A barrow full of prayers.
My journey beyond the cancer seas.
I nodded and raised my eyebrows. She was right, my dear friend was correct in saying that with my character, getting through the treatments for breast cancer had been the easier part for me. She knows me well, inveterate survivor who excels in a crisis situation. That’s me and now, well now its the learning to live part. The learning to redefine part. The asking for what I need on the understanding of its relation to my journey ahead part. I confess to you all I am out at sea with this part.
I keep trying to engage in the ways I used to and find collapse awaits around a corner. So then I retreat and plan a different foray out, only to find another collapse awaits. Then I try to rest and be quiet, and I fidget and sink into feeling like ‘billy no mates’ missing out on everything that’s happening. When the reality is that I have asked friends for space and don’t have the energy for half the stuff offered. Though it is interesting to note that after an all clear the wave of support eases off, not so dissimilar to what happens when there is any trauma such as death, accident or illness. In that the outpouring is fiercely felt during the initial stages, only later to all but disappear. I don’t really mind. And on another level I do. It very much depends on the way the stormy seas of me are moving on any given day.
The fear within all this is that I will make a bad decision, or indeed that I have already made wrong decisions regards some of the things I put in place to help me through this past year. The reality is that I am still in recovery and all over the show. Living in a world teetering on the brink of one disaster after another. Full of ideas with little fuel to engage them and no idea if any of them are relevant to my life now or even this changing world. My therapist thinks its all good stuff and I growl internally and roll my eyes.
So with no clue upon how to navigate my latest crash, I cancelled everything and jumped in the car with my friend and we went to West Kennet long barrow. We arrived at the barrow entrance at the very minute of the new moon. I know this place well, over the years I have frequented the inner chambers and felt the intense peace there. A place to call upon the ancestors of this land and to feel aligned in our humanity through the ages. We lit candles and burned incense and uttered heartfelt prayers into the dank womb like space. It was wonderful. Not in the sense that I don’t have pray in my life, because I do. More in the sense that there are spots such as this that amplify the prayers given.
I woke this morning feeling the same anxiety and urgency about my life. The barrow of prayers we offered doesn’t allow for escape of ones proverbial stuff. Except that it is further removed today and there is a more tangible space within me. I don’t really know my next move, but at the very least I can sit with myself. I would wish that for everyone out in this world. The space to pause and take a breath, to momentarily contemplate the wisdom of an action or word given.
May the sunflowers rise tall this season as they follow the glorious sun.
May there be peace from the inside out.
