Letters to a Life I Loved

on this journey of my grief, this endless journey, this blessed brief journey, this ceaseless slog, this flash in the pan, this sisyphean joke of an internal experience, this early spring of healing, i have often found myself at the threshold of the door of my own resistance.

a few inches one way, and i can almost glimpse this loss right-sized, woven into the fabric of my precious, meaningless life, a mere footnote to a bigger story. a few inches the other way, and i find myself warmed by the bellows of my resentment, rich with argument, and hardened in my defensive stance.

this door! crowded with all my reasons to be unforgiving. resounding with the irritating whining of my shadow side, her raised voice claiming her rights, telling her whys and wherefores. this door crowded with fury and arrogance. this door singing its siren song of the strange comfort of indulging in my own trauma.

tonight a situation arose which placed me at this threshold, again. i found myself face to face for the first time with someone who i at once feared, dreaded seeing, resented, and strangely, desperately hoped to like. i could claim my sadness or my anger, mask my humiliation with contempt, harden myself, contribute to discord. as we say in the parlance of affirmation, i had every right to feel that way.

but something had shifted.

that something was this:

last night, as i sat on my bathroom floor, a prayer of my heart arose. suddenly, sweetly; like a whiff of jasmine on the rote daily walk to the mailbox. just like that, this desire of my soul bubbled up from many weeks of traversing the blank dark night. this prayer offered me a real, deep, unifying framework for all that has happened to and for me, and for all that i know is bound to come.

i said to god, (or did god say to me)

“i want a legacy.”

god, more than anything, i want to leave a legacy. i often joke that all i’ve ever wanted to be was a dominant matriarch, but stay with me here. last night my heart told me that it’s much more than that, isn’t it? it’s more than raising kids, or having the nuclear family, or the vacations, or the home, or the loving husband, or the traditions, or any of the things i’ve been idolizing since the abrupt onset of their absence from my life. it’s a deeper desire to leave a trail of healing, grace, love and kindness behind me. not just through my family, but through my way of being in this world.

now, of course i want to leave a long legacy, but i’d settle for momentary ones, too.

i’d settle for transmitting peace and healing to my patients, even if that legacy starts to decay as soon as the exam room door opens back up and illness returns; as it does, as it will.

i just want to heal things, people, myself.

i want to heal the self-created schism between my feminine heart and my masculine mind.

i want to raise beautiful women who know their worth, who are healed of the barrage of cultural messages intent on destroying their light.

i want to heal my anger.

i want to heal my inner little girl by freely creating beautiful things, even ineffable things like songs that i’ll never record, (or blogs that no one will read.)

i want to offer grace and forgiveness to the people who have wronged me. i want to stand on the shore of the sea of forgetfulness with them, and drop their mistakes in together, never to be held against them again. i want to heal them of that encumbrance, that debt to me.

i want to look at and speak to others in a way that imparts dignity to them.

i want to share through my empathy and presence my unshakeable belief that even our worst mistakes can be transformed.

i am meant to be a healing force in this world, and i want my legacy to be a lifetime of doing well what i was made by god to be: a healer.

all this time, (for actual years now), i’ve been so stuck on the shape of my family changing that i’ve failed to see that this destruction was only ever going to be alchemized into clarity. the grief is real, of course. the loss is real. the sudden loss of my baby’s infancy and subsequently half of her childhood, of my home, of my family unit. the traumatic violation of my privacy, the exposure of my deepest shame to those i did not choose to share it with. the broken heart over the man i loved. the enduring sting of my love not being able to fix it. the awful things that happened to me, all that i walked through, yes. all real, too real.

and yet, i return to the paradox that without these losses, i would never have found myself last night finally hearing my heart tell me who i am.

you are morgan, daughter of josephine, granddaughter of louise and josephine, mother to abra and mara.

you are a healer.

you are called to leave a legacy and lifetime of healing behind you.

i’ve found that when god, universe, power, whatever you choose to call it, really wants to reach you, it’ll speak in your language. i tend to operate best with unifying theories. so in that swift moment last night, in that vulnerable moment where i spoke my heart’s desire out loud, telling god my desire for a legacy, i heard back in turn not only my way to leaving one, but also a way to understand all of what has happened. the wounds, the slow mend, and the way forward. and from the Healer itself, the fresh hope that my heart’s truest desire is best known to the force that put that desire in me in the first place. my heart’s truest desire – to heal and to be healed – is already underway. was already underway the very day it all fell apart. that is nothing short of magic! to know myself and to sense god acting in this way would only ever have been possible from the vista of this desert i’ve been wandering. thirsty, dusty, and ready to listen. from here, the blessed, bastard badlands of my grief.

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tonight, before i had the chance to decide to cross the threshold of my resistance, i peered at my bathroom mirror, where i wrote my legacy prayer last night:

grace where there is gracelessness

peace where there is discord

healing where there is sickness

kindness where there is cruelty

growth where there is stagnancy

hope where there is despair

strength where there is trial

beauty where there is ugliness

trust where there is distrust

honor where there is contempt

laughter in greater measure than tears

god, grant me the legacy i have always wished for

and the wisdom to accept whatever shape you send it in

tonight, with a new dream in mind and a legacy to create, i opened the door, stepped through my resistance, and wrote the first words of a totally different story.