Happy Spring

I woke up on the first day of spring for the first time in a new house. I had lived in the same house for exactly 40 years, but due to family problems, three generations of the Blackwell's have lost it. It was prime land, backing onto a greenbelt and creek, beside a park, but still close the the main street. This is a significant change, and it helps me that it is happening during this time of renewal.

This is the strangest season of my life, but also the most exciting and healing, which I was in no way expecting. In cleaning out the storage space in my room, I came across many pieces of my past, going back to almost birth. I saw so much both good and bad, but really, mostly good, and that was also surprising. The good that I saw gave me a whole new appreciation for life, and love for myself, my friends, and my family. The bad was brief, and merely served as a reminder of the good fight I now face.

When the movers took the mattresses, I found some letters that I had stashed between them. They were dated from 2008, and one had apparently started off as a birthday letter to a friend which had clearly taken on a life of its own. I was falling out of my yoga practice. I had begun to have problems with my alcoholism, and that had really catalyzed a divide between my teacher and I. He wanted me to stop drinking, and to practice sadhana (4 am meditation and yoga), neither of which I wanted to do.

My letters showed a different turning point in my life. The one to my friend talked about the exhaustion I was facing in trying to be a lightworker, and a second letter showed a psychotic break that would soon take place and require medication to reverse. That was ten years ago, and a lifetime ago. I had not yet been called into the Catholic Church; Christianity wasn't even on my radar, for the most part. I was interested in crosses, and discussion on the social media site MySpace, but it was interesting to see notes pertaining to that dedication to my yoga practice. It was also difficult to read the struggles that I was having, because they were ultimately due to not knowing how to reach God, even though I desperately wanted to. I had no backbone and no self-esteem, and so I became easily indoctrinated and dependent on others. 

The message that I have received the past two weeks is that of forgiveness. I need to forgive in order to heal, and seeing those letters from ten years ago was physical evidence of my long-standing desire to become a better person. What I didn't know until recently though, is that I need to forgive myself first, in order to move forward. But in order to forgive and consequently heal, there needs to be responsibility. Even in the devastation that first week after being informed that I was going to lose my childhood home and move for the first time ever, I was able to see where I had gone wrong. It is not usual to be forty with no money for rent, no partner, and never having left home. And in seeing my errors, which invariably need restitution to myself for past choices, and in upholding my amends to others, I was able to practice gratitude. That healing comes through accountability is one of life's great paradoxes. But now, despite my shortcomings, I have confidence in which previous lack-of had caused great distress, and so today I can still be happy even when dealt seemingly losing hands.  

And though I still have a lot of fear about losing my property, and consequently my inheritance, I feel more connected to myself, and others, and this is something that I have been working on for years. In a way I feel that God did for me what I could not do for myself. Forty is a holy number, I see no coincidence in this transition is happening at this point in my life. Spring is a time for rebirth, and not only do I feel that I have been given a reboot on my life, I also remember why I persist in my journey to being a healthy and honest person. Responsibility and accountability have given me a new freedom, and I feel so much less isolated. Happy Spring: the time for decisive, uplifting change is now.