Thursday, September 4, 2014

Mother of Phoenyx: Honoring the Cycles of Transformation


Category:  Soul-of-Thought Revival
Journals:  Cup of Kavi, Facebook Notes, Earth Mother, Music of the Spheres
Dates:  9-4-2014, 5-12-2014, 9-13-2013, 9-3-2013, 11-24-2004


Awakenings
(September 4th, 2014)

Lives are full of awakenings.  Even those who appear to be constantly hitting the snooze button on their internal alarm clock…they can never fully go back to sleep, ignoring the responsibilities of being alive.  At some point they have to get up and move forward.  The only thing that stops that is death…but even death is its own awakening.  To awaken, in any respect, is to accept and allow a necessary transformation to unfold.  How we deal with those subsequent changes we are meant to experience in life determines the length of time we choose to endure the most difficult stages of our own purification process.
 
Can we simplify our story, dissolve our toxic emotions, release our demons, and embrace our shadow all at once and reach a point of resolution?  Possibly, if we’ve spent all of our lives learning how to make personal transformation a fine art.  But what of right now?  Right now, we are still learning.  We have to focus one step at a time.  We have to learn that impatience is actually a waste of time.

The past year has been a journey for me.  As a woman, as a wife, and as a mother, I have changed.  It wasn’t easy…and it wasn’t exactly the change I had in mind to begin with either…but it was necessary to experience it as I did.

For several months after losing our little Phoenyx last September, I didn’t quite understand what was happening to me.  I didn’t have sense, anymore, of who I was or where I was going.  Not at first.  What I could understand though, is that the birth of our nephew and the death of our baby happened on the same day last year so that I wouldn’t fall apart completely and miss the importance of what was unfolding.  I came to understand that the miscarriage lead me to take care of myself, and forced me to rid myself of what was stagnating new growth…purifying myself for new life to return in the Spring.  Love and gratitude had to be experienced in some way at each grueling stage of the process to remind me that life goes on and cycles of transformation are beyond our control.  And sometimes, even the worst of it is absolutely beautiful in hindsight. 

I relearned how to trust the process.  I openly and honestly felt the whole of that experience and came out of it changed for the better.  I called out my fears and let go of them for good.  I unearthed my feelings of inadequacy…and I admitted that though I may not be fully prepared for whatever was to come from this experience, I was ready.
 
And this process didn’t end in the Spring when we found out we were pregnant again.  It didn’t end yesterday, when I reread what I wrote about the miscarriage that happened last September 3rd and realized why it all happened the way it did.  I’m still going through some final stages of changing…still being tested a bit a long the way.  But I realize that it’s all so that when this baby is born, the new me will be born as well.


Excerpt from 'Mother's Day Confessions'
(May 12th, 2014)

One thing about being born in the Springtime is that you find it difficult to hold back from announcing new things happening in your life. 

Last month, during the week following Easter Sunday (the week the Cardinal Grand Cross was at its peak, for those of you following the planetary alignments), we found out we are pregnant again…due around the time of the Winter Solstice this year.

That blissful news being said, I feel it necessary to give some voice to the process of transformation that comes from the extremities of joy after pain. 

The end of April had been looming like a ghost in my mind since we lost Phoenyx in September. As the original due date drew nearer, the recognition grew clearer and clearer that I was still stuck in some limbo state of being and feeling…and definitely at a deadlock of doing. My once strong sense of identity had been shattered and scattered amongst fears I never realized before, thoughts that self-sabotaged my efforts to remain in tact, and emotions that had a grip much tighter than reason.  I took that time for all of it...and considered that I may never feel like myself again.

In theatre, you have this unspoken commitment to everyone involved (especially the audience), that unless you are physically unable to perform…you push through any pain, suffering, or sickness and deliver a performance to the best of your ability. This last show I was in certainly wasn’t the first I’ve pushed myself through while sick or in pain, but it was the first that gave me insight into that pattern being present within my own life.  I’ve always been taught by life that in order to be something you have to do what it requires of you.  If I want to be strong, I have to overcome my weakness.  If I want to be healed, I have to understand my own wounds and take care of them.  And if I want to be whole again, I have to retrieve all the pieces and rediscover the big picture in the puzzle.

I didn’t glide through those months gracefully, whether I appeared to or not.  I fought myself at first for a while, but I grew new wings within that chrysalis of transformation.  A voice, small and still within, whispered a calm knowing that I was coming home soon…though it was barely audible amongst the din of self-deprecation. 

Soon after the Spring Equinox, I began to dread the coming April.  I was about to turn 32…maybe I’m only meant to have one child, I thought.  So I told Michael, two more months to see what happens, and then I’ve got to give it up and move on.

And maybe Phoenyx heard me, because the ‘rebirth’ happened soon after.  When we found out, it was surreal.  Here I had been writing throughout April about the Cardinal Grand Cross of Mars, Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto…and there I saw a blue cross on the pregnancy test, signaling the necessary change that was beginning.


Luna's Darker Half
Sept. 13, 2013

On the 10th day after The Great Departure
The impending night falls like a shroud.
A ghost unveiled, revealed in half-light;
Shadows cast upon an empty shell.

I hold my womb as if a memory;
I hold my husband like a distant dream.
Both appear just out of reach now...
Phantom pains in a broken heart.

So close we were to resolution.
Heartstrings now stretched and falling flat.
Discordia sounds that familiar tri-tone,
A restless interval to wake the dead.

Another flood from a weakened body...
Not one of blood, but saline tears,
And the heaving breath of a wounded mother.
The panic fear returns once more.

In The Awakening, I held a promise.
I felt it grow and touch my soul.
But all at once, I couldn’t keep it...
The void within can’t be ignored.

A week of grief seemed like acceptance,
But there was pain left unaddressed.
After some days of new distraction,
The half-moon lit the unearthed root.

This dark night is cold and lonesome,
And deep exhaustion refuses sleep.
Luna alone in city skyscape...
The stars all hidden within the noise.

This is a Test, says the Teacher.
You have a choice, don’t waste your time.
Within the deep there’s something thankful;
The sun returns with a hopeful gift.

And so I wait with trusting patience;
Illumination will break this night.
The dawn will fill the dark with color;
The day will come when all is healed.



The honest, uncensored, experience of what happened a year ago...the point of departure from everything I was and knew up to that point in my life, that eventually lead me to where I am now...can be read here:  The One That Flew Away.