“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt, in a speech in the 1930’s on conquering the Great Depression

One of the major blocks many people face in healing from emotional depression is fear. This comes in many forms. Fear of intimacy is often a fear of rejection and shame. Fear of the future is a fear that if we embrace optimism, something awful will happen. Many people fear taking risks in relationships, or in their careers. Someone once said “I fell in love once and it didn’t last. How can I ever love again?” Another sentiment, often expressed: “I felt the presence of something deeply peaceful and beautiful in myself. I called it God, or the feeling of divine love. It didn’t last, so why should I believe in something that goes away?”

There is an intimate relationship in the psyche between traumatic loss and fear, often resulting in a life lived on the surface of things, unable to commit to others . Even if we pretend otherwise, many people secretly believe that everyone will either hurt them, or at best be a huge disappointment. This fear protects us from the anxiety that comes with reaching out, or daring to hope for more depth in our relationships or our work.

This  also shows up in our relationship to ourselves: a fear of trusting or valuing who we are, in all our imperfection and vulnerability. We think we have to make ourselves perfect, or no one will love us. This is a hopeless enterprise at best. So when we make a mistake, we beat ourselves up, mistrusting our own misunderstood human capacity.

All of this can translate into a dysfunctional relationship with fear itself, as if fear is the guard dog that keeps the us “safe” from the misadventure of trusting or loving ourselves or others. We come to respect our fear as we would an old friend, knowing it, obeying it. Herein lies the trap. Giving fear so much power, keeps us forever trapped in depression, anxiety, low self worth, and loneliness.

In the classic Broadway musical THE FANTASTIKS, the Narrator says,

There is a curious paradox that no one can explain

            Who understands the secret of the beating of the rain

            Who understands why spring is born out of winter’s laboring pain

            Or why we must all die a bit, before we grow again?

This beautiful lyric has meaning on so many levels. We all suffer. We all “die a bit” when we lose someone, are hurt by them, or experience disappointment or loss. And yet, this allows us to grow, to open to new parts of ourselves, to find the courage to confront our fear and to experience the real feelings lurking in shadows.

What can this be? What is behind the fear?  Courage is the ability to face the unknown. To say to this tyrannical fear, “You are hiding something from me. Whatever it is, I can face it.”

This can be so many things. People often idealize a parent who has been abusive, out of a deep need to believe in an all-nurturing father or mother. Pulling aside the veil of fear can expose them for the flawed, damaged people they really are. To see, and feel the truth behind the fear means experiencing grief, anger, sadness, the rage of the betrayed.

“So why should I do that?” you may ask. “Why would anybody want to go through all those bad feelings?”

The truth of it is that if we give fear the power to alienate us from our true feelings, we suffer far more in the long run, by leading an “as if” life locked in depression and emotional distance. Carl Jung called tears, “the royal road to the soul.”  And yet, it is not so easy to open up all those buried feelings. Tears often need a nurturing other – a dear friend, counselor, or group of like-suffering souls, to extend compassion while the wounded person grieves.

There is another paradox, at first as invisible as the secret of the beating of the rain. As we learn to feel the depths of loss, betrayal, and rage, we can awaken to the universal human condition. We are not alone in our suffering. Even if we had an idyllic childhood, as was apparently the case for the famous Asian prince, Siddhartha, eventually, the reality of death, loss, illness, pain, comes to us all.

At age 30 he stepped outside the walls of his palace and saw a dead body, people going hungry, people in pain. He left all of his worldly goods behind and set out to find a way out of the cycle of death/birth/loss.

After many years of wandering and struggle, Siddhartha found his answer in Enlightenment. He experienced the oneness of our humanity in all our suffering, and joy. The way out of individual pain is to acknowledge this reality, step through our fears and reach out to each other.

Healing from depression calls each of us to step beyond the castle walls of our own fear and feel our way to our own Enlightenment.  We can learn to carry the reality of loss with us every day, without succumbing to depression. We can choose joy and beauty and meaning because life is temporary. This flower will never again be so beautiful, my little girl is a woman now and I will never again lift her high in my arms, I will never hear the voice of someone who meant the world to me because he died, but my love for him is eternal.

Joy, even as spring is born out of winter’s laboring pain.

I remember her so well, my maternal grandmother: eyes searching our faces, her hands brushing each other as if smoothing a silken cloth into bare threads. She was always worried about something. Was the ice water cold enough? Was the bath water warm enough? Did we get enough tomatoes for our pimento cheese sandwiches?

My mother echoed the same pattern, adding into it an expression of self-blame. Somehow when things went wrong, especially with her children, the fault lay squarely on her shoulders like the harness of an ox. Somehow she could never get free of it.

I write of an archetype, not confined to gender. Many men feel this sense of over-responsibility as well, whether it is to their children or to their corporation. I am searching to articulate an energy embedded in the dark side of the Feminine. Believing that you are responsible for the happiness of others is a distortion of Eros, the principle of love, which, in its pure state (and when is human love ever in a pure state?) it is free of these leaden convictions that erode the self.

At its heart the culprit seems to be what modern psychologists call “Enmeshment”, the melding together of two or more people in a family or a close relationship where it is difficult to tell where the identity of one person ends, and the other begins. This happens in marriages, lover to lover, parent to child, child to parent. Unraveling the coils of enmeshment is slow, often painful work, complicated by the fact that it almost always comes alongside real feeling, secure attachment, and the fact that people simply enjoy each others’ company.

Another complication is the fact that the mistakes of a parent, their reactions, decisions, and behaviors do have a profound impact on the psyche of the child.  I was deeply impacted by the anxiety and over-responsibility of my mother and grandmother. When I had my own children, I wasn’t even aware of how deeply I held the conviction that it is my job to create a secure and happy life for them, indefinitely. I have come to realize that I am in the grips of this over-responsibility complex, handed down, generation to generation. It goes further back that that. Greek myths are replete with the dramatic over-reaction of mothers when something goes wrong with their kids. To the extent that women have been oppressed –and still are, especially in some parts of the world –a core aspect of this oppression is this belief that females (or the feminine principle in a male) are responsible for the health, nurturance and happiness of the family, and, by implication, of society as a whole.

Like feminists before me, and so many women today, I want to be free of this. I am weary of carrying a stone in my heart that turns to the branding iron of self hatred when something goes wrong. It is not rational. Often the choices of adult family members is far removed from my influence or even my values. Yet, when there is suffering in others, I cannot abide it. I have made a profession of helping people take responsibility for their emotions, actions, and inner life. Yet, I believe in large part because my over-responsibility conviction runs so deep, I exempt myself from this aspect of wholeness which I nourish in others.

A paradox, you say? Indeed.

So, how are we to free ourselves from this menace? If I were a person coming to my office, what would I tell him/her?

Awareness. Begin there. See this over-responsibility complex for what it is. Imagine the face of the grandmother and mother who inspired such a torture. Did they deserve it? Didn’t you grow terribly weary of watching them writhe and beat themselves up? Aren’t you sick of it in yourself?

Can you pronounce yourself “Guilty” for choices you made years ago, when you were young, unaware, reactive, unenlightened? Do you judge others that way?

Can you see the grandiosity in this? Believing you have so much power over others, even your children? Especially your adult children.

If you embrace humility, and a grounded perspective on your whole, flawed humanity, it suddenly seems ludicrous to believe that a choice you made years ago, or yesterday, has that much influence on anybody, Even those close to you, or those who admire you.

Awareness. Humility.

What about respect for yourself. In most cases, you did the best you could. It is delusion to think you could have done more. Why is it so hard for so many of us to like ourselves, much less love ourselves? Yet that is what is required for psychological wholeness, health, and freedom from the over-responsibility curse, and her cousins worry, guilt, anxiety, and depression.

I tell my people self love requires a three-pronged approach: love your qualities, what shows in the world and in your relationship with others; love your essence, the very core of the goodness-seeker within; receive love from the divine within you, making a place in your busy life to listen, reflect on, and remember the sacred.

The first one is at least somewhat empirically verifiable.  The second, sensing your personal essence, is more subtle, a movement beyond ego to record and remember, and value your character. What are the values you hold, the principles you believe in? What do you respect, in yourself and others? It is no small thing to bear an allegiance to the good, the true, and the beautiful.

And the sacred? It comes in so many forms. Speaking of grandmothers, I recently heard a story of a woman in her 90’s who spends most of her time either singing or praying.  One of her children witnessed her saying the Lord’s prayer, then, when she came to the word “heaven”, she burst out in song, “Heaven, I’m in Heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak!” – When she finished a stirring rendition of Cole Porter’s “Cheek to Cheek”, she returned to the Lord’s prayer, right where she left off.

She found beauty, joy, and a sense of “Heaven” in both.

Awareness. Humility. Learning to love yourself, for what you do, who you are, and for your relationship to Universal Love.

This is the approach I would lay out for a person coming to my office to heal themselves from the curse of over-responsibility. Can I apply this prescription to myself? Time to embrace my own humility and embrace the confidence that I can do this, not just for others, but for myself.

What happens to us when we lose a loved one?

They say, “time heals all wounds”, but is this true? Is the repression of painful events and feelings what helps us “get over” a profound loss? Or is it an opportunity to open the heart, the mind, the senses to a process of releasing our mortality-bound concept of the person we have lost. Surrendering to the loss of his or her “personhood” only to glimpse, beyond the heavy boulders of grief, a new intimacy?

I think of my mother, a woman of many dimensions in her mortal life: a Southern Belle beauty with a sharp wit, and often, an acid tongue, certainly a depression dating back to her early adolescence; a courage to fight this depression, a fierce love of her children, yet a sense of being lost in a world that never met her expectations. In mortal life, there was a great love, and  a persistent tension between us. She died some years ago quite suddenly. I was there in the hospital in her final days, but by the time I arrived after a long plane flight, she was closed off from the world. I talked to her, held her as she died, but though some would say otherwise, I doubt she had any idea I was there.

A few days after her death, I dreamed I entered her room in the small apartment she had called home for many years. It was empty but for a white palate on the floor. Mom was dressed in a white coat and pants – yoga pants, I thought, though she never did yoga in mortal life.  She was relaxed, her body moving with an ease and grace and freedom that was all new. She saw me and said, “I can’t believe it is almost time for you to go—“ Apparently I was on my way to the airport, to leave her again, as I had done so many times. She said, “Just let me hold you one last time—“ We reached for each other and I melted into her arms, as I surely did as a baby.

I woke in tears. This mother in my dreams was a new being. Someone I may have known pre-verbal, or in isolated moments, but I had never seen her whole, free, open, loving.

When I think of my mother now, I do not whitewash the history of trauma she suffered, or how that played out in her life. What I focus on is the new relationship that began after her death. A relationship, arguably, with the “her” in me. I felt a warmth, an intimacy, a closeness with this new mother. Not a fantasy, not a delusion. A sense that, with her death, we could be close to each other, essence-to-essence, in a way that all the layers of protection, blame, judgment and our false selves had blocked in mortal life.

It is a relationship I cherish more and more as I age. Not long ago, I dreamed of walking in the kitchen door at my house, to be greeted by my mother. She was happy and surprised to see me as a woman in my 60’s – the same age she was in this same dream. We laughed and hugged each other, again, with that easy intimacy that stripped away all the fears and resentments that drove a wedge between us when she lived on earth.

Often it takes a full year for us to really admit that someone we loved is really dead.  The shock is so powerful when the love is so deep. We keep waiting for the phone to ring, the door to open, that voice on the pillow beside us in the dark. It is simply unbelievable that this person is never, never coming back in the “mortal coil” as Shakespeare said.  The shock keeps our grieving frozen, and, quite often, out of sheer self defense, we push the love away as well. It is just too painful to feel the depth of love when the next thought is, “And I will never see him again!”

Sometimes, usually into the second year, another wave of grieving comes. This can be nightmares that re-play the final stages of life, the last moments with the beloved, the last time we heard that soft, weak voice whisper, “I love you too.”…

It could be that, into the second year, our psyche is delivering a tough-love punch to the self: “See: It happened. He is GONE. —Wake up!”

What are we being called to Wake Up to?  Nightmares can often have a healing effect if we look beyond the horror of the images and the renewed shock of the loss. If our loved one is dead to us in mortal form, what is left? Did the love go away? They say a loved one lives on within the living, but how is this love experienced. There is a difference between a memory (good or bad) and a re-conceptualizing of the relationship. In the case of my mother, it has meant a release into a love that eluded us in mortal life. In the case of someone I recently lost, it means I must let go of the form of him: his lanky walk, the sly way he looked out of the corner of his eyes, the way he nursed a latte all day long and there it would be in the frig the next morning….That reality is held in memory, and is dear. Now, he is elsewhere. Does this mean I can’t feel close to him? Talk to him on my morning walks? Imagine him sitting on the porch in the summertime, listening to me, answering me…?

A new intimacy is possible if we can let go of the attachment to form. In the second year of grieving my recent loss, I have come to realize that if I let the shock give way to horror, and the horror give way to deep grieving and acceptance of the end of his mortal form, I can actually feel close to “him” – the pure essence of him that I can feel and taste and hear, with much the same reality that I felt when he sat across the table from me, offering me a slice of triple berry pie.

Much of this awareness came to me a few weeks ago. In typical first year fashion, I had pushed him out of my thoughts for awhile. On Christmas Eve, I felt a great heaviness flow over me. This didn’t make sense. We never spent Christmas together…well, a talk on the phone, as we had every week for 30 years…but why now this heaviness, this awareness, as if I wanted to open a door and find him standing there. But knowing he wouldn’t be there.

I heard a voice inside me whisper, “There are no words”…

I wrote this poem, and sobbed, for some time. A letting go, only to let a new level of intimacy come into being:

                                    Everywhere

How do you write a poem with no words?

There are no words,

only the light on the olive tree,

the hummingbird thrumming

                             then, no sound.

The wind rustles the palo verde,

                            then, stillness.

Your eyes,

         then, the light is your sight,

             the wind, your breath,

                        your laughter, the hummingbird,

                                            thrumming

I invite all of you to explore the intimate relationship that is possible, after letting go of the moral form of your beloved.

“No woman is old”—Vincent Van Gough

We appear to live our lives in linear time, watching the inevitable biological changes that accompany the aging human form.  Much attention is given to preserving physical health, curing diseases, holding on to our connection to what poet Mary Oliver calls, “your one wild and precious life.”

What if we peer behind the illusion of linear time, beyond the wrinkles and stiff joints, the deep fear of losing what we look like, how we function, indeed our very identity?  The aging process of the body is an event on the surface. What of the aging of the soul?  If we are much more than the person on the surface, what phases of our being accompany us on this journey?

What if our physical body is cradled in a timeless sheath that contains all the identities we have passed through, and the aspects of our development that have lived often a secret existence,  in our unconscious? As we age, our memory for details begins to fade, but, if we look deeply and listen to the voices of our inner world, we can become initiated into the unconscious reality present in our life lived as a child, an adolescent, a young adult…

For example, I have a memory of my 7 year old self, lying in front of an open window on a hot summer day. I had come in from playing in the hot East Texas sun. My fox terrier, Foxy, lay up against me. We were both sweating. A sheer white summer curtain hung in the window. The breeze was blessedly cooler than our toasty bodies.  I remember a feeling of deep contentment, just being there: the movement of the curtain above us, our sweat, our breath, the gentle breeze flowing over us. I had no words for this at the time, but I believe that early experience was my first clue that there was a part of me, watching the rest of me move through my days. Another part of me that lived, quite literally, in a different world.

What if our human life is like the moon? Certain phases of it are illuminated at any given time, but the whole moon is always there. The dark side of the moon supports and observes, tends and records the life lived in the brilliance of the outer world. Without an awareness of the part of our consciousness that lives in shadow, we can go through our days waiting only for the next brilliant phase.  This can lead to a life style that is ultimately incomplete,  reactive, grasping, believing in the illusion of the temporary.

If, like the moon,  we are all there from the beginning,  this means that as we age, our younger selves are still with us. If we are fortunate, they come to us in dreams or waking images, unfolding stories from the secret wisdom.

Do you ever dream of yourself as a person younger than your current age? Or dream of “a girl” or “a boy” who is also “you?” Why has your younger self come forward? What is he or she teaching you?  An ambassador from your unconscious mind, she or he has been living in a world of archetypes, eternal knowings,  poetic and symbolic languages for years, while you were earning a living, raising a family, paying your taxes…

There are many paths to communicating your younger selves. You can use reflective meditation. Close your eyes, get in touch with your breath. Slow down your breath. Ask for a wise younger self to come forth. You could imaginatively place yourself in a setting. For example, I could put myself on the floor beneath the open window – feel the soft fur of my fox terrier, the hot sweat cooling on my small, sticky legs… ask my 7 year old self to describe what she is thinking and feeling. She will tell me.

Another possibility is to watch the cycles of the moon. Some nights ago, I was awakened by the brilliance of the moon coming through the closed blinds of my bedroom. A moon so bright I had to go out into the back yard for a full look. Not quite a half moon, but fuller than a crescent. Just beyond adolescence, the time in my early twenties when on the surface I felt very lost. Rather than fall into the temporal story that so often comes with self recrimination, regret, shame, anxiety, it seemed much more interesting to look at the rest of the moon – the 3/4ths of it in darkness, and wonder what was happening in that part of me while the rest of me was “lost”….What part of me was dormant, but alive, and what can that part of me reveal to me now?

I will conclude with a dream of someone in her 60’s, and a dialog she wrote with a younger version of herself that appeared in the dream. Jung called this Active Imagination.

            I dream I am in a canyon with a rugged, outdoors-type man who is no one I know from waking life. There is also a plump young woman in her 20’s who has long dark hair and dark clothing covering her whole body. It seems odd she would wear such clothing in the desert.  She is accompanied by a man who is slender and also well clothed. She goes with him down a steep path and disappears. I join the rugged outdoors-type man and we proceed to crawl onto the ledge of craggy rocks. I follow his lead, not questioning the danger or why we need to keep climbing. We only come down to seek out another stony outcrop. At one point he speaks very analytically: how is it that our bodies seem to know how to find a stable position in each of these rock formations, all of them on the precipice? He continues all this intellectual talk. I can see the blue sky and the river far below, but they seem very far away….Then I am at a way station with another group of rough men, and the plump young woman appears. She is the same age, early 20’s, with long black hair and black clothing covering her whole body. We are so very happy to see each other. We embrace.

Dialog with the Young Woman in Black, and the dreamer, who I will call the Crone:

Crone: It is so good to see you.

YWB: You as well. The years have been good to you.

(they smile)

Crone: I have the feeling it has been a long time since we saw each other.

YWB: Oh yes, over 40 years.

Crone: (silence, she reflects) Why did you wear so many cloths in the desert?

YWB: You were so ashamed of me. I was very hungry in those days, and I did not want you to see me so fat.

Crone: I’m sorry. I hated you.

YWB: I knew I could not be close to you, to feel so much hatred. I knew to survive, I had to find another place to live.

Crone: Who was the young man who went with you?

YWB: My soulmate. He never hated me. Not for one second.

Crone: I know someone he reminds me of now, but when we were together 40 years ago, I had no idea such a man existed. (silence) I am so glad you knew it, and that he was with you.

YWB: I would have been lost without him.

Crone: Why have you returned to me now?

YWB: I can feel that you don’t hate me any longer.

(Crone weeps)

Crone: I don’t. I think you have much to teach me.  Please, I am listening now.

YWB: (sighs) I do have much to tell you. (reaches out her hand) I cannot put into words what it feels like, to be with you.

(weeping with love and gratitude, the Crone takes Young Woman’s hand)

I invite you to explore the parts of yourself that live in this timeless reality.

Book review: Mischief and Mercy: Tales of the Saints by Jean McClung. Tricycle Press. Berkeley, CA 1993

As the Winter Solstice approaches and we are inundated with images of Santa and Christmas, what a joy to discover Jean McClung’s often-hilarious, sometimes-macabre, adventurous, illuminating tales. The author, now known as Jean Goodwin, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Texas wrote this book over the course of thirteen years as gifts to her children.

No cream-puff bed-time fare. The author warns, “These stories have about as much violence as old-fashioned Brothers Grimm-type fairy tales, which means there is some chopping up, and about as much sex as the average Greek tragedy. Children should use judgment when reading these stories to grown-up!”

Humor abounds in tales of Mary Magdalene (unlike anything in the Bible!), Joan of Arc (a true horror story), Valentine, Judas, Saint Francis and eight more. Enough to read aloud each day for all the twelve long nights of Christmas.

Choosing one to share with you is easy this time of year.  The year is 300 A.D. The boy who would become Saint Nicholas had a traumatic childhood of loss and abuse. As an orphaned but somehow wealthy teenager he was drafted into a position as bishop of the town, a job more worldly-wise folk avoided like the plague.  Sure enough, Nicholas became the scapegoat for the powerful elites, hauled away to the salt mines, then to prison and torture. On rare occasions he was let out and allowed to do some good.

The most famous story involves a penniless father who was about to sell his three daughters into prostitution. This man was apparently so proud, he was willing to sell his children, rather than ask for help.  Our author writes, “Nicholas’s solution was breathtaking. He dropped three golden balls down their chimney, one for each daughter to use as dowry. As it happened, the sisters had just done their wash that night (well brought-up girls to the bitter end!) and had hung their stockings out to dry near the fire. The part that was magic was the way each gold ball, after Nicholas dropped it, bounced slowly from the grate then spun off in just the right direction to land in the stocking of the appropriate sister. That’s why we all to this day hang our stockings by the fire on Christmas Eve.”

Next we find Nicholas appointed by Emperor Constantine as a delegate to the Council of Nicea in Turkey. Those who follow religious history know that this is where the church fathers chose what to include and what to exclude from the Bible. (Omitting, among other things, writings on Sophia, the Feminine Divine; The Book of Mary Magdalene and other Gnostic Gospels.)

Nicholas came to Nicea with his old friend from the salt mines, Big Peter, a gigantic Ethiopian who was sent to the salt mines for piracy, and often carried the frail Nicholas in his arms as they escaped harm’s way.  While in Nicea, Nicholas punches an arrogant bureaucrat who insults him. By the time the physicians and centurions reach the scene, Nicholas is “not there.” He is in Big Peter’s arms, yet Peter feels a certain lightness familiar to him when Nicholas experiences trauma, ie, Nicholas goes to a place he discovered in childhood when he was burning with rage and injustice . Our author writes, “He found himself riding through the snow on the back of a gigantic deer with tall antlers. For many years Nicholas thought is was a daydream, but once he was a grownup and a bishop, other people…started telling him about dreams where they had seen him, Bishop Nicholas…riding in the snow country on a reindeer.”  Add to this Nicholas’s red bishop’s robes, and we have the origin of Santa Claus in a red suit, with his mighty reindeer dropping those golden balls (oranges) down the chimney.

I commend the entirety of this story, and all the others in Jean McClung’s wonderful book, as we celebrate the holidays – Hanukkah, Christmas, Solstice, and all the rest. Beyond the frenzy of gift-buying and parties, it behooves us to give – of our time and money, surely, to those who are in need, but also, to touch that sacred place in our hearts that longs for the constancy of love, and peace for all humankind. Without it, we are all consigned to a snowy wonderland.

This year in Seattle we have been blessed with light. Yes, the usual spate of rainy days, but today, sun penetrates the golden maple tree, its leaves, big as dinner plates, sailing down, to cover my window.

And yet, even with our bounty of exterior light,  I feel an activation of inner darkness, in myself, in those around me: an increase in dreams of shadowy figures. images of alleyways going nowhere. Waking in the night with unanswered questions; something has been stolen, longed-for, not retrieved.

I tell myself, and others, this is a fertile time. Write down the dreams. Search for meaning in the darkness.

A dream of my alcoholic mother calling my name. I cannot see her, yet I hear her voice, calling, as if off-stage. I climb a tower of plastic toys. When I come down, I discover my wallet is stolen.

Terrifying?  I felt so some years ago, in the days before I learned to look for rich healing symbolism, especially in shadowy, or evil figures, or long-departed ancestors.

I invite you to open to multiple possibilities of meaning in your dreams, even scary ones. Ask yourself who is trying to get your attention. If you find yourself running from a monster, what can this mean in your waking life? If you turned and faced the monster, what would you ask her? What do you suppose she would say?

In the dream cited above, what did the alcoholic mother say to the dreamer?

Simply my name, called out in the darkness.

What is she naming? Perhaps your own vulnerability to alcohol or other addictions? Perhaps she issues a warning, as one who knows so well, that your identity can be stolen by the monster thief of addiction.

At this point it may be tempting to blame the shadow figure. To remember all the times your mother looked at you with gin-soaked eyes. To rage at her: the childhood stolen, the hopes, the love, the grace, diluted in watery silence.

Another possibility is to invite your Shadow to tea.

Don’t demonize her. How easy that would be. The far more difficult choice is to say, “She is in me”. And, most poignantly, “what has she got to teach me about her struggles, her pain, her relationship to her disease that I can learn from in my own life?” Spend some time, listening to her, remembering all the times she tried to quit, the times she did, the tenderness in her voice that was always there somewhere, even in the darkest times.

Let her wisdom come to you, alongside the awareness that addiction stole your loving mother and in some sense, she never returned.

Embracing the wholeness of her reality can inspire a deep compassion – for her, for yourself, for all who are vulnerable to addiction – or to any human suffering.

This is a path open to all of us, even in the darkest inner winter. Armed with wholeness and compassion, we can look deeply into our own life. If we are on a dicey road to addiction – or any other self-destructive or life-destroying path—we can chase down the thief who stole the “wallet” of our identity, and get it back.

Cherish the shadow as she lives in us, ever grateful for her loving, warning call.

numinous – of or relating to the numen (a presiding deity or spirit of a place; a spirit believed by animists to inhabit natural phenomena or objects; Creative energy; genius.  –American Heritage College Dictionary

Reflections, including a review of The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram.Vintage Books. New York.

It is happening. Even as I stand on the edge of the North American continent mourning the passing of summer, I notice with joy the shifting of light, the sweet crisp smell in the morning, the odd leaf floating lazily to the ground.  Last year I was so grieved to see the end of our all-too-short sunny season, I took to scolding the trees for dropping their leaves. “Go back,” I chided rudely, “not yet.”

It is impossible not to see a reflection of my own fear of mortality in this unseemly behavior toward the innocent trees.  I’m not doing that this year. I watch each leaf floating toward me on the wind with a new sense of wonder and respect, even humor. “Feels good to let go, doesn’t it?” I whispered to a descending maple leaf. Letting go of all illusions, all of the expectations we humans heap upon ourselves to be or think a certain way, achieve a standard of perfection defined by a world ignorant of the unique inner landscape, needs, and creative forces within each of us.

I attribute much of the change in my relationship to my trees, leaves, and luminous water droplets cradled on the fronds of cedar to David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous. He captures, in a most original way, a vision of the numen, the divine, embedded in nature that follows in the tradition of Black Elk Speaks, or The Tao of Physics, or Thich Nhat Hanh’s Fragrant Palm Leaves.

Using references from Native tribes around the world, including Navajo and ancient Hebrew, Abrams opens a world to the reader where everything of the soul is right here, now, a vibrant, observable spirit present in plant, and animal life, the water, the wind. Human beings are, in one way, simply a part of this evolving plant/ animal kingdom. We are not split off into a higher realm of intellect and projections of a patriarchal God, looking down on the creatures we can dominate. The “happy hunting ground” of native lore was never separate from the landscape, simply over a near hillside, just out of view.

Abram nourishes us with many chapters on the history of oral language, an art form that came from the observable natural world as interpreted by the human mind. He goes on to tell us how the creation of  written language became an inadvertent tool for separating us from our direct experience. Later the Cartesian scientific model taught us to ignore direct perception and focus on abstract ideas. All of this is fascinating – not that we need reject everything created by the “left brain”, but that it too, requires integration into the whole reality of our natural, perceivable soul-rich world.

The most transformative section for me is on pages 202-203. Abram shares an exercise he did in the woods one day. This certainly evoked for me images of the young Henry David Thoreau, or John Muir, forebearers who found meaning and spiritual reality in the wilderness. Abram invites us to join him in sitting in the woods, or any natural setting, Close your eyes. Imagine your Past, everything you have ever lived or remembered – joys, losses, regrets, in a giant bubble. Beside it, imagine the Future: projects, deadlines, hopes, plans, fears, desires. Breathe into these joined states. Then, gradually, imagine the Now. As you breathe, take in the smells, sounds, coolness of the wind on your face. As you focus your mind on the Now, imagine the Past and the Future as two giant balloons, growing smaller and smaller. They grow small as the Now increases, until they go away, and it is only the imagined, expansive Now. Open your eyes.

Abram describes what he sees, “I find myself standing in the midst of an eternity, a vast and inexhaustible present. The whole world rests within itself—the trees at the field’s edge, the hum of crickets in the grass, cirrocumulus clouds rippling like waves across the sky, from horizon to horizon…”

            He goes on to describe how long it lasts, that this vast world includes his rusty car parked at the top of the hill…nothing is separate.

I do my own version of this on my morning walk. This vision of a birth-less/deathless world is not some floating ideal. It is quite down to earth, known to my senses. Nor does it take away the loss and violence in the world. Last night a storm came through, knocking down trees and power lines. We humans continue to make war. All creation and destruction is contained in Abram’s “vast and inexhaustible present.”

I invite you to try this exercise. It has brought to me a sense of calm, wonder, and acceptance that was clearly needed for my psyche’s development.  I no longer scold the leaves for dying, or rage at the Universe for taking the life of a beloved. Living in this numinous now does not take away the tragedies and injustices of the world, but it does, for me, bring a sense of wholeness and peace, to see so clearly my place, humble but conscious, in the vibrant fabric of Being.

I hear it all the time: marriage, or any form of long term commitment is so hard! In popular media, in adult gatherings, or on Facebook, the lament seems to run along predictable lines: people get bored with one another, people want more excitement and diversity as time goes on, why have children if divorce is so commonplace, etc.

Few people talk about it from the other point of view. What if, instead of instilling boredom, people can actually get more energy and engagement with each other , the longer they stay together? What if it is possible, as we change, grow, and develop as individuals, to actually increase the curiosity and level of discovery in the relationship? What if it is more interesting – and less humdrum – to get to know more and more facets of each other, than to contemplate “moving on” to a new relationship, or opening the marriage to multiple partners?

Not very modern, you say. Perhaps. Or, perhaps this is a neglected dimension in evaluating the benefits of  a long term relationship. What if it is more important to cultivate depth and diversity in yourself and others, than to seek excitement or stimulation in new partners?

You are skeptical. Fair enough. Certainly some relationships do need to end. People do out grow each other, or grow in different directions, and need to part ways. This is all quite true, but if you make a commitment first to your own individuation and development, I believe it is entirely possible to find great joy in observing and nurturing a parallel evolution in your significant other.

I have seen many examples of this, in my own life and in my work. It is particularly touching to see a couple who share similar scars of emotional wounding learn to trust and to open up to each other. I was told years ago, “water seeks its own level”.  We think we select a mate based on compatible values or physical attraction. In fact, while this has a hand in it, the real “glue” of love is something unspoken, and often unconscious. We choose a mate who will help us work through our emotional barriers and blind spots, one who will give us the space, the love, the respect to do our own work, and develop the trust to share our vulnerabilities.

In the process of peeling away layers of a defensive, proud or false self, we suddenly see deeply into the other person. “Oh, you feel that?” “Really? I always thought you were so confident.”  “I had no idea you were so afraid”…..

From this place of evolving trust, sharing, and openness, the wounds of childhood can be healed. Not by depending on the other to do our work for us, but by healing ourselves, and becoming an independent whole person who can reveal himself/herself in all of our dimensions.

Does this mean perfection? Absolutely not. In every individual, in every partnership, there is shadow: the dark side of the personality, or simply that which is unseen. But if the foundation is based on the positive aspects of growth, openness, and joy,  patience and stamina emerge, and the tough stuff can be worked through.

From a Jungian perspective, we all have many archetypal personalities within us. Another way of framing this is that we all have multiple personalities or character traits, which vie for dominance in any given situation. In a trusting, long term relationship, as the armor melts, we get to know each other in every possible dimension. Changes and new directions in your partner are not threatening because you are committed to your own growth. Say a woman of middle age drops her career as an engineer to become a landscape designer (trading her inner Athena for the earth goddess, Demeter), or a man who has devoted every ounce of energy to family and profession embraces his inner Orpheus and picks up a guitar. Rather than be threatened when a new archetype surfaces, these transitions can be embraced with enthusiasm and support.

“I love you,” a partner might say, “I never know what magical new adventure you will discover next!”

Not that the changes have to be terribly dramatic. The most delightful, devoted, and animated couple I know had a very quiet life together, raising children, loving their grandchildren, spending their senior years reading to each other from the New York Times, or simply watching birds and butterflies cross their back yard. These people loved life on an equal scale, and lived every moment as an opportunity for discovery, humor, and hope. They shared this approach together, for forty wonderful years.

A role model for us all in the modern, creative possibilities of long term love.

In this season of graduations and rites of passage, a dear friend asked me to write something to her daughter, who stands on the cusp of becoming a woman.

The first thing that comes to mind is how drastically the world has changed for emerging young women since I stood on this threshold fifty years ago.  Back then, people simply did not talk openly about normal, healthy biological processes like getting your period or growing breasts, or all the new emotions and bursts of energy that come when a little girl becomes a woman. My mother was embarrassed to talk about it. In school they separated the boys and girls and showed us different films about sex and biology that were stiff, self-conscious, and “scientific”.  This communicated that there was something “not okay”, even shameful about growing up in a female body. This began to change with the feminist movement of the 1970’s, but my caution is to be on the lookout for anyone or any ideas that attach shame, dread, or lack of worth to becoming a woman.

In ancient matriarchal cultures, the onset of menstruation was celebrated. A young girl got to go into a scared structure with other women and be cared for, adored, and educated. Sadly this changed when patriarchy conquered the goddess civilizations. The effects of this are striking today. I just saw an interview with former US president, Jimmy Carter, who has written a new book about addressing the plight of women around the world. He said today (March 23, 2014) that when the Pope says that women can’t be priests, it sends a message to men that they can devalue and dominate their wives.

As a girl becoming a woman, I believe it is important for you to understand that modern women must fight this kind of oppression, wherever they can. Not only by helping women around the world in school projects or volunteer opportunities, but in everyday interactions.

Simply asserting your worth, and standing up for who you are and what you believe communicates that women are valuable, whether it is insisting that a salesclerk gives you correct change, or masterminding a school research project on the lives of women in countries like the Congo, or the Middle East.

In the working class suburb where I grew up, girls were expected to grow up to be housewives and mothers. Period. Opportunities in education, sports, and the arts were scarce. There were no sports teams for girls. In high school you went out for cheerleader or drill team, both window dressing for the boys’ teams. So, my first thought is to shout from the rooftops: “How fortunate you are to be coming into womanhood in the 21^st century!!” Today women are expected to have careers, whether they get married or not. Women’s sporting events are mainstream. Women excel in the arts, education, and politics. We now have the first woman CEO of a major auto corporation, the first woman chairman of the Federal Reserve, and we just might elect a woman President of the United States in 2016. In global affairs, three women jointly won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in empowering women of the Third World to free themselves from abuse, domination, and oppression.

As you contemplate entering this brave new world of womanhood, it is good to ask, “How do I prepare for a future that is true to my own deepest needs, desires, and abilities? What am I curious about? What kind of power do I want for myself?  Do I want to be powerful as many men have been in dominating others, or do I want a power that suits my own unique nature, and also brings a new compassion and humanity to our world? How do I learn to value power that is not about gender – whether someone is male or female, but about what they think, what they value, what they care about?”

A wise teacher once told me that it is important to “carry the question” – not to leap to quick solutions or to come up with answers that will please others. If you carry the question long enough, one day you may come upon the answer, and it will be something you could never have imagined, and yet it will feel “right”.

One great benefit of being a woman is that over time, we can develop, refine, and nourish our power of intuition. This is a way of knowing that does not come from obvious logical approaches. It is the ability to listen to that still, quiet voice within. To listen to our dreams. To observe situations, people, and systems from multiple points of view. To allow paradoxical truths to co-exist. For a deeply intuitive person, reality is rarely black and white. In my experience, growing into maturity as a woman has been largely about learning, not only to carry the question, but to hold seemingly contradictory realities as see the truth in both. For example, I may want to be a powerful woman in the world, and it may also be important to marry and have a family.  I may want a career in business or the arts, and I may also want to take a year off to travel around the world with a friend.  I may want to grow up and become a woman, and I may want to stay a child. Both are true.

When I was thirteen, I felt very sad. I knew I was leaving my childhood behind. I even thought I should write a book about what it felt like to be a child. I was afraid I would forget, and all the joy and wonder of my child self would be lost. Sadly, I moved into adolescence, and never wrote that book. I regret it, because I might have captured something that now I can only reach with my imagination. So, if you have an idea to create something or write about something from your unique perspective at a very important point in time, do it. Do it now.

Some part of me still grieves for my childhood, and yet, the spirit of child wonder is alive in me whenever I discover a new idea, or act on my own curiosity, or feel the sense of power rising in my adult woman self. For me, power is simply the opportunity to pursue what I love, to make my own living, to care for my family – to contribute to organizations like the Motherhouse Fund, Women for Women International, and Mary’s Place, a shelter for homeless women in Seattle.

You will find your own path to power, meaning, opportunity, and joy.

It has never been a better time to become a woman in the Western world.

Welcome to the adventure.

This quiet Easter morning, I am blessed to feel the silence. There is a bush tit nest in our English birch. It is a fragile, tiny construction, a hanging weave of grass and moss, well camouflaged by the gently bowing leaves.

Fragile. This word has been traveling through my mind of late. I feel it deeply, remembering the hands of those I have lost.  The hands of my beloved Aunt resting next to mine as she slept during her final days. A hand I knew so well. I placed mine next to hers. The features, tone of the skin, shape of the thumb: hers, mine.

I remember the hands of her son, my beloved cousin. Only a few months ago we sat in a restaurant, ordering triple berry pie. I had given him the ring of my father and grandfather. “It’s a bit gaudy for my taste,” he said, but he wore it that day. I watched his hands as they pushed his slice of pie toward me. He couldn’t finish it. He smiled as he watched me savor each bite.

My cousin died two weeks ago. His long, gentle hands, his wild laugh, his loving eyes are no longer manifest on our earth. I weep and wonder where he has gone, if his consciousness still exists anywhere in the vast dimensions of the Universe.  Many years ago we watched a movie together, Ramblin Rose, a comic, poignant story about a Southern family who take in a teenage foster child. Rose, played brilliantly by a very young Laura Dern, has had a wild past, and proceeds to educate the family’s 12 year old boy on the glories of sensual human contact. The film takes a hilarious, tasteful, compassionate look at this all too common behavior from young people who have been abused. The mother in the family, played by Diane Ladd, proves a powerful role model for young Rose. In fragile health, this soft- spoken Southern matriarch studies for her Master’s Degree in psychology. A conflict arises when she asks her tradition-bound husband, played by Robert Duvall, to do the dishes. He is outraged: Rose should do the dishes, he shouts: “it is a ‘woman thing!’ ” Diane Ladd rolls her eyes and calls to the heavens, “Man things, woman things, what does the Creative Universe care for such nonsense?”

My cousin and I howled. For some time after we evoked the Creative Universe, and acknowledged that She knows what is best, in every situation.

Now, I find myself wondering where he is in the Creative Universe. Even if he is in “a better place”, we can’t text him or phone him, or hear his voice, so what good is it, this elusive gnome called “faith”?.

And yet, in the blessing of dreams, my cousin continues to teach me. Last night I had a dream that I was in a car, going to a Memorial. I was worried about the arrangements, where I would stay, what I would wear, what I would say if asked to speak. He appeared beside me and said, “Have an orange, purple coconut cookie.”

I woke laughing. Life is too short to waste it on worry! Eat the cookie: enjoy the moment. An irreverent, loving message from my cousin in the Afterlife, or perhaps….a message from the Now life.

Jungian psychologist James Hillman wrote that the “Afterlife” is not some magical kingdom we go to when we die, it is alive, here, now, in our unconscious mind. The part of us that makes dreams and fantasies and takes in the impulses of the world to create works of imagination. The Creative Universe inside of us.

I see this as a sort of Jungian Reincarnation. We lose the body of our beloveds, but their archetypal reality endures. How many of us have lost someone, only to discover their essence appearing in a new friend, a relative your reconnect with as a result of the loss, or, perhaps most profoundly, emerging in your own character? Viktor Frankl wrote, “Nothing is lost.” I used to rebel against this as sentimental nonsense. Now, I am beginning to understand what he means.

If we are fortunate, not only do we see our loved ones’ characteristics mirrored in the temporal world, we are visited by them in our dreams. “But they don’t come to me in my dreams,” you say. Fair enough. If you want to take charge of that process, you can imagine your departed ones, and have a dialog with them.  The people who always knew just what to say, how to soothe, and what questions to ask, are still available to us. We have only to call upon the Creative Universe within, and they are there.

This practice, conceptualized as a version of Jung’s Active Imagination, or intentional meditation or guided imagery, can be a powerful aide in the grieving process. It is a paradox. On the one hand giving us the experience of being with the person in our imagination is joyful, and yet it can be bittersweet, because they are within us, but not beside us in the sensual world.  Someone said (Rumi? Jung? Thich Nhat Hanh?) “tears are the river to the soul”. So if the dream visitation of a loved one or their dialog with you in your mind can inspire grieving, and this too is healing.

There is no way to avoid the pain of loss, but the gift of continuing your relationship with your loved one, in dreams and meditation, can give you the visceral experience that they are walking through this with you.

And, who knows, wherever they are in the unknowable dimensions of the Creative Universe, it may be healing for them to be with you in your imagination and  dreams.

You can share a cosmic coconut cookie, in a place of that touches the eternal in all of us.