Dancing leaves and the dark hold.

My journey over the cancer seas and beyond

I watched crouching low on the damp lawn, at the sharp bright morning sun. Mesmerising leaves twirled and fell to the ground as the breeze gentled in the branches. A rain of leaves, silhouetted against a clear sky, each taking a different falling dance to the earth. Some floated softly, some twirled at high speed. Each one unique. It was an awe inspiring moment. Autumn teaches us such a lot, there is a deep beauty and colour in natures inevitable tread into winter and the death of all the splendor of this past year. Yet the display is nonetheless one of the finest to see in the northern hemisphere. We also do this dance, for though our lives seem longer in the greater scheme of it all, we too can be seen as the vibrant leaves, budding, growing and falling as time weaves us on.

This week my liver is sore, perhaps because it is detoxing, perhaps because of other things. My thoughts these days go to the inevitable extreme, even if only for a moment. It is a constant to be ridden well, this sense of worry about any and all body sensations. I am told it is a normal state of affairs for those of us who walked the cancer way, no matter that we may have survived, thus far at least. I find myself stopping to take hold of the hand of that fearful voice once again and telling her that worrying never helps really, that I have her in my arms and that I am doing the best I can. Much like the leaves, we are dealt our position on this tree of life. The choice we have is the how of living and our ability of letting it all go in the end. I am no wise woman in this. Like many of us I fear death, early death at least.

It is as if inside me and perhaps inside you? Well anyway, inside me there resides a darkened hold, similar to the hidden places on dank forest floor in fall. It is only a part you understand. In the texture of my living it is hid from sight. Sometimes though creature parts emerge from that place to prod and torment me as I am on my way, whispering stories of dark terrors. Sometimes those creatures are only young and unfinished in the form of life, and they spin yarns laid upon the bones of traumatic experiences I have already lived. With all that is emergent in our times it is hard to put the dark creatures back into that safe place. It is hard to imagine and live our fullest potentialities in a world so changing.

So today, after the showering of the leaves I sat with myself there in my darkened hollow. To visit freely and to listen wide is a choice to be taken. What I found was not monumental and certainly has no bearing upon life changing moments. It was a simple act of breathing and presence with myself and a letting go of any concept of what may need to be done. In that place there is a coming apart, so no doing is relevant anyway. And yet, I do feel better for taking the moment to acknowledge the dark hold within me. I feel freer, and though not necessarily at peace, certainly I feel more whole somehow. For now at least. Tis human to be changeable after all.