Can change as a transformative and healing process?
A transformative process may start with an event that shakes you up so much you don’t feel like you will ever be in control again. For me, it was the sudden death of my father, which coincidentally happened during my Chiron return and a week before my 50th birthday. My dad was the one I went to with all my problems. He was also the one who inadvertently started me down an earth-based spiritual path by showing me the wonders of nature when I was a kid and kept showing them to me my whole life. And then he was gone and suddenly I had to figure out my own problems and find ways to keep the wonder and magic of nature in my life and start showing it to others.
Clouds have been rolling in regularly this month.
Here in the northeastern part of the United States we are having crazy storm after crazy storm. In the southwest the heat has been unrelenting for days. Last week, while Americans were celebrating Independence Day, the Earth’s average temperature was the hottest ever recorded. We are getting a collective shake up and all life on this planet is facing radical change.
I was outside for my morning sit spot meditation, watching the birds and the squirrels and the spider who walked over my legs on the way to wherever she was going and spent some time thinking about how these beings are being affected by change. I have no doubt that more-than-human lives were lost to raging floods and excessive heat. The way humans treat the Earth has a lot to do with the changing climate and why weather events are going to the extreme. I often tell you to get real about your life. Please get real about this. Because well-being is for all beings, and we can’t get there unless we figure out how to deal with our problems and how to keep the wonder and magic of the diversity of life in the world.
So how do we deal with change? To be honest, I cry a lot. Sometimes I give into the overwhelm and shut down because otherwise I can’t breathe. And feeling the grief and anxiety that change can trigger is part of it. But it isn’t empowering. There comes a time when we have to find a way out of that and do something.
It is not easy. Nor is it a straight line from whatever small or big thing screws up your life to stepping into your power as a healer or teacher or leader. My dad died while I was in the process of expanding my yoga studio into a second location. Just a couple of weeks before he was at the new space with me giving me ideas on renovations I wanted to do. Looking back, it wasn’t a good choice. I was barely making the rent at the first location and hadn’t paid myself in years. But I really wanted my dad to see me doing something good in the world. The next couple of years were incredibly stressful. I threw myself into Shamanic Reiki and got my license to care for wildlife and piled that on top of teaching 16 yoga classes a week to try to keep the business going because I just needed something else in my life. The day the pandemic shut everything down I was relieved. I let it go. I went to seminary on Zoom and rescued turtles and sat outside in a chair six feet away from the next one and watched my son graduate from high school in a mask. And held my new grandbaby. And decided to find new ways to be a healer.