In February 2006, two days after registering for wedding gifts, my fiance sat me down and told me that he didn’t love me, he didn’t want to marry me, and that he wanted me to move out.
Well-meaning friends have asked me what he was thinking, did he have cold feet, was there someone else… I told them all the only truth I had: I don’t know. People find this difficult to believe, and it was excruciating to live through, but we never had another conversation about it. I don’t know why he handled it the way he did, and I probably never will.
I went upstairs, got on my knees, and offered up the only prayer I could manage: Please, God, just stay with me. Don’t make me go through this alone. I called my friends and wept for hours. I found an apartment on the internet: a dark, tiny place that fit my debt-ridden, disorganized budget as well as my state of mind.
It took me three weeks, a dozen friends, and a handful of someone else’s anti-anxiety pills, but I made it out of there, only to collapse into a year-long depression, made worse by my intention to cure $12,000 worth of credit card debt with incessant work, fueled only by self-pity and macaroni & cheese consumed in front of the television.
Amid the tears and loneliness, I did a lot of things right, as well. I learned to budget, I participated in my spiritual community, and I began to seek deeper healing from my own self-destructive patterns.
I had already begun to explore my abilities as a healer. Since I hit puberty, some pretty damaged people have been intensely drawn to me. I had a long pattern of relationships that involved people moving in close, finding healing for themselves, and– just when I thought it would be my turn to receive something from them– moving on to explore their world with their newfound ease and grace. Time and again, I watched the people I wanted to be with transform their lives during our time together and walk away, leaving me depleted, resentful, and wallowing in self-pity. Why couldn’t I do for myself what I was doing for them?
Perhaps that’s why I was able to accept not knowing my former fiance’s reasons for the seemingly sudden end to our almost-marriage: although it shocked my senses, it did not surprise my soul.
In early January 2007, I came across a sidebar ad on www.thedailyom.com for something called “The Reluctant Healer.”
“That’s me!” I said to the flickering screen, and clicked the link.
Ten days later, I was holding hands in a circle led by David Elliott. I announced my belief in the healing power of groups in general, and expressed my gratitude to the members of this one in particular for their willingness to hold space for me, a stranger to them.
And I began to breathe.
Six weeks after that, I attended my first retreat with David, on his property in New Mexico. The topic was “Relationships,” something I wanted nothing to do with! But I did want to cultivate my abilities as a healer, so I could stop offering up the best parts of me to heal people who offered little or nothing in return. I wanted to stop re-building my life every few years, and start creating whatever it was I was born to do. And I wanted to do it in the presence of whatever I had felt during my first breathing circle.
I showed up that first weekend to the best of my ability. I was keenly aware that the best I could do was only a fraction of my potential, but I was exhausted, and frightened. I knew that David, and most of the other people in the room, could see how fragile and defensive I was. But they let me be, and didn’t judge me for it. They talked, and laughed, and attended to their own healing. They hugged me, and waited for me to learn the ropes. And they breathed. We breathed.
The night I flew back to Los Angeles, I got a call from a friend. “Are you looking for a bigger apartment?” he asked, “Because I just got word of one in your neighborhood.”
By the end of the week, I was living above-ground for the first time in a year.
I breathed my way through paying off my debts. I breathed my way through cutting off the premium cable channels and into a renewed commitment to my spirituality. I breathed my way into new friendships, and out of relationships, employment situations, and ways of being that hadn’t worked for me in a long time.
I breathed my fattened, neglected body up mountainsides in Sedona, led by David Elliott, encouraged by and sometimes literally shoved up the edges by the amazing people that show up for his circles, workshops and retreats. I put on a swimsuit and lowered that body into the icy water at Slide Rock Creek, and watched my new friends perform acrobatic feats and charm water snakes (and passersby). I breathed, nearly naked in a pitch-black sweat lodge, shoulder-to-shoulder with these folks, and felt the steam pass through the spaces in between my molecules, taking my grief with it when it left.
Last October, my mother was diagnosed with inoperable, incurable brain cancer. Three weeks later, even though I was working two jobs, keeping two houses, and watching my mother’s strength and vitality deteriorate because of the daily radiation treatments that I was driving her to, I sat in yet another circle to begin my Healer Training.
I did everything I had to do for her, and for me, and I kept breathing.
In January, my teenage sister moved in with me to get the support she needed in finishing one phase of her education. I shook my head to think that I, an unmarried woman with no children of my own, was suddenly a member of the “Sandwich Generation,” caring for a woman twenty years my senior, and supporting one twenty years my junior, but I wasn’t feeling drained. I was breathing.
Last Easter, I drove both of them to a David Elliott retreat in Sedona, where my mother announced her intention to be cancer-free, and I asked for help in re-calibrating my instrument so that I would resonate with loving, helpful energies rather than the dark, needy places I had always been drawn to. We all breathed.
Three weeks later, her doctors declared my mother cancer-free. Three months later, my sister passed all her classes and moved on to her next adventure.
Recently, interspersed among the Healer Trainings, David led a series of healing circles on relationships (this, again!). At the first one, he asked us to write down the names of anyone whose energy needed clearing out of our personal space regarding breakups or divorces. I wrote the names of nine men I’d been with, dated, whatever. I set the intention to release the anger and resentment I’ve been holding towards these people for not loving me enough. Or at all.
By the second circle, two weeks later, all but two of the men had initiated contact with me in some way. I kept breathing, and handled each interaction as it came. The two left on the list were my former fiance, and one I call the Best Boyfriend Ever. But I figured I didn’t have to actually talk to each person to clear their energy.
In June, I went to Joshua Tree, to complete my training as a healer, and more energetic shifts happened for me. Big shifts, and very uncomfortable. But fantastic, and vivid! I am being called upon to drop “the act” regarding my self-doubt, and to step fully and confidently into my own fabulousness and competence, as a healer, a leader, and as a woman.
Two days later, my phone rang at 7:30 am. It was The Best Boyfriend Ever, calling from New York.
He apologized for waking me, he thought he was calling a woman at work with the same name as mine. I told him that it was fine, that I’d been sort of expecting his call. We talked for about twenty minutes, during which we worked a miracle together.
We had loved each other pretty perfectly, as close as human beings can get to perfection, anyway. That morning on the phone, we both admitted that during our relationship, we felt free to give as much as we wanted, because it didn’t cost us anything to do so. Neither one of us has experienced anything similar in the five years since we broke up (which we did because our lives were headed in different directions, and we loved each other too much to ask each other to go against our own hearts).
I said that our perfect love was like a pearlescent bubble locked on the time line in 2003, that I was tired of trying to live and move forward in 2008 with my heart’s desire chained to five years ago.
He agreed with me to free our love from the container of our romantic relationship, to let it flow up the timeline, into our hearts. That love was ours to keep forever, and nothing could eradicate or diminish it. As we spoke, I felt a pearly silver-white light ease like morning fog into the interstices of my heart, and begin, slowly and gently, to expand.
We ended the call by saying “I love you,” and we set each other free.
Later, I decided to get a coffee & pastry from the Cuban cafe down the street. I had the thought that generally accompanies my desire for pastries: But what will that do to my weight? Another thought quickly followed: That’s not a problem anymore. Go look! I jumped on the scale, and the number I saw was 25 pounds less that my post-Upheaval weight. I’ve breathed myself into a healthier body, as well.
When I entered the cafe, everything stopped. I searched people’s faces to see what had captivated their attention, and I realized… it was me! Me, with the soft glow of love emanating from my heart. Me with the hot body, and the healing spirit.
At the final Relationship Circle, I set an intention to give up trying to control other people’s perceptions of me. I want to be myself, and let people like me, and love me, or not, as they will. I want what’s coming to me, no more no less.
Three days ago, when I woke up, I found myself staring at an old, ratty trunk that I call the Box of Pain. I’ve been dragging it around for a decade, shoving photographs into it. Last Thursday, I thought, “I want that thing out of my life.” I grabbed a bag, sat down, and opened it up.
I was fine when I found the pictures of the Best Boyfriend Ever, who has been re-christened “the Best Boyfriend So Far.” Totally fine when I came across the shots of other ex-boyfriends. I was even fine when I came across some photos that belonged to my former fiance from before we got together… but I knew he’d want them back.
Without thinking, I dialed his number from memory, and wouldn’t you know it, he answered the line. He asked me how I am, and I told him I’m fine. I asked him how he is, and he said he’s fine. I asked if he was still living at the house, and when he said that he was, I explained that I found some of his photos that I’d like to send along. He said thank you, and we said goodbye.
I have now talked to everyone on my list. Although I can’t be completely sure yet, it’s entirely possible that I’m free.
And tonight, I’m leading my own circle. I wonder who will be there, and what their stories will look like next year.
With Love,
Juju
http://empressjuju.blogspot.com
