Sometimes I wonder where time is going these days. I  have not had the opportunity to access this creative wishing space for awhile. What a shift all are going through. What I am seeing so much of, is a sense of exhaustion, various doses of grief, and a magical awakening of creative forces within us. We are opening up to new layers of empathy, beauty and acceptance of the drastic change.

My personal journey this year involves: riding a traumatic rollercoaster as an essential worker at a hospital through the pandemic, becoming awestruck as the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement ignited, being attacked by my dog, making the heartbreaking decision to surrender my pup to the universe, and enduring some family losses. I’ve been in healing mode, as we all have, and we’ve taken quite a swim into the human experience of grief these past six months.

Welcome to the great swim.

It has been quite a :choice expletive: year for all of us:  We are losing our sacred spaces and being called to rebuild.  Some of us are mourning what we had, others are mourning what they never had. First, it began with a virus, which triggered the shutdown of our workplaces, our places of worship, our nourishing entertainment, and our places of recreation.  Our sense of community vanished seemingly overnight. This was heartbreaking. Collectively, we stepped through a sacred passageway of grief and loss.  For our safety, we were forced into a grand isolation that has not only caused a large ripple in our emotional health, but also our economic,  physical, and spiritual health.

So what has happened within this passageway?

Together, we have begun to heal through innovation by adapting life to connect digitally. We have raised our hearts and our ears to support BLM and offer overdue space to amplify sacred black lives. We are seeing the rise with online mental health resources. We are creating small circles of connection. We are mindful of other’s safety. We are slowing down.  We are grieving. We are tuning in. We are opening.

Individually we are adapting, we are building resilience, we are emerging as thriving brilliant versions of ourselves with deeper empathy and radiant gratitude. We are reclaiming our joy and exploring new avenues of flexibility and trust. We are realizing we can trade our lens of hurt and struggle to the lens of gratitude and compassion. We are  resurfacing  our hearts from detachment and passivity to presence and joy.

Know that these spaces you build, the lens you choose and the surfaces you adorn are sacred. Know that these spaces are just as valid as the cathedrals that cause us to gasp, the glory of the first snow, the magic sizzle of fireworks and the presence of a loving touch. Know that you have the opportunity to build your space anew at any moment. Know that you are change being made by the force of love, and that all of you and everything about this moment

is impermanence.

Nothing exists the way it was a moment ago. For this reason we must offer gratitude for the lesson and the legacy it left us with.  Frame it on the walls of your soul and honor the existence of this sacred pause.

Consider the sacred space that is in you.

 

One way you can choose to fill this space is to create with it

Last year I was by the ocean after the realization that a lover was not in alignment with me. The play of the clouds on the sea was such a peaceful metaphor of the passing of time, and the necessity of space between us. My dog Mojo was with me at the time, and when the first verse escaped my breath for the first time she shook her tail in agreement. She agreed it was meant to be. Since last year so much has shifted, and it has come to be a mantra for me “We are impermanence, tender and delicate, this is impermanence, I am impermanence.” And so, it has been a vital reminder to help me shift out of the terribly vast loss of her presence.

One beautiful way music therapists celebrate impermanence is through the recording of a heart rhythm. In the song below, you will hear Mojo’s heart pulsing throughout the song, just as she pulsed through my every experience for the sweet 10 years of her existence.  It is my dearest hope that you will find this song useful in managing and coping with your loss.

 

Contemplations to embrace impermanence:

~Let our experience not be woven by our expectations, for they are at the root of hardness and misunderstanding.

~Let us settle into the comfort of the awareness that everything that surrounds us is temporary.

~Let us allow ourselves passage through the sacred threshold of grief and reclaim our gratitude.

 

Step into the sacred of yourself.

For a moment, imagine that it is safe enough to come up for air, and your hands rest on a soft sandy shore of intention:

May we have the strength to create with the grief that arises from the deaths we experience. Let your breath fill the sails of your intentions, and your heart’s rhythm captivate your empathetic wisdom. Let your purpose be driven with the clarity of your intuition.  May we speak clearly with the love we embody. Let us create new ways of being, forge new pathways of love, and rebuild our sacred spaces in the temple of our hearts, so that we can carry them with us everywhere we go.

 

 

Impermanence

 

I am the clouds.

You are the sea.

I’ll drift by you.

You wave at me.

We are impermanence

And when I pour

Rain from my soul

Will armor you adorn

Or swallow me whole?

Tender and delicate.

Surrender your knives (to storm)

to the perimeter of shade

With shadow Ignite

A soft warm space

 

This is impermanence

 

I am the clouds

You are the sea

And the space between

Honors all that will be

 

We shall transform

into something new

Rain becomes love

Rebirth fueled by truth

We are impermanence