It’s coming…in drips and drabs, fits and starts. Dreams half lived. Tears. Books half read, piled to the ceiling containing the “answers.” Questions floating on top of a still pond.

This voice:

“Your new life is not about where you will live, whether cabin or ranch, or what child you live close to, or even what you will do with yourself 24/7. Your new life will be based on Who You Are.”

Gulp.

This poem comes:

I  am looking for a deep whisper. Something from a hollow well
that resounds softly.

I am looking for an invitation to meet myself. A soundless, wordless entreaty to sink into my flesh so as to sense and feel. My thoughts alchemizing into blood trails.

 I wish to speak only in oxygen exchanges. 

Between the pulsing of the pineal gland and cortisol release,
There must be a message for me writ in “knowing.”

It is now going on 8 months since my husband died.

July— summer in the city. I am sharing an apartment, not far from my daughter, with a young man needing to share expenses, in a lovely neighborhood in Boston. And he is lovely too. We talk enough, but not too much, which is to my liking. I have less to say now than before my husband’s death. I’m waiting to understand something, anything.

In 2020 the fabric of my life began to rip apart. Each pattern became unrecognizable until nothing of the whole could be salvaged. Then Terry died in 2023, and the last shred of my reality bit the dust.

I’ve been thinking about how marrying him was “choosing” a certain reality. A way of living that dovetailed with a comforting shared past. We both knew the calming cadence of season’s changing in the mountains. We understood the hierarchy within the family. We shared healthy skepticism for big talk and big promises. We knew what it felt like to have noses to grindstones—scratchy!

Some of those hallmarks of our reality together had to be challenged. That’s what a long marriage is for. There were arguments, misunderstandings, and negotiations.

And there was always the chance, the possibility, the potential to grow, to go and do, and be whatever we wanted, because we lived, where?

In the USA

OMG, it’s July 4th tomorrow and I am feeling nostalgic! And, of course grief. For old realities.

I come from a two party home and the home of my marriage was two party as well.

It never was a problem. We live in the USA. You can believe what you want and love your “opponent.” We all want the same thing, don’t we? A good life for ourselves and our family. We all want freedom. And, in the end, we want freedom to be who we are.

So, we’re back to that question:

Who Am I?

According to one of my gurus in the Light Worker realm, realities are based on individual perspectives and EXISTENCE is based on our connection with source. I think Jesus said this too.

There is nothing comforting now about reality in the United States. It is too fragmented for that. Too many different perspectives about what is “real” and what isn’t.

I was invited on a hike with a women today who was wearing a mask when she picked me up in her car. While walking I told her casually that I had been sick last week. She asked me if I took a Covid test. I said, no. And, she put her mask back on for the rest of the hike. She made a remark about how she cannot get sick because of her mother with immune deficiency. And, all I could say is, “I’m not sick.” In my reality I had the flu, and I got over it. In her reality, I was a threat and source of fear, and there we were —both on the same hike.

I guess now, I am on the same hike as everyone else, but not in the same reality.

However, I am part of existence. I am here. I am part of THE whole. And part of the earth. (When you have your life after death experience you’ll be crazy existential too!)

Lately, I have been I thumping my dahnjon (lower abdomen) with my loose fists and asking over and over, “Who am I?

This practice is a new one for me, coming from a tradition called Body Brain designed by Ilchi Lee, with what I consider a healthy synthesis of East and West modalities for well being.

Next week I will attend a B&B workshop called, “Finding My True Self.” In preparation for that I will continue thumping away on my dahnjon in a rhythm to the question—Who Am I ? and waiting in the vibratory stillness for the answer.

Who am I asking? My higher self? God?

Not my ego, that’s for sure. My ego would love it if I would just defer to the carefully crafted, and well programmed identity that I have been using rather facially lo these many years. Truth be told, my friends and relatives might prefer that as well. But, Fr. Thomas Keating calls this the “false self.” And, he is all about laying it down.

I wonder (the precursor to faith) if the truth of who I am can be the reality that I live?

Knock, Knock