In mythology it is told that these days were never counted on the calendar because they were meant as a time for pause and reflection. This new lockdown and curfew has brought more of that and there is definitely a feeling of suspension — a holding of breath and a stillness in waiting for something to pass and something new to take its place.
As time moves through the midnight hour at the end of one year and into the next, nothing miraculously changes. It’s just part of a created construct. But that’s not to say that, with intention, attention, ritual and mindful manifestation, you cannot create the change you want.
Writing a new story – for me – means pioneering again and, as the saying goes, the pioneer is the one with the arrows in her back. I’ll take that a step further by tying in the arrows to my posts on wounding as the place one’s daemon (a.k.a. one’s gift) emerges. And I’m challenged to reflect on how I keep the wound open enough to allow the radiance of my gifts while bandaged enough to protect myself from the energy vampires who bleed me dry. Because my pioneering has almost killed me many times.
But, by pushing into my outer edges of near death, I have found my treasures … and those treasure chests, remember, never come clean out of the ocean depths; they come up encrusted with barnacles and strapped with rusted iron and jammed padlocks. And then accessing that treasure is not simply finding it but also cleaning it up and unlocking it … and it’s the tools one finds or has to develop in this very endeavour that often generate the greatest growth experience.
This year had brought crisis, trauma, destruction, illness, mental health disasters, and death … death that has taken both human kind and human kindness. This year has also brought opportunity through isolation – an uncomfortable and often unbearable pause … a hiatus from which we have had to recreate our stories of who we are.
And this story writing continues as we spiral through time.
My story has changed dramatically again this year as I have had no choice but to prostrate myself at the alter of my own fallibility and shed the flotsam from my sinking ship. This has included some of the roles I have had to play — dutiful daughter, loyal lover, dumping ground, punching bag, scapegoat child, holder and organiser, gap filler, option — and some of those people who have expected me to fulfil those roles for them because without my part their own identity is compromised.
It’s a lonely journey speaking out from one’s heart, following one’s truth and putting up the necessary boundaries … but I’m building resilience as the earth falls away from under my feet and I hold myself in suspended animation until I can trust the people who have chosen to stay in my life are the ones who can catch me when I allow myself to fall.
Although I know it’s temporary, the hiatus can be excruciating. This ending has been a long one as I transition through the different stories of my life now with space for new leading roles played by people who resonate with the changes the protagonist has been through.
Yes, the pioneer has a lonely journey as misfit, rebel, activist, truth-seeker and orator… but I’d have it no other way. So as I crawl to the finish line with arrows in my back, everything is still the same yet it is different purely through a shift of mentality. Because as we change, the people and activities we resonate with change too and, just as a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, we grow stronger through our choices and the quality of the connections we make.
Immunity means I am you in Me … so to build immunity over time, let’s not bury human kindness along with everything else this year that has both died and been killed.
