death and life

It's so interesting what comes into one's world when one opens up to it.

The woman I knew as my Grandmother died this week, and a very good friend's wife had their first baby on the same day.

Even though Eda had been out of her mind and in a nursing home for a couple of years, her passing marks the end of an era in my maternal family: she was the last one left in her generation. Her twin sister died a few years ago, and the rest of her siblings many years before that. My Grandfather died when I was 17, his brothers when I was younger...unfortunately too many to count (and that's only my blood family, not including my family of friends who are no longer with me in this life)...

But then I know 6 women who are giving birth in the next month or have just given birth within the past month. Somehow their choices to start a family both draws me in and draws me away. I am less torn between having a baby and not having a baby, and more concerned with the "when"...

I realize the tantrum I threw and posted about last week was not a superficial or isolated incident at all, but it came from a deeply rooted place with a million strings attached. After it was over I slept for 13 hours, waking up in the same position I went to sleep in. Something dislodged from my entire being; the black anchor has lifted from around my heart. I don't think I'm an angry person anymore.

Not to say I'll never get angry again, but I think I confronted the first trauma in my life: my inability to admit I didn't know something and to say "I don't understand" with the willingness to learn. I don't have a very solid history of asking questions when I didn't know something...somehow just getting by on what I thought I knew with my attitude and false confidence was enough. That began to change when I stopped being so insecure about who I was or how I wanted to live my life, but still the old habits died hard, and I still clung on to (albeit old and useless) patterns of thinking.

But last week, seemingly out of nowhere, something that usually happens at workshops, happened on my own volition in my own studio. With my husband. As easy as that. Although it was what I can only describe as a complete physical and mental shift in consciousness, it was almost over as soon as it began, with me never able to be the same person again for the rest of my life.

I did not know how to describe how I felt because I had no memory or recall of ever feeling that way before. I feel like an open book, a boundary-less drifter in my own life. My brow is less furrowed. I sleep better at night.

That happend the day before my Grandmother/Great Aunt died, the day before Zelda was born. Life and death and personal transformation has been on my mind all week. Thank you Tereza for posting that link to another blog it was very aptly timed.