On a Journey

This past weekend I went on a journey. This was a far greater and deeper journey than my recent European river cruise. It had to do with my emotions; with living and dying. I thought I was attending a retreat to support my daughter-in-law, Michelle, who has stage 4 cancer. It was being given by the Institute for Birth, Breath, and Death, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Bread Crumbs along the Way

A few weeks before arriving at the Center for Conscious Living and Dying, where the retreat was being held, things began falling into place, like following a trail of breadcrumbs.

For instance, during a recent interview by a homeopathic physician, I had become aware that I had trouble answering questions related to feelings. When asked how I felt about something, my responses tended to be either physical or intellectual explanations. When asked about my dreams, I commented, “I don’t really dream much anymore.” He suggested I work on that.

Then, a couple weeks before the retreat, I took a beautiful fall walk with a friend. She happens to be a Hospice nurse, and never steers me wrong in book recommendations. After the walk she sent me an audible by Pema Chödrön, How We Live is How We Die. Essentially, the book explains the Tibetan Book of the Dead in an accessible way. I started listening to the audible a week before the seminar.

The Journey Begins

Packed and ready to head south, my daughter, Jackie, let me know that her son had woken up with a fever and her husband wasn’t feeling well. My plan to stay with her probably wasn’t a good idea. Suddenly I had to open myself to believing that it would all work out. I also had to let go of controlling, and trust my husband’s judgement in finding a last-minute Air BnB for me to stay at that night.

On my drive down, my girlfriend BJ, called to review the blog I was preparing to post. It was a re-cap of my chapter on Hermeneutics from my memoir, Real People. In the blog, I describe an experience where I literally enter inside a postcard. Walking around within the landscape of the postcard had been cool, but suddenly, I was afraid of getting stuck there.

Maybe it was fear of being locked inside the confines of the postcard. Or wandering, lost, through the landscape. At the thought of not getting out again, I panicked. I’m unsure what I was afraid of, but my fear “popped” me back out into my familiar dorm room at Sherborne House.

After reading the piece back to me as I drove, BJ started asking me what, exactly, was I afraid of? I kept saying I was afraid of getting stuck. “But what were you afraid of—I’m just curious.”

What was I afraid of? I began to realize I had a real question here, something I was avoiding. So much so I couldn’t even understand what was being asked, or where the answer lay.

Thus began my journey, which I’ll continue to delve into in next week’s blog.

Until then…