When I was a kid…
Stars arc over the desert night
When I was a kid, I took a trip with my mom during her remission. Just me and her zipping along California’s Pacific Coast Highway from South to North. She’d ask me where I wanted to go. And all I wanted was to head into the ferny cliffs.
In the passenger seat, my side wasn’t the ocean, it was the woods. Through 12 year old eyes, in a family who didn’t do trails, I didn’t even know there were trails through forests till I was nearly 20. I sought ways to enter the wild from the safe seat of the car with my beloved mom who I’d been so scared of losing.
We rode her (or, let’s be real, my!) favorite roller coaster on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk: The Giant Dipper.
Years later, in San Pedro de Atacama, the darkest sky on the planet in the driest desert, I ducked in and out of what seemed like cliffs and caves and tunnels, in starlit wonder of the giant night.
I was on a journey to find myself. I’d attempted suicide just months before, I felt shamed by my therapist, the only person who knew this fact other than the person who probably saved my life. (Also the person I was attempting to escape from, and, sigh, maybe even hurt.)
In grad school, writing a book of poems for my thesis, I was literally trying to FEEL my mom’s pain, not just on her journey through cancer, hospitals, angels, and death. Not just how hard that must have been to know you are leaving these people who need you so much. Not just the pain of her inner child. But what led her to get so sick in the first place.
I don’t know if it was a real attempt or not. I didn’t take all the pills. But it took me a while to realize how close I’d come to not ever meeting my husband or having these beautiful kids, all my greatest teachers.
Because nobody knew I tried to…, it was life as usual. Pretend all’s fine, run the San Francisco Marathon, miss your friend’s wedding cuz of your migraine, and get a less than stellar year-end review at work.
I couldn’t tell my therapist right away. That’s often how it is. Depressed people are ashamed of their depression. They can take on so much. They feel and understand so much. They don’t always have a place to share or process all that feeling. At least that’s my story.
Plus, my generation is built from adults telling you that you don’t feel what you’re feeling. That they’ll give you something to cry about, not realizing they just did.
When my therapist expressed her feelings of betrayal because I didn’t tell her, I sobered. It was a big deal. More common than I thought, but still a big deal.
So that’s the backdrop.
There I am under that Atacama stars, hanging almost like grapes. And I am so small. I am in tears of awe at my insignificance and overflowing with wonder + reverence that we are here at all.
How can I not waste this?
How can I not waste the teaching in all these events?
It took another decade for me to make any more real headway in this marvel called life. The transition into motherhood shifted things. But I was a grown child ignoring my inner child and often just wanting her mommy to fix it (still!).
(As my most sensitive child brings me some food, and smiles at me on his way to the door, then returns to give me a hug and says, I love you… I am so fucking grateful to be here right now.)
It’s a question I bring in sometimes, and it makes babies, as questions tend to do.
How can I not waste this?
How can I love more deeply in this moment?
How can I be more here?
How can I make sure I don’t miss it all?
How can I live my dharma?
How can I serve?
May these questions help anchor you into the present moment.