alchemist's eyes: compost

one year ago, i attended the love works, love heals class taught by kathy headlee miner.

i remember the electric shock that went through me when she said the words, "we must leave the past we wished for behind."

i also remember the exact place by the marriot center where i prayed a prayer.

that prayer.

let me leave the past i wished for behind.

the ghost ship.

looking back on that naïve moment i almost want to scream from the sidelines, like someone watching a car wreck about to happen, WATCH OUT!

but i didn't know yet.

so there was no shouting, only a long walk back to my car.

and this has been a year of the manifestation of that prayer.

a stretching, pulling, testing, settling of that prayer.

last week, i found my "permission slips" from my brene brown "gifts of imperfection class."

the slips said: "i give myself permission to". . .

--not care what other people think.

--stop people pleasing.

--set boundaries.

--have my own vision and goals.

--be emotional.

--like what i like without qualifying it.

--REST.

--do a 'b' job.

--listen to my intuition.

--face my fears.

--fail. fail. fail.

--look stupid.

--try something new.

like the powerful prayer that day at byu, i didn't know when i jotted those intentions out on tags and slipped them into an enveloped pasted to my art journal that THOSE would become my 2015/2016 goals. i didn't know what forces i had unlocked in both of those simple actions. i wasn't thinking that if i wanted to learn to set boundaries that my boundaries would be TESTED. i didn't think if i gave myself permission to fail, fail, fail that i'd need to do just that. that i WOULD indeed look stupid, so stupid. that to listen to my intuition wouldn't be following it toward the field where unicorns eat daisy chains, that instead it might lead me to a personal hell so i could FACE my FEARS and gremlins and stand my ground with the FIERCE strength i had been building up over previous years, but yet in the moment i would feel anything but fierce.

again, i almost want my current self to go back to that casual moment and caution in dread, "winter is coming, and you set it in motion."

last fall, as it happens most falls, a word begins to whisper to me. it is often the time when my next word of the year comes calling.

sometimes a word only comes for a short season, piggy-backing on another word.

or sometimes a word comes that plants a seed and grows into another word and then another. a rough draft, or blueprint for the final word that settles on my soul and in the stamped letters across my necklace.

the word, that came before alchemy (and rise) was COMPOST.

it came, as a result of a beautiful line written by my friend rachel about first drafts. that messy first drafts, or even first novels are not wasted. they are simply compost. first efforts to get the first tries out of the way to make way for something beautiful to grow.

for a year i have been composting. trying to examine the past, and my beliefs (about life, about myself) and examining them as truth or lies, and then composting. over and over.

a friend shared with me a powerful concept: that we must kill our parallel lives.

a similar concept to leaving the past we wished for behind, and releasing ghost ships.

i think that requires a certain amount of forgiveness (often for others, but even more often for myself) and with that grief.

and with grief comes a burying.

and then a waiting.

a rising.

and a rebirth.

and the purpose of compost is never to simply create compost.

the purpose of compost is to create an atmosphere for things to

GROW.

“Recovery is an unbecoming. My healing has been a peeling away of costume after costume until here I am, still and naked before God, stripped down to my real identity.” --Glennon Doyle Melton

this year i was stripped.

layer

after

layer

discarded and used as compost.

where it worked its magic of alchemy

to create a safe place

where i could step out

naked

in the sun

without the armor i had clung to

or the lies i had carried

to know

enough.

it did not require a different past

or a brighter future.

in 2014 i chose the word "daily." i fought and struggled with that word. what exactly did it mean? what was it trying to teach me. it wasn't a pretty sounding word or a anthem for a battle cry. it wasn't until this last week, when i picked up my ring of past necklaces that i realized what it meant, what it was trying to teach me.

PRESENT.

daily meant to be present. to stand in the joy and the pain. to not live in the past or the future, or a parallel life that did not exist.

to be present with the seasons.

to stay on my mat.

"One morning after beginning my yoga experiment, I dragged myself into the studio. The grief, fear and rage about what was happening in my marriage and my family weighed down on me like lead gravity. The receptionist told me that my usual teacher was out sick and pointed me toward an unfamiliar classroom. It was 1 million degrees in that room. I felt so upset by this. My life was hard enough without broken air conditioning with which to contend. As I planned my escape, the instructor walked in and said, "Thank you for coming to hot yoga. Let's decide on our intentions for class." I stared at her in disbelief. Hot yoga? What kind of fresh hell is this?

The rest of the students stated their fancy spiritual intentions, and all I could think about was how perfect all of their lives must be and how painful and hopeless mine seemed at the moment. By the time it was my turn to share my intention, I had tears in my eyes. I managed to say, "My intention is just to stay on this mat and make it through whatever is about to happen without running out of here."

As I choked out the last word, the room fell silent and the teacher looked at me with steady eyes. She said, "Yes. You just be still on your mat. Yes."

And for the next 90 minutes, I sat still on my mat. It was excruciating. All the ghosts I'd stuffed under my bed when I got married, all my fears for my family's future, all the pain and rage I'd been denying caught up with me as I sat. I had no way to escape, nothing to use to numb myself from the feelings. I just had to sit in the middle of it all. I had to stay on my mat and let it scare me. I cried until I couldn't cry anymore. And when it was over, I was still alive. I'd stopped running and faced my pain. I'd let it all come, I'd felt it all, and I'd survived.

Later that day, I rediscovered a line in When Things Fall Apart, by Pema Chödrön, that had been pressing against my consciousness, not quite remembered, ever since my time on the mat: "So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn't sit for even one, that's the journey of the warrior."

The journey of the warrior. The warrior journey is staying present with love and pain. Feeling them both, letting them bubble up in my body and come and go without hitting an easy button to escape. Without overeating or boozing or shopping or sexing or snarking or scrolling my way off my mat. Believing that anger, unbelonging, loneliness, fear, doubt—all of these, too, shall pass. And I would survive them all, remembering that all the courage and wisdom I need to become the woman I want to be is inside my love and my pain. If I transport out of it, I will miss my transformation. I must stop being afraid of pain and start being afraid of easy buttons.

I've learned that sex is a lot like yoga. It's a time to feel instead of think, to be instead of do. It's a time to remember what my body is: a self, a teacher, a student, a vessel to accept and deliver love from the shore of me to the shore of God and others. And that my body is not valuable because of her size or shape, but because of her wisdom. My body and I reunited and became friends when I stopped abandoning her. When I committed to staying present with her, listening to what she tries to tell me and trusting her to know.

Stay in your body today. Sit on that mat and handle whatever is about to happen here without running out the door. Let the hot loneliness come, let it go, and let it leave you with the courage, wisdom and fuel you'll need to get your work done on this earth.'--Glennon Doyle Melton, Love Warrior

this year i stayed on my mat.

i composted.

i fell.

i rose.

i fell.

i composted.

i rose.

i continue to cycle through moments of being on the mat, with dirt on my hands, knees in the mud, being still and waiting for seeds to bloom.

i heard kathy teach again this spring.

just as school was starting i went back to hear kathy's same class: love works, love heals again on byu campus.

as i settled into my seat for the first class and i heard her say those magic words again, "leave the past you wish for behind" i looked around me wondered whose lives were about to change, if anyone else would pray that prayer right then. did kathy know what she was doing?