Tag Archives: death

Embracing Life and Death: A Journey of Surrender

23 Aug

As its most elegant expression, our Moon Cycling facilitates a way to understand/experience ‘being with’.
Being with… the span of our lives, long or short, birth to death- and the beauty and terror we are capable of holding/encompassing as human beings.

Being with our Experience, our lived experience of the events of our life as they occur to us…present, before thought, before our concept of :how: things ‘should’ be in order to maintain our often narrowly conditioned narratives and labels.

I am learning again and again to surrender into a darkness that holds not terror, but healing, a darkness that is ultimately the bearer of light-

It’s a surrender to the depths, in the depths, to that which is, that which holds me regardless of who I am, what I’ve achieved, how i am or the choices I make…unconditional….. ultimately, of course, we name it love. It is not romantic. It is a rough passage. A dark night.The descent is not for the faint of heart.Religious? Goddess? Spiritual? Christ? Pieta? Yes, yet just more labels.

Experientially, for me, IT is what is, and it holds with such grace and partnership that slowly I am unfurling. Allowing -this- IT – mysterious darkness bearing light- to be the Maypole I find myself joyously dancing around as my life is woven into such rich beauty around me.

Witnessing my moms passing is the wildest, scariest inconceivable leap into the unknown yet. (She is still here, but hanging by an ever more worn thread.) No one ever really prepared me for this one, this particular event. This is my Death Doulaness, the Death Cafe – allowing/creating an opening so I (which has become a WE) can be present with the darkness and learn to seed into it vastly- relying on the immanent- and eminent possibility -of life- to continue uninterrupted in its daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, rounds.Talking helps. Soothes. Normalizes. Allows the hard to be easy(er). Community. We do better together.

To me- every religious teaching hints at the embodied expereince of this leap of ‘faith’- The ancient Mysteries, Bohm’s implicate and explication order, every Labyrinth, Newgrange Spiral, Tarot Fool, Eschers’ discontinuity, Geb’s flip, Minoan Bull Leapers-, YingYang, the Resurrections – a whole world of countless motifs call to us across all humanity- all singing the same ancient song…dancing, because well, IT all ends and begins with Love- which is a passage. A movement. A twist, a leap. It allows us the womb and the tomb, the Pieta, who holds birth and death in her arms and says a vehement yes to both, not knowing how the hell it will unfold- but knowing it will, and she will be shaken, not stirred —– more powerful and present for the holding of opposites as they resolve themselves again and again in her arms.

🙏❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

New beginnings..from endings

26 Jun

Why don’t I do what I want to do? Why am I afraid? This New Moon, I’m planting seeds of desire. Because who really wants to plant seeds of discord that will reflect back the same? No thanks.

So, by posting this video (below), which may be bad, or good- the point for me was to post it. To post a video for new moon. On the new moon. Not about the moon per se, but the cycle it represents, that of preparation for the understanding that Life is very much inclusive of this thing we call Death.

If you’ve watched it, the absolute clincher for me in actually sucking it up and deciding to post it was that my intended length was 11 minutes. Voila, the video clocks in at 11:08. oy.

This for sure today, was the thing that scared me most. A done deal, no justifications necessary for my intellect, terrifying to my emotions. What if I suck…I’m not an expert…Oh fer feks sek. Get over it.

That said, my mom’s dementia scares me, and the fact that on her discharge papers from the hospital yesterday, it clearly states she was admitted with DVT (deep vein thrombosis) in pregnancy.

WTliteralF.

I’m gonna have a sibling! Matt’s gonna be a middle child! Dear God. She’s 87.

Anyway, it gave us a laugh in an otherwise fraught two weeks. Oliver if it’s a boy, Bethany for a girl…

So that thing you want to do? The Thing that is so clearly your next step? The thing that only you know how to do? The thing you cannot do? Just Do It. (no diggety)

Find that person who will gently nudge you in the right direction. That person that when you look them directly in the eyes will tell you: Yes. It may be scary, may require laying down a burden of past beliefs, probably requires a whole new outlook. But yes, you are indeed the only one suited for the job. No one else can ‘do’ your next step. Likewise, this time, no one else (but you) can look you square in the eyes and say ‘It’s go time.’ 

my podcast beginning… Notes fron the Edge.

Death Cafe

7 Jan

Coming up January 15, 2025