My fingers gently touching the bits and pieces of my days, the things that now make up my life.

My truth today, all of it.

Calypso and our FJ40, Bubba, Costa Rica, summer, 2004

Since we're all here, you and me, being human, I'm going to tell you another part of the truth today.

I always tell the truth here, through my stories of how I navigate the world, but they are just a part I’ve crafted carefully, still raw and truthfully, but crafted, because that’s what writers do. But as I've said here before. I'm tired. I think we are all tired. And today, I am out of juice. 

I could probably finish the essay I started for you and it would probably be good. But there comes a point when we just have to stop pushing and I am at or past that point today. Hopefully, with this strange little post, I will find some grace, and you will too. 

So here goes. My truth today, all of it:

I am overwhelmed. I feel like I’m forgetting things. I can't keep track of all the pieces of my puzzle. I've taken all of my numbing practices to the dump and so I am left to just sit here with my discomfort.

And in this discomfort and overwhelm, I want to share three things with you.

---

ONE

I had a dog. She licked me for the first time when she was a week old and for the last time when she was nearly 17.

I brought her home when she was 30 or so days into being in this world. Thirty days. And then we lived our lives together, nearly every hour of every day, for the rest of her 6,303 days in that particular furry body on this particular planet. She came into my life when I was 31. She left when I was 48. My brain knows that dogs are dogs and that humans are humans, but my heart knows that this dog was my baby. The first and only puppy I ever had, the first and only being who was mine to take care of, to feed, to keep from harm, to play with and teach how to be in this world. So what I want need to say is this: It is not like having lost my child, for me, it is having lost my child. And I've been pretending, for the nearly three years since her death, that it is something else. That I'm okay. That she was, after all, just a dog. 

I try to hedge how I talk about this, especially around mothers, because I cannot fathom what being a mother to a human must feel like. Your heart raw and exposed, flitting around outside of your body, wherever your child's body goes. I cannot imagine, and yet maybe I can, just a little. 

But I am not okay. Or maybe, I am okay, but not the same. I have learned how to carry this as I do the things we do in this human life, get the groceries, plant the flowers, go to dinner, sing in the shower, buy a new pair of shoes, take the tequila shot (or not), get on a plane, hug people, argue with people, sleep, wake again to a world without her in it, in which, hand outstretched, I fumble, searching around as if for missing glasses, my fingers gently touching the bits and pieces of my days, the things that now make up my life.

---

TWO

A meditation/conversation I had with my five year old self, in which I am working on acknowledging her fear and anger and her desperate need to know how things work, how things go, how to do all of it so she can get it right — in order for us both to be free from this particular cage. I jotted it down because in my head, as it was happening, it was beautiful, and when it landed on the page, it sounded like a poem. 

***

I know. I know you're scared, I said, as I held her fragile bird bone body and she cried.

I'm not scared, she said, I'm furious. 

I know that too. I feel your fury. It's okay to be mad. You can be mad. Here's the thing though. Needing to know has not gotten us anywhere but still terrified and furious.

She looks at me wondering if this is true.

Do you want to be free? I ask. Do you want to stop needing to know and instead be full of trust?

Yes she said, and nods her little head. I’m tired of being scared.

Then we have to stop needing to know. We're inhaling smoke from a wildfire, thinking we're headed to safety when we're really stumbling deeper into the forest.

Will you try to trust with me? I ask. Because we have to do this together.

She looks up, a sun looking for her moon
and takes my hand.

---

THREE

My Letter from Love this week. If you're not familiar, this practice is from Liz Gilbert. She has been writing herself a letter from love every day for the past 25 or so years. The idea is to let go of what the mind has to say and write a letter to ourselves from the heart, from Love, to be gentle and kind with ourselves and see what Love has to tell us. 

The subject this week was falling behind.

Dear Love, What would you have me know about falling behind? 

Oh my sweet swimmer, you feel like you have always been headed upstream, never able to float down a lazy river, afraid of being lazy, afraid you were lazy, even when you were doing, doing, doing. 

Do you remember the conversation you had the other night with your new friend? The one who seemed almost angelic, she was so happy and light? I know you do. And I know you envied her shininess, you wondered how she sparkled so much without trying. And that's just it, my love, she isn't trying. 

I know it's almost impossible to believe that trying isn't how you get where you want to go, where you want to be, but the only place to be my love, is inside your heart. It is the only place where peace and truth and contentment live. 

And when you begin to do things from your heart, you will start to see that the status of a thing is just pixie dust. Doing all things from the heart of the heart, this cannot be measured. There is no falling behind with the heart, there is no getting ahead either. There is just being.

When you are in your heart, I am always there with you, forever resting in each other's light. 

I love you,

Love

It’s normally at this point that I craft something clever or heartfelt asking you to subscribe or upgrade to a paid subscription. But again. Tired. So.

If you liked anything about this, think about whether you’d like to hear from me weekly, or even pay me $5.

With so much love,

Jocelyn