A Reminder in Grief & Love
We are not separate.
Dear reader,
How do I make a written post, when I have a hard time grasping onto the right words? I’ve started and deleted this post so many times because I just don’t know what to do. Do I serve as a place of comfort? Do I unpack the unspeakable horrors we’ve all witnessed in the last few weeks and validate people’s utter confusion and shock at the depths of evil that have been seen? I am at a loss, and unsure of what my own purpose is in it all. I also feel like hopping back into my regular content of betrayal/infidelity/healing is out of touch at the moment, because many of my readers are likely feeling extremely affected by what is going on in the world. I know that I certainly am.
And I don’t know if I have the ability to write eloquently here. This isn’t going to be a post where I edit much, worry about my grammar, or care if it sounds like it all makes sense, because writing on something that is utterly senseless is going to feel senseless. I know so many of us are spinning or spiraling, some disoriented motion, and the world just doesn’t compute. We are appearing to carry on as normal but there is something so disconnected about that when we feel the intensity of grief and shock.
But.
This all confirms one thing to me that I’ve known to be true for a while now: we are not separate. We just aren’t. Pain that happens even across the world, is also my pain. It doesn’t matter where you are born, what color your skin is, who your family is, what gender you are, where you live, what you pray to, who you love. We are all in this life school together, in this deep education at the same time. And I know many of us wish that this was desperately understood. Harming anyone is harming everyone.
This is a quick story but I promise it’s related. This is when I came to know these things for sure;
In 2016 I found myself in the wild tropical jungle in Mexico, in a small little 1 acre property that I found on AirBnb. My now husband and I had gone to the Yucatan Peninsula and we were a little ways outside of Tulum, maybe an hour. Anyways, this beautiful AirBnb had several little cottages on the property, as well as a gorgeous yoga room, and a fairly large outdoor area. We met the owner of the property, his name was Leon, and he told us that he was going to be having a well known Mexican shaman in the area come by to host a ceremony on the property that day, and we were invited. We were honored to be invited and of course said yes. There were probably 20 of us in total, mostly people that Leon had met in the closest town, and friends of those friends. I think Daniel & I were the only Americans there, but we were still able to understand what was happening even though we didn’t speak Spanish. Words weren’t important, we were able to feel the vibes, if you will. Anyways, we all somehow piled into a sweat lodge that had been built by Leon. This part of the ceremony I don’t remember as well because I am slightly claustrophobic, and I think I blacked part of it out. But as we finished with the intense sweat lodge, we were asked to rinse off (we were all in bathing suits) one by one under a little spout that had freezing cold water. It felt perfectly refreshing, and like we were emerging as different people than when we entered the sweat lodge tent. Afterwards when we were all back in normal clothes, we were invited to participate in a ritual smoking of DMT, a strong hallucinogen, that the shaman had brought. One by one we sat down on a mat in front of him, and everyone else was meant to be in a circle surrounding it, quietly holding space for the participant, and serving as support for them. The shaman would offer the pipe and then sometimes people would lay down on the mat after the DMT had taken effect. I can’t explain what the shaman was doing to everyone because it’s his own skill that would not translate to me, but it felt like he was shifting energy and helping everyone release things that they needed to just by moving his hands in the airspace around the person. When it came to be my turn, the DMT didn’t really work (I don’t think) but the shaman was so powerful regardless, and as I sat on the mat, he sat with me. My eyes were closed and I could sense that he was just sitting there with me. And so was everyone else. Somehow through some sort of energy exchange, I couldn’t tell you how, these people that were ‘strangers’ to me, they all helped me to know deep in my bones that we are all here together. Everyone I’ve ever loved is here with me. Everyone I don’t know is part of me. Everyone, every single one of us, is connected. All of the animals, all of the land, all of the people, all of the water—all of it. We may not understand why or how or the logistics of this, it may be one of those mystical things that we just have to trust in. But to know this is to experience humanity.
It’s not some ‘woo woo’ thing to say this and it should not be controversial, it is the truest truth that each one of us knows on some inner level. Maybe this is buried way down for you, maybe it’s closer to the surface of your consciousness, I don’t know. We’re pulled out of that knowing every day by so many things. But if we can stop and just sit with this for two minutes every day, I believe that our world would be a vastly different place. I do know that it is not a coincidence that we feel the pain and suffering when others across the world experience it. And if collective grief is real, so is collective love. We can feel the joy, too. If we can tap into that energy flow, that truth, every single day and if we can keep it in mind when we go about our life and when we make our choices that align with this, just imagine what that could do.
Always,
Annabelle