Dear Friends,
As the sun is setting over the rockies, the moon is rising, the wind is winding. I’ve decided to stop lighting my own fire, and adding oregano tea, green apples. All were intuitive insights to aid in the recovery of the much held grief in my lungs, which has turned into congestion.
My sister and her family and so many are facing their biggest nightmares right now. I did an interview with Daniel from Spiritual Rockstar and Your Sacred Purpose today. It was so full of truth, the whole dialogue was driven by what Buddha reminds us – suffering leads to compassion.
When I wrote and shared my story in a book called Mayhem to Miracles, an article called Tragedy to Triumph, I was reminded how I survived my own fire with no power. Two weeks of evacuation, and the depth of trust that I had to call forth, when no one could tell me if I had a house left to go home to.
The children and I lived in Santa Monica for seven years. It’s next to the ocean. We walked on the beach, we watched the sunset daily…how do we work with this fire, this tragedy, this reality, to back into that bliss? Or do we? I think every one of us needs to hold the space for each other, because if we go through each piece of clothing, each piece of furniture, it’s just so thick and sticky and finite.
Can we hold the space to discover our way? It’s truly nature that is leading us with the loudest voice. Are we listening? Our conveniences have become our habits, dare I say.
But it’s ancestral. My Italian great-great-grandfather was certainly sitting in a coffee shop every morning that had been there hundreds of years. He was uprooted and sent to America without his wife and put in a little mining town in southern Illinois, Kincaid. Which thankfully gave him a familiar place, a familiar purpose. The mines, all probably look quite the same whether it be Italy or Chicago. But we are uprooted. All our favorite shops, all our favorite friends we go to see, our community.
I remember taking with me when I was evacuated, a mantra. And I said, I will play this in every home that houses me, and I will uplift every household that I stay. In the presence of those who are so kindly taking me in. That will be my give back. And I did that and people still remind me.
My daughter shared that her husband reminded her of what a pioneer her mother is. And made sure his wife, my daughter, understood what it takes to live alone in the high country, pioneering through harsh weather. Inviting mitigation projects that are going to put her own personal sense and sensibility under the weather, the shock of what it all looks like when the trees are down.
This is what we are looking at right now in LA, we are looking at mass destruction. How in the world are we to cope? Then he reminded her how the flood came in. In this sense, we forget so easily how resilient we are, that we can rise, we can come back, we can fight. For our own peace, we can stop war.
I was touched by what my son-in-law said. It hasn’t been long since his father has passed. His personal mission was to move from Colorado, to be near his father, and take close care of him. So he came up with something super wise to say to his wife, about her mother, the grief from the loss of his father is filling in some beautiful awareness, encouraging the voice to share it, and the heart to breathe it. My daughter reminded me that out of the ordinary comes something extraordinary.
To feel the depth of the loss is to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary. Every soul is so loved, and a lot of us have not been trained to live in this way. Losing a job, losing home, losing a child, losing so many things. We are not at all good at this, but there is a huge tribe of us willing to lean in and get good at it. Suddenly our own personal story isn’t so important.
Sat Nam
Love,
Karuna
