Who do you see when you can see yourself clearly?

Notes on worry, healing and the things we forget and remember and forget and remember again.

Born With Shadow As My Light (after Ivan Bilibin), 2021, for Hannah

Stuck to the pillows last night, not sleeping because I’m still sick and made of worry, I was staring out the frost-glazed windows trying to see myself clearly…

So I rolled over and started writing…

You always should have done something sooner. 

You carry the fear of money and death in the same abscess in your chest.  Is today the day the truth comes out of hiding?  Is today the day that finally changes all of the rest of your days again? 

Where do I begin?

Once you’ve had cancer, the usual bets are off the table. Everything raises the stakes. Everything is just-in-case. Everything is too late. Everything is inconclusive and every day is waiting. Everything is reason for concern and many days, and many nights, concern feels like all you’re made of and the world feels small and lacks all reason. 

Who am I when I’m not sick and worried? 

Who do I see when I can see myself clearly?

My husband looks at me softly and asks “Are you okay?” I freeze completely then collapse into No. The No is endless.  I’m bleating.  It hurts my face and feels so relieving and I’m crying & crying into this big wet robe.

I should say “no” more. I should be resting.

I should say “yes” more.  I should be living.

I want to feel like smiling. I want to be held and trust the holding. I want to remember who I am when I’m not made of worry or fear or shame for this body that explains nothing and asks so much of me.

I’m trying to remember who I am when I’m home under oak trees just floating down a great green river. Just letting it take me there. Accepting. 

I hand a note to my surgeon. 

I wade into the water.

---

---

---

In truth, I hesitated to share this with you today…

But part of me understands that the thoughts that haunt us out of bed and out the window and into our imaginations and onto the page at 3am are the real story. This is my real story.

Or- It’s one of my real stories…

Every time I write - or pick up a pigment, or pick up a song - I’m creating my way toward some real story my heart’s trying to remember.

This morning I understand what I needed to remember last night:

You wade into the river.

This drops my shoulders. I trust it. I know who I am at the center of this river.

My creative partner Anna & I are kicking off another weekend distance retreat together tonight, so I expect to have some more revelations about this by Monday.

Earlier in our partnership, back when we met at this weird cold coffee shop in a conservative strip of Southern Oregon, we were ‘on one’ for a while about this idea of the things you remember and forget and remember and forget again. We were helping one another see ourselves clearly.

Anna, who has powerful access to the burning center of things, is one of my lanterns.

Going back through my notebooks across the last seven years or so, the lantern shines and the river runs through and through the pages. I seem to forget and remember and forget and remember my light, The Light, my river, The River, again and again and again.

So, a prompt for you today…

I grew up playing in the cow pies and mugwort patches on the bank of the Rogue River, watching for beavers and eagles and boaters. The river, the place and the metaphor, is a living and peaceful part of my inner picture.

Going into my first major surgery for a cancer diagnosis in 2012, my long time acupuncturist, supporter and visionary healer Claire gave me a book— Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster. [I’ve since recommended this to many others— and I recommend it to you now if you or someone you know has a body that may one day need to heal.]

Part of this preparation process was creating a vivid & safe place to walk myself through in my mind’s eye before dropping under the surface of anesthesia. And another part was having a written script about this to hand over to the surgical attendants that I asked they read to me while the IV started to drip. (You can ask for this sort of thing!)

Where I went, with great purpose and attention to detail, was through the blackberry thicket, past the pump house, across the slippery rivulet with the help of a stick in my hand, over across to the wide soft river rocks pushing out into the water, where I step off and slide down into the sparkling, ever-renewing water.

So…

What is your “river”? What carries you home? What guides you to the center of your ever-refreshing and essential knowing when you’ve been awake at night trying to see yourself clearly?

How can you name it, picture it, feel it, draw it, sing it, move it through you with clarity?

(Or, maybe it would help you to just write it on a little slip of paper and tape it to the wall?)

I look forward to being with you on January 27th! If you have questions or want to connect personally you can always reply to these emails or contact me here.

*I’m grateful to have opened this missive from

Jeannine Ouellette

this morning, without which I might not have remembered that I also “…strive to transfigure dark pockets of the past into something that is, if not less dark, then at least more nuanced, as in, something that possesses the knowledge of light…”