Stay.

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

Today is my day off. I have done most of my 'day off duties' (ie housekeeping and cooking and such) and I look ahead at the "so- much-ahead of me" in this next month beginning with this weekend into next week and the following long weekend. I am at a pause place right now, taking stock...or not. Actually, just pausing before the storm...or whatever this flurry of movement ahead is in the next month or so. There is nothing I will be doing that I don't want to be doing...it's not busy-ness I will be involved in. All will be things/doings that are heart-centered. And...there is much. And now, for now, I am pausing, turning towards you, my dear Beloved Phoenix.

I miss you. Still. Always. Forever. I am being with how life is without you, how a relationship with Beetle is without you, who she is without you, how a relationship is with Myrrh without you, who Myrrh is without you, who I am without you and who/what my partnership is with J. without you. Sometimes I am delighted at what/who I find, sometimes, terribly disappointed and sometimes just neutral, unimpressed, gray. And the most challenging thing of it all is compassion for myself, for the other and for the situation as a whole. Shame likes to creep in and put a body cast on me, making me feel trapped, fixed, without choice and freedom. I slip into ways of being that are not honoring of any Truth, they are ways of fear, shame, and guilt. I forget who I've known myself to be in my Integrity and I become obsessed with two things: hiding and pleasing. It often is such a familiar disconnect that I hardly recognize it anymore until I suddenly begin feeling checked out, depressed, depleted, dull and uninspired. I have found myself here this week again after such a big opening last weekend where I felt a prolonged sense of happiness in the Living. Dark and Light...moving through the shadows....of the labyrinth.

Meanwhile I am seeing myself in all of my complexities, all of my depth and all of my breadth and trying to hold all of it, all of me in tender arms and hands, cradled, with gentle eye contact and humming or rocking. Like I would and have held you, dear Phoenix, through those nights of loud thunder and bright lightening...trying to calm and reassure you that no matter what, I will not leave! And I recall too that sometimes on those nights, it was important for me to be firm with you and tell you to lay down in your bed. It was almost like sometimes you got so freaked out by the sound and light, you forgot where to go, what to do, where to seek some ground again. And when you did come to your bed, I sometimes would have to just firmly hold you there, saying nothing but "Stay" feeling your whole body tremble with each next clap or flash. I must be like that for myself now too: reminding myself to go to my bed, to my room or outside by the pond, or to walk the labyrinth, or write to you, my Love, here on the WEb, telling myself "Stay" firmly and with assurance that this will change, my body will settle.

I love you, Phoenix. I am here "Staying" with myself without you.
Thank you for "Staying" with me in the ways that you do, both that I recognize and that I don't/cannot.

Melissa