September 2023 Soul Notes
Photo By Sandra Hilton
I live in academic years. The body of the year starts in September and stretches to July. August is a saggy month that feels unmoored from the rest of the calendar, like a dropped stitch on a crochet hook. This past year has had a different feel to it, as the university academic calendar now dictates, which in our case only runs until Easter. Once you factor in the strikes that have cancelled lectures and mean no exams marked, then the academic year no longer feels like a reliable timetable by which to live. Too many dropped stitches. The old structure crumbling out there, and also in here.
So instead, I’ve been tuning into nature and feeling the daily, monthly and seasonal rhythms. I’m really enjoying connecting with what has always been there – a bit like when you notice your breath in a meditation and realise that there is breathing going on, whether we intend it or not. Nature’s breath flows through its cycles, whether we pay attention to it or not. The days get longer or shorter; the moon waxes and wanes; the trees shed their leaves and begin the preparation for their reemergence in the next spring. John O’Donohue writes that “Change arrives in nature when time has ripened.” not when a deadline has been set or someone has decided, but because it is.
Another feature of this year for me has been anxiety. Since my daughter left home last year, I’ve been carrying around a tight ball of fear everywhere. I can’t remember feeling this intensely anxious since she first went to nursery when she was one year old. Eighteen years have passed but the cord is still there and being pulled ever tighter across the 400 miles of distance between us. This, I know, is my learned way of holding others - to worry about them. Somewhere there is a belief that says if you don’t worry, you don’t care. Worry has become a synonym for care. My grandparents taught me this well. If I would go out playing and come back even 5 minutes later than usual, my grandma would shriek, “Where have you been? We were worried about you”. When I said I wanted to go and study in another country, they said…”That’s all well and good but you know that we will worry about you”. When I said I was getting married, having a baby, changing careers, moving house, the first thing I heard was a declaration of worry. Any time, I felt ready to pass over a threshold and grow into life, I girded myself to meet the worry of those who cared for me (and who I now know were trying to protect themselves as they felt how they couldn’t control what happened next). I knew well enough to hear it as care but ironically what then happened, was I stepped into the role of carer, gently reassuring everyone that I knew what I was doing; that there was no need to worry, etc. But the seeds were planted. Worry = care. And so I carried this equation unquestioningly into my own parenting.
It's only now that I’m beginning to question its wisdom, as it occurs to me that there are other ways to hold loved ones in mind. This insight came as I watched the sun go down after a glorious day, sitting on a hill peeking over the valley at Medicine Festival. As I relaxed, my daughter came into my mind and I could feel the familiar bite of fear. Where is she? What is she doing? Who is she with? Is she ok? Should I call her? I noticed the tightness in my whole body and how shallow my breath had become. I could feel a darkness around me, completely self-generated in the fading evening light. And I realised that this was the energy I was putting out there to hold her in – a dark, toxic, fear-filled stream. So far from all that I want for her, and based in nothing other than my need to feel reassured.
I began to wonder what the alternatives might be. How else might I hold her in mind in a way that would create light and space around her image?
Firstly I thought of prayer. What if I were to pray for her? I’m not particularly religious and prayer feels like an entreaty to God which isn’t quite what I want. Then I remembered John O’ Donohue’s Book of Blessings, To Bless the Space Between Us. I meet with a group of wonderful women each Tuesday morning to write together. We end each session with a blessing from this book – a blessing that often reflects the journey we’ve been on in our writings and conversation that day. Even if we have touched on painful areas and are feeling tender, the blessing never fails to comfort. I always leave full with the warmth of these nourishing words that carry me forward for many days after. O’Donohue writes: “ The word blessing evokes a sense of warmth and protection; it suggests that no life is alone or unreachable.”
For worry often arises as people we love cross thresholds in their lives and begin to feel unreachable. Thresholds of maturity, new beginnings, or endings. Thresholds of crisis – changes that feel so unfair and intolerable. O’Donohue’s book offers blessings for all of these possible moments. He writes:
“We have fallen out of belonging. Consequently, when we stand before crucial thresholds in our lives, we have no rituals to protect, encourage and guide us as we cross over into the unknown. For such crossings we need to find new words. What is nearest to the heart is often farthest from the word…..Each blessing is intended to present a minimal psychic portrait of the geography of change it names.”
This is exactly what I have been searching for. Whatever the hardship, the challenge, the wound, a blessing can hold it all and bring solace to the blessed and the blessor. For it offers a way for each person to be in their experience. In my case, it allows me to step back so my daughter can cross the threshold into her own individual life, and gives me a way to accompany her without actually meddling.
If I bless my daughter, I hold her in light and love and also trust that she will navigate this new terrain; trust that she will live life according to her own path, rather than assume that I know best or try to control and take on more responsibility than is mine. As I sit with the blessing, there is space in me and I hope that at some level it creates the sense for her that she is not alone in the world.
This feels like a real transition from an attitude of mothering to one of eldering. As I sat round a campfire at an elder gathering in the summer, I learned that eldering is a verb. It’s not something conferred on us by virtue of our age. Many older people are still children psychologically, emotionally and spiritually. We elder when we hold space without interfering, assuming we know what’s really going on or offering solutions. We elder when we can be fully present without needing to do anything. For me this is a significant threshold. Being mother has never been a comfortable place in truth. I learned to mother too early in life which has led me to feel responsible for others; to anticipate their needs and try to meet them, sometimes at a cost to myself. Now as I realise that I do not have to tend to, or be responsible for others, then I can hold space for them instead without feeling the need to urgently rescue.
As O’Donohue writes above:
“we stand before a threshold we know We have to cross to come alive once more”
I feel I’m standing before this threshold which asks for surrender to a less familiar way of being; one that I must cross if I am to continue to grow; one that asks me to put down my worry beads and risk being seen not to care. May I find the courage to take this step; may I find community with others who are crossing their own thresholds; may I forgive myself as I stumble and grasp for the familiar; may I get up and continue with the crossing; may I always feel the love and care in my heart.
As I tune into the natural cycle, this time of year supports the crossing of thresholds. Nature leads the way as the trees undress leaf by leaf and we are invited to harvest the gifts of the abundant months and ready for the leanness of the coming season. I wonder what thresholds await you? To paraphrase our poet, what force has built inside your heart that leaves you uneasy as you are, so you only know it’s time to change?
What blessing would map the terrain you are to travel?
May you find new words to cross into your unknown and may we meet on the other side soon.
With love always,
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