120. emptying and trusting

I received some feedback on my writing today, which something inside of me interpreted as, “What are you even doing? Why are you even bothering writing anyways?”

And so, after I allowed the mind all of it’s justification of why the feedback didn’t even matter anyways, because I don’t want to write a book or bigger project anyways, and maybe she isn’t the person for me anyways, and it’s not about doing its about being anyways, and what if I just want to live a quiet life anyways and then spent some time thinking about how the gold star, A+ student in me probably could tap out something that they wanted, after all, I have always been good at that … I got quiet.

… and decided I’d bother to come here and write.

I spent the last few weeks cleaning out my library from the days of when I called myself teacher. I don’t know why it hit me so suddenly, but I knew … it’s time.

If you knew me as teacher, you’d know books … stories, is how I taught. How I reached you, how I connected with you, how we found each other.

Touching each book, deciding on it’s next life, I thought of so many sweet kiddos: I bought this series for S, he finally started reading once we got these in his hands, and oh, remember when A found this one! And T, she loved these books, and A finally felt like a reader once she got her hands on these and T gosh we persevered all year until he finally, finally found himself in these ones, and remember listening to J as she shared the power of this story and M when he took these books back and forth from home to school because he loved them so much, and A when she would giggle in the corner reading those ones …. So many books, memories, stories, gifted to me, through me.

And now, sending them out to new homes, new kids, new classrooms and teachers is more than just a release of the physical objects, but also the job, the role, the identity, the community, the certainty. Unclenching my fists, and my jaw, allowing the flutter in my chest and throat and making space, emptying, for something else, something I can’t yet see or know or imagine.

The willingness to consider possibility requires a tolerance of uncertainty … there may be more to life than the mind can understand. Emptying space … silence. I had never trusted life before … never allowed any empty spaces… I believed empty spaces remained empty and life had been about hanging on … anything I had ever let go of had claw marks on it…” – Rachel Naomi Remen “Kitchen Table Wisdom”

I wrote out Christmas cards yesterday, I wasn’t going to do it this year, one of the things I thought I might let go of, but when I felt into it, it’s something I love to do. I love writing personalized letters to people in my life, I love the act of hand writing, of the slow correspondence of a letter versus a message. On a few of the cards I wrote something like this …

Just a short while ago, we didn’t even know each other existed in this world, and now you have become such an important and special part of our lives… I smile when I think of all that we can not see or know or imagine that is yet to be lived through us …

Trust life.

As I was going through books, I found a book of poetry I’d never seen before. “Fragments,” published in 1977, by Yvonne Sell. I opened the front cover, and find a newspaper article about the author, a 46 year old mother … and then as I begin to read the book, I find this note written from the author:

To Doreen: Looking forward to seeing your work …

Doreen is my Grandma. She died when I was 9. I ask my parents if they know anything about her writing or what was meant by “her work”… they vaguely remember maybe she did write a bit, but aren’t sure …

And I find myself wondering, wishing, longing for her words, a window into her world, into her … I wish she had “bothered”.

And, when I Googled Yvonne Sell, I found nothing. Her life, her being here has all but disappeared, and yet her words, her bothering, her offering I hold in my hands some forty five years later …

"And we too, in our passing
Leave behind the decayed fragments 
Of ourselves
That can be used to enrich
The soil of other's lives" 

she writes in the title poem, Fragments.

I reread the writing feedback again.

It reads differently now. Perhaps it’s just not a fit, perhaps I’ll look back on this one day and smile, perhaps I simply need to listen … whatever it is, I trust. Again and again and again. Sometimes it takes me a little bit to remember or to get myself there, but as I let go, and release more, and more and even more … not easy for someone who can have a preference for control, life continues to teach me trust.

The truth is, I don’t know why I bother to write, but I listen and notice lately that I am writing myself somewhere unknown. And maybe it is there … there behind the intellect and the masks, the emotions and the knowledge, the will and the ego, comparisons or cares of what others think, past the external motivations and desires or bigger projects and clear pathways… maybe it is there, as I unclench my jaw, relax my belly, undo the button and let it hang loose, empty … I might find or hear … or glimpse…or write or dance my way towards something … somewhere … nearer to soul.

Until next time …

N

Let us make an invitation of ourselves, that wildness might decide to approach us. Let us re-member ourselves to the mysterious unknown, even when we hear nothing back. Let us keep returning to that uncomfortable silence and allow ourselves to be shaped by our yearning for answers. – Toko-pa Turner (belonging – remembering ourselves home)