Cutting Cords

I spent a very sweet Sunday morning in the garden after a deeply challenging Saturday. My garden heals. It never fails. The blooms, fruits, birds, bees and herbs produce such a balm... Little else compares.

My dear Ana, a healer herself, lovingly performed a cord cutting ceremony for me last night after I placed a call of desperation. Letting go of an unhealthy connection to someone is wise (an overdue)... but painful in a way I cannot accurately describe.

"Talk about him. Bring the feelings to the surface," she said... but the feelings of pain, loss, rejection and failure were already spilling over. I'm a Cancer. I cry relatively frequently. But this was overwhelming even to me... I could barely breathe as the tears rushed out from behind my eyes. "I am going to begin with your third eye," Ana went on in her warm, soothing voice. "Okay," I croaked.

She went on to my throat, heart, solar plexus, root... feet. That's when I really felt it. As she moved, I suddenly felt as if I was standing in a pool of salty tears. My feet felt wet... but glued solidly to the ground... as if I were weighed down by many lifetimes of sorrow which had begun to melt around my toes. Just as suddenly, I felt untethered. I began to rock and sway... and my feet, as well as the tears, dried. I was cut free. Together, our intentions had successfully released me from at least some those ropes to which I've clung far too long. "This doesn't completely separate you from the other person. It just gives you a clean slate."

No, I don't feel as though the letting go process is over. In fact, my dreams were filled with my hearts rebellion against the ritual and I awoke with a new ache. Still, I do feel changed and am more confident in my ability to move forward.

I told him that I would not be contacting him "for a while." I'm not sure what that will turn out to be, but I have at least promised myself a week. He is loving and will respect my healing process. In our conversation yesterday morning, he made it very clear to me that all he has ever wanted was to cherish our friendship, to keep from hurting me, and to respect my feelings even if he didn't mirror them. (Of course, in his efforts to shield me from hurt, he helped me to create more... but that is human nature... and I place no blame. Blame is a worthless endeavor anyway.) Though I was pressing him, challenging him to be mean to me, to "cut to the heart and hurt me enough so that I can let go," he said only gentle things, trying as he might to make me feel better. "But none of this is really about me, is it?"

Ah. He CAN be insightful. And though I lashed out at one point, he remained present and I could hear true love in his voice. "I WANT your FRIENDSHIP," he said with a certain sense of grief... or fear... or both. That's when I finally woke up... and when those tears started bursting out with a force I've never before experienced.

And so, I'm cut... and will try to find some solid ground as, right now, I feel myself blowing around in the wind.

Of course I would spend this morning in my garden... my little piece of ground. She's a healer... and whispered to me so many insightful, beautiful things today.

I just ran into my friend Rob here at Stella's and he asked me about my new job with Greenpeace. "I'm so proud of you," he said. What a sweet, lovely thing to say! Melanie, too, has been so supportive and has expressed her pride. Oh, how I need those affirmations! While I struggle with feelings of defeat and failure in my love life, I am being built up in other ways. This job is another bit of ground on which to land.

People have said that one negative, cutting remark can ink out a hundred positive, reaffirming remarks. I am finding this to be completely untrue, at least where my new career is concerned. Literally hundreds of people try to bring me down each week... "You look like you need to find a real job," one grumpy, sad little man said to me last Tuesday... But just a handful of supportive comments from a few have successfully kept me buoyed. Thank goodness. It would be a much tougher job otherwise! It isn't easy to share controversial opinions with strangers!

A little tenderness goes a long, long way. Ana shared so much of hers with me last night and I am deeply grateful. I attempted to be tender to myself as well... easing myself into a tub filled with steamy lavender water and then allowing myself to sleep the clock around before heading out to the back yard.

The tenderness of my garden is unparalleled. The delicate tendrils of my morning glory vines seem to have wrapped themselves around my heart, holding the pieces together while the softness of leaves and blooms brushed away the hardened bits.

Melanie called just as I was cleaning up from my play. "How are you doing today?... (He) was a growing experience, Rabbit. Better things are waiting for you. ...Maybe God wants you to concentrate on Greenpeace." Maybe He does. It's a wonderful thought at the very least. Perhaps if I continued to hold onto this old longing... I would not have been open or available enough to succeed the way I know I can in this new job.

Or perhaps I needed to be broken completely open in order to be more compassionate toward those who would rather sling hurtful barbs at me than admit they are unwilling to hear something inconvenient... something which might require them to change.

Change can be so horribly difficult.

In order to be truly successful at helping to end the destruction we are imposing on the earth, I'm going to have to be tender and sweet myself... no matter how much resistance I face, no matter how rude or cutting people become. After all, I'm surviving THIS... this cutting of the cords... this letting go and moving forward.

All photos copyright 2009 - Gloria D. Price