truth I am tired.

In truth I have endurance and stamina.

So when there is mention of a recruiter calling from London, I tighten, and want to brace. Curl up hard as stone. Become immovable, but that is not life.

Movement is life.

My 12 year old is standing in the kitchen dressed up as a Pink Lady. She is sweet, she is so innocent, well adjusted. She has a life full of abundance and privilege.

I started smoking at 12. I look at her and try to imagine her lighting up, like Sandra Dee at the end of Grease. It blows my mind. It is absurd.

I was not well adjusted, not even trying to be good.

I knew I was bad.

Halloween in the traditional sense is a day when we can more easily contact spirits and ancestors. It is also a day to fend off evil, to protect ourselves from malevolent forces.

I pause to consider today in that way. What forces and spirits I want to draw close, those guides out in front of me and within me, and what I want to ward off.

But I think all of it just wants to be seen, loved, set free.

A friend of mine and I have been discussing, belonging, goodness, and our culture of purity and performance.

I was not bad at 12, or 16, or 20, or ever. I performed a role I was pushed into. I surrendered to what I was told I was. I performed, and my performance lived. I embraced it. I wore a mask. Badness.

I perform now too. I wear a mask. It is one of goodness. Good mom, good citizen, repectful, trying hard to please, trying hard not to offend. Being good.

Neither mask in the end serves my truth, they both stifle and oppress.

I am conflicted and confused in all this. I am my own labyrinth. I think maybe we all are. We are complex, so much bigger than simplistic notions of good or bad.

I carry that with me today. I walk with it, dance with it, light a candle to it. May it all rise to its highest, most free form.

I went for a run after the dark faded to light.

The sun turned bright and I ran to reclaim my breath, to beat the wind off my body.

I run to clear my mind.

As I move I hear my breath, steady, feel my heartbeat, strong. Running always reminds me of the vitality, endurance, will, and fire that are so very alive in me.

The light on my face reminds me to claim the name my teacher gave me. Jyotika means light.

I cycle through these phenomena of forgetting parts of who I am, remembering, forgetting.

I have on various occasions had an experience of a voice whispering to me, “Remember who you are.”

My name is Jyotika, it means light.

Monday, the day before Halloween.

We get up early, it is still dark. Shorter days make 5 am part of night more than morning.

Coffee takes the edge off, but affirms the bitter. The coffee is dark. I am tired.

We go out to walk the dogs. The wind is whipping in our faces. The dogs walk in front of us on leashes, I can see their outlines like guides.

The day before Halloween, a day for the dead coming.

I lost my teacher over two years ago, a dear friend in February, my Grandmother in July. Cancer took them all. I think of them up ahead of me, their outlines there, subtle, untouchable, but real.

I want to believe that, but doubt always rushes in, hard. The wind slaps me in the face again, takes my breath for a moment.

My family is riddled with cancer, on both sides. I know that is probably what will take me.

I think about the scans you can have done to seek out cancer. It shows up as dark spots, shadows, dense. I wonder about the dark spots in me. I know some of them, I visit them often, but what about the ones that might be there waiting, seeds lying dormant, until the moment arrives and they grow.

Rainy Sunday. Staying inside.

Laundry, grocery list, unpacking, cleaning.
Domestic day.

Content with that because the weather is inside weather. I can see the trees through the window. Rain drips down the glass.

I sent a text to my son who is away at college. Call me, I said.

I look out the window, through rain, grey, out into the trees. I miss him and I wonder what he is looking at now. Maybe he is still in bed, in dreams.

I wonder what he dreams about.

I start to sort the socks.

Hiking this morning with hubby. Feeling so alive out in the woods at the rivers edge, off trail, skirting around rock ledge, on an almost cliff, just enough danger to warm me up from the cold air.

Earth will hold and sustain us, but she also demands presence and respect, attention, when we dare to go out in the wilds, the water, the cliff edge…if we are not respecting her with our full attention she will fuck us up. It isn’t personal, it is just her way.

Even if you are fully present and aware, things can happen out there, and they do. That is reality, we are vulnerable, things get destoyed, it is not personal. It is inevitable. We are guaranteed nothing.

Being born, existing, dying, are all we are entitled to in the natural world. And none of that is inherently personal.

Nature is beautiful, nature is brutal. That is honest. We are part of that nature.

The song “Lovesong” from the Disintegration album by The Cure was on the radio today. I listened to that album nearly every night of my freshman year of college. It lulled me to sleep with its deep and earthy tones, sadness and falling felt. Letting go into weighted, heavy, grieving places.

To disintegrate is something I pray for too, it is like death but still breathing. That way of dying in life. A way to freedom.

What I want most is freedom.

I am not used to the cold anymore. I never have been a cold weather person. The sting of it on my hands this morning made me ache inside for the island I lived on a year ago. Grief shows up in moments unexpectedly. The cold and the grief, an ache and a sting. These things live in the body.

I try to escape feeling. This is one of my things. I am an addict. I find many ways to numb out. I fool myself into thinking I am not an addict. I can’t escape myself though.

Being an addict is not the worst thing to be.

I have been taking pictures out in the woods of things that reflect my grief and loneliness back to me. Autumn gets me and where I am right now. Layers of fallen leaves in water, a dried husk of a blossom, mossy decay on a fallen tree.

I think about death a lot, many times during a day. I wonder if this is a rarity, or if we just don’t share this, because it is taboo, scary, uncomfortable, forbidden ground. I am ok either way.

Sometimes I wish I was dead, but I love my family so much. They save my life.

I remember being a little girl sent out to play in the snow. I mostly just stood there and told myself, “You will get to go back inside soon.” Waiting for the end, relishing the relief from the harsh cold.

When I was a little girl, about 5 years old, I was at my friend’s house, her mom was my babysitter. She had a black lab puppy. We went to take it outside and it got away from us. It ran into the street and was hit by a truck. It was completely disemboweled. I remember its body in a snowbank, the blood leeching out turning the snow pink then red, the guts spilled outside its body, its tongue hanging from its mouth. Her father stood over the puppy with a stick, shaking it, and yelling “What did you do?”. I remember the images, the words, but I don’t remember what I felt, except that it was so cold standing there. I don’t remember crying, though I must have. Death put its hand on me that day, out in bright sun shining on a bloody snowbank.

I need to go running, it is vital, a medicine…but I know it is still cold out there, so I am stalling. Avoiding. I will go though, as easy as it would be not to. I do possess strong will, and an undeniable perseverance to take care of myself so I can go on with this messy and magnificent life.

The things we do to keep going. The ways we survive. That is some awe inspiring shit.

I need to backtrack to something I said yesterday. I said I leave people. That is mostly bullshit. I have not left anyone in recent history, quite a few have left me. I hold boundaries, yes, but I am loyal to a fault and forgiving as hell. I don’t leave people unless they have shoved me out the door and slammed it in my face.

I do have a tendency to make myself wrong even when that is not accurate. I put myself down, I take the blame. I often do not deserve it. Just setting myself and the record straight, because it matters.