When It All Overflows

And We Can't Seem To Expand...

Choccy in better times - a lush Transylvanian spring in the valley

Vast like the ocean and free like the wind. It’s been my mantra for a good long while. Ever since someone explained to me this: Imagine your loss, pain or trouble like a stone pebble the size of your thumb. Now think of yourself as a small shot glass filled with water. What happens when you throw the pebble in the shot glass? It overflows. Now think of yourself as a lake or the sea. What happens when you throw a pebble into a lake? It ripples and then returns to a smooth calm surface again. Clear as a mirror.

THE DISCOMFORT OF EXPANSION

When events and experiences come with emotions, thoughts, urges and behaviors that seem impossible to contain, we can either succumb or expand. Expansion isn’t comfortable though. It’s not instant relief, and I have learned that the rippling often lasts a bit longer than anticipated.

These past few days I have experienced a crushing loss that changed me instantly. With the passing of my darling little brown dog Choccy, another version of me vanished. I now shed skins more often than baby snakes do. While waves of anguish wash over me, I go from stunned to enraged, from numb to a fierce anxiety. How can I feel I am overflowing yet completely hollowed out at the same time?

“Do you think we are being punished?”

My friend asks, after I have shared with him how only a few days prior to Choccy’s death I had been meditating to invite more joy into my life. I had done everything I could to facilitate the next steps on my path. I had sold everything shipped everything, bought a small car and had started planning the route, the pet friendly accommodations. I was looking at places outside of cities and had imagined us, two dogs and cat and me, having a road trip adventure.

That’s how I had reframed my return to Romania. Something that despite the call of the forest fills me with trepidation. I asked for joy as my road companion in addition to my lovely little pack. In response one of the biggest sources of joy in my life was taken.

My friend asks: “What do you think the meaning of all this loss is?” Well unless my soul is destined to reincarnate as the next Dalai Lama I have no idea, yet.

Revenge can be sweet by Cathy Hayes

SWEET REVENGE

My friend confesses about dark thoughts he had throughout his life, occasionally wishing bad things on people who hurt and betrayed him. A while back Sally C Sumner, one of my favourite writers present here on Substack, posted a note on this and I commented:

“Does it make me a bad person to fantasize about revenge?”

Sally responded:

“Lee, The moment we wish harm, even silently, something tender in us tightens. You’re not a bad person for having those thoughts. You’re a deeply feeling human, navigating the ache of being hurt.

Wanting revenge may visit the mind, but the soul always longs for peace. The fact that you’re aware and questioning already shows your heart is rooted in love.

Thank you for sharing this honesty, it’s how we heal together.”

One of the main sources of spectacular grief and fear in my life those past two years has been my neighbour in Romania. He is a very heavy drinker. When he is in one of his darker and more aggressive drunken stupors he lets his violent dogs out on the street.

These dogs themselves never meant any harm but after years of abuse and neglect they behave viciously. I have been bitten myself and one night I watched them tear my beloved cat Lollipop to shreds (I called her in for the night not knowing the dogs were out and they grabbed her as she crossed the dirt road to jump on the fence into the garden- two minutes earlier and she would have made it..)

After this I no longer held any compassion for my neighbour. When Eva told me that a few years back he had been down her well to fix something, she called him in for coffee, and the well caved in a few minutes later. Eva was grateful and considered her sudden urge to offer him coffee as a saving grace that had kept him from dying in the well.

My first thought was: Damn that was close.

I allowed myself for a minute to imagine what my life in the village could have brought me if he had not been there.

Not long after my conversation with Eva, I was the one to call off the dogs. My friends and family were plotting revenge on my neighbour in the most imaginative ways (like spiking his beer with poop pills) and although it seemed silly and fun at first, I realised all this negative energy was not a good thing for anyone involved.

Painting by Nathan Gibbs

PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN

Not that I forced myself to be compassionate towards my neighbour again. No. I couldn’t care less what happens to him. But I am not going to energetically invest in his demise. I am cutting all chords with him and all events tied to him.

Whatever happens with him I could now never call Zalanpatak home again anyway. Too much has happened there. The surroundings, the sounds will trigger trauma for too long and I don’t have the time to take that as a “healing opportunity”. I do think sometimes healing is letting go, walking away, moving on even if it means leaving behind a stunning old stone cottage and a yard bordering on the forest with a spring stream running through it.

(Forgiveness may be next on your mind now but I reserve this for another time. I have written extensively about this theme as part of many healing modalities as well my personal experiences. But the current state of the world as it is - I have put forgiveness in an abstract realm of being without needing my personal involvement. I won’t carve out cages from hate, I will walk free, but also free of the burden of having to forgive)

Going back to Transylvania now becomes a pilgrimage. It feels less like forging a future and more like just bringing one essential part of our story full circle. Reunite Choccy with her friends who lay buried there. As a Child of the forests and green hills she must return.

Tulku Oracle deck print

LEAVE THE TRIBE

My recent session with Zsolt reminded me how in all the wreckage there may still be hope. How everything is entertwined in all possible ways, joyously and painfully.

Zsolt said it is not karma and I am not being punished.

I had a session booked already in preparation of our departure and had actually hoped I would be in Transylvania by July 9 so we could see each other in person. Instead I was sitting on my bed clutching my coffee cup, my cat at my feet, trembling with what I have started to experience as a total systemic collapse.

Referring back to discovering Jody Day and her introduction to Daniel Foor and Ancestral Medicine are starting to look like divine intervention.

After telling Zsolt about Choccy my pain, my fears and frustration, how all the small steps laid out on my path have utterly lost their appeal… the dots on the horizon seem random and irrelevant now… we talk about the homelessness of my spirit.

After ten months in my motherland I feel depleted, worn out in ways I had not expected. It became clear that rest and recuperation were not on the menu, once I arrived. Any sense of sanctuary was further shattered by sudden hospitalisation.

“HEAL WHERE YOU ARE. TRUST ME.”

The land here loves me but it’s exhausted. It’s been brutalised, over burdened. Exploited. It can’t breathe (the same way I seem to be subtly hyperventilating now for over six months).

My country, my people are choking the earth.

I talk about my family and all the things I feel are “false” there. The roles we are expected to play, the projections. It’s all becoming increasingly more alien.

I don’t belong here. I have known this my entire life. I left at 18 and would have could have should have blablablah … should have never come back…

I tell Zsolt about my daily ritual in witnessing the genocide in Gaza and how this makes me feel in relation to a nation state, a national identity, a sense of citizenship. How I gather the names of martyrs and write them down by hand to send to the Dutch prime minister. How terrified I am of this system, how psychotic the silence of my government feels. How nothing makes sense at all… the NATO meeting… the war tribunal in The Hague…

Ok, Zsolt says. But don’t burden yourself with this. You can step out from all of it. Family, state, culture, all of it. Look at the way your body responds to this. The moment you start talking about all this there is a visible shift. You don’t have to participate, you don’t have to be this. But that doesn’t mean you don’t belong, in general. It only means you don’t belong here, in this.

(I may be mistaken but I see less and less engagement with posts by the voices that need to be heard, sharing messages that are so so urgent and essential for the changes we must make now.. together… please read this by Ahmad Ibsais … read Mosab Abu Toha take time to discover his poetry too… read Robina Qureshi who has such a unique way of connecting dots in faith, humanity and culture… let yourself be energised by the activist human dynamo that is Aalia Mauro…)

A NEW HORIZON IN BELONGING

Setting myself free from this appeared as a loss to me, a free fall instead of a purpose. How do I flip this? Into a gain or opportunity to create. Being someone else. Be part of something else. Belong somewhere else.

Be mindful that you don’t start playing pingpong between two countries.

Frame the road back here. Write down why you are coming back. Goals, boundaries all of it.

I cried…

I am scared to ask de anything. Dream of anything. If I keep getting the opposite of what I ask for .. maybe I should pray for the total destruction of this planet and we will all receive the opposite…

No, it doesn’t work like that Zsolt reminds me. You still have the right to your dreams.

No, the two houses you bought and worked on didn’t get you the home you deserve. It does not mean you don’t deserve a home. You deserve all the things you have desired: the small cozy house, the yard, close to nature, a loving sanctuary for you and your animals. You are not wrong for wanting that.

Sometimes our dreams are right, but the places we choose weren’t compatible. He urges me to keep that in mind for any future steps: look clearly at who you are and what you want and see if that is a match with the surroundings.

We talk through the bizarrely identical patterns in how both my houses in Transylvania unfolded. Both times I lost my job just before starting renovations. Both times the locals hurt me. Both times the work on the house was shoddy.

Both times I walk away.

No these have not been blessed, Zsolt says.

My grandmother Jo’s biscuit tin

See your dreams as seeds, Zsolt said, towards the end, wrapping up the session. They need the right climate, fertile ground, care.

A long time ago, I sat on a bunk bed in an all girl orphanage in Romania with a friend and colleague. It had been a tough couple of days, where we had discovered more heartbreaking background stories of the children, there had been tantrums and major meltdowns, confrontations with a local lack of compassion. We sat there wondering whether our presence would ever make a difference to the kids.

That night I wrote this poem:

Sow your seeds on barren ground

Of love and of hope

For everyone

Nurture them and be careful

Let it rain, but not too heavily, or

It will wash away the seeds

Let the sun shine, but not too hot, or

The seeds will dry out

Be patient and have faith

The seeds that washed away will sprout in the sun

In places far from where you have been

The seeds that dried out will flourish

In times long after you have gone

The roots will grow deeper

To withstand all winds

The branches will reach up to heaven

To bear fruit

For everyone

Who loves and hopes

Again years later, I had it printed on the back of a postcard. The front featured my grandmother’s biscuit tin. GOD BLESS THIS HOUSE.

It was a thank you card in a fundraiser for a friend in Romania, to house her and her family somewhere safe. Maybe, together with the baby black walnut tree, I can find some guidance in finding my own home…

PS

Another broken dream, imagining my pack’s adventures in a camper van

My cousin on a quick visit for my birthday asked, what has changed? Everything. This loss has changed all dynamics again. It has stopped me in my tracks the same way it makes Stella stop, turn around and look back as if to see if Choccy may still be coming. Moving forward without her feels meaningless. Imagining new beginnings in the middle of mourning is more than I am capable of. I can’t let time collapse in on this. No quantum leaping, just being with my grief. As long as it takes.

I felt ok to write today, so I did. I don’t know if this will be instead of Sunday Brunch or if I will have more to sahre, come Sunday. At three I am picking up Choccy’s ashes and I allow room for whatever comes after.

XXL