Welcome to this healing blog. This site focuses on writing; the content related to my professional healing practice has its own space. Click here to enter that space. There are pages there about dating and relationships, artists and creatives, people of color. I have also started working on a page for women and one for the sons and daughters of immigrants.
I'm trained as, and practice as, a Feldenkrais teacher, TARA Approach practitioner, and psychotherapist. I'm a woman of color and the child of a war refugee. My own healing journey has flowed through developmental psychoanalysis, somatics, Karma Kagyu Buddhism, dance, and energy medicine. I've been involved in the performing arts for 27 years.
You can subscribe to the blog through the boxes on the right. If you want to talk to me about anything here, or what I do, email me: dovesflight@gmail.com, or call me: (512) 470-4268.
Photo credit goes to my dear friend DD Dagger. We make fun things together for her shows.
Peace to all, and thanks for visiting.
BlogCatalog
All morning I've been sitting here with my old dog. My hand on her side. Listening to her labored breathing. Today is her last day on this Earth as I know her now.
My housemate and I have talked about this day before, but now it's arrived, and we're both dealing with it as best we can. This morning a gaping wound opened at the site of an old surgery--a sure indication that the medications, the steriods that have kept her alive over the last year, have damaged her tissues to the point that from here forward, it's almost guaranteed that her suffering will only increase no matter what interventions are tried. She's already lived a good deal longer than either of us expected due to the drugs, but their benefit has now come to an end, as we both knew it would.
I listen, stroking her gently, feeling the flutter of her breath. I'm worried about my housemate. He's a quiet, private person who finds it easier to show his love toward animals than humans a lot of the time. I know this is affecting, and will affect, him deeply. In the beginning he didn't want to get a dog because he didn't want to get attached and then lose that relationship. I understood that. But I asked if we could do it anyway because I felt in my heart that a dog that would otherwise have been abandoned or killed in a shelter would have a happy life in this house and also that, in some ways, it would assuage the loneliness that I am pretty sure he feels but never speaks of. I have to say that despite the difficulty of today and the last few days that for the most part it appears that this has been true. There's another dog in this house now, and a cat too. This dog opened the door for a little family of animals who have lived happily together for years.
I can't help but sit here and think about how difficult it is to make the decision to prolong life when that life is sliding into a state of intense suffering. Although she could conceivably live as long as another few weeks, those few weeks would be, for her, an experience of both slowly suffocating and starving to death as the autoimmune disease asserts its course. There is no chance that she will recover or become well; all of those options have been explored. She is not in any pain right now and I would like for her to continue, and to pass, in that state of not being in pain, especially given that her body is now beginning to deteriorate and that without the pain drugs she is bound to suffer intensely. After spending a lot of time with this it seems to me that the most humane thing to do is to allow her passing to be as painless as possible--whatever it takes.
My housemate and I have talked about other pets we've lost during this time. Especially about our regrets about letting these beloved companions die in hospital settings, alone, or surrounded by strangers. It's a natural response to want to rush your pet to the hospital when you realize what's happening, but this morning when I saw her leg, I asked if it was possible for the vet to make a house call. It turns out that it is. I have too many memories of animals coming to the end of their lives frightened, drugged, and not surrounded by the environment and the people that made them so happy. I want this to be different. It feels right.
It's never easy to let go. I told my housemate, if it was up to us, we would never let her go. He cried. I cried. He agreed. But we both decided we're willing to do so. For her sake. For her passing to be as peaceful, and safe, as her life with us was.
The sun is shining on her face. She's listening to the birds singing their spring songs. She's unaware of what her body is doing; she's peaceful, daydreaming dog dreams to herself. This is good. She gave us the best of herself, and in this moment, I want us to give her the best of ourselves, and of the life she loved.
Goodbye, old girl.
Goodbye, old friend.
I went to see Wim Wenders' Pina last night with Stephen, my sweetie. He is relatively new to viewing dance and asked me afterward what I liked about it. I sighed and said, "This film is a synopsis of all that I love about dance and being a dancer."
I loved the long shots of dancers looking into the camera interspersed with work they had done for Pina. Their honesty. Dancers, working at this level, are often very deep people--in contact with the pulse of their own life, the ephemeral nature of the form we practice. I felt that the film also honored dance itself by juxtaposing many many perfect moments together in small segments. Dance is like that--so carefully trained for, so carefully prepared and then it's gone in mere moments. I feel like I could see this film again and again, savoring every vignette.
We went for a walk in my neighborhood afterward and I shared with him my growing realization that as an artist--at some point, if you are going to truly express yourself, if you are going to make what can be made, you simply have to let go of superficial things and superficial people. You must get into contact with what is beneath the surface, what is really important, what needs to be said and that which calls out within you for expression. I am at that point in my own artistic life. I have been a dancer for 27 years. I am not going to live forever and I do not know how many more good years of relatively uninhibited expression I have in my body, though I hope for many more. Pina died during the making of this film, quite unexpectedly. You just never know. It is so important to do what matters.
I have spent a lot of time over the last month asking myself what is really important and what needs to be let go in order for the most direct expression of what is important to happen in the most direct way. What I came up with is that I have to let go of most of the values that drive our society, retaining only the ones that fuel my art form--hard work, perseverance, a kind of simple faith that is native to my Southern roots and which is one of the best qualities an artist can have. If there is anything I have learned in my 43 years it is that cynicism is mostly useless in the making of beauty. It cripples the artist and creates the false sense that one is somehow doing something useful and cool by doubting and deriding everything. Pina's work was often painful, often difficult, but it was never superficial or cynical in its intent or execution. This is the kind of artistic life and expression that I believe in.
To me there have always been two kinds of dancers--those who dance to be seen, to be cute and endearing and pretty and sexy--and those who have that deeper heart. The dancers that want to be seen don't last; they move on to other things after a few years. It takes more than the desire to be seen to find within yourself the expression in a four or five hour rehearsal when you are tired and have not eaten enough, week after week, when the director keeps saying, "No, that's not it, try again." It takes more than the desire to be cute to go into something over and over and over and find out what it is in order to share it with others through your body. In this way dance again is about relationships, about things not always being easy, or pretty, or nice. That's not life. Nor is it art. The fact that our culture is addicted to superficial ways of being and presenting oneself is entirely irrelevant. To be an artist you have to look inside yourself and find out what your deal is. That's all there is to it.
So that's my commitment to myself--as I age, as the need to care for my body grows ever more urgent, as I find within myself feelings and expressions that I could not have dreamed of as a younger dancer. I have always had the heart of a deep dancer and have been fortunate enough to follow that for the most part. Not everything I do comes from this place but most of it does and for this I am grateful. And it seems to me that it's time to fully let go of that which doesn't really matter and swim, swim into the truth that I know is there.
Well. Not hollers. But says, "No!" No--don't do that, don't date that person, don't hang out with those bad friends, answer that 3 am text!
Like everyone else I was taught in school that therapists are "not supposed to give advice." I get that. On the other hand, isn't the reason that most people come to counseling that something in their lives isn't working? I've never gotten that. What, exactly, is the use of going to someone for help with a problem who refuses to give their honest and moderately educated opinion about it? I know that when I went to all those years of therapy, I needed real help with not only the question of why I felt the way I felt, but real-life practical help with questions related to career, relationships and how to handle difficult situations. I still need that help today, which is why I'm so grateful to be working with my supervisor Leslie. After all, anyone's opinion is only their opinion regardless of the letters after their name; but an experienced, in-my-best-interest opinion at the right time has helped me more times than I can count, and I pass on the goodness by not being afraid to do the same for my clients.
There have been some unintentionally funny conversations that arise from "No." I won't tell anyone that smoking is good for them, or drinking too much, or that being a booty call for the OKCupid "playa" you met last weekend is a good idea. Oh, those hopeful looks that people sometimes give me even when they KNOW what I'm going to say. I know I'm the bad guy in those moments and that in order to be a Good Stand In Mom I have to burst the bubble, the fantasy bubble from The World Where All The Things That Are Bad For You Somehow Aren't. I'm sympathetic. Are you kidding, I get it. I, too, want someone to tell me, "Elaine, it would be Just Fine for you to live on bacon and coffee. You'll live into old age with no major health problems looking like a teenager."
I saw some research a while back--wish I could find it now--that showed that even MDs often chicken out when they need to talk to their clients about things like losing weight or stopping smoking or drinking. It would appear that the reluctance to say "No" isn't confined to any particular caregiving profession. Doctors have about as much clout as people can get and if they're chickening out then maybe my job is even more important.
I was sitting with a great kid the other day--the inspiration for me to once again try to get an LGBTQ support group started in a school, something I have never managed to get off the ground (the reasons/complications/political stuff around why schools don't support such groups are the topic for their own post). I told her that one of the things I think about with trying to get LGBTQ kids support is the danger of their being outed when they're not out themselves. She pondered for a moment and asked, quite reasonably, "But why would a kid out another kid? Wouldn't they be hurting themselves, too? That wouldn't make any sense."
I sighed. "Sweetie, that's true, but if people actually worked that way, we wouldn't be dealing with things like air pollution or oceans full of trash. People do things that hurt themselves all of the time. We have to think about the way the world is, not the way it should be. I want the way the world is to change, like you do, and I work toward that like I know you will, but right here right now let's just talk about the what-ifs of things as they currently are."
"That's true, people do stupid stuff," she said mildly, with the assurance of someone far beyond her years.
So, personally, although I mostly listen to and follow my own "No's", I'm still waiting for the day when science discovers a way for me to live on bacon and coffee. Somebody let me know if you hear anything.
Somehow, I saw a news article this morning about a "new condition" called porexia. Porexia, apparently, is a term coined by doctors that refers to patients being obsessed with their pore size (i.e. that their pores are too big) and going to extreme lengths to "correct" their perceived problem.
I guess we can add this porexia thing to the list of other "exias" that pop up in the news. Bigorexia. Orthorexia. Tanorexia. In other words, being obsessed with working out, eating contaminated food, or being tan. At this point I fully expect some new "exia" to appear in the media at least once every six months. Mind you, anorexia--the only "official" exia I know of at this point--is a serious and often fatal illness of the self. But really, aren't all of these illnesses of the self? On some level, are all of these cases of what I'm going to call "selforexia"--i.e. being simultaneously obsessed with something about yourself and hating yourself at the same time?
What's next? Hairorexia? Teethorexia? Toe-o-rexia? Handorexia? I imagine once all of the available skin surfaces get exhausted, there might be a movement into the skeletal system. Femurorexia or humerusorexia, the belief that your thigh and upper arm bones are not the right size. Or maybe personality characteristics--I'd probably be diagnosed as being egorexic, suffering from the belief that my ego is not the right size, as a Buddhist.
Why not, right?
What IS this "exia" business? Where is it coming from? Are our lives in America really that empty and superficial? I know this can't be true, or at the least I don't want to believe it's true. But then I walk past a rack of fashion magazines being devoured by a cluster of young adolescent girls, and wonder. I grew up without TV or fashion magazines for a good portion of my formative years, something which I now view as having been one of the best things that could have ever happened to me. From the outside, it's hard to take this stuff all that seriously, but for a young person, it's different, and often not in a good way.
I say: Make art. Make friends. Make love. Eat simple good food. Live. Live a life you won't regret if it ends suddenly. I rather doubt that anyone would wish they had spent more time on their pores when it's time to go.
So here is my favorite photo (I think) from the Chuck E. Cheese DD Dagger Sunday Morning Photo Shoot.
Although, I'm also really liking these "too cool for school" rock and roll shots:
What's really fun about this, for me, is not only the fishnets business again--always a good time--but also the fact (yes, it's a fact) that I have been dancing longer than the youngest dancer in this picture has been ALIVE. That's right. She's 25 years old. I've been dancing for 27 years. Can you believe it? I hardly can. I keep looking for a dancer to replace old-knees me, but Allyson insists that she still wants to see me on stage, which I'm pretty sure makes her a saint. Our upcoming show is an experiment for me as a choreographer and dancer: how do you make half a dozen do-able, petite dances from diverse source material that can be done in heels, last no longer than two to four minutes, and have some relationship to songs about belladonna, bad relationships and bobbleheads? It's actually not at all easy to do. I'm having fun playing with it.
The life of a dancer can be a funny thing. For one thing, you find yourself behind Chuck E. Cheese on a Sunday morning trying to look like somebody. For another there is this accumulation of history in your body: all the classes taken, all the time spent in rehearsal, all the drills and exercises and costumes and stage fright and lights and oh my god I forgot this or that or is THAT person in the audience or how am I going to do this show with a case of the triple swine flu or whatever bug I came down with this morning after eight months of rehearsal, tech and costume preparation.
I wouldn't trade any of it in for anything. And if it was all to do again, I'd do it again, with a few changes: I'd walk away from those nasty ballet teachers after the first class and go in search of teachers who had souls, not just nice arches. I would have switched to Haitian dance from West African a lot earlier. I would have taken more classes in Cuban dance while that teacher was still teaching. I would have started studying Middle Eastern dance before the year 2011 and not had such a reluctant attitude about it. Oh well. Them's the breaks. I do not regret at all the fact that I am a dancer or that being a dancer makes me largely unemployable because employers can Google me and find photographs like the above and experience corporate-culture anxiety attacks about bringing, oh heavens no, an EMBODIED PERSON WITH FLAVOR into their well-regulated and highly air-conditioned work environments. For whatever reason, it's always been a little hard to believe in their particular type of show, for me. Maybe not only just me, eh?
At any rate, I'm now old enough to be in the position of mentoring and teaching younger women and artists. Not so much as a dance teacher, although I do currently hold the title of Creative Director for the Daggergirls. Mostly I've been a lifetime student of dance: modern, ballet, West African, hip hop, jazz, improvisation, a little contact, Haitian, and now, for the last year or so, Middle Eastern dance. I've never particularly been one to teach dance even though I could, preferring to teach Feldenkrais and movement meditation and, more recently, to act as a guide, role model, stand in mom and counselor for younger women. Most of my therapy clients are younger, artistic men and women who need a bit of help here and there. Counseling them is a pure delight. Recently I had to fill out a history form for my acupuncturist and under the section that said, "Describe job stress," I wrote, "None, just wish I had more work." I meant it, too.
Being a dancer has everything to do with why I don't have job stress. To tell you the truth, I see pretty much everything through the lens of dance and movement: relationships, personal problems, music, love, art making...I ask questions like a dancer, I think like a dancer, and I believe like a dancer: in human expression, in love, in vulnerability, in the power of music and art and transcendent experience to shape us. Yes? Does it make sense? Arawana Hayashi once said to me in a training, "Dancers are so important. We walk into a room and immediately understand how to make relationships with other people. That's something that our world really needs and almost no one knows how to do it, do you realize how important we are?"
I would say that at the time Arawana said these words to me, I didn't really understand it. Now, as I've gotten older, I do. Dance is all about relationships, really, and how relationships travel through both space and time. My recent foray into Middle Eastern dance with Amae and Bahaia has opened a door into a whole world of expression, sensuality, femininity and pure-on prettiness and bling that, as a modern dancer, I wasn't exposed to. It's downright fantastic and I'm fortunate to have two such strong Egyptian style teachers in the same city to take classes from. Amusingly, I never went into this intending to become a student of the form; I'd met Amae in an aerial silks class and liked her; she said that she taught a dance class, so one day I went to her class--and I'm still there a year later.
Such is the life of a dancer: flowing, organic, all about the people, the experiences, the connections. Being a dancer involves a lot of curiosity, a lot of exploration, a lot of tolerance for the tender, the absurd, the novel in oneself and others. The fact that dancers may be genetically different than most people may have something to do with this, but I like to think that, more than a set of moves or a particular training, dance is an attitude, a view, a way of living.
In addition to Dagger, I'm currently working on new contemporary, non-fishnetted projects with my dear friends Julie and Heloise to be shown later this spring. More on that as time goes by...now this dancer has to go take her Aleve and go to bed.
Many great, unquotable words pass through my everyday life, rehearsal, and work. Unquotable, in the sense that I couldn't pull them out at a party and impress anyone. I store them in my head like little chestnuts of experience. Here are a few of them.
"It's a song about a bad relationship. Like what you see on Cops."
"From a Buddhist perspective, is this steak an abomination, or an efficiency?"
"Most therapists are treading the line between frumpy and orthopedic. To an eating disordered person, this makes you the enemy."
"You walk to the back, turn around, and suddenly you're Maria Callas, that's all. It's very direct. It's very serious."
"I'm telling you, if you really listen to Barry Manilow's songs, some of them are dark."
"I was looking for a male therapist, but then I saw you were Asian, and I thought, she'll be fine."
"Be egotastic, get the party started."
"I'm from the suburbs. I can't handle this."
"If she's transgendered, hasn't had the operation and is dating a guy, does that make her straight?"
"Twist around yourself more. Like those old paintings of baby Jesus."
"If I don't stick around to make my crappy art, who will?"
"Those shorts made my IQ drop 50 points."
" I don't feel like talking to you today. I guess this means therapy is working."
"Miss, you can't play basketball in those shoes, not if you wanna win."
"Sometimes I feel like I'm stuck in an episode of Hee Haw."
"You mean, I can stand on my foot?"
I was standing out back of the Chuck E. Cheese, in my fishnets (photo shoot), on a Sunday morning and thinking about this one...it's been coming up in sessions a lot. Maybe because Valentine's day is around the corner? I don't know; I've just noticed that the question of love has been in the air a lot over the last few weeks, so much that it's got me rolling along musing about it.
So what IS love? How do we experience it? What does it feel like? How do we know if someone else or someone elses love us? Are we afraid of the answers to these questions? Sometimes in a healing session, I ask, "What do you know about this?" and the answer is, "I know that person X doesn't love me the way I want to be loved." How do we know that? Part of it is our own experience and wants, but how do we know--or DO we know--about the experience of another?
I've really been pondering this one because there are times when I see difficult relationships that are full of love, situations where two people have so much in their history and so much to work out that they can barely talk to each other, but the love between them is palpable. And I've seen other situations where it all looked good "on paper" and things seemed to work but there was something missing, some kind of deep and abiding caring about the experience of the other. I'm not going to even pretend I'm an expert on love, but to me it does seem that this element--a deep and abiding caring about the experience of another--is the center of the action of loving. Loving: a verb, not a noun.
A person can be a loving person, someone who loves, and make a lot of mistakes. A person can "do everything right" and not love very much at all. It can be confusing. I've been asked more than once, "How do I know what love is?" There isn't really a set answer from what I can tell. There are times when what feels familiar can be mistaken for love; for example, a person who comes from a neglectful family who now has a neglectful partner. It feels familiar, so that must be love, right? Only it isn't, and that's why the person is talking to me. Familiarity isn't love. Neither is checking the boxes. What's amazing to me is that we know something is wrong even if our history would seem to dictate that we should not know, that we would remain ignorant of any possibility of change. Where does that come from?
There's also the question of limits. We don't get a do-over on our early experiences, family of origin, or quite often our traumas. That's just not within the capacity of this human life for the most part. Time moves forward, we get older, and that's how it is. I believe that the question of love is very intertwined with what it means to accept our experiences and understand that some losses are not replaceable. Otherwise we can spend a lifetime trying to chase down a perfect love that we imagine will solve our early and oft repeated pains. There's something in all this about deeply understanding that other people can give us all they have and that sometimes it might not feel like we're really "getting it." This doesn't mean that we are not loved or that we won't be disappointed at times by the limits of our human experience. Of course those things happen. That's just part of the deal with being here, on this planet, being alive, being human.
I write these words wondering if they make sense. These questions about love are very important and the quest to find the meaning of love is something that deeply drives most, if not all, of the people I encounter as a healer. In fact, I'd say that the quest for love and connection is often at the very heart of the confused and confusing things people do to themselves and others; they're trying to solve a problem that's very, very, very important to them, and there are physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional components to finding out how to live, and love.
Finding out what love means to you, or me, or anyone, is no small thing. At this point in my life, I have a practice of looking for it every day: in small interactions with others, in the shoulder bumping of kids running down the school hallways, in the smile of eyes. Some of the sweetest conversations I have happen through the service windows of Taco Cabana. I might be eating a piece of non organic, bad for me chicken, but I really like talking to people who work everyday jobs, and it's good for my health. There used to be a woman working at the Popeye's around the corner from me who had the most amazing smile full of gold teeth. I thought she was beautiful and I always wondered about her life. Oh yeah, that's important, too: I believe love involves wondering...being curious...going into something, checking it out, asking questions, seeing what it is and taking it in. That seems worth saying here.
I also noticed that my sweetie pretty much writes only love songs, which makes me happy every time I think about it.
Okay. This one is a leap. It's not really about healing per se. But it's about something I want to honor in 2012, which is my creative life.
You may or may not be able to tell that the photo at the top of this blog portrays me in pair of fishnets. Yeah, fishnets. Those tights that only suspicious types like gypsy yogis, circus performers or ladies of the night wear. I am aware that this is usually the garb of a profession or professions quite different than that of a healer or counselor.
The choice to make this picture the headliner photo for my blog was not made impulsively. I spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I mean a LOT. I'm well aware of how people view ladies in fishnets. However, the views of unknown persons do not change the fact that occasionally I do appear on stage, in public, in fishnets, as part of one of my dance projects. Now, mind you, this is a decision I revisit about every six months, as I have no particular desire to follow in Madonna's footsteps. But there's a basic, odd truth here: this is part of my life, and on certain days of the year, similar to Groundhog Day, this healer appears in something similar to the above attire.
I remember so well my attempts to "blend" as I went through my masters' degree. At one particularly painful point, I even owned a pair of slacks. I know I just italicized this as though slacks are some kind of crime. Slacks are not a crime, but for someone who has been a Goth and dancer since she was 15, slacks were kind of a mini-death. But I just wanted to be a professional that bad. I went out and I picked up some slacks and I even wore them in sessions in the student clinic and properly crossed my legs like I thought I was supposed to. The whole thing was quite funny, in retrospect, and quite painful too. I was so sure that I could become someone else. A good citizen with a good, sleek haircut, button earrings, and slacks. Someone anyone would instantly trust as their professional helper.
However, during the time I was in school, I was still dancing and performing, and it was during this period of time that DD Dagger started to evolve into something that would be more like a performance. Daggalicious originally asked me to help her with her own movement as a solo artist, but as her craft grew, so did her vision for her shows. And at some point, given that her aesthetic is that of a dark cabaret, fishnets got involved. And I had to make the choice about whether I would allow myself to be seen this way by strangers, friends, and possibly someday a client who might have gone out for an evening, suspecting nothing.
Eek.
So. The reason this photo lives at the top of this blog is that I made my choice. I am who I am. I actually dislike slacks AND button earrings. My hair won't stay in a slick newslady bob. It is what it is. For some reason I always thought that when I turned 50 I'd be brave enough not to care what others thought any more. But then 2012 arrived and I decided to start early. My next step is to open an Etsy store to sell black leather accessories.
If you're doing this being yourself thing you may as well go all the way. Don't hold back. Life is short. Right?
I think I do owe something to Madonna after all, as much as I hate to admit it.
Indeed. One of my favorite topics, and one that feels appropriate for a new year that slipped in quietly, bringing new things and experiences with it.
I suffer from asthma. Have since I turned 36--the same age my mother developed asthma, which could probably get into a fascinating exploration of genetic/epigenetic inheritances and repeating the patterns of one's family of origin--but for this post, that's not where I'm going. Over the last seven years, I've been back and forth with all kinds of medications and treatments. I have an excellent physician, a true genius, and conservative with the pills and potions, but even so I ended up with a lot of bags from Walgreens in the bathroom. 2011 saw me spend the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas mostly lying in bed wishing I was one of the lucky ones who can get up every morning and fully breathe without complications.
The littlest things become magnified and weighty when you spend a lot of time either in illness or a healing process that requires you to get quiet and do little. I'm just like every other American in that I have a bit of a compulsive-doer's complex. In other words, I at least partially believe my culture's message that I am most valuable when I am doing, acting, making stuff happen. I had a real chance to examine those beliefs over the holiday season. I also had a real chance to learn about what it's like to have to let all of that go and simply attend to the present moment: the sound of leaves brushing the window, the click of the electric kettle, the mysterious and questionable routine of dosing myself daily with unknown substances that seemed to create as many ill effects as good. There was time, more time than maybe I wanted, to reflect and to contemplate the situation and what it meant to me.
So here's some of what I came to understand during the last six weeks. I came to understand that although my doctor is a genius in his field, the very nature of Western medicine at this point in time means that all he can offer me is a shuffle between one toxic drug and another. It's not his fault; it's the state of the art at this point in time--one that's grown a lot in the last 15 years and I imagine will continue to integrate non-Western approaches as time goes by. I feel very grateful to my doctor and he is the person I want by my side should I break a leg or rupture something or get really sick. And the next phone call I made was to an equally brilliant acupuncturist who could open the doorway of healing from another plane--one that's working well for me after only a couple of visits.
I learned that having the time to talk to my friends and have tea with them is a richness and a gift that I essentially forgot about after I became a grad student. Life became so much about being busy and "getting it done." I got consumed with doing and forgot about the things that make me deeply and truly happy. Illness allowed, no, commanded me to rediscover those. This is a huge blessing and a gift that I feel pretty sure I would not have accessed another way.
I learned that as a healer, it's just as confusing for me sometimes as it is for my clients. I knew that, I guess, but it's really good that I got reminded of what it feels like to be IN it and to not know, despite many attempts, how to help yourself or get the right help. I learned that it's never wasted time to reconnect with that vulnerability, that need. I believe that healers can become very toxic people when we ignore our own needs or, worse, start to pretend that we don't have them. Being humbled is good for us. It keeps us real, so to speak.
I remembered the words of my teacher, Thrangu Rinpoche, and what I've learned from him: that life is fleeting, that the nature of suffering is the same no matter what the specific content, that patience and the maturing process of a soul share a lot in common; that I'm very, very fortunate to have encountered the teachers I have in this life, and that the truth is, no matter how much I try to plan for my future, what I really know is now.
I learned that it was okay to feel irritated at my occasional denseness about taking care of myself. Like Pooh, I sometimes get to running around the tree chasing the Woozle:
"Hallo!" said Piglet. "What are you doing?"
"Hunting," said Pooh.
"Hunting what?"
"Tracking something," said Winnie-the-Pooh very mysteriously.
"Tracking what?" said Piglet, coming closer.
"That's just what I ask myself. I ask myself what."
Yup.
I think 2012's gonna be a good year. I've resolved to chase my personal Woozles with as much determination and humor as Pooh did. Sometimes a Woozle is what you're dealing with, right?
Happy New Year!
