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Dearest beloved Phoenix on the WEb,
Last night I found myself on the floor again. It has been a long time since I have collapsed like this. Cascades of feelings poured through me for hours, the core of which was that deep deep felt sense of loss, missing you.  This is the first day of March: 3-1-13, such a lovely symmetrical date.  March carries so very much life and death in my personal Wheel of the Year.  This round it carries in addition the first day that I will not be employed by GE.  Yes, my last day was yesterday, the last day of the month of February.  I know it was the right thing to leave, it was my choice and my timing.  I said my conscious goodbyes to folks and to the space over the last two weeks, so I've had time to let go in ways that I wanted to.  I have so deeply appreciated the employment, many of my co-workers and the folks that I served there.  That position was a container for me of so much personal change.  I had folks remind me of the time I chopped my hair off! One brought me a photograph of me when my hair was long and my uniform was green!  Now my hair is short and my uniform is blue!

 I arrived there 6 1/2 years ago planning only to stay a short while and months stretched into years over the course of which I lost you, beloved Phoenix, I let go of my partnership with beloved J., I began something new with O. and so much additionally in between.  These are huge life transitions in the course of these almost 7 years!  And it was the container of GE that held a space for me to continue to engage in life in a particular way in spite of the times when I would go there with swollen eyes from crying half the night before or when I would show up hardly 'there', a ghost even to myself.  There was a beloved sister there who was my link to what was real, no matter how bad it got.  I could go to her and she would understand.  I remember several days there after you were shot, I would have panic attacks between shifts. I carried a homeopathic remedy, Ignatia, with me which would often help mitigate them but/and it would take some time.  Those days, I would go to RW, my sister, and she would tell me to go, go! do what I needed to do, she would cover for me.  I would get myself out the door to the pond there and walk with such intensity as if I could outrun the awful panic that was chasing me.  And it worked every time, thank Goddess.  I have so much gratitude for things like this that were part of that container to hold me through. 

And so, I've said goodbye to that container.  I dissolve it as it has served us well, giving it back to the well of creation.  And now, I am in the Void.  I asked myself yesterday what that is like this time, this particular Void and the answer was startling: it is a place between She and I.  It is calm, it is connected, it/we is trusting.

So, then...how does one end up on the floor from that place?  Well, sweet beloved guardian Companion of mine... we have learned together that it is never just one thing, nor rarely a linear sequence of one things.  The WEb, we know, the WEb.  What I do think I understand about it all is triggers.  Even though I have and do feel that Void as all I have said,  the absence of something that has grounded me for so long through so much is triggering of the other intense times of loss when I could not access trust or She and I or anything but the HUGE cascade of feelings that washed me onto the floor last night, the bottom being the absence of physical presence of you, of J., of O. of my twin.  It was and will always be inconsolable grief. Such an easy thing to name, inconsolable grief, and the words don't even touch the enormity of the meaning/reality of the experience. Inconsolable grief: that which no one, nothing will ever be able to fill, mend, repair, soothe.  An endless gaping wound of loss that streaks through my heart, down my left arm, through my fingers that reach for some physical contact of memories of times when the missing match was there. 

So, that is where I went last night again.  I did not try to stop it or redirect or numb out. The cascade had its way and took me with back to you and the beginning of this month of life and death.  Sweet Beetle and Myrrh slept with me all night long even though their presence was not what/who I needed/wanted.  This morning, though, Beetle curled against me like you used to do, Phoenix.  It was not you, it didn't fill the missing match and...she is so my girl, my sweet devotee, offering me all she can.  I am grateful.  And...still in all of the feelings, not wanting to have to explain to anyone anything.  I am hoping today to feel better enough to go for a walk with Beetle and do some errands, gently finding my way in this place of Void, a Winter Solstice here on 3-1-13.

Much love to you. I am so grateful to have a place to come 'talk' to you, my sweet beloved Phoenix.
Me

Reaching out to you

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,

What is it that I have come to say? I miss you. This is one way I try to reconnect with you.  Yesterday while walking around downtown, I encountered a large brindled hound named Maizy.  As I was greeting her, she leaped into my arms, front paws and giant torso.  While at the time I felt immensely happy, I don't think the meaning registered right then. It was another experience of my body knowing what was happening before my mind did.  Later I cried about how familiar that felt for a large brindled dog to jump into my arms!  You, Phoenix, you.  I miss you.  And interestingly, this hound dog was a Plott hound (Beetle's people!) with your heavy brindle markings.

I am feeling discouraged.  There are many things that are unsettled about another class beginning, about a space for our dances,  some relations feel a bit uneasy and I'm having some physical pain with my ovary today which is causing me some concern/doubt.  Just overall I feel low grade anxiety, like there is someone just around the corner ready to criticize me and what I should be doing or not doing.  I know this is some of the 'old stuff' I am working to let go of my past.  Trying to replace it with Trust.  Trust amidst the anxiety.  Trust flowing down from my heart to my ovary.  What if I do it wrong? What if I do it right and it still doesn't make any difference to the outcome? What if something sudden happens and I don't have time to prepare?  Am I being foolish?

Oh, Phoenix. Oh, Ovary.  Oh, Goddess.

Reaching out/in to you.
Love,
Me

Making a note

Dearest Phoenix on the WEb,

I just want to make a note that I feel things are possible now, not so hopeless with my health situation. There's nothing else I need to say about that right now.  Just feeling happy, hopeful and in Her hands and there are so many other times I feel so many other things that it seemed like a really good thing to make a note of this.

It is just past the zenith of Winter and we are in the Deep. I have been despairing about various sundry of things.  Today I have been thinking of the rose, our rose that blooms in May and how that will be to see it again this coming 200013th year.  I feel happy imagining that, looking towards that lovely first blossom that you send back to me from the grave.

My love,
Me

Good Solstice morning to my sweet Phoenix on the WEb,

I woke early to watch the live stream of the Newgrange sunrise, but the cloud cover prevented being able to see anything.  However, of course, I know it happened...the energy of the light moved through the passageway and lit up the triple spiral, beginning another beloved Earth cycle of Winter Solstice to Winter Solstice!  And...perhaps, as many have prophesized, the beginning of a new era.

It was a long night.  Technically, the longest one of the year.  And, internally it was long, though certainly not the longest in my internal year.  There have certainly been longer ones.  Last night after circle I was saying goodbye to someone and she mentioned she was going to be traveling to a place in New Mexico where I had been years ago on Summer Solstice.  Actually it was a place J. and I traveled to to meet other close friends for a celebration of women; J. and I were an active part of the celebration weekend.  Women from all over the world came to be a part of this, women who I have respected as feminists for years, women who were leaders of the second wave of feminism and women who are now part of another wave.  It was a big deal, and a big deal to be an included part of it.  As this person was talking about going to the town where J. and I stayed with our dear friends S. and J. who owned a women's lodge, I was flooded with WuWu excitement in connecting to that time and space.  I quickly responded and told her where the lodge was in relation to where she would be and as I began to speak, my body cracked and my voice fisted the words as they squeaked through my throat.  I didn't want to tell her the whole story of this place and what it meant to me, in fact I hadn't totally seen what it has meant to me now, here from this place in my life.  After all, as our lives change, so do our relationships with the memories of the past.

So, I noticed the change in my voice as I spoke, found an easy way to leave the conversation and later cried about it.  Still the meaning hadn't arrived until early this morning when I couldn't watch the live streaming of the sunrise in Newgrange and I went back to bed in the dark.  Then, I got it, Phoenix.  I got what that memory is to me and why my throat responded with a clutch to the the words, the sharing of it in such a superficially social way.  You see, yes, it was literally on the weekend of Summer Solstice of 2007 and it was metaphorically the Summer Solstice of Ph. and Sc., our time together as Feminists, as Goddess Wimmin, as Shamans, as Partners in this tradition.  It is where we were not only partners of life, we were Shaman partners.  I remember hiking up into the hills the morning of the opening ceremonies and we found an area on the side of a mountain that overlooked the town and the mesa.  There we got very clear what we were doing and why we were doing it...for women, for the women who have come before.  It was awesome to have that focused comraderie with J.  And later at the ceremony, it was beyond words what it felt like to do what I do and witness what she does and be Together in that.  I still remember the feeling of the tears of joy flooding down my face as I watched the room and J.; I was in Awe.  The only way I can articulate it is this: it was the Summer Solstice of our Beingnesses, our Essences, our Quintessence together.

And so, here on the dawn of a new Era, a new Cycle on the Wheel, I hold this precious Light to my weary Heart.  You see, Phoenix, I am grateful for this piece because I have been taught the language of The Wheel and now I live it, so I take great comfort in being able to locate things in their natural cycle.  It takes away some of the shame of things/relationships etc not lasting forever.  J. and I had an incredible Summer Solstice.  Now we are in the void.  No one knows what comes from the void at any time.  And...I have seeded some peace there now.  Or, perhaps, some peace has seeded herself there now with this memory, this meaning, this illuminating that has happened inside me, even though I cannot see it, per se.

Thank you, Phoenix, for this venue to come speak Heart to you.  Maybe new worlds happen quietly like this....

Your beloved Companion,
Me

Giving Thanks

Dear Beloved Phoenix on the WEb,

On this day, Thanksgiving of 2012, I remember you and give great thanks for your love continued from across the veils.  I miss your sweet body and love incarnate.

Always and all ways, my love,
Me

Many Miles

Dear Phoenix on the WEb,
It's been many miles now since you were taken. Today in my heart,  I've been in those last days with you because I taught that class on Women Who Run With the Wolves again today for the fifth time since then. That was the last class I taught before that night, in fact, it was the night before you were shot when I taught this material. This evening, after class, I've been shedding many tears, missing you, wishing I knew what was going to happen before it did so I could stop it. Wondering in looking back at the 'signs' or what seems like they may have been signs, why I couldn't stop it, why the signs didn't tell me exactly what was going to happen. Why being on the WEb didn't serve me enough to stop it, save you, interrupt the violence.  Why my last goodbye was not more focused.  Why the week before I was so bereft without true understanding that perhaps that was because I may have sensed what was coming.  I mean I was feeling crazed; I have it all recorded on my calendar for some reason.  It was that unusual.  I don't understand.  And all I am left with tonight are the tears and the words to a song called "Many Miles Before I Go": "I will try but I will stumble, I will fly, you told me so. Proud and high or low and humble, many miles before I go".   Plus today in class one of my students talked about a dream she had with her beloved dog who recently died this year.  She was with him in the dream like he was alive just like it was real.  She didn't want to wake up and come back to this reality and cried all the way 'back' awake.  I wanted to drop and curl up and remember those kinds of dreams with you and not come back either.

Later as I was able to quiet and be with myself more exclusively, all of this has surfaced, all this reliving.  The chaos and meaninglessness of it all then and for all these many miles since.  I've let myself just go wherever with it all: the guilt, the powerlessness, the victimization, the collapse all over again.  I wrote about it in my journal, spilled out all the self-doubt and the complete madness of it all.  Then something else happened.  I am not even sure I can articulate the felt sense of the 'it' of it. There wasn't even a sequence, I don't recall.  Suddenly, though, if there were a timelessness to 'suddenly', another awareness/consciousness came.  She was not in the middle of things, she stood on the edges.  She didn't shame the repeating.  She didn't comment at all on that. It was simply an eye that sees from many miles away, that has lived these many miles since you were killed. She has a keen knowing of this pain still and isn't dislocated from it at all.  She also carries the many miles since you've gone. It's like maybe how the stars feel sometimes to me.  They blink at me so I know they register my presence but/and it is not important to them that everything make sense, even that I make sense.  They are there regardless, steady and present moving in their cycles across the sky. 

J. sent me a card this week that simply said on the back of the photo of a heron: Be Happy.  While I wish it were enough for someone to say that to make it so, I have to admit that in a way it translated inside me as "Be Free" of guilt.  Go on with your life.  I set you free.  Maybe even, but not likely, but close enough: I forgive you.  How does one thank the one person who can gift you such a thing? Whether it's right or not, she IS the one person who could gift me that.  And she did.  I think, Phoenix, she freed me to turn a corner, to experience this new consciousness of She of Many Miles Who Stands at the Edges.  She who holds all of it in the senselessness of it.   She who lets go of the need to understand.  And yet, still understands deeply so very much.  Mostly though, she wears the many miles.

So, that line: "I will try, but I will stumble" seems to resonate after feeling set free, released from something of the pain of the past.  All of this has come together inside me tonight after this fifth anniversary class. "I will fly, you told me so" I sing to you, Phoenix and to J. 

I hope you hear the love and gratitude for you, Phoenix. I will never not want to feel you close and am grateful for the opportunity to remember those dreams of you.  I am grateful for you, for our many miles together while you were alive and now, after you have gone. 

My love to you many miles more,
Me

Duck, Death and the Tulip

Dear my beloved Phoenix on the WEb,

There is a children's book by Wolf Earbruch (2011) called Duck, Death and the Tulip.  Duck feels a presence near by, has for a while, but one day she notices how close this figure has become. It is Death.  At first, Duck is frightened and befuddled then she relaxes and they become friends.  They romp together and rest together quietly.  One day, the inevitable happens and Duck dies.  Her friend Death takes her to a stream, places her gently into the currents with a tulip on her chest and nudges her on her way.  This has significance again in my life, more so than ever, it seems, in the last several days.  I think I see where I'm going a bit more clearly.  Strangely enough.

Thursday of last week I walked into the kitchen at work and there in the large sink was a dead pig, skinned and pale, legs straight up, gut exposed ready for some sort of extraction.  I gasped and almost threw up then I cried.  I cried, Phoenix, for what humans do.  I cried for liking bacon (which I will never eat again).   I cried for the life that was that pig and her tribe.  I cried for you, Phoenix, for the shell that was left for me to find that night you were shot.  That shell that had been brutally murdered then dragged to a spot for me to get.  I cried right there at work amidst coworkers who were uncomfortable with the emotion.  Later that same day, I went to see a friend who was dying of cancer in hospice care.  When I walked into the room, I think I gasped quietly so as not to alarm anyone.  I've not seen anyone so close to death, skeletal and drawn.  I spoke to her, sang to her and gradually adjusted to this living life in front of me.  The next day when I saw her, she had just died.  I was there for 4 hours with her and her sisters and as time passed, I watched her face change, let go, relax into the death.  I too relaxed into her death.  And, something else.

My grandmother died this year.  She was 103 and I sat with her in April.  We sat and stared out the window, watching the wind blow leaves, flowers, branches and an American flag.  I have never felt such peace with anyone like that outside of circle.  She remarked to me how much she appreciated just the quiet and not talking.  When I left her that visit, I knew it was the last time I'd see her and I knew it was time for me to follow through on a long time interest in hospice work.  In fact she died two months later and I began hospice care work shortly after that.  It was time.

Phoenix, I am aware of this current carrying me.  I have felt this with me for many years, much like Duck: this presence and knowing of something lingering nearby.  I've had glimpses. And then long stretches of not knowing, feeling lost.  Now I feel like Death has laid me down into a stream of life, handed me a tulip and nudged/pushed me on my way.  I feel the flow and see how maybe all the trauma, death and divorce have some how woven this stream/current for me.  I am beholden to Death in this way.  I do not know how else to speak of it.  Beholden to Death and Life in this way.

And what must I let die in order to let go?  Guilt.  Not responsibility. No, I will never not feel responsible for the devastation I have caused another.  I see now, though, I cannot hold myself back from living a life I chose.  Death has showed me something of the way in Life.  I am truly grateful. 

Love,
Me