The Beauty & Pain of Loving—and Losing—Everything.
Transitioning to spring and letting go of what is dying... but not before loving it so completely that it lives forever.
I’ve never been able to turn off the part of me that feels. Maybe I’m not willing to, for fear of losing connection with the deepest parts of myself.
When I was in 4th grade, I remember asking, “If plastic takes hundreds of thousands of years to break down, why are we making more?”
I still don’t understand how people can go through life and not feel the impossibility of that. Where will it go? What about future creatures of Earth? We make and use so much plastic every day… it doesn’t make sense.
But this isn’t a rant about plastics or being eco-friendly…
That’s just one small example of the way I feel everything. Inevitable, unsolvable, way-bigger-than-me dilemmas feel personal and problematic, illogical and unnerving.
I suppose that comes with the territory of being an animist. Sensing everything is alive makes my life relational. Whether it’s a season or a wildflower, the deep transience of everything is omnipresent in relational existence.
To love is to lose. To live is to lose.
And yet, each time I face the impending loss of a season of my life, I feel myself begin to quiver deep inside. What starts as a small quaking often spreads, until I’m experiencing invisible tremors as I go about my day. Before I know it, I find myself both living and watching my life—like real-time nostalgia—everything happening in slow motion, the mundane moments unspeakably precious.
In two weeks, my three year-old and I leave for a major research trip in the sacred South of France. We’ll be meeting my mother, who’s already in Toulouse and embarking on adventure through the lands of Mary Magdalene into the heart of The Martyr—the sequel to my spiritual historical novel The Heretic about the real-life secrets buried in code through the ages.
My mentor was the guy who really found the codes in the churches of the South of France that led to the Da Vinci Code. He charged me with telling the world the real story—with all the Magic, symbol, and history this story deserves.
Here, on the eve of adventure, I know that the person I am now will not return.
And the sweet child I bring with me will grow in ways I cannot begin to imagine.
I have made this leap a thousand times before, and yet each time the wound is fresh.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m being melodramatic about the transitions of my life. By the standards of our modern world and it’s prominent stiff upper lip, I certainly am. Yet when I look around at the alternative, I know I would choose nothing different.
Every day, I see people undergoing huge shifts with almost no recognition, burying the quiet pain of it in their bodies and hearts to calcify and become the stiffening agent of their future selves.
No—I choose to feel it all.
The love of what is… the subtlety of transition… the slow and invisible loss… the pain of severance… and the wonder of new growth.
When we honor the moment and feel into what we are experiencing, we allow ourselves to—not just move forward but to go deeper… to move along the spiral Path.
In this moment, I feel helpless to prepare for what comes next.
Leaving for six weeks in the spring means that I will not see the forest bloom with life after a long, snowy winter that tested even the bounds of my snow-loving soul. I will plant no garden this year, for I won’t be here to put tiny seedlings in the earth after the thaw.
Yet I cannot help but think that perhaps spring was never meant to be a season of preparation.
Something deep inside me whispers…
All I can do is to Love so fully that as this season fades from existence, it never truly dies.
Perhaps that is the true meaning of eternal life.
The last patches of snow stubbornly dappling the forest floor hold so much love and memory. My daughter’s first at Forest School when the trees and sun and sky became her teachers, the squirrels and sticks and rocks her friends. A long a bountiful maple season filled with sweet sap and friends of all-weather. Quiet days by the fire, staring out at the trees and remembering when woods still covered the world.
Something inside me is so deeply tired here as the last dregs of winter are wrung from my bones. I do not know how I to prepare for spring—for whatever adventures come next.
Whatever challenges lie ‘round the next bend, I can’t help but feel I am not to meant to prepare…
Only to give myself to it.
Does the tree know how to grow leaves again? Does it worry that perhaps it will not? Or does it simply surrender to the warmth of sun on bark?
Shall we worry about life after the resurrection? Or shall we simply surrender to Death, trusting that what is next will all ways find us?
Right now, the forest needs me to walk among the last of the bare branches, noticing the small, sweet buds, tender and barely open. My soul needs to hear the whispers and dreams of those greening shoots so I can know them before they erupt into a riot of summer without me.
Next week will be my daughter’s last week at Forest School. For that alone, I could weep forever. This autumn, she will start kindergarten, and the mother’s milk in my breast is not yet dry.
Everything is all ways happening—all around us, in front of our eyes, behind our backs, out from under us, against our wills, and deep in our hearts.
How can a heart bear to live through changes like these if we don’t feel them fully?
If we do not drink the nectar of each blossom in its fullness, it will die and be gone forever. The pain of that loss is not increased if we dare to love them more… it is immortalized. In my heart, that blossom—and this little girl with her bouncing blonde curls—lives forever.
Heretic means “one who is able to choose”.
Surrendering into Love… into this moment… this death… this blossoming… is my Choice. I choose to a relational existence… giving myself to the Beauty of the pain of loving—and losing—Everything.
Our community here at Mystery, Magic & Mayhem is exploring surrender this month as a crucible of personal transformation. We’d love for you to join us in your own personal exploration of surrender during this season when Life and Death live so close to each other. Next week, we come together to discuss and explore deeply what surrender means to each of us at our Heretic Happy Hour—April 22 at 8:30 Eastern.
Upcoming Magical Events
Heretic Happy Hour
Wednesday, April 22 @ 5:30pm PDT / 8:30pm EDT / 10:30am AEST (+1 Day)
Bring your favorite brew for an hour of magical inspiration with kindred souls in a safe-to-be-yourself space. In this community of like-hearted Heretics, you’re invited to discuss and explore this month’s theme of surrender. How do we turn our lives over to a magic greater than ourselves? Why does it sometimes feel so difficult? What do we get out of it when we manage to do it?
These conversations are not only powerful and thought-provoking, they open new spaces of magic and possibility for all who participate.
Heretic Reading Circle
Wednesday, April 23 @ 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT / 7:30pm CEST / 3:30am AEDT (+1 Day)
Share the epiphanies and explorations that this month’s magical book open up for you as you explore the chakras of your own body, diving through your own history to heal your past and open new possibilities for your future.
This magical book club invites us to explore and share our sacred journey in profound ways that create new openings for transformation.
This month’s magical book:
I've just been putting a post together about the nature of Mother Mary and started out speaking about Mary Magdelene. Everyone I know who is inspired to go to France to walk in the footsteps comes back enraptured. I look forward to reading your experiences...and maybe some photos from the locations?? I will say that your intensified experience will be over soon...far too many planets and positions in Pisces for quite a while, culminating now. Mercury goes into Aries tomorrow, Mars into Leo and Venus will eventually get into Aries again on the 30th. These personal planets have much to do with our everyday experience. You'll be all adventure and heart energy for your trip!
I love how you captured that particular shade of pain that smells like opening. It’s not easy to lose everything, but it’s even harder not to love for fear of losing. Thank you for reminding us it’s still worth it.