Author: leaving traces

can english really capture and describe spiritual experiences as it is a language of utility and production?

i’m embracing difficult conversations softly. i’m embracing the difficulty of staying soft during these conversations. we had a lovely dinner for diwali at a friend’s house. three couples. one baby. one teenager. a cozy home with home-cooked food. i sent an instagram post to my partner on relationship stuff, spoken by a man who speaks directly but compassionately. he listened to it beside me on the couch. then said nothing. then i mentioned how our kid is ignoring his gf when she asks him to stay over and he doesn’t want to. he is copying what he sees at home. he is copying how his father copes with relationship conflict – by avoiding, ignoring, and not responding. i brought this up to him and said i’m worried that he is copying the behaviour he sees play out in our house. i said just like how things are passed down to us from our parents, we are passing things down too. and if we don’t make a conscious effort to heal ourselves we will pass down the unhealed parts of us too.

he didn’t even look at me, turned on the tv, said something about the hockey game and i got off the couch and said good night.

tears stream down my cheeks as I read another book about healing. I was asked to write about my favourite city – no place came to mind – just one where I am anonymous, where I hold my head high in the streets. Where the male gaze faces down to the cobblestone streets, a sign of respect. Where the first encounter I have with a man doesn’t end in a scratched back, swollen pussy, and a cab dropping me off at the wrong hostel. It’s not where I stumble into the hotel dorm and worry about the other canadian who’s been lurking in my shadow, behind doorways, and at cafeteria tables keeping his eyes on me like his next catch. It’s not the city where I find my perpetrator in the crowd, I tell him that was my first time and he looks mildly concerned and said it was fine. Gives me a hug and I disappear in the crowd – it’s not where I walk through the streets and wonder how many men that I come across have drugged and forced their ways onto women and girls without consent. It hurts now. I have my own room. It’s been cleaned except for the dog piss stains on the carpet. Baking soda and vinegar do the trick – it gets old after the dogs are passed six months and the spots become the main colour and the original is barely there. Trauma sits in the body – it fucks with all our relationships until we heal they say – this whole lifetime could be dedicated to healing – like 14 glasses of water in a day – besides drinking and pissing, what the fuck else are you suppose to do. They say we fear joy – and that healing trauma doesn’t allow us to feel pain and suffering, but it allows us to feel joy. My dogs pulled me into the middle of the street, with cuts and bruises and a sprained ankle – my family didn’t ask how I was – my kid made supper when he realized and cleaned the kitchen. My partner was in the hospital on pain killers for his back – I told him what happened – he couldn’t even ask if I was ok. He said nothing. Absolutely nothing. He made some comment about the nurses coming back. Do you see me? Do you feel what I feel? I am so lonely, in a relationship with someone for over seven years. You didn’t nurture me. You didn’t care for me. I had strangers care for me and show more concern than you. You would show anger, aloofness, and laugh. We can’t take care of these dogs. We can’t take care of ourselves. We can’t take care of each other. Our relationship can’t be like this. We are failing our dogs. We are failing ourselves. We are failing each other.

Blues and reds – a strong boot grounds a ladybugs wing – the strong neck reaches up and out with a proud head shaped by time and space and relationships – shaped by love by loss by trauma and through war.

Travelling distances by choice or forced fleeing – from Ukraine to Germany to the Netherlands.

Friesa or the Friesens – the birth of my ancestors.

Playing with spells and sermons through mythical arts.

Northern Europe – mapping a way back to myself – nesting dolls of DNA warm my belly as they cocoon and trace their way back home.

Opening wide. Soft, wet, squishy. Wide-eyed – head up, knuckles white from holding her vulva open for centuries.

Churches crucifix vaginas – the divine masculine and feminine. Unsure where to begin – breath. A first breath, a heartbeat, an eye opens to the light.

How can a vulva be carved of stone – so hard and rough and rugged – opposite to the warmth and comfort we are born from and into.

Living rooms filled with plush pillows, soft blankets and warm to the touch.

A chaotic mix of ancestral trauma – worry, angst, fear and uncertainty.

Visualizing a twisted torment of chemicals flowing through the umbilical cord – like a news clip about covid – spiked atom tumbling with pills with blue and red caps on one end and white on the other. A nurse’s hat from the 50’s or 70’s… eyebrows inverted and rounded down – yet a sad smile folds upwards – only at the edges of the lips – curling a frown with strain and sympathy.

Wrinkled forehead – bright fluorescent lights – squeaky clean plexiglass and the iconic blanket of white with the blue and pink stripes. Small pink fingers and toes – curled tight – waiting to be loved.

The cocoon – tomb or womb.

A vessel – digesting ourselves.

Nothing wasted.

What would it be to really digest ourselves? To become a gooey mess of all of the parts of ourselves that were before – the chubby caterpillar parts – the teenie-tiny leggy parts – the chomping-on-the-leafy parts. The bright green segmenty parts – the black stripes and the few white dots circled in black personas.

To ooo and goo – our lives our bodies – our souls – contained – cocooned – wrapped in steamed banana leaf like sticky rice on the patio of your favourite dim sum restaurant.

What would be released when we open the leaf? Steam? What scent, what temperature? To be disturbed in cocoon – What would happen then? Mid-metamorphosis – half sticky, half asleep, half not – one eye blinks open – oh fuck!

To be in “pause” is a strange place to be.

To be aware of being in pause, I’d have to say, is even stranger.

I believe this is the first time in my 36 (almost 37) years that I’ve been tragically/painstakingly and stubbornly aware that I am in pause.

Where Trust – capital “T” beams its bright light – but tempered by “How?” – well – all the things to do… but “HOW?” (all caps) – with the time, with the house, post-flood recovery, the budget, trade-in a vehicle, live in a camper, look around there? lead a team in camping clothes?

Trust. Trust. Trust.

We’ve done so much work, we’ve done some healing even. We’ve glared at each other, joked, smirked, rolled eyes, hugged, kissed, and walked away.

We’ve done a date night on a Tuesday when the tacos and tequila is two bucks and the tickets to the theatre are cheap.

We’ve cleaned. We’ve cleared out. We’ve come together. We’ve power struggled. We’ve convinced each other and opened each others’ eyes.

We’ve celebrated. We’ve expressed – we’ve found our ways to communicate with family.

We’ve released and let go. Bit by bit. Day by day.

We’ve laughed at the TV and at each other. We’ve gone to therapy and heard words never said before.

We’ve taken the dog out. Cleaned the car. Scraped the coffee grounds into the garden.

We’ve sat and watched nature day-by-day. We’ve soaked in our surroundings. We dusted that one time and even used Qtips to clean the baseboards and the sliding door base.

We’ve fed hummingbirds and yelled at neighbours. We’ve farted with the windows open, then giggled thinking the neighbours probably heard that.

Dear Pandemic,

Thank you for pause. Thank you for chaos and confusion. Thank you for stacking up all of my methods of working on top of each other like lego blocks, boosting my ego and teetering it sky-high with all of my capabilities, my insights, my critical analysis, my personability, my sincere desire to help and be of service – my crazy determined methodical mind and its ability to sequence, plan, prepare, collaborate, respond, adjust, repeat –

Thank you Pandemic for forcing me into my body – for screaming at me with all your might – for coming along at a time when my worth was so wrapped up in being the giver, the helper, being of service to the job, to community, to those less fortunate – but forgetting to be of service to myself – my memory weakened, my brain fog set in – my lack of patience and irritability started to kick in to high gear – my full-body exhaustion – my attempts to control my adrenals and cortisol levels by exercising and eating a restrictive diet – my weight gain – my stop, my breath, my pause – my limitations – my bed, my house.

To rest.

To rest.

To rest.

Thank you Pandemic for returning the Venetian canals to turquoise – thank you for removing the air pollution from our skies – thank you Pandemic in a similar way as the animals and plants are thanking Chernoble.

Thank you Pandemic for taking covert hatred and the ‘isms’ and shining a big, bright, hospital-room type light on them.

Freedom of speech helps us point to the ___ist.

Thank you Pandemic for breaking me down into a million shards of china or porcelain – and thank you again for lingering – so I could take a pause and pack up the pieces one-by-one and reform the vessel with gold and copper – a way similar to how fragile shiny objects are restored in Japan.

Thank you Pandemic for calling out my enemies, the Evil ones, and the snakes draped in sheep’s clothing.

Thank you Pandemic for giving me an argument to policy makers for how quickly something really can be implemented…

rose bud thorn

– a win to celebrate – to being surrounded by people in a work environment who want to love and embrace my authentic self

bud – well obviously the big changes of landscape, environment, climate, culture, people, work, life, etc etc

thorn – an obstacle is to not give a fuck I guess that many of my friends are falling away, literally dropping like flies – ages and stages

different paths – might reconnect, might not – that’s all okay, they say – but it’s still hard, there is definitely some heartbreak there – if I let it show, beneath the judgement, anger, resentment, shame, self-punishment… you know all that good stuff we learn about in therapy and in the books.

To move away – to tear the heart strings –

Oh Natalie, you intuitive beast genius you.

The memory that is coming to mind is the story of my family – my honey, my kid, and myself being ever so slightly late – yet still late to a funeral or celebration of life I believe they were calling it.

Everyone was seated in the pews and one large carved wooden door was left ajar for the latecomers – upon cracking the door open enough for us to fit through – it turned out – unfortunately for us, and our egos – that we were the latest of the latecomers – if there had even been any before us.

All eyes were on us. A seated sea of eyes – some disappointed, some shocked, some pissed and most just sort of blankly hazed and cast in our direction.

It was Hanne’s service. My late stepdad’s first wife. They had had two daughters together – with their husbands and two kids a piece – one with two sons, one with two daughters.

We were late because my kiddo said he had good pants to wear but was wearing sweatpants with the button-down shirt I got him. I decided that wasn’t good enough so we b-lined it to Old Navy to get some khaki drawstrings he might wear again.

After the service, we apologized and shared our condolences with our families-in-law… I remember wondering why everyone seemed so cold and stand-off-ish to us…

I mean, being a bit late can’t be punishable for an eternity, right?

I later learned… like years later – my mom let it slip in a random conversation… that she is the one who invited us to her late husband’s ex-wife’s service.

Sing sang sung song or air essence.

Mistakes. That’s OK.

Sung – overwhelmed. That’s OK.

Sang – wind and heart. That’s OK.

Song – perfection? Enlightenment?

Where are all the clunks?

The percussive messes.

The symphonic blunders that let blood mend in plain sight?

In community? A cacophony of catastrophe?

Crash-swell-fumble cymbal.

Clash – shhhh… and rat-a-tat.

//

The tree – growing and staying. There is some work for me to do in there. It poked me like a twig underfoot unseen in the spiky grass.

To grow and stay.

To grow and let go.

Letting go or flight?

Over-analyzing or curiosity?

Growth and pain.

The skin forming slowly and glacially around our initials carved in the trunk.

Bee stings and bite marks.

Dog piss stains revealed in summer heat and drought.

Tanned old leathery men who seek heat in Spanish-speaking places but snap at home at their wives for the unprecedented waves of heat in their own home.

Status quo Pete’s and Charlies.

Are being extremely religious and extremely anti-religion the same thing?

What do we have if we have no centre?

A polarized donut who flames lash at frozen sprinkles and icicles slice back at flames?

Michelle Obama is launching her second book called, “The Light We Carry” – a toolkit, she says, to help ground and centre us in the madness.

Stuckness.

Falling away.

Falling away.

Falling away.

A blister forms on my inner thumb which is new – must be sweat, posture and pen position.