I sit by the creek on a sunny spring day. I am tired but something is lifting me. I am being pulled, ushered through space and time as if I must be here. I don’t even know where my lifeforce comes from. I can’t identify it. It doesn’t even feel like me.
She comes to me with a face of water. I dialogue with her.
I ask what that gut wrenching clenching sensation is in my upper abdomen. She says, it’s both the old you and your inner child. She’s scared. She is scared to lean into the unknown. She is scared not to have work, projects, to be losing friends, to be losing herself. All that she had hoped for, all the meaning she had placed outside of herself. All the identities that she once occupied are falling away. You are taking them away from her. She grips in worry. She simply cannot trust. She cannot trust that anyone will be there for her. She has always had to do it on her own. She has always had to manage her own emotions, keep a lid on it, suppress, deny, suppress, deny. She doesn’t know freedom like this. It’s a completely foreign land. Her world is a world of checks and balances. Ensuring it’s always safe to take the next step. She is obsessed with getting it right. She is supposed to take care of others, you see, not herself. And how can she take care of others when there is no money coming in, nothing to show the world, “look, this is what I do”, “this is who I am”, “this is my worth”. When she is simply a carbon copy of someone else’s life, not her real true self. Trust, trust, trust, she wants to control, control, control. In her world, there is no other way, there has never been any other way. When you don’t have a mother who can love all of you, you become what she wants – success, steady, calm, assured, independent. The wound is deep. She wants desperately to let go, but she can’t.
I draw my attention to the gaping wound in my upper abdomen. I begin talking to her, I ask her to speak.
She says:
“We have nothing to hold on to. Everything has fallen away. I have no meaning. All that has given me meaning – the money, the projects, the jobs, the meetings, the relationships, the image, the material things – they gave me meaning. I have nothing anymore. The sensation tightens in worry. How am I supposed to trust?” She searches across the landscape of her intellect, nothing arrives.
Water face woman replies:
“Do you not trust nature? Do you not trust that the spring will follow winter? Do you not trust that the moon will rise tonight? Do you not trust the strength of a sequoia tree? The oak? Do you not trust the warmth of the sun? do you not trust this creek, flowing effortlessly? Do you not trust the sunrise each morning, the birdsong outside your window, the purr of your cat? Do you not trust that your hair will grow, that your eyes will see? Do you not trust that Finn will keep growing, evolving, changing, and becoming who he is meant to be?
You are nature.
You trust nature. I know that you do.
It is time to trust yourself.
Trust what you are.
Trust in the perfection of the cosmos that created you. The intelligence of Life itself.
Trust that what is meant for you will never, ever, miss you.
Trust in nature. Trust in life. Trust in your body, mind, and soul.
Trust is all you need.
This is the lesson.”
The wound softens and she feels relief.
She begins to understand.
“What do want me to do next?” she asks.
“I want you to write about loss” she replies. She turns into a ladybug and she flies away.
