Witnessing Surrender

I am on my way to visit my mother in Spokane in Memory Care. These eclipses are coming in strong, hard, and fast. Seems we just can’t keep up with the profound shifts that are now being required from all of us.
Not only am I dealing with my mother and her dogged, dementia attachment to anything that is familiar. Meaning that she must have a sewing machine (that she cannot use alone), she must have her patterns (that require a computer and internet which she does not have and now require her friends who are also in their 70’s and 80’s to put things together for her and send them to her, not knowing if we will be able to load any of them). She is desperate for her identity that is now slipping away from her and she is a lesson for me to observe her attachment and the inability to let go of those things that are now beyond her capacity to accomplish.
My prayer to myself is to be graceful and willing to let go of who and what I was in favor of being fully in this moment now. I recognize that we can miss so much love and connection (that is currently being offered) when we grasp habitually for who and what we used to be.
Ballet taught me so much about surrendering up my gifts and dreams when it became clear that its moment had passed.
I learned to gracefully let go of ballet recognizing that it had captivated so much of my time and attention that I realized that I did not know how to have a real life.
I learned that I had embraced a mission and a purpose but I suddenly realized that I was missing having fun because I had no time or energy left at the end of the day to engage with others.
I recognized that the requirements of a ballet career were so consuming that I needed to learn a better work/life balance.
While I could balance on the end of a point shoe, I did not know how to have balance in a real and regular life.
I did not know how to let others in because I had learned to keep my deepest self very private and to keep all my good deeds to myself.
It is not a selfless act, if one does something to gain attention and acclaim.
I learned all of that through ballet. But there was a time when I had to let go because that life (as much as I loved it) was literally killing me.
I did not completely understand the complex nature of what that meant, but I knew it somewhere deep in my core. And I am grateful that I listened and walked away feeling like a ghost in the night escaping from a beautiful dream that was now giving me more pain than joy.
This week, as I am preparing to go to Spokane, my sister’s 3^rd son, had a medical emergency and required gall bladder surgery. As of last night, he was still in excruciating pain after the surgery and my sister (the doctor) was having to demand that they not release him from the hospital until they had his pain under control.
It is terrible when one has to fight the system to get what (in the past) would have been considered reasonable.
Insurance companies are creating some terrible karma for themselves (and their employees). I am grateful that I will not have to figure out how to unravel this type of pattern in this life or the next.
We are all in this place where so many things are quickly coming down an assembly line and we are trying like Lucille Ball to wrap the chocolates.
But things are coming too fast and once we realize that we cannot keep up, we begin stuffing ourselves with the chocolates and hiding them.
In this moment in time, we will not be able to hide anything. We are going to have to learn to admit when we need help and what we can and cannot do.
Just like my mother needing to recognize that her mental decline is not something she can soothe away with the old and familiar things that allowed her to know who she was and to have pride in her accomplishments, all of us will have to come to terms with the truth in this moment.
That realization does not diminish who or what we used to be, it just reminds us that life can be graceful in the aging process when we do not let the ego define our value or current existence.
None of us are what we have done in the past.
We are all divine sparks of light and consciousness moving through this density and having many experiences of birth, death, and rebirth.
Letting go gracefully is not an ending. It is about embracing the unknown fearlessly and from the mindset of the incredible explorer that we are now and have always been.
Besides, our home is not here. Our home is in the stars among the powerful forces that exist between many dimensions in time.

~Suzanne Wagner~