“Release to receive.”
The remedy of the right words clicks me into a breath of calm. I hover in momentary serenity and commit my mother’s mantra to memory.
Release to receive. This is the life-line that will repeat into a rhythm of breath; the life-jacket directed straight to me as I break open into a storm of deep, oceanic sobs.
Permission to cry, baby, permission to cry.
And I do. I grieve wildly.
I self-mother. I self-parent. I grant myself the fullest grace to allow unfiltered feeling to manifest and express itself in sensations that I accept in the present.
And in my own self-mothering, I call my mother.
She’s at a restaurant in Disney World, celebrating a younger sister who is a personality of fireworks, and in that liveliness of magic, she takes my call. She leaves the excited ruckus of families and entertainment and walks to the furthest corner to deliver a presence of listening that soothes me in Austin, in my rose gold room tucked at the back of the bungalow.
“Release to receive.” Her counsel clarifies the way forward.
Release: The judgment around the pain (and this alleviates the suffering), the critical voice that slams my worth and picks apart what I might have done wrong (nothing, baby, nothing), the resistance to feeling.
Release into the breath, into brave and complete cycles of breath that deliver me to my body, straight to the pain-point, and sustain attentive embodiment. Here the current of emotions can be honestly and courageously felt and in the feeling they are seen and in being seen they shift – when and if they are ready – into various forms of teachings.
Receive: The cultivated compassion I carry within me, my phenomenal emotional resiliency (yes, I own that, I own my past pains and my unique alchemy in distinct healing), the deepening and the ever-rising relationship I have with myself.
Receive the full experience, because this experience trembles in a life-saving lesson: Staying present in this is how you will strengthen your heart to remain open.
Release to receive propels a honey-soaked presence into meeting the rejection, and in the past, I would viciously react to the rejection. I would reject the rejection. I would toughen up and refuse to be hurt by throwing my energy into external going and doing.
“Oh? You don’t want me, well, I don’t even have the time for you.” And my busyness became a refuge to hide an ache that only gnawed and grew in an effort to erupt and be freed.
So this time, I release the pretend. I feel hurt and the hurt affirms a very human longing to be loved, my very human need to connect and feel safely accepted and seen.
Release to receive keeps me in tune with my healing, my processing, my grieving, and also vibrantly open to the life that is my life here in Austin. And there is love and winks of kismet and encouraging whispers to go here, ask this question, listen more softly. Aww, now I hear.
And if I am feeling this way, I think as I gather my focus to teach a yoga class, then others are feeling this way, too.
Rejection. Failure. Grief. Anxiety.
Emotional pain tidily tucked up.
So when I release self-criticism around my current pain, I receive others with brighter compassion, with deeper listening. I don’t need to specifically share the details of my story, but I can utilize the energy to connect and more widely receive another human being in all their dynamic complexity.
Release to receive reintroduces me to the arrival of October.
And October will always be my mother. October is my mother’s first trip to Austin and the long dress I adorn while I show Barton Springs and we venture to late-night movies for the Austin Film Festival and she’s celebrated as THE script queen (because her pitch punctuated in intriguing perfection). And my mother’s first trip is the birth of the mourning for my grandmother’s health, and the next fall, my grandmother will not be here with us.
October will always be my grandmother, a Libra who teased that her birthday month was the best of all, and as a spring baby, I agreed with her, because in Kentucky, autumn glows in gorgeousness. The fall blazes in scarlet and amber splendor, and the captivating brilliance of dying leaves teaches the beauty that comes when we let go, we release into the natural seasons of life, of things.
So I release into the season of fall, even if my Texas fall burns in a sweaty heat and the trees remain a paled green, and receive the growing darkness, the shorter day, the slight coolness as welcomed invitations to turn inward, to reflect.
October is reflection on duality, on releasing and receiving, the lightness and the shadow, the rooting and the rising, on this constant interplay that transcends into a wholeness that lets me feel the life that I am in, the life that I am. The sobs that soared out of my heart that one night on the edge of October showed me the depth of my capacity to love, and when I left the door open to that sadness, the strength of my self-compassion and self-love appeared.
And my mother appeared. When I let myself be seen in messy and wailing vulnerability, I was met with great tenderness, I was met by a writer who knew the right words to say. And in releasing my resistance to ache, I could wholeheartedly receive them.