October 7, 2014 – The last bit of night

Listen to this post:

I’ve been waking these days somewhere between 3 and 4am.  It seems that all this menopausal body can sleep right now is about 5 or 6 hours.  I stay in bed and rest – not one for getting up to read.  I figure that if I’m at least resting my body and enjoying breathing, it’s better than nothing.  Thankfully, I don’t toss around, stressing about it anymore.

This morning I was wondering what to share with you today.  The stream that floated by contained all these stories of loss  – including my own.  It was Sunday morning and I was painting and listening to my music and Audrey Assad’s exquisite “I Shall Not Want” came into my ears.  I learned about her from a post written by David Brooks, where he noted that she’s often told by women that they listen to her music while in labor.  A wave crashed ashore:  grief that I’ll never have that experience, not just childbirth, but holding my own baby/ies in my arms.  It’s always there.  I no longer am a shivering ball on the floor, sobbing with the grief.  I can talk about it without the catch in my throat.  Yet, it bubbles up sometimes.

And then the paradox comes to me. I know in my knower, as my friend Joanne Cormier says, that I’d not be doing what I’m doing with my life if the in-vitro fertilization had worked. We’d have a 10-year-old now and I’d be Mom before anything else. I know me. I’d be focused there – and I’d want to be. I’d not worked so hard to become a mother at 40-something to then park my child in daycare to pursue my dream!  But I would not be painting, at least not with much regularity –and I’d for sure not be showing my art or teaching.  It’s hard enough for me to get myself to sit and paint sometimes now, without a child needing of me!

At the end of the fertility treatment road, it was 2004 and I had just left my contract position with Schwab in the city (San Francisco).  I jumped into real estate with my mom to do something – but the gnawing wouldn’t leave me.  In August I took myself to Rancho la Puerta in Tecate, Mexico for a spa week.  I spent the week doing only what I wanted to do – no sweat-‘til-you-bleed workouts, just dance classes, morning hikes, and looking at the sun through my eyelids.  I painted “Full Circle.”

It came to me that I needed to ask for help.  I prayed for the energy and inspiration to adopt (a whole odyssey in itself)  or to be given something else that would give my life meaning and purpose.  I got the “something else” – painting these watercolors – and now leading others in their painting journeys.

This is just my story. I think if we look, we all have a story of loss – of grief.  What lifts me back up is seeing what comes of it.   Saturday I was hauling the wood chips from the tree trimmings (it’s amazing now that the tree has been lightened up!) and randomly the thought came to me “what if Bill Wilson had not suffered from alcoholism?”  Millions of addicted people of all kinds would not have been helped with the 12 steps. Pain can be great fuel for transformation, for fostering connection – for bringing forth humanity. They say we are at our best when things are at their worst.  It’s a pisser that it’s that way, but it is that way!

I’m pretty certain that none of us escapes it.  It’s part of the deal of incarnation. We live a human life, we experience beauty, joy, pleasure, ecstasy even – and we have pain, loss and suffering. The light and the shadow – it’s all part of the bargain.  What I want for me, for you, for the world is to be able to see the light in the darkness.  I went out this morning with Bo to get the morning paper. It was still dark and I was ambushed by the beauty of the moon, nearly full, a shred of clouds over it, framed by the neighbor’s redwood trees. We can’t order up this kind of experience. We can just tune ourselves to notice and receive these moments when they happen.  My iPhone camera couldn’t capture it, but I wanted to share it anyway. I added a bit of color – because, well, that’s what I do.

Wishing you a lovely, lovely day,

Cara