Hugging Ghosts

There’s a way this feeling of Defeat/ or laying down my arms, has been coming through for me as an important acknowledgment and deep medicine inside the Mars in Libra transit. I spoke to these energies yesterday on our call. Mars in Libra 8/28/23-10/12/23

HUGGING GHOSTS - THE IMPORTANCE OF DEFEAT

As I’ve been nursing my back injury, I’ve tried to make it outside as much a possible. I have been able to do light movement without re-aggravating anything. So I decided I’d get in a highly abbreviated walk each day.

I walked down to the corner, and for whatever reason, I took a right at our Main Street rather than a left. The left takes me on my usual route, while the right takes me to a more urbanized area that I don’t enjoy traversing as much.

Day after day, I walked to the corner, made a right, walked to the next corner and turned back home. Without really thinking about “why”.

Sometimes three times a day.

By the third day I realized I was being taken to the corner of Tanner’s nursery school. At first I was annoyed that I hadn’t realized this earlier. But of course I hadn’t because I was wrapped up in my own fear and contraction around what was happening in my body.

But on that third day, as some spaciousness set in, and I made my way to the clearing of the school; I saw the ghost of my innocent boy run across the front lawn. Reach up for me with his beautiful smile as I greeted him with a hug in the classroom. Saw his coat on the coat peg, along with his Spider-Man backpack. Saw his artwork displayed on bulletin boards in the hallway.

I saw a boy with a bright future, that would eventually be defeated by life. Defeated by the game he set out to play.

And I thought about myself in this moment. Also feeling defeated. Laid up by an injury, mourning the death of my boy and our family cat. Feeling the losses all around me.

What would it be to meet this moment here?

To be utterly defeated? Devoid of any hope?

In the wake of Tanner’s death I remember the whiplash effect of the “fight being over”.

I had spent years “fighting” to keep him alive.

Armoring up for each new crisis.

Fight may not be a good word, but it’s one we use often in the face of illness and threat. We take on the words of war.

If I’m honest, it wasn’t so much of a “fight” as it was resistance. I was in resistance to the thing that took up residence inside him.

I know now, that when we do that, when we are in resistance, something fractures. We can’t meet the whole of something.

The tendrils of the fight, of mental problem solving lingered on, active in my psyche, for months after his death. Still thinking I could rearrange reality to fit my preferences. To bring him back. Back home to himself.

My neuro-pathways still deeply grooved to preserve life at all costs, and root out the problem.

As I walked back home, tears flowing, I realized how relieved I felt to be with the defeat.

To know that being defeated is a necessary stop. To give up hope in something other than what is happening right now.

This was the moment my experience of being injured shifted. I just surrendered to reality.

Again, just like in Tanner’s death, and Oscar’s illness, the moment was upon me. There was no more time. No proverbial “can” I could kick down the road. No small adjustment I could make to negotiate for more comfort.

Just raw reality. The helplessness, powerlessness, and pain of this moment here.

All I can do is engage here, and here, and here, with the defeat.

Grieve the losses.

Sunday is Tanner’s birthday. I’m not surprised to be injured, and brought to this corner now. It was an opportunity to meet the bright blue pools of his eyes again so vividly. While also meeting the infinite moment that opens when we acknowledge our defeat. When we give up hope in favor of opening to what is real.

I might have plowed right through this month. Not tended my heart if I hadn’t been injured. I may have bottled my grief in service to my busyness.

Am I grateful for my injury? Mmm, not really. But I am grateful for the revelation and opportunity to practice. I am grateful I got to hug the ghost of my beautiful, little, bright light, of a boy so close to his birthday.