It’s an unusually balmy summer evening in Santa Fe. I’m watching the sunset in the west while listening to friends, family and business associates say their good-byes to a dear friend. Our hearts are full. As each presenter at this memorial service tells his or her simple, poignant story from our friend’s life, we laugh, we cry and are amazed, not by the heights of professional accomplishments but by the depth of the loving that is present.
Tonight we hear uplifting accounts of how the process of dying has enriched the living. A brother-in-law shares his newfound inspiration to have a deeper connection to his God. A hospital caretaker describes her gratitude for the teaching and example of courage in the face of great odds. A river buddy wonders at the state of grace that was palpable throughout the illness and dying process.
As I glance around the crowd, average age of 55, I know we are not alien to life’s unexpected shifts. Many gathered have grieved the deaths of parents this past year, faced divorces, sent children off to college, lost jobs, weathered life-threatening illness and watched their bodies age. Yes, none of us are strangers to the unexpected life two-by-four.
As I listen to the stories, I find myself reflecting on my experience of counseling hundreds of people over many years in the midst of transitions. I know we do not all weather life’s storms in the same way. Some of us right our toppled life slowly and gracefully and in time flourish. Others can’t find a familiar remnant to hold on to — too many pieces — and continue to flail and eventually go under.
My thoughts drift back to a very frightening life passage when everything that I had counted on came toppling down: my financial security, my marriage, my faith in “happily ever after,” my trust in people, and my lifelong friendships. And I remember how, having been raised to “keep it together,” I had quickly run around putting out fires and wiping the tears away while bandaging the leaky, broken places not only for myself, but for my two small children as well.
It took two years, much support from family and friends, and regular counseling but gradually my life was rebuilt on the outside: I had a new marriage, a new career, a new home, new friends and a new spiritual practice. However, inside I was exhausted from always being on hyper alert anticipating the next “shoe to fall” and scared silly of my own punishing judge and jury standing ready to hand down the ‘guilty’ verdict that it was once again my fault.
One day I lay down on the couch to take a quick power nap and didn’t get up. In fact, I didn’t get up for the next four days. The part of me that was holding things together gave out, and I did not have the will to superglue the pieces one more time. . . .
Holding on tightSeveral weeks before my couch breakdown I had a dream. I was sitting in a moving car behind the steering wheel, but the steering wheel was not attached to the driving mechanism of the car — and yet the car was maneuvering through traffic just fine. As the dreamer, I knew it was an illusion that I was driving the car, but I couldn’t take my hands off the steering wheel.
Here are the queries from my journal entry that morning: What part of me was driving the car safely without my assistance? What other part couldn’t quite let go even when the reality of not being in control was obvious? Not knowing at the time that dreams often preempt major shifts in the inner status quo, I wrote after the last question, “This is really funny!”
Well, lying on my couch in my living room weeks later, unable to move a muscle, was not funny! My body was filled with a visceral panic of anxiety, not humor. Voices in my head clamored loudly with threats of catastrophes, judgments of shame and blame, and fear of what people would think. It took me several hours the first day before I stopped focusing on the disaster flashes and uncovered the underlying cause of my fear.
Beneath the “I’ve got everything under control” exterior were limiting beliefs about what I was supposed to be doing, judgments about what I should have done, past conditionings about what good moms/daughters/wives/women need to do, and fear that it had been all my fault! Ah, the bottom line: I was afraid of my own self-judgment and punishment. I was trying to control a part of me. And, clearly, it was not working.
Because I couldn’t resort to my old habit of “fixing” everything, I asked myself seriously, “Well, what is going to work?” Lying very still, I took deep breaths and listened. I also watched, like an unattached bystander, the scary scenarios unfold like scenes from a bad soap opera. As I stopped reacting to them, one by one they lost their charge. I didn’t try to fix them, dismiss them or banish them from my head. My “stories” unraveled. By my observing the thought or feeling, all the attached shame and blame dissolved. And I let go — of “shoulds,” “oughts,” “what ifs,” “need tos,” and “wish I hads.” Using lots of self-acceptance I redefined my definition of “good” to include all parts of me — especially my humanity. And I realized with a mixture of relief and soberness that I was not in control – and that was alright.
Many months after that experience my consciousness began to surface the treasures that I discovered during my voluntary breakdown. Today, I often tell the story one more time to my clients when I sense how hard they are holding on to something. As I watch their eyes glaze over with fear, I want to assure them that what they think is holding everything together is an illusion. Instead, the real glue of life is discovered when we stop in our tracks and cannot go any further. For it is in those times that we realize that there is something more powerful than our fear, stronger than our limiting beliefs, and greater than our sense of overwhelm. And that is love. But we have to go through the process to find the buried treasure.
Here are a few of the caveats of the process told from the lives of ordinary heroes and heroines — like you and me.
The issue is not the issue
What my couch experience taught me was that trying to “fix” a situation, especially when it is in the falling-apart stage, is a futile form of control. By loosening my grip, I uncovered what I was really afraid of facing. But I had to practice allowing feelings and thoughts to surface without reacting. Two keys are observation and acceptance.
A common life passage that often ends up in my counseling office is a marriage that seems to be poised on the precipice of divorce. When Judy, let’s name her, first came into the office, the “problem” was her husband — his behaviors, his lack of attention, his priorities, his “not loving her the way she wanted.” She needed to know what to do to “fix” him and how to “control” her fear and anxiety. Divorce, she stated bluntly, was not an option.
I suggested she observe everything, from behaviors to thoughts and feelings, and accept it all (acceptance = no judgment). As Judy began to practice the concepts of observation and acceptance, she reached a new calmness inside and decided to apply it to her feelings and thoughts about her current marriage
crisis.
Within a couple of weeks her anxiety had diminished, and her awareness of what lay beneath the marriage crisis started to emerge. She realized that she had lived in stories all day long — stories she had made up based on this thought or that intonation, unresolved issues of the past, and fear about the future.
She stopped focusing on her husband (what she had thought was the issue) and began to apply new self-mastery skills to this drama/trauma storyteller inside her head (the real issue). By accepting herself, she found that she could accept her husband and also express a new clarity about what she needed and wanted. Her husband responded with surprise at her less-demanding requests. Both began to listen with different ears to each other. Together they decided that the looming scary cliff edge of divorce was now a new edge for exploration and discovery.
The loving essence returned to the marriage. Judy remarked after several months that she and her husband’s connection was stronger than ever. When I asked her what she believed the new bond to made of, she smiled and replied, “If I hadn’t had the courage to look beyond my disappointments, I wouldn’t have realized that accepting instead of judging would rekindle our hearts. We are bonded in our loving hearts. And our hearts are teaching us about what we can count on to connect us.”
Fear is the messenger — What is the message?
It does take courage to stand and look fear in the eyes. Fear is a human by-product of change. Whether the change is a chosen life passage such as the decision to sell a house and move, send a child off to college, or an out-of-the-blue occurrence — fired/laid off from a job, sudden loss of a loved one, diagnosis of a life-threatening illness — the present moment is flooded with fears about “what will happen” in the future. Feelings of safety are scarce.
Oftentimes we confuse the message with the messenger. When it comes to fear, our fight/flight response has us arming ourselves as we raise the drawbridge or running off down the street so quickly we don’t take the time to ask ourselves, What is the message?
Randy, we’ll call him, had experienced three major losses: his job of 13 years was terminated suddenly, his best friend of 25 years married and left the country, and both of his parents died within six months of each other. On a grief scale he was off the charts. But you would not have known Randy was grieving. The day I met him he was mad as hell.
Anger is one of the many masks of fear. Our culture does not support admitting to or spending time with fear — not cool. So Randy’s first hurdle was to discover that his out-of-control anger veiled deep grief and paralyzing fear: a younger part of Randy was frozen inside. But this part also held untapped gifts of creativity, enthusiasm, joy and his heart’s desire — an alive, vital connection with Source. Randy was about to discover one of the amazing ironies of life: fear is really an angel that stands at the gateway to what we truly want. And right around the corner from loss is always a rebirth — something dies and something greater is born.
Like my clients Judy and Randy, I am amazed time and again at the deep well of inner strength and loving that surfaces when we dare to confront the seeming monster of fear head on. Just when we think that all is lost and our next breath will be our last, another part of us emerges from the shadows — and, lo and behold, it’s not our darkness, it is our light.
Look for the good in all things
In her work, my friend and end-of-life coach Denys Cope sits at the bedside of people facing their darkest hour of death. She is familiar with the perceptions in our culture that dying is somehow a failure, a terrible ending one is loath to speak about or confront. And yet in her book,
Dying: A Natural Passage, she describes beautifully how all the lessons in dying are greater gifts to the living.
Having attended hundreds of deaths over 25 years, Denys outlines for the caregiver and the one completing his or her life what to expect in the process of letting go of the body. Her wise and warm words are practical and full of an underlying message of comfort and safety.
In her book she compares “deathing” to birthing. The pregnancy stage of dying is marked by a noticeable withdrawal from the world and a turning inward. The labor stage of the dying process registers as a change in breathing and responsiveness. And finally begins the restless transitioning stage of active dying. There’s symmetry in how one phase follows another; it’s comforting and predictable. And we relax.
But there is something else, something greater that Denys also perceives and has observed consistently when that darkest hour is present. She writes of her deep knowing that goodness, not badness, holds us all gently. And when we witness the end of a life and reach out and touch the grace of that goodness, what is present is liberation, not failure, and loving, not fear. . . .
Love it all
Back at the memorial service, my friend’s wife is sharing what amazed her about her husband during the months leading up to his death. Right before he went into the hospital for the last time, he was filling out a questionnaire describing the quality of his life. The form covered not only health issues but relationships, work life, family life and overall mental/emotional well-being. Her husband was checking “Excellent” in all the boxes.
She was incredulous. “How can you check excellent?” she asked him. “What’s excellent about your life? You’re really sick, your body is a mess . . .” “But, honey,” he replied with eyes that sparkled with light, “my life has never been better. We have a wonderful relationship, I’m closer than ever to my friends, and my connection to God is so alive inside of me.”
For her that was a defining moment, a new reference point. His sense of excellence in his life had nothing to do with the circumstances, conditions, challenges or concerns of his physical crisis. He was tracking something else, something greater at the helm of his heart. And he had surrendered 100 percent to its divine plan.
At the end of those four couch days, hours of tears and boxes of Kleenex, I sat up from my temporary confinement, threw away all the tissues and reviewed my new insights. Learning to love it all through baby steps of courageous acceptance and letting go of fear had brought life back into a body that had given up. I felt rested, lighter and renewed. But what was more startling was the revelation that love, not fear, had kept me on the couch; love, not overwhelm, had given me time to reflect and heal; and love, not despair, had led me to the depths of my suffering, showed me the grace of forgiveness, and gave me back myself all glued together, whole and better.
Excellent.
