Wide Open

Some of the most impactful and destructive losses are the result of our communication.  Not necessarily “bad” communication, but how the communication gets interpreted and then choices which are made as a result.

So often, something is received not in the way it was intended and then you lose someone you love as a result because that person refuses to come back to the table, or  far worse, to your life.  Then you have two or more people walking side by side through life never speaking again over something small or something monumental.  But over “something” nonetheless.  

Meanwhile, a mother is sitting at bedside while her child is fighting for his life due to Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia.  Or a daughter is saying goodbye to her mother, as she is about to die from COPD.  These scenarios happen every moment of every day and there are people in the world (often just one degree of separation from them) not speaking over misunderstandings which have ripped them apart seemingly for good.

*

I was told that when I was an infant, I used to soothe and sing myself to sleep.  I am sure that I was also trying to drown out external noise.  Even as I was pre-verbal.

When I was a toddler and of school age, I had constant ear infections because I loved to swim and I would stay in the water until forced to come out.  I dove to the bottom of the pool or the ocean as often as possible and never thought twice about how much water was accumulating inside of my ears and eustachian tubes.  But those ear infections were extraordinarily painful, especially growing up with a mother who was extremely loud and never thought twice about her volume.  

*

The Fifth Chakra is considered the chakra of purification.  Located in the throat.  It is about speaking your truth in order to purify a situation.  It is also about the purification of substances, people and karma.  

I learned that when you close off your ears, you are closing off your Fifth Chakra.  So as a child, that was what I was doing.  Too much noise, and I was cutting off my voice.  A voice which I was often told to shut down as well.

That message left a scar.

*

Flash forward to my adult years.  My good friend told me several times that I scare people with how honest I am.  

Hmmmmmm...

I can see how that has been true.  I have watched many friends and loved ones walk and run straight from my life.  I say this as fact, not from a place of wounding.  I know that it was not the result of my truth telling.  I know that.  Could I have been softer in my truth telling?  Yes.  Absolutely.  Even as I have always prefaced discussions carefully so as to prepare friends and loved ones so that they would know the content of what they were entering into without surprise.  

For instance, when my father became terminally ill, I knew discussions needed to be had about his burial plans.  And so I asked for him to have that discussion with me.  He did not want to.  But I also knew that it was important that his wishes be spoken to someone.  And so I asked for him to have that conversation with me explaining why it was important.  I began with telling him what my burial plans were.  

*

It’s taken me a long time to learn the distinction between being fiercely honest about everything and giving people a break and room to hurt my feelings without having to tell them every single time that they have in fact hurt my feelings.  I can remain in my integrity, work through my process and still keep my Fifth Chakra clear without having to bring out the Good Year Blimp every single time I feel someone has violated my boundaries or not listened to me or hurt my heart.  

This WAS my modus operandum for longer than I care to name.  And it had to have been very challenging for others to live up to.  I was committed to it because I was lied to left and right growing up and I needed to remain faithful to my own soul by being fiercely honest.  But what was coming across, instead, was my PUSHY NEW YORK JEW, which I was really just holding up as a banner and wearing as a suit of armor.  (Purification, needn’t always occur through the process of dialogue with another.  Many of us know that this is not always possible.)

*

When I woke up in the hospital after this last surgery sounding like Brenda Vaccaro and in utter agony swallowing, all I felt was grateful.  I was grateful to wake up.  I was grateful for my blood drain.  I was grateful to see my friend seated beside me.  Grateful to see a brightness in her eyes rather than worry.  I was grateful, that after being with me through all those hours of surgery to finally see her eating a sweet little sandwich.  Grateful for the years of self- care reminders which were now finally paying off in my hospital room.   I was grateful because there was trust being laid in my hands in this sweet gesture (through an act of nourishment) on many levels.  

I was grateful that when one of my nurses told me she had a headache, I could offer her some of my coconut water to help hydrate her.  I was grateful I could remember everyone’s name who came into my room.  I was grateful to see that what was once a fierce push was now turning into a soft strength.  

I don’t think you get your neck sliced open without deciding to have a clear commitment to speaking love and truth.  

Before the surgery, I was sad for what I would have to let go of in terms of my body and my physical abilities which I was attached to.  It will be a long time before it is even a wise option to see what is left or what is there.  But all that matters now are the simplest things:

What am I grateful for?

Is it wise?

Is it kind?

What is the truth?

What does the heart say?

You don’t get your neck sliced wide open without waking up to speaking up clearly, softly, lovingly and with a greater sense of perspective.

There’s only so much you can do to clean up a mess.  I am sure my instinct will be to always want to try.

But from where I sit now, I know that all there is to do is to stop pushing.  

And to speak the truth with wisdom, tenderness and love no matter how closed off anyone else is.  There’s always an opening.

10.2.12

Jill Bacharach

My Chaverim

We are all drawn to each other for different reasons.  Chemistry.  Attraction.  Special interests.  Intuition.  Past Lives.  Fortifying the troops... Who knows...

When I met my Chaverim... it was an instant knowing and it was also a Darwinian process of Natural Selection, although through selective choosing.  “Not you, YOU.”  “NOT YOU, YOU!”  We were like that with each other at every workshop.  We were cordial towards others, but would not trust our bodies with them.  Only with each other.  One American.  One Russian.  One Israeli.  Loving.  Giving.  Generous.  Kind.  Devoted.  Unyieldingly reliable.  We were stalwart and mighty.  Vigorous and tenacious.  Unwaveringly compassionate.

It was always this way.

When we came together, the environments were dramatic.  We were the calm and steady ones.  

No one knew the circumstances we would each eventually face.

That is what must have called us toward each other. 

The look in our eyes.  The knowing.  

We were never the kind to question “why me?”  But to ask “what now?”

Never would we wish our circumstances on another.  Never would we even dream of burdening another with the content.  Just figure out how to manage them and keep going.    

*

We would each scoff at the word “brave.”  It never occurred to us that we were “being” brave.  It was simply what there was to do.  You just put one foot in front of the other and deal with what is before you.  

What is courage?  It’s being afraid, but doing it anyway.  

What if this happens?  What if that happens?  What if this happens?  What if that happens?  

None of those things have even happened yet.  

My grandmother used to say... “What if the sun comes out?!!”  

Sigh.  

*

When all was said and done, what was going to matter in the end?  

What others didn’t know?  Or how they felt?  

Love.  Just love.  

It will always come down to love.

Before my grandmother took her last breaths, she held my hand and pursed her lips to blow a kiss to me.  She was saying goodbye.  I knew it and she knew it in spite of her severe brain injury.  She called herself back for those few moments to say goodbye in that tender and intimate way because nothing could break the love between us, not even death.  

It took my father’s terminal illness for us to heal our relationship.  But we did heal and painful but beautiful and magnificent truths were revealed to one another as a result.  And as he was dying, a love began which had finally grown steady and strong and at last, had a chance to live.  

“Death ends a life but it does not end a relationship.”  (Robert Anderson)

*

With every loss we shed a part of ourselves we cannot anticipate.  It either tears us apart or wakes us up to what is deeply alive and meant to be known about ourselves and our relationship to this lifetime.  I have shed many a skin.  

In the film, Out of Africa, Karen says the following words about her beloved Denys: 

“Now take back the soul of Denys George Finch Hatton, whom You have shared with us.  He brought us joy... we loved him well.  He was not ours.  He was not mine.”  

It is such a potent and significant moment.  That recognition.  Losing what we love the most and recognizing that it never belonged to us.  How to hold both truths when our hearts move toward love and grasping rather than neutrality.  Neutrality and emptiness is something we work to foster with our minds, but the natural movement of the heart has a compass of its own which moves in its own direction and occurs on a calendar of its own.  One which is real and needs tending to in order for us to keep waking up to this full relationship of movement and shedding.  

What is there for us to fear, really?  Death?  Loss of a loved one through death?  If not that, what else?  Pain, disfigurement, paralysis, blindness, ALS, cancer, loss of motor control.  I could come up with a list which could create terror.  But why?  Anything could happen or it may not.  It’s a crap shoot.

What is there to fear, really?  Loss.  Rejection.  

But the truth, once learned, can be healed as long as you have a real desire to heal.  It’s a decision.  

My father left when I was two years-old and I barely saw him while I was growing up.  It colored my life in a deep and significant way.  Which was why when he became terminal, I became vigilant that we heal our relationship.  It was a very important decision because I had tried for years to heal the fractures between us but did not have his participation in that endeavor, which subsequently, caused further and deeper fractures.  

Had he left the earth in that way, I would have had a different kind of healing to do.  So for last 5.5 years of his life when he was ill, when I pushed and ultimately helped him feel less afraid to die, we were both healed.

What is there to fear, really?

That those we love will not love us back?  Well, it happens and it has happened to me more times than I can count from the people who are supposedly “contracted” to love us.  But I believe that ultimately, unless you face what you fear, you cannot know what it means to really be free.  The fear will keep showing itself to you again and again and hold you back.

I have learned things which have hurt me so much I didn’t think I would be able to survive knowing them.  But the truth cannot kill us.  It hurts.  That’s all that it does.  And then we get to decide what kind of life we want to live knowing what we know.  

That’s how, for some of us, we can look around at others and see things in their eyes which tell us stories few could ever recognize in just one glance.  How one may have survived something unspeakable.  How another may have a strength in her that you would be lucky to be in the same room with or to ever be touched by.  

I have learned things which have split me open.  But I have always been grateful for every morsel of information.  Because knowledge leads to choice and ultimately, healing.

I think of my Chaverim.  We have endured much.  But we fear little.  And when we do, we know that what needs to be done is to step in and face whatever lies ahead.  It’s all temporary except for the love which remains which when felt, is a strength which will endure.

For my Chaverim... and all who wish to step in and bless it ALL.

10.1.12

Jill Bacharach

Two Yogis on Yom Kippur

I saw two photographs yesterday.  One was of me.  And one was of a yogi who used to be me.  I looked at the yogi and thought “Yes, that used to be me.  Strong, muscular, fierce.  And now I have become something else.  Waif.  Thin.  Everything is temporary.”  

But I didn’t feel sad or maudlin.

Yesterday was Yom Kippur and it was the perfect time for me to look into the eye of this transformation and not hold it as permanent.  

I did not fast this Yom Kippur, as it would have been counter to my health.  But in past years, as I used to, I always found fasting to bring me to a very quiet place.  I didn’t need that this time.  I found that place without the hunger and without the thirst.  Without that primal ache.  That knowing exists inside of me now.  It is a stripping down.  A place of no ego.  But a place of clarity.

I went to a very quiet place outside and I listened.  I listened to the cicadas.  I listened to the wind.  I listened to the river.  I waited to see what more the river had to offer me before I made my next offering.

I moved about to get comfortable on the sand because I could feel my tailbone speaking to me.  “Too thin.  You’ve gotten too thin.”  Was the voice I heard.  (I’m sure it was my beloved grandmother speaking from afar)  I breathed.

Yes.  It’s true.  Within a short time, my body called for something else from me aside from asana.  And where I was once strong, in body, I no longer “appear” to be so.  But as I sat, I realized that I have had to become strong for myself in newer ways.  Ways which cannot be taught (unless beaten into you through Navy SEAL training and that is not the kind of teaching I mean since it lacks every type of tenderness known to humankind).  

*

I sat at the river and made offerings to those hearts I could feel were in need of healing.  I prayed for them.  I listened to my dialogue with myself.  And with god.  I felt buoyant.  

Every other year, this ritual of Yom Kippur was lengthy and pierced a place inside of my heart which was painful.  On this day, I felt at ease.  I felt STRONG.  Staring out at the river, I realized that there was nothing else to do but let the water find the stillness inside of me and cleanse and soothe the places which need it still.  For all of us.

As my teacher described recently, I too, had a trip around the sun these last 13 months which now included 3 surgeries and that time period took me into very deep silence and very deep places of learning how to forgive in ways which I had not accessed before.  I recall hitting a bump along that journey that was quite agonizing and made me think it was going to take several more trips around the sun until I would find some peace.  

But a big shift occurred which was seismic and profoundly healing.  

Forgiveness, for me, is a lifestyle.  

I don’t just show up at shul on Yom Kippur and pray for it.  In this case, that wasn’t a possibility.  

I take that trip around the sun every day and every year.  And just hope, for the sake of my own heart, and the hearts of others, that it pays off.

So, the gift of Yom Kippur for me was in the silence.  In recognizing how much stillness happens amidst the constant movement.

Let there be nothing to do but let the water find the stillness and cleanse and soothe the places which need it still.  For all of us.

In health and happiness.  And another trip around the sun.

9.27.12

Jill Bacharach

Rosh Hashana

My heart is beating fast.  

Everything is perfect actually.

Monday is the first day of Rosh Hashana.  The time leading up to the holiday, which is called Elul, is the time of repentance in preparation of the holiest time of the year.  Elul is seen as a time to search one’s heart and draw close to God in preparation for the Day of Judgment and the Day of Atonement.  It is a time to begin a process of granting and asking for forgiveness.  A time to work out problems, let go of grudges, a time to put energy toward working out issues you have with others.  It’s a ripe time of preparation and intention.

Monday is the first day of Rosh Hashana and I will be having a cervical spinal fusion.  Two discs which are at the point of crumbling will be removed.  The gap will be filled with pre-made sizer bones and secured with titanium.  

Monday is Rosh Hashana.

I will be opened up on the same day that Torah is opened.  

I bow to all that has come before this day.  Every relationship I have cherished.  Every relationship I have lost.  Every heart that I have hurt.  Everything that has been broken.  Everything I have pieced back together.

I regret every part I played in creating a misunderstanding.  In creating mistrust.  In creating fear.  I regret everything that was tossed away and hardened or broken or changed irrevocably.  

I hold and cherish every heart I have loved and awakened and inspired and helped catapult forward.  I cherish every life I have ushered forth into another life.  

As all who gather together on Rosh Hashana, I bless them.  I bless their hearts.  Their frailties.  Their limitations.  Their hurts.  Their joys.  Their endowments.  The losses and challenges they’ve endured.  I hold their hearts in mine.  That they may each find their way.  I pour love into the places that need it most.  I keep pouring love.  

I thank everyone, near or far, here and gone, who has ever poured love in my direction, if even for an instant.  It has changed the fabric of who I am.  I have been thrown into the sea many times but came swimming back to shore every time with something new to say, to question, and to offer. 

As a young child I was daring and free and went at things with a ferocity that may have looked overly risky to an outsider.  I had a few serious accidents as a result.  One very significant one when I was six which rendered me unconscious for several days.  

Thirty-eight years later, within the span of 2.5 years, I will have had 4 major orthopedic surgeries.  Who knows why.  A lot has happened in the span of those thirty-eight years.  Is it congenital?  (The hips supposedly were.)  Is it emotional?  Is it psychological?  Is it karmic?  Who knows.  But here I am.  And this is what there is to tend to now.  

I am not broken.  I am changing.  I am listening.  Something else has been called for here.  

I have learned many things.

If you are not listening to your body, then what are you doing?

If you are not listening to your heart, then who’s life are you living?

Love the people you love well.  

If you really want to love a person, be sure to learn how they want and need to be loved.

Things are not always what they seem.  

When someone looks well, that may not be the whole story.  

Ask a person how their heart is. 

If you don’t know how your mind works, you have no defenses against it.

Always tend to your inner landscape no matter what.

Monday is Rosh Hashana.

It reminds me to take nothing for granted.  We never know what lies before us.  

May we each be able to identify the blessings we actually possess.  

Whether you are of my tribe or not, whether you will be ushering in the new year or not, alone or with others, may you bear in mind that every day is a day worth truly and entirely “waking up” to.  

“There’s Only Now

There’s Only Here

Give Into Love

Or Live in Fear

No Other Path

No Other Way

No Day But Today.”

(from “Rent” lyric by Jonathan Larson)

L’Shana Tova.  
I wish you all a healthy new year.  

9.15.12

Jill Bacharach

Lion Love

I have had a penchant for drawing very charismatic people towards me.  Some have been leaders of their communities and some have been famous people.  Some have simply been magnificently larger than life.

One of my roles has been like that of the secret service.  I have been the beholder and protector of privacy.  Outsiders would ask me questions about these people and forget about it.  I have been a faithful guardian.    

And I’ve come to see many things along the way.  The lion is considered to be the King of the Animal world.  Female Mountain lions are extremely protective over their mountain lion kittens and have been known to fight off large mammals, including grizzly bears, with success.  Its lifestyle is solitary and it has powerful forearms, powerful paws and a muscular jaw.

I am like this Lion.  Extremely protective when that is what is called for.  

It is the lion’s nature to go off on its own.  And I know how to roam the mountaintop alone with adeptness and skill.

*

Lion power:  Vitality.

We have all fantasized about being friends with famous or larger-than-life people.  Imagined that if they only really knew us, they would want to be our closest and dearest friend.

I don’t know what that is for others, but what has been real for me is something important.  I know it is sheer and utter projection, because I have no life experience with most of these people, but...

There is a reflection of a humor, a life-force and an energetic juice that when I see it “over there,” reflected outside of myself, I want very much to have it closer to me.  I also know that I can only see it because I possess it inside of me.  And so, I am not just responding to projection, but a great reflection of myself which I wish to share and express, and express more and more of by someone who is expressing this vibrancy so clearly and beautifully and perhaps vibrating in the very resonant magnificence which I know I wish to tend to but perhaps have not achieved as fully.  

I have achieved this expression quite spectacularly.  But I have allowed life to get in the way and pull me off course and practically pull me from remembering this expression of myself until I hear myself laugh or gesture in a certain way and find myself all over again.  What it says to me is that I am not in the full expression of my life.  I have veered off course.

Signal: steer the train back on track.

*

I am experiencing a distinct arc at the moment of making decisions and experiencing real plateaus.  Some things are being asked of me and some things are simply not moving at all.  

I am asking myself very big questions on all fronts.  What do I want?  Who am I?  Who am I becoming?  Who do I want to become?  What have I come here to do?  What do I need?  What can I give?  What is my highest purpose?  Who is there left to forgive?

And right now it is also lovely to just watch the tennis.

That’s not a joke, actually.

I saw a photograph and it was a life which did not belong to me.  I asked my friend if there was a television at the function.  And I immediately felt a deep ripple of feelings inside.  

Indignance possessed my entire being.

The thought which came to me was this: “Well, then, I just wouldn’t go to that function! That would be non-negotiable. It’s the U.S. OPEN!”

Then another ripple.  

“That’s so rigid.  Look how isolated you keep yourself...”  It went on for a while.  From how those who seek me out in friendship are not so available to how I actually isolate.

It was a tricky moment.  If something that I love (tennis) brings me more deeply into who I am, and helps to bring me back to myself, brings me home again, I may not be willing to give it up.  Except under emergency circumstances.  Emergency circumstances trump everything as far as I am concerned.  

It may not actually be petulant or stubborn.  It may be wise.

This lioness doesn’t mind being alone on holidays if the matches are on.  Even if she knows how to rabble-rouse with the best of ‘em!

So, maybe one of the reasons charismatic people are drawn to me is because of my own inherent charisma.  But maybe we always need to take leave of one another and go to our own sides of the court more often than not because the flip side of having charisma is a longing for solitude and quiet.    

A longing which keeps me contentedly roaming the mountaintop.

In full expression of joy and tears when my players win or lose.  Protecting.  Loving.  Persevering.  And truthfully, having a ball!

9.2.12

Jill Bacharach

Tug-A-War

When I was six years old I began going to sleep-away camp for eight weeks every summer.  

I was a “runt.”  (Those of you laughing and murmuring, “You still are!”  You should know that I grew to be the tallest member of my biological family!)

I was always the smallest kid in the bunk, on every team, on the girls side of the camp, and at the entire camp, in general.  So when it came to size order, I was always in the front of the line.

That was just size.

What I lacked in size meant nothing to me because I made up for it in every possible way in athletics, in muscle, in guts and in sheer will.

I had a reputation.  

When I was eight years old and it was College-Week, the pre-cursor to “Color-War,” I was in the tug-a-war competition and I was helping win the competition for my team.  During College Week, the camp was divided into four teams.  So you would have to compete against all three in order to be in the lead.  

I was in the front of the rope.  The runt.  Largely unorthodox when you think about it.  But somehow, no one was going to knock me down.  Our team was fierce and we kept winning.  

Three tug-a-war’s later, we had a crushing lead over all of the other teams.

Then came the “All-Star” competition.  That was the one where they took the strongest members from each age-group and asked for us to compete against the “All- Stars” on the other teams.  

This was going on for a very long time.  Many rounds of competition.  It was a very hot day. 

I would not give up.

I had no sense of being tired.  No sense of calluses on my hands.  No sense of my body, even.  No sense of the heat.  

I remember the screaming, I remember my counselor screaming my name, the cheering  in the background, the feeling of the team moving as one unit as we pulled backwards and ripped that rope to victory.

The entire camp seemed to scream.  But all I remember was running into my counselor’s arms.  My legs, cradled around her hips and I collapsed inside her large and comforting body.  Everything went dark and quiet and at last, I was able to rest.  

There was more screaming but I didn’t worry about any of it.  She ran me around, threw water on me, tried to wake me, etc. etc.  But I was gone.  I couldn’t see or hear anything.  Everything was dark and black and quiet.  It was wonderful.

Ultimately, I was okay.  I had fainted in my counselor’s arms.  The counselors were not doing a good job of looking out for my well-being, and my nature was to push.  I didn’t have the sensibility at age 8 that I was dehydrated or that I might have been at risk of passing out from over-exertion.  It never crossed my young mind that I could pass out.  I only focused on what was needed of me, which was to win.

It amazes me to remember this now.  That I already had this imprint of pushing past what was healthy for me 36 years ago.  Maybe even before then.  

How long does it take for us to learn a pattern?  And how long to unlearn it?  Hmmmm...  

Well, what I can say is that I am no longer muscling through my life.  I have even shed about 12 pounds of muscle (sadly), and do not presently, have that barrier between me and where I need to get to emotionally.  

I don’t begrudge the counselors nor the camp for not looking out for me.  I look back and see a child who tried to teach me something.  She tried to teach me even earlier.  On countless occasions.  And she has tried to teach me since.  That is what I can see now.    

How long does it take for us to learn a pattern?  And how long to unlearn it?

As I am about to embark on another major surgery, what I see is that I am ready.  I feel 

compassion for myself.  I am listening to a body which is speaking in clear and direct ways, even if they are just quiet whispers.  

I am listening.

Not muscling.

Nothing else to do now but listen.

And let go of the ropes.

Unless of course, you need me to pull you to safety.

With love.

8.30.12

Jill Bacharach