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"The person who set out on the journey is not the person who arrives"—David Whyte perfectly articulates how a different part of ourselves can rouse once in a new landscape. You could joyfully discover your lightness, your exploratory and inspired self. Likewise, it can mean you find the lost and unformed you that lives deep under the crust of the roles you inhabit daily or the insecure and distrusting you, the closed and resigned you. The list is endless, and who shows up is exactly as it should be, but the woman that turned up when finally arriving on a journey I had long held in my dreams was not who I expected. I pinned for this experience and envisioned hours of tawny sunlight and sweet wines, auspicious connections, and delightful surprises. Though many of those things happened, an ongoing internal struggle stained the cloth. My solitude is my most precious asset, but this was different. My aloneness felt barbed and unsafe to land in. I drifted high above myself, unwilling to face what this moment in my life had to show me about myself. This avoidance is a certain kind of torment. I have been trying to outrun my heart while the shadow of grief billows like a thunderhead. I have felt a sort of mourning seeping in through twill of my life that I have been afraid to admit or feel fully. I am avoiding the rawness of the second half of life and how resistant I am to entering this era of humility and surrender.
The first half of my trip was spent blissfully with my dear ones, and then onward for a few weeks "da solo"— on my own. A dozen kisses later, fighting through distressing heartache, I got in a cab to Rome while my boys boarded a flight home. Their plane flew into the sky and took with it the sunlight. A dark cloud covered all of Italy for the weeks I was there, in what locals said "was never seen before gloom."
70$ euros later and perched inside a tiny room above a busy street corner, I was about to be alone for the longest stretch in over ten years. I opened the window, paced the room a few times, and whimpered. It turns out I didn't want to be alone. I wanted my duties as a mother and the assuredness of my husband's reliability. I wanted all my usual preoccupations and storylines, not unbridled swaths of time, especially not in the rain. Not me, alone with me confronting the copious amounts of dissatisfaction and inflexibility nattering on. Not me, having nothing but time and space to feel the mourning and grief close at my heels.
Things were not as I had envisioned; I was not who I wanted to be. "The person who set out on the journey is not the person who arrives"— experience can show us the parts of ourselves that hold us back from love and well-being. The hard-to-swallow gift of our conditions not being met is that we must reckon with our suffering body's staunch core. The part in each of us that is unwilling to let go and let life take us. The part in each of us effectively ruining our lives. She was the one who jarringly showed up and was who I had to live with while I was away. I was not "Eat, pray, loving" as I had hoped I would be; I was "Eat, pray, laboring" through the grit of a very hard-to-be-with part of me. This journey was about many things, but mostly it was about seeing and admitting what I most disliked about myself and how I have been functioning in delusions of safety, control, and self-importance. In a foreign country, under gunmetal grey skies, in the confines of ancient stone buildings, the “me” I thought I was lost her relevance, and who I am becoming came spitting from the mouth of creation. But before we move toward any new embodiment, we have to face the gatekeeper, so to speak. For me, it’s grief and mourning and letting go of ideas I have about life—how I see and feel things. With the time that stretched before me while away, I was asked to “grieve, and mourn and let go," but I could not answer any of life's requests until now. I am beginning, and I'll explain how.
There is a beautiful quote by Soren Kierkegaard I love: "Life can only be understood backward and lived forward." I had to live forward while away without fully registering what I was learning, and now home, the understanding is kernel by kernel, being given to me. There is a lot for me to unpack, and it will take some time, but the central feeling is: it is time now for me to let myself die before I die. It's not often we get time to look at how we are imprisoned without distractions or escape. Looking backward, I can see how the cloud of darkness and rain teased forth that gnarled fist of my lifelong accomplice of pain and suffering. I saw her from every angle and felt her in every cell; I carried her into every Roman church and felt her asking for healing. No easy task, but I'm listening and will lay her down in the oregano field outside my home. This second half of my life will be about the many deaths of who I am not. Truly dying, before I die, and as many times as needed.
"Sarah, I die every year," a new friend said while smiling from their mouth and eyes. "If you allow yourself, you can die many times in this life, and it will get more beautiful each time." Standing on what I feel is a crucial precipice, I have needed support in discerning the actual message inside the discomfort I've been feeling. This new friend helped me see I am ready for an intensive letting go and death. My new friend told me they know it is time to die when—the world, the body, the thoughts —become impossible to live with and inside. Life becomes barricaded and very painful. Instead of ignoring and suppressing the messages, they will block off the calendar and willingly move through it. How this is done is unique to everyone, but for me, they recommended I go into the woods for a week and let the wild, primal body show me the way. Use the elements, the water, and the dirt, to create the ceremony of death and rebirth.
I have died many times already, meaning I have let go of many versions of myself, many attached, identified, and desirous versions of myself, but never willingly. I have been dragged through prolonged and painful dissolutions. I have never considered inviting one—intentionally. The distress present for me now is familiar, and I have felt it at the onset of my previous deaths, so I am trying to approach it awake this time. I know death and rebirth are knocking because the atmosphere is thick, like a tar of molasses. Things aren't working. A forest in Italy even mysteriously stole my eyeglasses after I set them down for only a second. There is something I am unwilling to see. The mind and heart are arguing ruthlessly. My "why" has withered, and the colors are flat and greying around the edge. My legs are stiff and won't move me forward quickly. Everything is saying: "STOP."
I articulate this because I want you to know where I am now, and I don't think we talk about these thresholds and transformations enough. I sense many of us are in the same place, and if you are, I offer this sharing as a poultice to place over the inflamed in you or, even better, ignite curiosity and an invitation. Perhaps the present moment or your body has been feeling unsafe to touch down into, or you sense you have been trying to outrun something you can’t name yet. Perhaps you have lacked the courage or the forethought to make space for it to join you in a field somewhere. Maybe there is no one in your life to tell you “it's time,” if relevant, may I lovingly be that for you.
I write to awaken a connection with the mystery and to remind you of the dynamic interplay between you and the world. I don’t know very much. With each day, I know less. But what I see as an emerging truth is I am meant to open completely into love and find a way to do it fearlessly and with my whole body. I keep dreaming I am falling from a high tree, my arms are outstretched, I’m smiling, and my body is full of trust, knowing there is no bottom for me to hit.
May we see into the discomfort and allow it to lead us. This I know for certain: being dragged is more painful than accepting. May we walk lightly through our cycles and go willingly toward our evolutions. I will share more when the time comes.
Transparently yours,
Sarah
Some questions or prompts for your consideration:
Has the present moment felt unsafe to sit in? If so, can you name the uncomfortable feelings that live there?
What is asking to die? And can you find the courage to spend some time with this?
If you weren’t afraid, what do you know you have outgrown? And who is calling you forward?
Also, I invite any questions you may have and will try to answer them.
Folding In# 44 Dying Before We Die