52nd Thursday

Dear WEb,
I am readying for the Return. Return to the 52nd Friday and the actual date of Phoenix's murder. I've noticed so much of my own inner responses, have been tracking and self-soothing, ritualizing, releasing, caressing, expressing etc etc etc. And just these last several days I've noticed other's responses to me. There are wimmin close to me who I think are quite uncomfortable with my Returning stuff. I've noticed an energetic pulling away when I broach the subject of the approaching dates. It's subtle. I don't think I am projecting. It's a slight turning away...a subtle attempt to shape me. It's not working. I am still being shaped from within and...I am noticing how perhaps for some they've reached their threshold of grief tolerance, or don't want me to stay in the trauma anymore or just are tired of the ride. I don't blame them, really. At one time I would have been just like that probably. Now, though, I will linger however long with myself and anyone else there in that space.

Time is funny. In some ways the actual day/night will be important to be Present to this weekend (which is Saturday, March 19) and in another significant way tomorrow being the 52nd Friday is vital because it is the night I came home from work to find Phoenix killed. While it's not been officially the full 365 days, on this 52nd Friday, I will be ritualizing for myself a Return to that part of me who also was killed. I'll be singing Life to myself, honoring and connecting with that part of me still back then, in shock, in a state of suspended animation. There will be no coersion to Return....no subtle expectation that I be Whole or be shaped a particular way. It will be a conscious connection, a conscious reaching and tending to my tender self there, back then.

And so, I turn the corner tonight. I believe it was 52 Thursdays ago Phoenix and I took a hike and he found that heart rock for me. I turn the corner with that and so much more in my hands and heart.
I love you, Phoenix.
Always yours,
Me