Several years ago, around the time of the 2008 mad crash of the economy, I studied Sedona Method Releasing.  I felt that I had to do something to save my life, my mind – to counteract the blinding fear and anxiety that was like a social contagion.  I traveled out to Sedona several times, and took coaching workshops there and in New York.  I loved it.  I still do.  So when a dear friend of mine was in distress, I thought of releasing.  There is a part of the method called “triple releasing.”  It goes like this:

1.  Welcome the thing/situation/emotion itself.  Then welcome anything attached to it:  feelings, images, memories, sensations in the body, stories.

2.  Welcome any wanting to do anything about or with it.  Fix it, change it, understand it, explain it, hold onto it, push it away.

3.  Welcome any sense that it is personal, any identification with it, any feeling that it is about you or who you are.

Then just observe all of that spinning – like clothes going around in a dryer or like a big whirling weather system.

Then ask if you could just let it all go, even for a moment.  Could you let it unravel, dissolve.  If you could look through it, what is beyond?

Then at an Al-Anon meeting last night, someone spoke of a friend from the program who had passed.  She described how this woman would  make an upward gesture of the hands when she spoke of handing something over to a higher power.  Seeing this gesture opened something in me – I felt a tremendous sense of relief and spaciousness.  As I did the gesture last night and today, I felt like that simple opening of the palms allowed all the closely packed mind-molecules of the situation with my daughter to spread and expand, creating space for resolution, for possibility, for me to breathe.

I love summer.  I love the warm, sensuous mornings, the feel of water on my skin while swimming, the sounds of birds, the brilliance of night skies.  I love potato salad, ice tea, ice coffee, eating outside, anything outside.  I even love the sweat running down from under my riding helmet.  I love dancing in the heat, muscles looser, longer, more playful.  All sweet.

In the midst of summer’s sweetness this year is the bitter absence of my youngest daughter, and the accompanying inexplicable silence.  There are certain hellacious life experiences that feel like psychic whiplash.  Unexpected, brutal, painful  This is one of those.  This morning, Pam and I wept as we ate our peaches, sitting outside in the soft, curiously empty morning.  I said that I felt I could not contain both the bitter and the sweet of these days.

With this, I can neither carry it nor put it down.  The ache feels like it is carried in each of my cells, like a stain or a bruise. At the same time, the beauty of each day, the irresistible sweetness of my new granddaughter Laila Rose, the kindness of my daughter Bimala, the touch of a horse’s nose on my cheek, the caress of the water on my skin – all call me, hold me, soothe me.  Sweet, bitter, sweet, bitter.  Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Keep walking, keep opening, keep hoping.