A quick reminder before I dive in: This week we are opening the doors to our first learning experience in Provence, welcoming participants from visual and performing arts, education, architecture, innovation, and futures literacy, for a beautiful, immersive experience focused on fear and loss, with time and space to explore, learn, and create. If you are curious, and longing for meaningful connections, and creative explorations, I hope you join one of our remaining experiential gatherings this spring. All the details are on our website.
Loss is something I am intimately familiar with, having had more than my fair share of it over the years…The loss of country, and any sense of belonging…being forever suspended in a place in between, always in movement, never arriving. A new friend described it last week, as living with chronic pain…your body is so used to it, you don’t even remember the time it wasn’t there…The loss of identity attached to so many stories, roles, and expectations that demanded everything of me, and that I built my life around…Breaking that structure of illusions, was one of the hardest things I ever had to do…The loss of shared values, and connections, grieving for the state of the world we find ourselves in, with no common ground between us…The loss of trust, and inability to protect our children from what is happening, desperately trying to preserve what’s left of our sanity…The loss of “success”, money, influence, all the material things I spent years working and sacrificing for, and that I had no choice but to give up to pursue this new path I am on. Not because I believe this work is less valuable, but because we live in the system that doesn’t recognize the work needed right now. Sorting out the mess we find ourselves in shouldn’t be a choice for the market economy. The market economy shouldn’t have a say in whether we have clean air, healthy food, good healthcare, and education for all…whether we can put our kids to sleep at night without worrying for their safety or whether we choose to support our families with meaningful work that is healing for ourselves, and our communities instead of a grind.
There have been losses so profound, so heartbreaking, that made me question everything. Loss of my mother to cancer when she was only two years older than I am now, loss of relationships, and friendships that mattered…of people who didn’t want to or didn’t know how to let go of an idea of me and instead accept and love me for who I am. The losses that triggered the underlying trauma of never feeling safe to show up, and having to work hard to earn someone’s love, made me face my fears and conditioning and taught me how to stay open to life and love, despite all the hurt and rejection. In the acceptance of loss, I have found freedom at last.
A generous heart is always open, always ready to receive our going and coming. In the midst of such love we need never fear abandonment. This is the most precious gift true love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.”
Bell Hooks
We often mistake the fear of losing with the loss itself, so much so that we willingly choose to stay in our stories, toxic relationships, and family dynamics…When I think of so many sleepless nights just before my marriage ended, and how paralyzed I was by the prospect of the unknown life ahead…all the scenarios I was running in my head, night after night, worrying how I would manage with two kids on my own…all the effort I was putting in, trying to “save the marriage”, it wasn’t surprising I ended up in hospital with a severe case of anemia. My body knew how to give up before my mind did. The day after my husband left, I was made redundant: all of my worst fears manifested themselves at once, and yet all I remember of those days is an enormous sense of relief, of not having to carry the weight of it all anymore. The loss is rarely as big as all the worst-case scenarios we spend so much energy on, “waiting for the other shoe to drop”. It is the fear of the unknown, of losing control, and having to let go of our stories and beliefs, that prevents us from pursuing our dreams, lowering our masks, and opening our hearts to others. What we can’t know holding to the fear is that on the other side is a beautiful possibility of something new, exciting, curious, peaceful, spacious, and loving…and someone else inside us responding to the call of freedom…
Things come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
Pema Chödrön
Over the years, I had to learn, to paraphrase James Baldwin, how to risk everything, of me and who I think I am, who I think I’d like to be, where I think I’d like to go. To learn, life is nothing more than a series of experiments, gathering experiences, choosing opportunities where I become softer and more vulnerable, where new possibilities emerge without effort, where I can see and be seen, love and be loved…The journey without a map, meeting each moment as is, not as I would like it to be. Ability to discover something unlooked for, by living the unfamiliar, noticing any disturbance and resistance to what is unfolding, and leaning into curiosity and joy.
What makes us remarkably resilient, creative, and courageous, is our ability to hold the full spectrum of our emotions: from the deepest grief, sadness, and anger to the most profound love, and joy, we have the capacity for it all. In preparation for our first gathering, while reflecting on fear, and loss, I was also working on a new piece of art - a door symbolizing this adventure I was embarking on. As always when I paint, any ideas I have of myself go away, and I am left in a place of spacious possibility, without a need to understand or solve anything, All that is required is playful curiosity, and trust in what is unfolding. When the work was finished, all I could see and feel was pure joy, the magic of shapes and colors, reminding me the child in me was alive, and well.
When things fall apart, as they inevitably do when the sense of loss is too much to bear when the adult has no clue what to do next, and how “to solve it”, all we need to do is allow the most innocent, wondrous part of us to come out and play, for the new, previously unimagined worlds of possibilities to emerge. Let’s remember to keep that part alive, even in the most difficult of circumstances!
Until next week…
May you have the courage to live the life that you would love, to postpone your dreams no longer but do at last what you came here for, and waste your heart on fear no more.
John O'Donohue