Write about the rain.
The voice arises from within me, emerging from behind my navel, circulating up my spine, floating into my ears. The voice is a whisper, motherly and tender.
The voice booms from above me, a clear command issued in time with the shake of thunder, that like a dreadful and brilliant flash of lightning, illuminates the moment with nerve-startled awareness. The voice is an order, fatherly and direct.
I pause. Mid-sentence, mid-word, my pen hovers above my journal entry about my first day here in Fort Lauderdale.
To write about the rain, I must first listen to the rain.
And so I extend my hearing through my cottage Airbnb to the rain-smacked windows to the great darkness puddling around the cottage.
I listen … and my heart quickens. The wind relentlessly roars. The rain furiously whips. The storm, like that inner voice, is both raucously loud and chillingly still. This, I think, because I don’t complete my journal entry that night, is something I’ve never heard before, and the instincts of my ancients propel me forward.
Water invades through the heavily shut and locked front door, snaking through the invisible cracks and crevices.
Water trickles through the above light fixture.
Water, ghost-like, moves through the back wall, immersing the floorboards around the bed, swallowing the small expanse of the room.
I become water. My movements are fluid, responding to the rising threat.
I lift my suitcase on a stool in the adjacent kitchen. In a flash of brilliant clarity, I email my book to myself before abandoning my computer to the fate of the surging storm.
My backpack bulges with necessities (bread, water, avocados, wallet, and toiletries … and an organic chocolate bar).
My escape plan is clear – out the window because the front door is blocked by rising floodwater.
I peer through the window, out into the surreal fury of the thrashing storm. There are no streetlights, no lights on in the house in front of my cottage, no lights in the neighboring houses beside me. The water pools around the cottage, a little pond, but within my sight, I can see higher ground. The house in front of me is elevated. The pathway to the front gate is free of flooding. There is an escape route. But beyond the gate, I can’t guess the condition of the street, which was already excessively puddling earlier that day.
But there’s hope … hope in that higher ground.
I am the calm in the storm. Once, or actually a couple of times, astrologers have informed me that I have the capacity to be cool-headed in a crisis, and this internal fortitude clarifies my thoughts.
I message my Airbnb hosts, updating them on the situation, asking for them to please call me.
I call my family. My father is my weather-man, giving me live-reports about the whims of the storm. My grandfather’s caregiver, who knows I am in Fort Lauderdale, sends me life-lines of emergency phone numbers to call.
The Airbnb hosts do not call me, but they arrange for me to evacuate to a second unit next door – it’s on higher ground, safer than here. I am messaging with a property manager whose nickname on the Airbnb app is Sea Turtle (it’s actually Sea Trust, but in that maddening moment, my brain read it as Sea Turtle, so he will be referred to as Sea Turtle to be historically accurate).
Sea Turtle cautions that I should wait for the storm to end and then leave, head for the second-floor unit.
The water snakes into the kitchen, and I unplug the oven and the refrigerator right in time.
I once again ask Sea Turtle to call me, saying that I am scared because the storm is still raging, the water is still silently increasing, and I don’t want to wait to leave for the second-floor unit if the flood waters are going to continue to rise. This might be the most optimal time to leave. I’m concerned about getting out.
I do call 911, to notify them where I am, just in case something changes and my situation becomes dire … and I am told that I am not a priority. And I don’t take this personally.
I don’t take this personally because I am a strong woman. I have the physical strength and stamina to get myself out of this kitchen.
My sister texts me, “Don’t let the fears of others overwhelm you.”
And I lean back, back into the wisdom of my spine, the wisdom of my ancestors, the wisdom of instincts … and again, the voice emerges from behind the navel, like cutting through the static and finally moving the antenna to attune to the right station.
My station. My station of inner knowing. My station of inner sight. The eye that could see myself, the cottage, and even the condition of the street.
Go outside.
And I realize that what is frightening me, what is putting me into panic, and again, I do not typically succumb to panic during emergencies, is the water lapping closer to the electrical outlets. The growing panic is because I am not listening to my impulses.
Go outside … into the storm.
And that is what I do. Instincts carry me through – out the window, through the water, to the pavement, to the gate blocked by a fallen palm frond, to the flooded street, to the porch next-door that is my light-house, to the upstairs loft … to physical safety.
To higher ground.
In drenched jeans and a white-knit sweater, I hoist myself up to the kitchen counter, and grant myself permission to sit in stillness, listening to the rain-whirling, wind-howling darkness.
On higher ground, I let my defenses completely crumble.
I let myself grieve a dream I had held about moving to Fort Lauderdale/Miami, because I had felt … safe here. I felt safe to be my fully expressed self here … my past few visits had been so bright and affirming in spirited, kind-hearted connections, in feeling alive and enlivened, in feeling beautiful and bold in my skin. I felt safe to be outspoken here about my deepest passions … about medical freedom, about our most basic human right of bodily sovereignty. I could envision creating a life here, having a community that mirrors my values, sharing my gifts and feeling appreciated in return. I could envision finally … arriving as me.
But what would be reported as a “biblical” and a “1 in 1,000 chance storm” … that I had just happened to be there for … had uprooted all my deep-seated fears around safety, flushing them to the surface of my consciousness.
I had placed my feeling of safety, like a permission slip to be fully myself, outside of myself. And true safety is cultivated internally.
Because there will be storms – literally or figurately, or both – and the invitation is to cultivate the inner roots that dig deep, so the true foundation of Self cannot be shaken.
After the storm, I blink open my third-eye, that all-seeing gaze, and scan my inner terrain. What came to light that needs to be tended? What scared aspects of myself need to be embraced as sacred – that fear of powerlessness, that fear of vulnerability, even the struggle to meet these parts of myself. Come, come, come home.
After the storm, my friend David sends me an Elvis Presley song called “Pocketful of Rainbows,” and his syrupy voice narrates my evening routine. Tara serendipitously texts a compliment about the biscuits I made for her darling family and this bright-light of a message warms my heart tremendously. Diane includes me in a prayer email, and a neighbor, a hurricane survivor, emerges out of her garden like a Floridian Goddess and embraces me and counsels lovingly, “Give this time.”
After the storm, I rest on a furry blanket and a bodyworker focuses on resetting my nervous system. He helps me breathe fully, clearing the residue freeze out of the top part of my lungs, uncoiling the fright clenched in my intestines, so my belly can sigh into liquid ease. I am amazed at the sentient intelligence of these organs.
And I have raw respect for this body – for the strength and stamina utilized to rescue myself, and it also deepens my passion for championing on health and vibrant wellbeing … and I can be a cheerleading advocate for bodily sovereignty, for the intrinsic awesomeness of the body, wherever I go. I don’t need the backdrop of Florida to stand within my truths.
After the storm, I sip a green tea at Starbucks and revisit my old journal entry, the very first in my diary … the one that documents the beginning of a stormy night in Fort Lauderdale and abruptly concludes because I listened to that inner voice that advised I write about the rain.
I can do that now.
Write about the rain.
And in writing about the rain, I write into the fear, I write into the courage, into strengthening the inner container to hold both. I was always safe during that storm. That inner voice cast a life-line – seeing me through the storm, to the shore of a tomorrow that was sun-lit and bright, to this moment that delivers me to see a wholeness always present even and especially when I am healing.
After the storm, I soften into being more me – fearful and courageous, all at once. This is the cultivation of inner safety that emerges after the rain, a tending to the internal garden that roots me deeper into the spirited, heart-humming bloom of home.