Here, I am at home.

 I am always and never at home. 

The rain is coming down outside. Hammering onto this parched desert soil with a force that makes windows turn waterfall and employees frantically try to block the flow of water rushing in under the double doors in front of me.

People walk in – drenched – plastic bags hastily pulled over heads. The scattered few who listened to the forecast and brought umbrellas look vaguely smug.

Us desert folks, we don’t prepare for downpours like this. We pride ourselves on the resilience it takes to grow roots in hard-packed soil. But the free flow of water? It’s a rare and wondrous thing.

It’s a long, long way to the ocean from where I sit.

I swallow the last long-since-cool dregs of my latte. A deep, long held sigh releases. My shoulders drop.

My wild heart, she is weary today.

I am swirling with thoughts of all the ways that we break. Feeling this in my bones. All hard bite and liquid surrender. How life does not give us a single blessed guarantee. How the foundation of all that we build is this wild and vast unknowing.

How, in the end, all there is for us to do is choose where to stake our faith and our trust. Not because we are promised anything or can rely on external security. But simply because we want, and that want asks us to choose.

Because want always demands choice.

Choice. To place our feet upon a path. To walk through the unknowing with all the ferocity and grace we can muster in our weary and hopeful hearts.

For the moment, the rain has let up. Even a storm needs to rest. Seeks pause while it decides what it is that it will become and where it should become that thing that it is destined to be. 

There’s a wild sort of beauty in the sky now. It’s all potential and possibility and life and destruction and elemental force. Letting its own want push it in the direction of choice.

And here on the ground? All there is to do is to wait.

To move through the world and make our best guess of where safe ground lies. To decide how to best move ourselves in that direction. Or to choose exposure. The vulnerability of staying in place, walking out under that ominously low gray sky and knowing that there are times you have to risk in order to fully receive that which brings life.

And even in that, sometimes the forecasted storm never arrives. We batten down the hatches and brace ourselves – cover the windows and pound up makeshift walls. And then, without fanfare or drama, the storm decides that destiny calls it elsewhere, or to become something other than expected.

Sometimes the battle we brace for is actually surrender. Sometimes the security we seek isn’t at all what we need. Sometimes it’s the embrace of the unknowing that delivers us to grace – however wild and untamed and raw and real that grace may be.

And sometimes the storm comes. It hits hard. And when it does, we cannot find shelter. We are swept up in its force under cracked open heavens. And there is nothing to do but let the flood waters rise and yes – sometimes things break and sometimes we break and sometimes it seems that the damage is catastrophic and that nothing will ever be the same again.

And sometimes this is true. Nothing will be the same again. It can’t be – not in the wake of a storm like that. Things are uprooted that cannot be regrown. Things come apart, are ripped from their moorings, are carried along by forces beyond their control. And even when the waters recede we return to find the landscape changed. To find nothing as it was before.

 Sometimes nothing can ever be as it was before.

To live through this is to be acutely awake of all the ways that we break.

To live at all is to be acutely aware of all the ways that we break.

The light changes now. The deep of the storm mixes with the bright edge of what is next. It’s the kind of light that holds promises, the hard and true kind. The kind of light that stirs something deep. The kind of light that only comes after.

Me and my wild and weary heart? We walk outside under that hard promise of a sky. Where everything seems sharply defined. The edge and the center. The brutal and the soft. The broken and the healed and the whole.

We spin slow, right in time with the wind that tangles hair and the cadence of beat and the pulse of light. And we make a promise. To honor all the ways that we break and all the ways that we knit back together. And we bow in reverence to the storm and her teachings. To honor the way that even this far from the sea, the water can still wash everything clean.

The way the water will always wash everything clean.

I return inside and sit with the blank page in front of me. Right now I am called to only two things. The words ready to live on the page and the memory of her hand on my lower back this morning as we walked again into the unknowing.

And I am reminded, once again – that to live at all is to break and to break is to make space for becoming. And in that becoming, all of the rest is made purposeful and good and true.

In the weary and grace and the storm and the raw and promises and the redemption and the light that illuminates this wild and vast unknowing. Without fail. Every single time.

Blessed be.

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The seizures were threatening to kill him, her only son. There was no choice. When he was in the hospital – having his skull opened to remove the tumor and during the long recovery that followed- she wore her wonder woman panties every day. Until they were as frayed and thin and worn as her weary heart. Because they were proof of what she needed to remember. She was very, very strong.

~~~

The night – when he took from her what should only ever be freely given – she watched it happen from the ceiling. When she could not bear to be inside her body for a moment longer, she left it behind. Floated high above.

Later, she kissed him goodbye, her lips parched and hard against his, aware that they were watching. After the others had long since fallen asleep the silent, shuddering tears began. She crawled up the stairs, her legs refusing to hold her any longer. Her knees scratched on rough carpet as she crawled across the bedroom in the dark, searching desperately for her overnight bag.  She knew without looking that her pink lace panties – the first pair that had made her feel like a grownup – would be stained with blood. She closed her eyes, silent tears streaming down her face, and wished for a cape. Blue and red satin, she imagined, and powerful enough that she would not have to float next time – she could fly away and never return.

~~~

Afterwards, when it was done – when the choice was made and it was over and could never be taken back – she stood in the shower. Her frail shoulders curved around her grief stained soul. She held her body, one that so recently had held another,  and she felt as if the earth might just give way beneath her feet. She waited for the hot water to scald the memories from her skin. She pounded slick tiles with her bare hands, a primal keening rising from the deep well at the center of her grief.  She was broken open, cracked wide. It was not supposed to be this way. There is no superhero in the world strong enough to alter this one irrevocable thing that she had done. This time, she would have to rescue herself.

~~~

Lover, there will be days when there are no telephone booths to change in. Days when your own personal kryptonite has robbed you of your last bit of strength. Days when Wonder Woman panties and satin capes and scalding water don’t have near enough magic to transport you back to the core of your powers.

Indeed, there will be days when the most heroic act you can muster is changing the sheets on your bed. All of your energy focused on tucking and smoothing, as if meticulously formed hospital corners are the one thing that will save your life. It matters now at the close of the day, when everything in this world feels dirty and cloaked in shame, that your skin only be touched by something clean.

This is enough. This is more than enough. 

No, you cannot really fly. There will be no single bound building leaps. You will not win a race with a speeding bullet. There won’t be a man in tights and a cape swooping down to save you. It’s just you.  One person. Small and exquisitely mortal against the relentless pressing of the big, wide world.

But know this. Even without costume or talisman or amulet, you have power beyond comprehension.  You have brokered peace treaties. You have kept intact that which was bound for disaster. You have held the hand of the dying and brought life to the world. You have brought down empires and built them anew, the right way this time.

To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory.  In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born.

And you. I bow to your tender heart. Your fierce ownership of self. To the battles done in the name of health and wholeness and agency and truth. To the choices made that had to be made that nobody understands. To the judgement faced and the heavy grief cradled.  To the ways you have continued, even in the face of great loss and sacred things stolen and all that has threatened your hard won peace.

It is no small thing to survive this world.  And it is no small thing to stand tall and to claim this life and to thrive.

I bow to you, humble and awed.

Because you have been the saving grace of your own survival, again and again and again. 

And in the end, there is nothing more powerful than exactly that.

The post You are the saving grace of your own survival appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

~~~~~~~

You wake up.  The sky is blue. The children laugh.  You forget to clear the breakfast dishes and the honey dries into sticky lacquer on the cover of the library book.  There are only hours separating you from the implosion.  You do not yet know this.  You may sense the approaching tempest, the remnant of some primitive instinct whispering losslossloss in the spaces just below the wind.  But you do not predict that this is the day.  You do not know to savor the aching sweetness of the final moments.  We never do.  Ignorance is not protection; this is the way of things.

But with a sharp crystal shatter it is done.  It’s a harsh slice, a vacuum of undoing.  Reality settles cold in the vastness of newly empty spaces. There you stand, dead center, eye of storm.  Face lifts to the heavens. Tender kneecaps find solid earth.  The body bends in a supplication that is the exact opposite of prayer.  Shrapnel of unwritten love letters spins the room round.  Scattered shards catch light and glitter with the fierce tenacity of things that will never be. It’s all slow motion now. There is a reckless beauty in the breakdown; this is the way of things.

You have stood here before.   You will stand here again.  In goodbye there is no first time or last time.  There is only this time, and the wrenching ache of it.   We are born with the knowing that this will come and come and come again.  The muscle memory of heartache holds no comfort.  Preparation is futile. Practice does not make perfect.  It is still – it will always be – gasping breath and primal howl and bleeding out from the places we hold most sacred.  The force of it will flatten, guaranteed.  Heartbreak has its own agenda; this is the way of things.

You pick up the pen, a desperate purge of words. You bleed letters now.  You always do when it comes to this. It’s a bitter end scrawl on neat lined paper.  You look down. Thick black ink seeps from pen, covering the soft pad of fingers, the raised veins, the curve of bone.  Darkness spreads across the page.  Your hand and just-written words are obliterated by stain.  It is fitting that truth flow has left body marked and words concealed.  It will eventually wash away.  The visible stain and the slow fade to forgetting; this is the way of things.

You stand later that night, on a street wet from rain.  Arms wrap around frail body, a desperate attempt to hold yourself whole.  Hazy streetlights glow, bone truth echoes in the damp night air. You look up into windows containing lives that could have been yours. But things fall apart.  Lives continue their trajectories without you. The heart gains new fault lines with each loss.  They slip against each other, and things fall down.   When the ground stops moving we patch things together as best we can. We are all earthquakes waiting to happen.  Parallel lives and the aftermath of disaster; this is the way of things.

And it finally comes, as it must.  That cry from your deep, ancient center.  The gash of loss. The frantic exile from skin and want and home. The full moon calls forth your grief song now.  Tear off your clothes, light fire to dreams.  It’s just you and the wolves and the unseen wild things.  The world spins on, – it always has and always will. But you belong right now to the exquisite otherness of loss. Give yourself over to it.  It is the only choice.   There is no place for you amongst the tame, pretty things. You must follow the spiral down.  The inevitable descent into the underworld; this is the way of things.

But dawn comes. Shadows lift.  You are shivering.  Naked.  Alone.  As alone as you have ever been.  The sun rises.   The earth’s waking rhythms are a call to rebirth.  From the ashes you emerge.  There is a tender ferocity about you now.  A solid core of strength at the center of grief’s deep well.  It is true, you think, that freedom is the only language our hearts know how to speak.

It is true that there are things in life that can never be explained to those who have not lived them.  It is true that loss is sometimes the only way to become more of yourself.    It is true that survival sometimes only comes from inviting a million different deaths. It is true that the first notes of that song will always transport you to a state of breathless worship.  It is true that you can be loved in a way that changes everything, and find that everything has remained exactly the same.   Layers of truth are always hidden in the folds of great loss; this is the way of things.

Your skin is a glorious road map of scars gifted by love and by devastation.   Your heart is inked with the essence of unspoken words and stories yet to find life.   Your breath will always remember what it was to love without translation. Your bones are the only things that know the whole truth.

The horizon calls to you now, speaks your true name. The name you were given by the universe the day you were born and the name that is whispered by the wind with every rebirth.   The name your spirit recognizes as belonging only to you. You walk forward as if compelled.

You walk eternally, hopefully forward.   This, always, is the way of things.

The post This is the way of things appeared first on Jeanette LeBlanc.

“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Ah love, I’ve been looking for you. I thought I’d find you here.

Open your weary eyes and look at me. This is the holding-on space. I remember well the constant echo of your questioning soul. The way your resignation lives firmly encased within your remaining hope. The tenuous grip you have on what is, and your hesitant reaching for an uncertain future

Soon the day will come for your leave-taking. Perhaps that day is now. Perhaps you wonder if it will ever come. Maybe you wait anxiously, biding your time until the pieces fall into alignment. You may have no idea until the moment arrives and it is necessary to be gone.

One day soon, love, it will be necessary to be gone.

That day is coming, and faster than you realize. There is much of the upcoming journey for which you can never be prepared. Wisdom that will not integrate until life has worked its way through you. But I will tell you this now, while you are still able to listen.

Take the time, love, to notice the specifics of your leaving. Pay exquisite attention to the details of what this life has been.

The way his eyes crinkle at the corners and his lips tilt when he smiles. The exact color of light that shines in your bedroom window at dawn and how he looks illuminated like that. The cadence of sigh and shift and breath as you move through your ordinary days together. That ancient olive tree in the center of your backyard. How it’s gnarly texture imprints your back when he presses you against it under the burning midday sun.

Notice the well-rehearsed dance of your bodies as you both navigate your cramped kitchen while preparing your meal. Pay close attention to the woven texture of the faded blue dishcloth as it swishes through the water while you clean up from your last together dinner. Your fingers briefly touch when you hand him the wet plate. It has happened thousands of times before. It will never happen again.

Walk through your life and touch gently all these things that formed the framework of your love. Note them in your heart with invisible ink. Bless them with grateful prayer. Take stock and catalog. Write litany and list. Make a sacred offering to the gods of infinitesimal details. These are the pieces of a life that will never be again.

They are mostly tiny things. Background things. They go unnoticed on normal days. They will not be enough to keep you here. Even the love – as tender and true and deep as it is – will not be enough to keep you here. But as tiny and background and unnoticed as they may be – they are the stuff on which a life was built.

And someday you will miss them. They will twist unbidden through your mind, the once concrete made intangible and mysterious with the intermingling of memory and time. This missing may come on waves of sweet nostalgia or with the deep undertow of regret or with the desperate longing for a reversal that will not come. It may be from the solidity of knowing what was best and with gratitude for the release to bliss that it brought. It may simply arrive with the bittersweet awareness of inevitability. But you will miss them; these things that rarely warranted your attention when this was the life your soul called home.

You will miss them because this was not a false love. Because the details of this life were real, and they formed a piece of your story – the one that delivered you to the place you are now. Because in forming a piece of your story they have – inescapably and eternally – become a piece of you. Because the details of what was deserve reverence, even if they do not sing your siren song right now.

Listen now, love. Even if it is difficult to hear. Even if you think I may be wrong. Listen when I tell you that someday this house will not be yours. This life will not be yours. And even within the brilliance of all that you will have and hold and know in your new life, you will still hold an ache for it, somewhere in your unfathomable depths.

You will one day be asked to ring the doorbell of your former life and wait to be granted entrance. You will ask the person who has taken your place where to find silverware for your daughter’s birthday cake. When she hands you the flatware you carefully selected for your wedding registry,  your heart will open – rough slice through tender center – right there in the familiar-unfamiliar space where love once lived. Yes, you will be immersed in the beauty of your current reality. Still, this will steal breath from lungs as you remember all that has been done and broken and ended in the name of your leaving.

This is where reality lives. In the epicenter of the paradox. Right at the meeting point of love and loss and life and leaving and beginnings and grief and joy. In the sweet, sticky spill of that rough slice and in the invisible moments when heart is stitched together again. Right in the center of that tiny cramped kitchen. Where the faded blue of the dishcloth and the gnarled bark of the olive tree and the illumination of daybreak remain the same, even though all else has changed.

I tell you this now not so you will dwell on pain yet to come. I know you are in the swell of seismic shifts. I know how you long for steady ground. And it will come, love, it will come.

I tell you this to give you a window to peek through. To a time when you have left the holding-on space far behind.  To urge you to honor the totality of your current life before rushing headlong into another. To allow yourself the fullness of your grief and your leaving and your missing so that you can one day embrace the fullness of your joy.

So in that one day time, when you are standing in that cramped kitchen where you once danced through a life that is no longer yours, you will remember the silent reverence you offered to your no longer life. And you can smile and know that the missing and the ache are as true as the love once was.

And that all of it is good. So very, very good.

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