The process of going through my boxes yet again has been painful but absolutely necessary. Whether I go forward with eight or nine boxes of belongings or three or four isn't really the issue. The issue, in these extraordinary times, is my intention to carry forward only the materials that support my life on behalf of the Goddess. Even now, I'm stunned to find a handful of negative things I held onto to prove what kinds of roadblocks I experienced in my life...such as a few pages of medical records from when I fell and fractured my elbow, and the hospital wouldn't operate because they insisted I had broken it previously (I had not. I assume this was because I had no insurance. My elbow eventually healed, but I'm sorry to say that I think I have held onto an inner desire to shame the people involved.) On the other side of the coin, I have saved (and still will for the moment) mementos of higher moments (a piece of my personalized Time Magazine stationery, flyers from organ recitals and art shows). Yeah, my inner historian/biographer is slowly exiting stage left. I'm sure she wanted documented proof of a life almost too strange to have been true, but as of the last few months, I feel less and less inclined to go back over old ground in that way. We're leaving that paradigm. If I end up being anyone's heroine, I hope it won't be because I survived the old paradigm, but because I take a welcoming and teaching role in the new one.
Even one slip of unnecessary paper has become "too much", too weighty. Here's an example. I've held onto a few things from the Smith College Chamber Singers tour of Spain in 1976, one of which I had assumed was a small itinerary. Upon actually opening it up, it turned out to be a menu from a meal we ate there. Fascinating, something to celebrate as part of a rich and unique life, but not worth taking forward from here. More recycling!
However, one thing stopped me dead in my tracks yesterday, and it initially brought up some of the feelings of shame, fury, hate, and helplessness that I spoke of last time, leading me to realize that I still have active healing work to do! It is a notebook that I bought in 2015, on the short trip I took to the UK to audition for the choir of Gloucester Cathedral, and then extended for a few months. I had happened upon a workshop about connecting with your true calling, and took it (and found kindred spirits there) and kept a journal of the class.
What made me tearful was a drawing (2-page spread) which I guess you could say was both illustrative of my inner landscape, plus where I literally was at that moment, plus the dream I have essentially had since childhood. In the foreground, I pictured myself on top of a rocky hill, overlooking the English countryside. There's a house in the middle distance, and a cathedral city in the background, and scattered around me are the tools of two of my creative gifts -- a journal and pen, and an easel and paints. In the center, a simple spiral. Overhead, an eagle soars in the sunny sky.
At that exact moment in the English west country, I initially felt hopeful that finally, I would physically live this dream. The spiral was like a grounding point, and it is a drawing full of light. Yet only a few pages later, I faced the hard truth that I couldn't believe my dream would ever permanently come true. I didn't feel I had the power within me. My entries in this notebook vacillated up and down for a few more weeks, before petering out as I got ready to return "home".
I'm thankful that I held onto this booklet through several purges -- how easy it would have been to deep-six it in frustration. How many sleepless nights over the intervening years have I questioned God and the Goddess over not being able to "figure out" getting back to England? Yes, I've returned for a few visits, but I haven't yet alchemized living a permanent calling there. I finally understand that the effort to figure out/find action steps etc. was the whole problem...since I am, at my core, a right-brained, creative Goddess. Perhaps I have felt stuck for a decade or more, but it took more years to spiral further up the dream, to spiral up into loving my own genuine self, to spiral up into self-acceptance, to spiral up in welcoming my life's strange paradoxes, and to spiral up in increasing love and compassion.
Today, I'm going to spend a long time gazing at this picture, because it is like a series of oracle cards. When I drew it, I probably resonated the most with the cathedral spires, perhaps the homey structure, but now it is the eagle. At my age, I have spiraled up through countless gusty air currents, metaphorically. Being the soaring eagle and looking down from above, as I spread out my wings like an embrace, I realize that the whole image is me, and has been for this whole lifetime, from the moment I first heard the men-and-boys' choir at our church, to the year of singing and studying at Royal Holloway College, and through all my various incarnations here in the States. My higher, floating self knows why things had to be the way they have been, and has kept the vision, and still does. There is no cause for sadness here.
As I continue to spiral upward, I intend to hold onto this notebook and the pivotal sketch, at least for a little longer. I think it serves the Goddess to continue to have it in my possession, and to reference it. Talk about getting to a really intense moment in one's discernment process. Literally, piece of paper by piece of paper.
