It Begins With a Call (Part 23): Writing My Way Into Healing

A week or so after returning from Topanga we went out on a Sunday morning to go to the farmers' market and found the car covered with ash from the fires in Lake County. The next day I worked to clear a heavily weedy area of our yard and began to cough.  This was the start of a new episode of new physical problems.  Back in the saddle again.

In the meantime, fires raged all over the state.  Fire, fire and more fire.  I understand that holding fire was something given to me in the last writers’ workshop with the teacher.  But it only now occurs to me that I don’t want to hold it in my lungs and airways.  

While reading a book the teacher recommended, a line leaped out and then rewrote itself for me – I write my way into healing.  This feels significant. Without writing I would never have come to this thought!

Over a month’s time, the symptoms changed and somewhat worsened.  At first it was an annoyance.  Now it became just plain difficult.  And scary.  My mother died of lung cancer, and it was not an easy death.  That isn’t where I want to go, and, of course, I realize I have no control.

This morning I turned to my SoulCollage® cards for guidance.  I pulled the one I call Emerging. 

The woman speaks first:  I am one who has been in the underworld.  I am now where the light is breaking through, almost out, and I am pausing here.  There is a large animal skull that is a gift I will carry out with me.  I have a staff that has helped to support me on my journey.  I look behind me, as Orpheus did, but I am not cursed to lose something.  What I see is the distance I have traveled.  I recognize where I have been.  I will honor the skull and my staff.  I have gained strength here.  The skull is ordinary and yet precious.  It, too, has a story.

The skull says:  I am one who has lived and died, but I have been preserved in this atmosphere.  Outside, I will eventually crumble into dust, but that will be okay, too.  I am not bound by emotions, instincts and the drives of living beings.  I am quiescent and at peace.  If I serve to remind you of something, I see that as a noble purpose I never sought.  It is pleasing.

The light says:  Come unto me!  You have served the dark.  Let me fall upon your pale flesh and bring you vitality and health.  You are going to enter a time of renewal.  All hail, all blessings!

The staff says:  I am one who has worked.  Let us rest now.  It is time for rest.  Not forever, but things must act and rest, act and rest.  If you can move from acting to resting, the dreams will return.

May it be so.  My dream life has been active but out of the reach of my memory.  I would like to shift that.

So, I will consider what it means to rest now.

I will also consider what it means to hold or carry fire, but not have it damage my body.