So long, suckah!

So, last year on this very day, I wrote a note to 2013 and told that year in no uncertain terms, how much it sucked. I kicked it in the ass and said good riddance; I even went on to say that I was sure that 2014 was gonna make me forget all about the challenges of 2013. I was right. 2014 was even worse.

I won’t go into all of the tribulations of the past year, other than to say that losing my dad in April pretty much set the tone. What I will say is that I feel as if the last 18 months have been my personal ‘dark night of the soul’ that is required of all humans. Could it get worse? Of course and at some point, it probably will. Far in the future, if I have anything to say about it…which I probably don’t. And that brings me to the year’s large lesson.

Control: we have none. Planning: kind of a joke. Loss: inevitable. Time: dampens the pain and gives us perspective.

“This too shall pass” is such a cliché, but it’s such a useful one. Time is like a power wash. If we can just get through another hour, another day, another week and if we watch and listen and pay attention, that time also gives us the space to see events in our lives with more clarity. For me, clarity is comfort.

I was listening to my latest guru Caroline Myss recently and one of her main lessons is that we will NEVER know why things happen the way that they do. We just won’t and wasting our time digging through our psychic and emotional archives for “why” is a waste of time. Life truly is unknowable and if you relax into that, peace will find you.

So, I bid farewell to the hardest year of my life (so far). I can look back and see a cross country move, leaving friends and comfort behind, losing my soul mate dog, losing my dad, navigating a new environment, trying to help my 94 year-old mother accept her ‘new normal’ and recently retiring from a 30+ year radio career. That’s a lot to pack into a year and a half, but it has passed.

I’ve emerged from my dark night and though I’m still a little banged up, I’m ready for 2015. I’ve come to the conclusion that my mom is in the right facility and she’s safe and comfortable. I’m completely at peace with leaving my job. I am ready to take more time to explore our new home and community. I’m going to get back into my health and wellness routine. We are heading back to my beloved Rocky Mountains for a ski trip in about a month and then spring will come, as it always does.

The biggest thing that I’ve taken away from this period is that I am now more in tune with other’s losses. I am a more compassionate and empathetic person and I’m able to express that now. In 2014, 9 of my friends lost their dads and I know that so many more humans suffered as well. The world has been a brutal, chaotic place for the past year.

Peace begins in each of us and in the choices that we make.

Peace be with you and in you. Here’s to a new year and a Detroit Lions play-off win. For my dad.

Lessons from a porcupine

There’s a porcupine hanging around our house. He/she suddenly appeared the Sunday morning after I returned from my final week on the job in Denver. We were alerted to this arrival when our younger dog, Ember appeared at the door with a nose full of quills.

We extracted them quickly and she was fine, but the varmint remains. My husband immediately suggested getting rid of it. Many friends weighed in with ‘shoot it’. We explored hiring a local guy to trap and relocate, but decided his fees were a bit too steep.

For you city folk, I’ll fill you in on the ways of the elusive porcupine. They climb and eat trees and often nest in them. You may have walked right underneath them on many occasions. They are not aggressive and are quite solitary; you will rarely see more than one, unless it’s a mother and her young ‘un. They move quite slowly, which is why you will see them dead on the side of the road in rural areas and they do not ‘shoot’ their quills, except in cartoons.

Porcupines are actually rather peaceful, little vegetarians, but the quills are a major problem if you have dogs. I know this from personal and expensive experience. Which is why we are struggling with what to do about our prickly, fellow earth traveler.

We have to do a quick perimeter search before we let the dogs out at night and last night, I looked at my husband and said “Who is this porcupine and what does it want?? Why is it here?”

I Googled ‘porcupine spirit animal’ and this is what I found for when a porcupine enters your life:

It’s time to free yourself of guilt and shame and reclaim the innocence that you left behind as a child. Open your heart to those things that gave you joy as a child; remember fantasy and imagination and bring them into your life again. Make sure that you do not to get caught in the chaos of the world, where fear, greed and suffering are commonplace.

Know that you are protected and that protection is always available to you. It’s time to be yourself, and trust that it is safe to be who you are. The focus here is on faith and trust and the knowing that you can move mountains with these powers.

Bam!

Protection, not threat. We live in a time where we seem to believe that we can eliminate all threats, often by killing them. It’s easier than listening or empathizing or trying to find common ground. Thus, the advice to ‘just shoot it’.

I went out last night with a flashlight to commiserate with our visitor, who I found sitting under a huge cottonwood tree. I told him/her that it was time to move further away from the house because we were fearful for the dogs. He/she turned and waddled away and up a tree and in that moment, I felt such a wave of sadness and affection that I had to take a deep breath to keep from sobbing; over a porcupine.

We are so quick to shoo away that which we don’t understand; so quick to see everything that might be different as a threat. There is always danger, but I think that many times, our reactions heighten that danger, rather than dampen it.

There is chaos in the world, protests in our streets. Politics is divisive and the common reaction is ‘just shoot it’ as if that solves everything. How about ‘just talk to it’ or ‘just listen to it’ becoming our go-to reaction?

So, Mr/Mrs Porcupine. Thank you for the lesson. Be well.