I Saw Like A Child Shot Through

Photo by Cole Keister on Unsplash

Dear Readers,

What a week it’s been. It’s only Thursday and I feel like a century has passed since last Sunday’s eclipse. This week I want to share a personal story, a poem, and some insights on how fern medicine, pua’aehuehu, has helped me let go and open to love.

I was visited by Grace this week, Kā’ape’ape. She is the consort of Innovation, Kalamoho Lauli’i, and together they are here to assist us in 2023 so we can innovate new creations and ways of being. Grace moves prayers.

My visitation was unexpected. I didn’t ask for it consciously, but with the Scorpio Full Moon eclipse, my unconscious asked for me. Because I wasn’t expecting it, the revelation felt like annunciation. One minute I was watching “Normal People” on Hulu, the next I was back in time so in love the whole world was contained in my beloved’s eyes, shifting, starlit seas I would never get enough of. As I watched Maryanne offer herself to Connell without defenses as if she’d skinned herself for him to eat, I remembered how I’d once been so raw, how I’d let my walls down, surrendered to life, my body, how I believed in us with the absolute faith of a child.

Eighteen years ago. We were only together a year. Inside, in the dark cave where we dwelled together, it was much longer. I haven’t been in a relationship since. I feel ashamed to write that, like there’s something wrong with me, especially because so many people warned me he was dangerous, or didn’t get him and thought I was crazy for being with him in the first place. I’ve been telling myself I’m available for another relationship for years, but what the world’s presented me with hasn’t been interesting. Too young, too much baggage, too…whatever. The truth is I want a life and death romance or nothing at all.

The grief was so intense the first four years after we broke up I thought I’d die. I looked normal. I went to work, hung out at the coffee shop, rode my bike, wrote poems, hung out with friends. People thought I was still the me they knew, but I was adrift in a leaky boat over a black ocean.

I wasn’t. I was in the chrysalis dissolving myself with the acid of loss. I knew my grief wasn’t just about him, but about all the losses I’d ever experienced as a human on earth, maybe some past lives, too, or even parallel lives in other dimensions; and the greatest loss of all, my connection to myself as a holy being embedded in a matrix of beauty and meaning. I resolved to feel it all the way through to the end, not to rebound, to get over him or anything at all.

And I did think it was over. That I’d let go. Until those tears watching Hulu. The gut punch. The crying on the floor till dawn. I used to be able to feel that much. I’m more numb now, or just older.

Palai Hinahina helped me, Grief. Why are you afraid to let go? she asked.

“Because it was so beautiful.”

Don’t keep it to yourself then. Offer it to someone, or somewhere, that really needs it.

And then I could see how I was hoarding, afraid that beauty was a limited supply and there wasn’t enough love. I had to hold onto the scraps I’d been thrown like a street dog. I could see how not only was I starving myself, I was stingy with everyone I encountered, holding back, afraid to be seen, to be witnessed, afraid to be loved.

Somewhere in those years when the pain was at its worst, I began a poem. Wrote at least a hundred versions and put it away. I just couldn’t get it right. No words could describe the emotional connection between us, the deep acknowledgment of each others’ suffering, the gratitude for being despite the knowledge we would not be together forever, the willingness to experience pain as the cost of metamorphosis.

That poem had been on my mind recently, before the eclipse. It was calling me to finish it. Fortunately I still had a copy. I recalled Robert Bly saying to keep your drafts and go back to them years later, that’s when the gold could appear. Sometimes words need time alone in the dark to know what they really want to say. Two days after the eclipse, one day after my meltdown watching Maryanne and Connell dissolve into each other, I dug the poem out of a crinkled folder and began to play with it. The first thing I did was change from present tense to past. Lines grew longer, some spaces filled themselves, some asked for silence, my voice swelled and broke on its own beauty.

Did I keep that poem because I couldn’t let him go? Did I not finish it to keep him tied to me somehow? Was I a martyr? A masochist?

No. I am not a martyr. Or a masochist. I did my best to let go. I had compassion-Loukahi Hou. I attended to my own suffering. And now, after years of hard inner work I am strong enough to release this loss without being destroyed by its completion.

One thing he said to me in a fight has always stayed with me. I was accusing him of being a liar. We were both sobbing. He didn't defend himself the way I expected. Through tears he said, “You’re a liar, too.”

“I’m not!” I protested.

“You lie about how great you are.”

All the fight went out of me. I was always jealous of his mind-blowing talent as an artist and resentful a lot of times that he wouldn't put down his sketchbook and pay attention to me. All he wanted to do was paint. He could see like nobody else.

And when he was present he really saw me. Like nobody else. He saw the white butterfly of my soul, the deer at the edge of a clearing. I took off my skin like a selkie to become his wife on land, only he didn’t want to keep it. He gave it back to me because he wanted me to be as free as he was.

I wasn’t ready then to be that free. I’m closer now. Eighteen years later I wake up like he did, eager to begin creating. I write for hours when I can with no sense of time passing. I find enrichment in the worlds I create even if no one else knows they exist.

Sometimes in translating my inner world I do come closer to you. Can you feel it? When you enter the magic is shared and multiplied. You are my mirrors and I become yours.

Grace is always close when grief invites us to completion.

I feel such peace sharing this story with you. Pa‘iwaiwa, Truth, sometimes requires confession, though no priest can truly absolve you, only you can do that, and don’t force it. Listen for the voices that tell you it’s time, the ferns, birds at your window. Don't rush. Although it’s seemed long, eighteen years is really nothing compared to the cycles of time measured by the stars.

When the time is right, perhaps when the Moon is covered by Earth’s shadow, remember the sacred exchange-pain for the gift of life. Ohi’a lehua, the mother of all ferns, Divine Pain, tells us that. To be truly alive is to feel everything, to collapse on your knees at the beauty, grateful for all the experiences. On the path to love, everything and everybody becomes a teacher. There are no mistakes.

The Outside Shower

Bare as wind-flayed bayberry

we ran naked into the wind,

charged the November ocean.

Smack into white caps, electrified,

numb to the cold, our legs held.

Up and over the dunes

we ran to shelter in the outside shower,

shut the door. Sealed ourselves in

and faced each other.

I wanted so much for this to be a poem

about the kind of love I wanted,

18 years later

it’s still not finished.

Water still streams between us;

steam rises off the cedar plank floor.

Bones soften like driftwood.

I could close my eyes again

and ignore what’s to come,

relax in the steam

knowing the cold air can’t touch us,

but I want to love again.

So this time I listen.

I’d rather write about how the deer

lie down together in the dunes

imprinting their shared shape in the long grass,

or the impersonal stars bigger than our sun,

if you can believe that. For me it’s just a theory,

not something I can prove with my eyes

or my palm flat on his belly soothing

in slow circles while he cried

and drew me to him. My head

on his heart, there was just enough space

between us for the water to pour through.

Belly to belly we stood and knew-

to love is to wound.

Kõ aloha la ea

Concentrate on love by way of the light,

Jen