I am coming home.
To a heart ready to receive all of me.
To a holy woman’s body ready to revel in sensitivity, sensuality, soul-lit creativity.
To an in-breath ready to ripple from the expressiveness of my throat to the kingdom of instinct that is my belly, and then mirroring the miracle of nature, like the ebb and flow of a wave, an out-breath that empties exquisitely.
I am coming home after a heartbreak that whispered, “What if this grief could be the heart opening?”
I am coming home to my essential need for beauty, and how beauty replenishes and restores me like a tall glass of fresh water.
I am coming home to my inner guidance which sends messages through lines of poetry, British movies, and a cranial sacral massage therapist.
Let the soft animal of your body love what is loves, writes the poetess Mary Oliver.
Her words echo throughout my being when I enter the massage therapist’s room, which is like a comforting cocoon of soothing shades and dim lighting. The soft animal of my body craves this cave-like darkness, to curl in closer to self and feel to heal.
The soft animal of my body is hurting. A grief must be felt. A mourning must occur. My golden retriever has crossed the rainbow bridge. So the soft animal of my body coos and calls for naps, hot Epsom salt baths, baked sweet potatoes with kale, and long walks along the ponds.
Grief is so physical, I tell him, my massage therapist who is a family friend. And the grief of losing my dog is one of the reasons I find myself here – on this blanketed table, back of the heart adjusting to the cushions, feet cozied in two layers of socks.
Subtle touch. My nervous system calms as I attune to his – my body remembers how to breathe. My belly rumbles. A good sign, but I still blush. My belly becomes liquid, granting me full-breathing access to the instincts, intelligence and intuition that richly reside in my small and large intestines, my kidneys, the waterways along my spine.
I relax deeper and deeper, returning to a sacred time when I existed within the dark waters of my mother’s womb. And here, and my body remembers this truth, and my massage therapist serves a guide, there was a time when my heart reigned above my brain.
The heart came first, lifted above the brain, and at some development stage, the heart masterfully toppled in between the brain, the lobes separating like elegant curtains for the fated summersault, and settled into the sanctuary of the chest.
That ever-loyal beat sings such a gentle and persistent song to come home to this truth.
The heart-work is in the re-remembering, in the softening, in cultivating a life that truly nourishes the soft animal that is the body.
This winter, I’ve been trying to tease out my plans. But I simply don’t know what exactly is next. I’ve been frustrated with my guidance system. I’ve had several shaking fists and sobs about feeling so perplexed and lost, only to find, that when I open my palms and surrender to not knowing that I can sense and appreciate the little nudges of guidance that are being sent my way.
The nudge to reach out for a cranial sacral massage.
The nudge to “write my way out,” as a song lyric goes from a Lin-Manuel Miranda song.
The nudge to revisit a 2018 PBS Masterpiece adaption of E.M. Forster’s novel, Howards End. And how the artistic beauty of this particular series speaks to a creative ache within me.
I want my creative work to be beautiful. To inspire a breath. To entice a homecoming. I want my life to be beautiful, and by beautiful, I mean enlivened by soul, by intentionality, by a gratitude that generates breath-buoyant presence.
My muse wants my work to be on the glossy pages of books. It’s nudging me to lovingly thank this blog, and this online space, and my dearest readers for all your support and receptivity, and to trust and leap into the unknown.
I don’t know exactly how my writing wants to reshape and redirect. I do know that the soft animal of my body wants books, wants my words to not only exist on a screen, and/or if it does, the container will be very intentional and curated, just like this blog, but different.
I have written a public blog for over a decade. I did this to find my voice, to rescue, repair and rejuvenate my feminine voice after years of academic writing, and to play with my writing, and to enjoy the process of creative expression. And it’s now time for a golden goodbye, an ending that will create space for a new beginning.
And there are many beginnings in endings. The body knows this. The soft animal of the body trusts life. We are nature, we live in cycles, and in seasons. My dear golden retriever, Gavin was a true chapter of my life. I miss him. I miss the force of his vitality. He loved his life and his family with a fierce affection that could leave me breathless, but his spirit reminds me to breathe, to howl, to be heart-open to it ALL.
What if instead of being heart-broken, I could let the grief open my heart?
My guidance these days is to lean back and move sideways. A riddle. I don’t know what that means. But I have a glimmer of an idea … leaning back initiates a connection with my spine, with my wise and well ancestors, creates the spaciousness to witness, frees up my belly to breathe, and moving sideways seems to suggest that forward movement sometimes comes in unexpected ways.
Who wondrously knows. Maybe it’s a dance routine I’m meant to learn, but I’m staying curious, and I keep coming home to trusting those words that are spoken in sensations and feelings.
We are all walking each other home, as Ram Dass says, and your presence has been felt in this journey, and I am soul thankful that you have honored my writing with your witnessing. To be seen, to be heard, to have a safe space for creative expression are essential to being human, so heart-shining gratitude for reading, for receiving and for musing along with me.
Let’s end by beginning to notice the flow of our breath, the song of our heart, the support of the earth beneath us and the air that surrounds us.
Let’s end this time together by softening into this shared moment – and when we connect from that place of heart and soul, linear time evaporates and we elevate to timelessness – and center within the heart.
Let’s end with how we started off from in the beginning – that the heart resided above the head.
Let’s lean back into that truth and move sideways/forward with the heart as our ever-loving guide, and be vibrantly present for the ever-now life ride.