emergence

is the title of my journal for this season. a book i'm reading talks about the chrysalis of a butterfly and how something in the caterpillar knows when it is time to chrysalize. (i don't know if that is the right word and i really don't care.)

one can be thrust into this cocooning experience by a sudden change, the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship. or all of the above.

i'm not sure what to do right now. how to be. who i am. where i go from here. i just know what i have told myself every time something rocky hit in the past, do the next thing. just the next thing.

i'm not sure how it will turn out. if things will make sense some day. i am guessing hindsight will be helpful, but for now, it is all uncertainty. and pain. and i must sit with it and experience it afresh. see what lessons i have yet to learn from this dread companion. i had not thought this would be happening now. it never crossed my conscious mind, but something in me knew. i heard myself speak and my friend whom i can be most honest with heard it, too. she even pointed it out to me at times when i'd say stuff.

did you hear what you just said?

yes.

sheepishly i'd reply, because i am wise inside even when i pretend not to know. and so are you. wise inside, that is. we know things in our knower.

so tonight at belly dancing class, the instructor walked over to me. mind you, she has not instructed me at all, one on one. she comes over and stands behind me as we're doing hipdrops from hell. she says to the class,

look at her technique. it is better than mine.

and she had all the ladies watch me hipdrop.

you're taken classes before.

no, just watched some videos.

i did do a workshop once back a number of years ago, but moving my body in these ways comes easily to me. though now we're doing rib isolations and those are tough for everyone. making one's ribcage move independent of the hips is not easy. it is not natural. it takes work. practice. and i need to wear myself out physically to get through my grief.

i took my daughter to a creek, or she took me, actually. and i sat by a babbling brook and wept. wrote in my journal, and just sat there for a while today. because i need to let myself grieve. i want my daughter to know how to grieve when her time comes.

so i cannot keep my tears bottled up. i cannot feign a smile at every turn. there are some times when i have to let the tears flow.

and so i will.

emergence does not come without sacrifice. the book i'm reading today instructed me. i wondered why i was laboring through, couldn't make myself read on even though i loved the book. but the pages i read today, just before i found out my dear friend had passed were about death. about embracing frailty. coping with mortality. living with suffering.

it was not time for me to read those pages. they would not have made the impact on me they did today. and i needed them today.

the one lady who dances beside me in class, walked with me when the class was over and i told her what had happened. she hugged me.

do something kind for yourself. be gentle with your heart.

she even shed a tear for me.

i have a poem that is coming forth, but i'll let it ride. i won't ask much of my artistic child now. she is fragile. i am fragile. we are all fragile.

no, right now, it's time for nurture. to let myself be caught in the loving arms of friends. to not demand too much of myself, and remember to let myself grieve.

grief means someone has truly lived, and someone has truly loved.

come grief, and welcome.