Days of Awe

As I approach these Days of Awe, I sit in contemplation about my primary relationships.

There is a quote by Samuel Beckett that comes to mind:

“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

I have failed many times.

I can sit back and say it was not for the sake of not trying. But as I approach these Days of Awe, I recognize that I wasn’t ready.

I had a habit of sending my partner back again and again to address the work that was her own to do (which is something I will always maintain), but what I see more than ever is that I needed time to heal a part of myself that had been harmed and hurt.

My partners wanted and needed me in ways that interrupted this healing and until this healing happened, I couldn’t possibly be ready for love.

15 years ago, on this holiday, my biological family chose to part ways with me. The details are messy.

For the next 10 years, I was lost. And I can finally admit, part of me was broken in a way that tried to heal and move on knowing my loved ones still lived and breathed in spite of me.

To say it was hard, is an understatement beyond understatements.

At year 10, after a lot of hard work, we reconciled. The reconciliation took time and care and a lot of love and it was something I never imagined would happen.

But, my family chose to part ways again. That was 5 years ago.

As I sit now, approaching these days, I feel deep compassion.

Compassion for myself. Because I recognize that this has been a lot to have lived through. And because I recognize it showed up in all of my subsequent relationships. The last one being the one which I experienced during the absence, the reconciliation followed by the departure again.

During the previous relationships, however, I now see that I was defended against being loved and defended against being ALL IN because I needed to save myself.

I needed to save myself from being left.

From being manipulated.

From being with someone who needed too much from me.

From someone who might hurt me in the ways my family had hurt me.

After having lived through the second leaving, however, I no longer feel this way. Something became inviolate in me and it was both soft and strong at once.

However, I recognize more about myself in relationship than ever. On the outside, it felt and looked like I was making only healthy choices:

sending my partner back to herself to do work that was hers to do, asking her not to put me in the position of doing it for her.

But on the inside, what I now recognize is that it was IN the sending her back where I was defended.

Until I had dealt with the ghosts of my family.

Until I fully faced the loss the second time.

As much as I loved hard, my heart was defended against being loved.

THAT was my ghost. And although I don’t have the answers as to what lies ahead, I know my heart feels steady even amidst the moments of pain or uncertainty or loss or anniversaries like this one. Which means to me that the ghost and I have become old friends and she has nothing to hide.

Have I been in a relationship since? No. But that probably has more to do with the last breakup than with my family. Or maybe it has to do with both.

But I learned a lot from stepping back in and I will never regret that experience.

I was no longer lost.

I was wholly accountable.

I listened harder than I ever imagined possible. As a result, words were spoken to me that were so painful, so unbearably painful, and… I was able to take them in and most importantly, I was able to forgive them.

I was able to do that because I had already experienced what life without them was like and the truth (as well as life experience) afforded me more clarity, more wisdom, and more love.

When they ultimately chose a divide at first I didn’t think I would know how to survive it. But then, I recognized that I had only shown up fully. That I was only there to love them. And that had been my only aim. I hadn’t been defended against being loved either. I had been all in. And although it failed. I hadn’t.

As these Days of Awe approach, I feel compassion for myself.

I can hold the truth now that I was defended against being loved. I feel the rumble inside of me when a cherished person is kind to me. The way it washes over me like gentle soul medicine. And I know that all is right with the world.

I also know that I have chosen challenging relationships in an attempt to heal the part of me that had been lost .

I feel compassion for those whom I was defended against. Yes, they sure had their work to do. Yes, we loved each other. But there was no way that our love was going to make it until I was left alone (which was something they each had a difficult time with) and which was so deeply critical and necessary for my healing.

I feel compassion for my family. I don’t know what they struggle with. But I know they are not immune to pain.

I feel compassion for all of us not immune to pain.

Most of this situation is in a place where love lives. It’s no longer dark. It’s not hidden. And it doesn’t shrink me.

As the New Year approaches, and as my heart expands, as this is the 15^thanniversary of when this all began, I send love to all those who have loved me. I no longer feel defended against receiving it. I know now, more than ever, that love (most specifically the love that lives in me) never dies. And I send it right back.

L’Shana Tova.

9.4.18

Jill Bacharach

"Magic"

She was Magic.

And that was what I called her.

She was pure. 

Just like works of art are pure. 

She used her words sparingly and it was such a relief because there was never any charge. The meaning was the meaning. You didn’t have to search for it. She pared down to their essence. And had mastery with words.

She was an artist. 

And because she was an artist, she saw you with a view like no other. 

This was her mastery. 

Her joy sat in deep crevices and was unleashed in the same way she loved the color white. It had no limits.

We had a shorthand. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. But it was extremely precise. Because precision was her language.

After 5 or 6 surgeries, my body hurt. My body was a body that held a lot of trauma. Beginning to walk, beginning to practice again took courage, even though once upon a time, I had been an athlete on my mat.

I trusted her. I always had. I met her a long time ago and I knew she was the one to go to when I decided to practice again and had both enough trust in myself and in the process of discovering with great care, who I was going to become. 

She is the woman I did privates with in her home studio... when I was truly beginning to recover. It was the beginning of things I still can’t even speak about because they land in ways that are simply sacred. Pure. They live in boundless precision. They live in a covenant I built inside of me with my struggling body, (and my ability to hear its call) and my tender yet, eager heart. 

Lisa and I had a shorthand. Because far too many things caused my poor body very very deep pain. And we both knew I listened to my body. 

I had the extraordinary experience of trusting her very deeply. She would be teaching a large and robust group, and all I would have to do was shake my head in an almost imperceptible way... and that was it. She would continue to instruct the class, and set me up in an entirely different organization. It was usually extremely involved. And it inevitably made me weep. Sometimes on the inside, sometimes quietly on the outside. But what happened IN me was extraordinary: it always healed a deep part of me like nothing else ever had in my body nor in my life prior to that moment of concrete organization. 

It was a profound generosity met with trust, silence, understanding, mastery, contained in a shorthand and held with kindness, reverence, compassion, and exquisite attention. 

Lisa always made me laugh and I have a big loud laugh which is not common or not often welcomed in the Iyengar community. But I never held back. I was just too happy to experience the spaciousness of her Magic. It filled me with medicine. Soul medicine.

Shorthand.

We had it in our homes as well. 

We shared some things that we would chat about that made my spirit soar so high and it was pure joy to share with her and impossible to contain. 

Eventually I couldn’t come to class and that was when she could no longer teach publicly. While we were out at the same time, it was for distinctly different reasons and Lisa was so honest and brave about why she was sitting things out. She had always been profoundly compassionate towards me about my own physical pain and then her compassion obviously took on a new meaning. During this period, she shared deep deep truths with me which will never leave me. They are truths I can’t get over.

I’m bereft that her life was taken.

Lisa was Magic.

For me, she was always Magic. I’m so grateful that she knew I felt that way but I’m just so utterly heartbroken.

Given her life of service, I find it so fitting that the way she lived teaches me something every day. 

I see her and I hear her. And I just miss her. And that is the tragic part of living and loving deeply. The wanting to gaze into her eyes. The wanting to share those special things we loved. The wanting to hug her. To have the ones you love be with you forever, which is selfish and just not possible. 

I love her. I am always going to love her. 

She handed me a shorthand maybe because I trusted myself enough to know I could listen to her through the struggle.

Having a shorthand like this when you have struggled with so much physical trauma, trusting yourself in the presence of another... is extraordinarily rare... and it came with impeccable sweetness and kindness and humor and love and with a pristine gaze that is emblazoned inside of me.

The words Lisa spoke to me softened my ears. Softened my tissues. They changed me. They were consistently some of the kindest words I have ever received. 

Her precision was something I couldn’t close my ears or eyes to. 

I hope I can hear it in some magical way for the rest of my days. 

I hope we all can. 

I hope. 

I hope I can... 

Live 

in 

Magic. 

4.29.18

Jill Bacharach