Paul left yesterday for three weeks and I feel a wrenching in my heart, like something is being torn away from me. Every time he said to me, “It’s only three weeks,” I responded with, “I know, and I’ll be okay.” I lived alone for years, I am not afraid and I am self-sufficient. So, what is the tearing in my soul?
I know this is not about Paul’s being gone, even though I am missing him fiercely. This is something very deep, and it’s a feeling I’ve experienced before. It’s primal and it’s visceral and it feels like a chasm opening up, threatening to swallow me whole.
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I gulp in big breaths of air to steady myself and walk barefoot in the yard to get traction. I’m looking for ways to ground myself as I explore this long-hidden primal fear that is right in my face.
As I sit quietly I sense a great feeling of loss, like someone beloved by me has died. I believe this is the indescribable and unbearable feeling I’ve spent a greater part of my adult life trying to escape. It’s root is the abandonment I experienced at a very early age when the ground was ripped out from under my feet. I did not have the vocabulary to express this at age three or four, but my little girl heart knew she’d been left.
Brenda-Age 3 and her brother
This heavy feeling of loss I’m knowing feels like I’ve stepped into a dark room and though there are matches somewhere in the room, I know I’m not supposed to light them now. Instead, I need to stand still and let my physical and spiritual eyes adjust. I’ve felt this before but have always left the room because the ache in my heart was too much to bear.
I’ve carried this heaviness for most of my life and kept a lid on it so I would not have to fully feel it. I have always been able to speak the words abandonment and loss but I have not been able to fully embrace the dreadful emptiness of either.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/lossquotes/gentlestarlitefreamer
The feelings attached to this are like waves battering the shore. I can feel the swells building within and know when they are getting higher and ready to break. They move up from my solar plexus and makes its way into my throat where it expresses itself in deep wracking sobs. It is such a huge piece of grief I have no words to describe. Nor can I attach a story to it.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/waves crashing/chelsss_x/crash
I know I do not need to figure this out or give it a name or a remedy. It’s too large to wrap my brain around. All I need to do is be with it just as it is and surrender to the pain. It sounds negative and dark but my being knows it isn’t. Every time it rears its head and rushes to the surface and I give vent to it by letting the sobs contort my face and squeeze my gut,it diminishes in power and dissipates for a while. I’m experiencing peace between the waves.
I don’t know how long this process will take, but I do suspect it will continue to get easier as I stay present to it. It’s made me run in fear many times, but not this time. I feel gratitude for the courage and grace present to me now to tame this sleeping giant.
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Beautiful Brenda – thank you for sharing your truth and thank you for facing the fear, the rawness of the pain, the intense waves of emotion associated with loss and abandonment. I don’t necessarily believe as we get older we become more vulnerable, even though it is true we are faced with our own mortality every day.
I suffered from abandonment issues for years as a younger person and when I first moved into my marriage 21 years ago I was gutted everytime we spent a day apart even though I have and will always be an independent woman. I knew I had to get over it and I did. Over the years we spent many times apart and up to six months at a time. I wouldn’t really recommend it too often, if you can avoid it, it has taken its toll. Even now at the loss of that marriage some of those old abandonment issues have come to the fore but not really. I think I feel more betrayed these days.
On the other hand, I sense from your post that your abandonment issues aren’t necessarily related to Paul going away for a few weeks, I sense this is indeed something way more primal but it’s because you know something. And it’s frightened you and as you said you’ve had this before and walked away from it but now you are finding the courage to step into it and face the fear and be still with it.
This is wonderful ♥ The answers will come with ease once you let the fear go. Once you settle into the dark, your eyes will adjust, and the next thing you know everything outside of you will become clear. You will have the awesome night vision without the goggles leading you down the path that you or indeed both of you have been pondering.
I could be totally wrong on all of this, but this is just something I sense within your words..
Darkness is good, because we all have a shadow and remember ~ Light does not need shadow to exist, but shadow needs light to exist ~
You will come out of this with clarity and each time you visit this dark and primal place you connect with spirit in its strongest and purest forms. The tears, the gut wrenching ache, the heart feeling as though it will split and you think sometimes the pain you feel may kill you.
Stick with it, Brenda – you are doing the work of a light worker and your strength and courage to listen, and let the shadow sit beside you will bring you to a stronger place.
Rock on for living authentically sista ♥ It can be fucking painful sometimes but when the light moves in gently or swiftly you will be euphoric!
Much luv alwayz
Michele XXXX ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Michele,
Your words blow me away. I love your sensitivity, compassion and beautiful heart and I deeply appreciate your thoughts. Yes, this is deep shit and I am grateful it is coming to the surface again. It is crying for the balm of gilead and I’m unsparingly pouring it on myself and my wounds.
How interesting that you would mention my doing the work of a light worker. In the late 90′s Spirit gave me the name Lightfeather. I went to court and legally had the name added so I am Brenda Marie Lightfeather Marroy. With the name came the message that I was here to be a lightworker and to bring light into darkness. Of course, I have to shine that light on my own darkness as I shine it in other places.
I’m convinced life is a continuous healing journey and no matter how much healing is done, there will always be scars. And, that’s okay. The scars serve as a reminder of all that’s been and being healed.
Much love back to you my beautiful sister. xoxoxo <3
Awwww darling, Brenda – your words made me cry, you are so gorgeous ♥ Lightfeather is a fabulous name and how cool that you changed it by deed poll.
You are indeed a light worker and it is your time to face your own darkness – you know this and you are doing the work.
It’s making you stronger every day and enabling you to share more and more helping others heal from all over the globe.
Embrace your scars, embrace the pain, embrace the love coz there is a bucket load of it all around you.
Big love beautiful sista XX ♥ ♥
Thank you, Michele. I am embracing it all…what else is there to do? Big love right back to ya you gorgeous soul. xoxoxo
Brenda,
You make us feel your pain, your struggle. Beautiful writing.
And knowing that you’re still standing, still seeking to be present in each moment, however difficult, you inspire us.
Thank you.
Tom
Hi Tom, Thank you for your kind words of support and honor. I appreciate you for reading and leaving a comment.
By the way, since I follow your blog I have to tell you that you’re pretty awesome yourself and your words are also beautiful and true.
Brenda, I don’t know you face to face but I so appreciate what you have to say. Some would say “Dark Night of the Soul” where we come to deeper wisdom as we embrace the treasure we once threw away, unable to process it at the time; it is a place of blindingly brilliant darkness. As you so courageously face this “fertile ground”, may your fears be blessed and released, and may this quest gentle you into it’s embrace for release. Hugs to you dear one.
;
Shannon,
Your wise words mean a lot to me. I love your phrase, “blindingly brilliant darkness” That is actually what it feels like: brilliant in that I am able to trust and embrace it and dark in that I can’t see the breadth, length, or scope of this place.
What I am finding in the center of this is a sense of deep silence in my heart. I keep looking for sadness which is usually prevelant in these times, but what I’m finding is a penetrating silence and stillness.
Thank you for your comment and for reading my words.
Oooooooooohhhh……
I would say that I could have written this, but I couldn’t, not nearly as eloquently. But I FEEL it, every word and everry picture.
When my husband went to his 9 week in-house PTSD program in another state, at a VA hospital for combat veterans, it was almost like being without oxygen for all those weeks. I, too, have lived alone for years, been very strong and proudly independent, but this was primal. That was when I felt, for the first time, that utter shattering aloneness that has no words, the abandonment of my tiny dependent self.
8 years after his time at the VA hospital, i still feel some of that terrible loss at times, when my husband is gone for a night or two. I believe part of it is the age we are, I am 59, he is 63, every year more people in our age group are passing on, and life doesn’t stretch out so endlessly before us as it once did. We see in the mirror and feel in our bodies the gradual breaking down, the day-to-day little losses, and we know that one day, unless we are “lucky” and we both go out together in some kind of a big bang, one of us will be forever left behind. I do not want that someone to be me! The bottom line is, it’s scary loving someone mortal.
Elaina
Elaina,
Thank you for letting me know I’m not the only person on the planet who can feel such raw emotion. Shattering aloneness and without oxygen resonate within my being. That’s why I knew this was something very deep and primal.
You may be on to something about the age thing. However, I know many people our age who do not experience this when their partner leaves. Maybe it’s a combination of age and the depth of the relationship. Also, in our case it feels like the ground has been falling out from under us for the past six months so we were both ripe and tender.
I appreciate your stopping by my blog and leaving your thoughts. I hope you will visit again.
Dear Brenda~~~I know you are a Spiritual Warrior and I trust your path, and your capacity to walk through the darkness. Love to you and Paul…
Thank you, Rosie. I’ve never thought of myself as a spiritual warrior, so your comment is very interesting. I am pondering on it. xoxoxo
sending love…this doesn’t sound negative to me…not at all…dark, perhaps, but darkness is not negative in my mind…it’s like fertile ground…dark and full of nutrients…
Monica Jane. Thank you for your wise and insightful words. You are right. Dark is fertile ground. Hugs, Brenda