Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Five ~ Saturday ~ Meditation

i was not the first to go to her room to try for sleep, and only a widow or widower knows what i mean when i say "try" for sleep. but i did sleep in the Whimsy Room. and i woke early as is my habit. it was still dark outside and i felt cocooned in that lovely, small space. so much had gone on the day before, so much enlightenment. i wanted to quietly explore this old inn. i wanted to mull over what i had experienced on Friday, and gather my strength to face the revelations that were to come. we were going to be talking about isolation and that is a heavy subject for me.i walked downstairs and peered out the old door. dawn had arrived. so lovely. so soft. i like this time of day.
i had seen her when i first put foot on the porch, but there was a carved wooden angel i wanted to visit with. her expression is somber and it seemed she carried her own sorrows. but she is solid and firmly sitting there. she is close to the door but not beside it. she is beside the window to the alcove where we talk and laugh, and sob. i asked her if she listened to us, but she kept her silent counsel and i smiled at the wisdom of it. sometimes all you need to know is that someone is sitting there. sometimes there are no answers to the trouble. but to have a friend who comes to you in the darkness in your soul and is willing to keep vigil is enough. it made me think of the women still asleep upstairs.
i wandered down the porch to a twig bench and i sat and had my quiet communion with my beliefs. i pray. what i mean to say is, i have 4 prayers i say and i hope it does not sound rote to God and the other Holy names i speak to. but i also have a conversation. i am not a good Catholic. i wish i were. i have not found a way to the closest Catholic Church since i have lived here and i admit i am getting tired of fighting for it. so i talk to Him.

before my Dragon died, i only prayed my prayers twice a day. now, since my Dragon died, i have conversations, much like when i talked to my Dragon. i do not expect an answer, or one right away, and yet somehow, with regards to faith, i do not feel alone. and that is all i will say about faith, not religion, faith. i do not impose but in revealing with honesty about my morning meditations, i will speak to it.
as the day brightened and i heard stirrings and footfalls on the stairs inside, i sat on the steps for a self portrait in homage to the architecture, the treasures placed all about, and to nature. i love this inn. it is a refuge. it was a perfect place for a spiritual retreat.
i went inside and found my tribe smiling, talking loudly as women well acquainted will do, and the wonderful smells of a hot breakfast.

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Four ~ Friday ~ The Women

i made it through last night. my candle was lit. i was embroidering. my dogs were content beside me. and i fell through the floor at 9:30 PM. i could not keep my eyes open. i took the hoodlums out for the last time and while brushing my teeth i started to cry. see, there is this awful thing called a mirror in the bathroom and i do not look like the woman in the pictures i have of him and me together. i look drawn, exhausted, hollowed out. but today is my daughter's day off and i am going to be with her for a couple of hours today. i am going by Build-A-Bear to stop in and say, "hi, i am back from my weekend retreat." depending on what they say i will wing it from there but i hope seeing my interest will be a good thing.

i am up and i wanted to continue about the weekend. during the breaks in our first session together i saw that we still hung out in the alcove. we ran and got more water, another iced tea, and we ran to the Ladies's Room, but we all hurried back. i think we all recognized the bond forming.

they say that people who go through harrowing times, who live through a trauma, like soldiers and Marines during combat ~ the Band of Brothers ~ are closer than if they had spent years together to form deep friendships. i wonder if that applies to some widows? we were not there for the death of each other's husbands and yet, of all the widows i have met, these women seemed to ~ no, they did feel empathy, compassion, and bore the cross of truly understanding what each other had gone through. sighs. some intakes of breath when a certain story came to light. the "oh" and the small movements of the hands to reach out, the instant furrowing of the eyebrows in fellowship mourning were not coached. they were not platitudes. nothing was done by rote. there was a trueness to it and a realness to it that came from the heart.

i took this photograph above of Elizabeth, the founder and organizer of Soul Widows, because she was still standing in the alcove speaking softly to one of us. the metal sculpture on the wall above her are leaves, but they seemed to me, at this moment, to represent angel wings. for Elizabeth? symbolic of a higher presence with us? i leave it to whomever reads to draw from their own ideas. but it is a photograph that represents the tangible and mystical things that happened this past weekend.

The Women ~ i would like for you to meet them. i can only hope my meager words honor them.

these are my mental images and for all, but for Elizabeth, i will keep their names a mystery; or you could go to a retreat to meet them. the order is from my memory of where we sat in the circle by the fire. when i look at someone i think of images. when i look at images i think of verse, poems, and stories. i have a brain that cross-references. i see threads. it is a quirk i nourish because i believe that my imagination and creativity have saved me else when i was knocked down, i may have stayed down.

Elizabeth ~ as i said, founder and organizer of Soul Widows. she has a powerful heart and a strong and inviolate love for her husband. she has a maelstrom of emotion inside her to nurture and protect her organization. she has reached out for it, to gain acknowledgment for her ideas of helping widows and gotten rejected by other organizations so she is carving her own path. she is as fragile as she is strong. she is a woman and a mother and apologizes to no one for her actions. from one who was taught to apologize for wetting her diaper, i am so very impressed and in awe. the image for me about her is a beating heart emerging from the gilded cage of her pain and yet, i feel she will always sit close to that cage for it is also her weapon against a world that sometimes does not understand.

the Clown of God ~ she is a hysterical woman whose rants are the stuff of stand up. she is religious and deep and thinks in terms of eternity. she is adores her husband and speaks to the qualities she fell in love. that is her shield and also her offering to the world. her lovely husband lived. he was here on this planet and he was hers. i could say so much more but i am not funny. she is laughter with tears. Kahlil Gibran would have loved to have met her.

the goddess Diana ~ this woman is newly widowed, less than 6 months. she came across North America to be with us and for us to be with her. she is young and in such pain, but she is fierce. she is a wall of water coming at you but also she is so very vulnerable. she shared all this with us in words and in what she did not, could not, say. i believe that one day the world will know "Diana" was here, if a large part of it does not already.

the Ceramic Storyteller ~ i know. where did i come up with that one. i used to hand-build them back 100 years ago when i was young and had a kiln. this woman is the mother of 3 beautiful boys and she is heartbroken. shattered. trembling hands. fragile eyes. i see a woman of the Earth inside her. she protects her young boys by keeping them close. like the Pueblo story of the Storyteller, she holds them in her lap and comforts them. she gives them stories of their dad. she is carrying their young grief on her shoulders. with us, she allowed her pain to be laid open. she allowed herself to be comforted and to find a brief rest before going back to the trenches of combining motherhood with widowhood. she is and will always be a powerful force to be reckoned with.

the Disciple of Grace ~ i met this woman shortly after i arrived where i am now. through it all she periodically kept checking in on me. she told me she had been worried about me. and i was touched. few worry about me. it was comforting to know that, should i disappear, i would be missed. she has witnessed to her faith when she was angry with God, but she is sure enough of His love to know it is okay to be mad at your "Dad." her eyes are clear. she does not own that hallway of doors that can open and close when someone wants to manipulate you. her heart is on her sleeve and her hand is out to you. i have not met anyone in a long time who has such grace.

the Fiery Fairy ~ this woman is our grief counselor. she is small in stature but that is all. her spirit is an all consuming light that she carries and shines on all. her eyes are a most unusual and beautiful color and are not afraid to show the balance of anguish and joy that she has worked hard for. i think if you could see her soul it would be a shimmering iridescent orb ~ no beginning, no end, floating gently on a breeze to where it needs to go, a brilliant light of fluid color. she is powerful and righteous and fairy-like with her feathers and jewelry and hairstyle. she has been called angel but i know angels cannot really interfere and this woman, she cares so she interferes. i wish for someone like her in everyone's life.

who is left? me. who am i really? am i Dragon's Beach Bunny? am i womanNshadows? am i my own name? i do not know because so few accepted any part of me much less the whole of me. i designed and built a stained glass window once. i used glass that was left over from other windows. i hate to throw anything out unless there is absolutely no use for it. i am that window.

i am the Lost Stained Glass Window. it is a metaphor for what my life has been. i was born unworthy so, as a child, i had to create myself, not from the example of my mother but from the women of literature i respected and wanted to emulate. i made myself from glass because i was always getting my heart broken. i made myself from glass as a meter for me to find friendship and love. you can see right through me. either you see me and believe i make the world a little more beautiful with what i create or you simply see through me and past me and i make no impression at all. and that is all right. i had my time with my Dragon. he found me. he saw me. what he saw he loved. he loved me for exactly me, scars, private horrors, all of it. now that he has died, i am lost. i am shattered like glass that falls can shatter. all the colors that are me are lying on the ground and the shadow that i am is stooped there in the gutter trying to find all the pieces.

what happened to the real window i made? my ex-husband took it from me. that is why i called it Lost. his taking that window hurt me badly. i had never made such a window before. over 300 pieces of colored transparent glass in a design i will never envision again. he took it before i had time to take a photo of it because it never occurred to me he would do that to me. he could not have hurt me worse if he had killed me.

there we are. the tribe, and then the session was over for the day. i rose and turned around facing out from the alcove. i looked up and saw the heart quilt. probably over 300 pieces of fabric went into this quilt the owner of the inn, Marilyn, had made. she could have hung it anywhere. she hung it there. it was if this giant heart of color had our backs. it was looking down on us from the highest point of the house and there is symbolism even in that. i did the only thing i could do. i took this photograph.

we closed with our candles lit for our husbands. count the heads. 7. 5 women, 1 Dragon's Beach Bunny, and our Fiery Fairy. we are a tribe of widows now who feel each other's pain. the commune we created that lives in our hearts still thrives but that is our private space that we all hope grows as those who seek find us.
after a wild, crazy supper out at a Mexican restaurant that will never be the same after us, we got back to the inn and had our sitting-on-the-bed-talking-until-late girl time. as each one of us dropped off and away to go to our rooms to sleep, we carried with us the awareness that our sister was next door, or just down the hall.
and so Bunny settled in for the night.

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Three ~ Friday Afternoon Sessions

our first session, or coming together, in the alcove was for the purpose of getting to know each other's stories and sharing our own. it was to set the tone for the rest of the weekend for me. talking. sharing. commiserating. feeling sympatico with the woman across from me and beside me. crying with and laughing with.

it was a small group. intimate. all the women, including me, had such pain in our faces. we carried the burden of loss that other widows have carried before us and we wanted to know how to survive this. we had questions. we had suggestions for each other. and above all, we had the release of sharing our hurt, our lost love, in the way we wanted and needed to do to get it off our chests and out there on the beautiful wooden floor that has been burnished by footsteps and chairs being pulled up to the fire for over 120 years.

each one of us told our story and in the telling was our worries for our families and for ourselves. in the storytelling around the fire in the stove was the sound of anguish and purpose. there was the somber tone of the exhausted and the clarity of our choices of words that only deep and lasting pain can carve into a voice. we acknowledged we will always bear the mark of widow. we acknowledged that we have no idea what is to come.

and we acknowledged each other. we validated each other. we did that, the 6 of us, without being told we needed to. we did that without being directed that this is the next step in the progression of this session.

this is a photo of our alcove and the shrine we set up on the bar behind the chair and sofa. i am purposely sharing it without anyone in the photo to preserve the sanctity of what transpired there that Friday afternoon.
this is a closer view. it is makeshift. it is ephemeral and we knew that, and yet i feel there is a permanence to our voices that will linger over this shrine. if energy really lasts forever, then in a few years, or who knows, maybe some random quiet Wednesday when a guest passes by, he or she will hear a woman's voice speak a man's name. they may pause for a moment and look into the alcove and wonder from whence it came, and from how long ago. B****, H*****, A***, J*******, E*****, and of course, Dragon. maybe the person will hear a collective sigh. if so, then good. if not, then the sacred names will be kept alive within this tribe that formed while we were enveloped in that alcove, beside our shrine.

Elizabeth had a gift for us. she brought with her, brought to us, a woman who knows grief and sorrow. she knows hard times and difficult choices. she knows how to live with them all and it seems to be her grace, though she calls it her passion, to help other women carry their pain and sorrow, and to find a balance between the Nurturing side, our happy, peaceful, and excited side, and the Creative side of us where anger, anxious feelings, and sadness dwell.

i understand now that grief is something i will always have inside me. i love my Dragon with the very essence that defines me. but i also need to find my way to some happiness however i translate it. i need to find my way to the peace that i crave but now has to be redefined because my love died. and i need to find my way to allowing an excitement in my life and embracing it when it arrives.

our guide is a petite woman with a fire in her spirit and a soul that soars. her eyes have a powerful ability to notice even the smallest things, like when one of the women stops speaking for a while, or stares too long at the flames without pause. and she remembers things she is told and realizes that maybe, possibly, that simple story, that statement carries a weight far greater than it appears. for example, to a pair of hands that have been taught to never lay open, relaxed, she will hand the end of her crocheted scarf to that woman to hold tight with the other end laid across her lap. there. see. she has given a connection, a link, a bridge over troubled water. now there is something soft to hold and magically, without words, that woman is no longer alone.

she came there to us where we sat grieving and sharing and she gave us the gift of her attention, a gift i have never been given to the extent that she did except by my Dragon. she is strong and brave and goes willingly and joyfully {and only someone who has known great pain can understand that word and the many ways it can be used and defined} into the depths of our darkness and despair and sits with us. she speaks to us there and offers, not really a way out, but companionship, the promise of staying there with us, and the words to encourage us to accept, and breathe, and rise to action when we are ready and able. she also tells us the most amazing thing. it is all right to sit back down for a while.

the best thing she said, and i hope i am paraphrasing correctly, was that the process of grieving, that what she does for us, was not about healing. it was about enduring, believing in ourselves, and finding that balance between nurturing and creativity. we are allowed, or should be, to embrace our pain. i can still hear her voice. "Do Not Take My Pain Away From Me." we need to live through it to get through it. it is ours. it is part of our story and now part of who we are. we need to feel each emotion that comes. life is all about emotion. and if it is not, then it should be. emotions are all that are keeping us together through this time. raw emotions.

so we shared our stories. we listened to each other. by suppertime, we knew each other. we knew everyone's names, husband's names, children's names, terms of endearment we had given to our men. the tribe was gathered around the fire burning for this spiritual retreat. by the time we were breaking to freshen up for supper out, we had started gathering to ourselves what we needed to create our own flame in our own darkness. we are going to be women of the light, however we define "light."

there is a table in the middle of the room as you come into the inn. it has a glass top and a carved mermaid holding the glass. i laid on the floor and took this photo. when i am quiet, i am thinking. all of us do, but i am a right brain person so i think with images i create in my mind to speak for me. the more unusual, the happier i am. i scooted and twisted on the floor under the table for the composition of the shot i wanted for the image i had in my mind.

she is reaching for the light. or she is holding the light. she made me think of the 6 of us in the darkness of our grief wanting and needing light, or lightness, in our spirits. this carving lives at the inn and it seemed to me, in looking at her, that she will always be guarding the light, or protecting it, or, since it is me, she will always be reaching for it. it made me think of my old screen name when i chatted online on that AOL IM thing when my children were off at university. i was Clytiesunflower. i love my Dragon and he is my sun. he is more gregarious than i am. he is noisier than i am. he is not afraid of being seen. therefore he is my sun. i was Clytie, always watching him, always taking his photograph. in a way i still am, only now Clytie, or Bunny, me, always watches the full moon.

so there was meaning upon meaning for me when i was laying on the floor like a madwoman skooching around finding this shot in my viewfinder. i hope if and when the sisters of my tribe {i like the sound of the possessive} see this photograph, they will understand. kindred spirits usually do.

taking a respite from writing more today. i have interspersed this in and around embroidery work on a quilt commission. this break is over and i am going back to the embroidery. i will stay with it until i go to bed much, much later on.

come back tomorrow evening maybe, if you will, if you wish, for the next posting on about this incredible weekend that it is taking this many posts to speak about it.

peace to all who read. peace and light to all who grieve.

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Two ~ Friday, Settling In

i walked into a most magical place. the run-down and run-over phrase of "location, location, location" was meant for a spiritual retreat. you need a place that feeds your soul visually and psychically {i am speaking of the human mind} if you are going to nurture your soul, if you are trying to speak your truth. comfort. melting into chairs. small lights. not long panels of utilitarian florescence, but small lamps, glowing shells, miniature tiffany lamps to soften the spirit and foster conversation. at Marilyn's Melrose Inn, treasures are placed with abandon all around that assist in the visual proof of the soul of the house. they offer something to focus on if your particular truth is so painful that meeting someone's eyes is too difficult to do while speaking. after checking in, i was told to "go upstairs and select a room, then just let me know."

i love freedom.

first i had to lay on the fainting couch. am i here? does this place exist for real? or is this one of my fantasies that i jot down to relieve the pressures of reality? i opened my eyes to the very inviting and very wonderful place that is this inn that was chosen for this retreat. a spiritual retreat. i could hardly wait. i slowly walked up the stairs to take it all in. to breathe the old fabrics and the new quilts made by Marilyn, the owner, herself.

i carefully looked into each room and i admit i had selected the "Angel Room" but then i turned and peered down this hallway. only the first two open doors had been claimed. the others down there were vacant. but for an older woman visiting a friend in Tryon who had the last room on the left at the end of the hall, the others were empty and waiting. i saw a door at the very end of the hall, a soft, whitish-blue door that was partially closed and yet, still, open.

i passed treasures on the walls as i walked down there that made me smile and made me sigh a little with quiet pleasure. wisdom in paint and glass and wood and fabric. i passed a pew as well. the door was indeed open and the room available, but with the age of the house and its quirks, it would not stay open all the way. i love mysteries so i pushed it open and walked in....

and claimed the room "Whimsey 1" for myself.

now i know i went there for community and companionship and this room was at the end of the hall, away from the others, but i knew i would also have my night time, my sleep time alone and i wanted to allow the house to speak to me. i meditate a great deal. it is how i have conversations with all that i believe in. this room was for me. no little quirk about it would keep me from claiming it. and the mattress was so perfect.

bag dropped off. room claimed, i went downstairs to the most lovely, large, inviting, eclectic dining room for lunch to officially start off the weekend, to meet the other women, the other widows, and our guide on this weekend. it was wonderful! we started off our weekend at noon with lunch, with sunlight streaming in so that our faces, our woes, our eyes, and our laugh lines that are etched on our faces could be seen. there was no shadows to hide in. our souls were laid bare in the beautiful dining room. we are all tired. we are all stressed. it was perfect for breaking bread together. a communion of and for widows.

we named ourselves and spoke. five women and our guide and Elizabeth Woods, the founder and organizer, the driving force of Soul Widows. we are all interested in each other. we all listen to what each one of us is saying. all eyes are on the speaker and you can see that we are thinking, not arrogantly of what we are going to say and when to chime in, but really listening to what this woman and that woman, to what i was saying. listening is so very powerful.

during that lunch, i felt that we were coming closer to our own community fire though it was still only an elusive vision in my head at that moment. since then, i have come to think this is the best metaphor for what transpired this past weekend.

so at lunch, there is laughter first. i loved that. we knew tears would come, and come they did. torrents of tears, deep shuddering sobs when no tears could even come, heartbreaking to hear; but first, at this lunch, in the streaming sunlight, there was laughter. it takes strong women who do not believe they are to laugh first. desperation? black humor? morbid? yes. all those words and one more. strong.

it is proof, i believe, of the weaving of the widow's web that is happening to help each of us carry each other through this weekend. we are creating a web, a safety net with our laughter as we introduce ourselves. our later tears will soak the net to seal it and make it impossible to come unraveled. our tears will make the knots tight.

after lunch, we moved to an alcove off the front foyer. beside the entrance. there was a fire there in a stove. the flames dancing. comfy chairs were pulled around it. i loved that we were not closed off in a room off somewhere, as if in hiding, as if we were an embarrassment, as if we had something to hide. we were in an alcove ~ where a room is less a room than an embrace. we had built our shrine, or altar if you will, to our husbands. we gathered there for our first session.

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat, the spiritual/grief working/meeting of "true minds," the whole reason for being there was about to start.

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ One ~ Friday, the Arrival

Bunny is me and i am Bunny. there is so much to say about this weekend. the whimsical side of me who always speaks for Bunny in third person is backing off, well, unless it pops out, but these next several postings will be me writing in first person though it is Bunny in the photos.

but never doubt this. i really was there. me. womanNshadows. and guess what? i came out of the shadows a little bit ~ enough that i was seen and heard in a very monumental way. i found a song that speaks to me personally about my weekend. i hope you hit play and listen even if you do not play the rest of the list.

when i got into the car of the woman ~ i had thought of her as friend but now i can do so out loud and officially ~ i know ~ right there the weekend could have ended for me and it would have been well worth it ~ i admit i had a bit of a nervous stomach about it. i had put so much hope on what i had been told to expect. i had read and re-read the Soul Widows website; over and over, and i had fantasized about what it could be.
we left the city. i talked in the car. a little bit. my friend driving and the other woman, now also my friend, sitting in the front seat, knew i was there and included me in their chatter. but i admit, i was a little quiet. i was me. i watched the city fall away into the countryside. leaves are changing, of course, but it is subtle down here. in New England, it can be a Mardi Gras of color explosions. up north, it is like the maple says to the oak, "i am wearing maroon with vibrant hints of my younger green and one wild touch of orange flame at the top." and the oak returns with, "okay, i am going total yellow but i like the idea of a green here and there left alone, to remind folks of the summer past. and i am going to have orange rain through my left side and spiral around here."

here, this is belt of America, it is quieter. calmer. more of a transition than an overnight decoration of the biosphere for a riotous Autumn celebration.

and then i saw the rising hills and mountains. we were staying rural. it seemed we were staying away from the noise and concrete and giant plate glass that blinds and burns with the sunlight. i wondered how large the town we were headed to would be. would we round a mountain and see tall buildings and concrete and too many cars? had someone stuck a cesspool i all this beauty that was epochs old? would there be noise and bustling, pre-occupied people with technology hiding their view of the world and jammed into their ears so that they can ignore what little bit of nature was allowed to be left?

no. Tryon, NC is rural. it is a small town with eclectic architecture that is tucked into a small valley that still has elevation to it. the air is clear. the mountains that rise up to worship the heavens embrace the little village with ancient ground and trees and rock. i had to roll down the window and smell the air; crisp, clean with the random passing hint of someone's wood smoke. dogs have it right. roll the windows down. we do not use our noses enough.
driving through the town, i was in such awe. unique characters were walking the little streets. yes, they had places to go and people to see, but they also sat on the chairs that were liberally sprinkled in front of the big picture windows of shops and cafes housed in historic brick and wood structures. i saw wood scrollwork on the eves and brick designs in the walls. most of the buildings in Tryon were constructed with architecture meant design and beauty and art.

one man sat and listened to another play the guitar. we were stopped at a light and i got to listen for a brief time. there was no cup for tips. he was simply sharing his music with the world in a small town where you were lucky to find him. you had to be a seeker of the quieter beauty that humans offer up to each other. his music meant something to him and maybe it was his way of speaking. there are so many ways to communicate.

and then we were there. we were at Marilyn's Melrose Inn Bed and Breakfast. beautiful trees lifting there branches up to the sky surround it. the sun was shining down on the softly beautiful and entrancing orange and yellow leaves. in remembering it now, the feel of the sun's warmth in the crisp noon air was foreshadowing to the weekend i was to have.
the two women i rode with and i gathered together for the first of many photographs from the weekend. we had arrived. we were in a small village tucked between mountains at a historic ~ 1889 ~ b&b with a small group of women hoping, wishing, wistful for something to connect them to each other. wanting nothing more than to belong to something again after our worlds have been ripped apart by the death of our husbands and taped back together wrong. a piece to the photograph of our lives is missing and we feel it in our minds, our hearts, in our souls. it is on our skin like an almost transparent garment, widow's weeds that shimmer with our tears.
we know that piece is gone but we also know where it is. we can go to a cemetery and stand in that garden of granite edifices where our last words to commemorate a life that is too big for such a small space are literally etched in stone, or the mantle where an urn resides as part of an altar gathered together from the small yet powerful remains of a life that should not have expired before ours, or a sacred place where ashes have been freed to settle or whirl and twirl and become part of other more ancient ash and dust.

life or fate, or something that cannot be known or named, has taken the snapshot of our happy lives and torn them up, and, like an evil collage maker, has put them back together. but they did so maliciously, and oh, so very wrong. and now we women, 6 of us plus one small woman with a quiet serenity and the fire of her own power that has been forged through her own sorrows and grief to facilitate our coming together, are meeting at this place in the mountains. one more will be coming on Sunday. she will be the veteran of our common pain. she will bring her own torch to join the one her partner in their counseling ~ what do i call it? service? that seems utilitarian. group? an overused word. sisterhood. i will call them the teachers of the wisdom of this particular branch of the sisterhood. the veteran, the matriarch will come on Sunday to share and hold us close and to continue and finish up for the weekend what her partner/sister has started. teaching us to make and keep lit our own torches; our own fire to light the way when the balance of pain and darkness to peace and light goes out of whack.

we arrived and were greeted with warmth from the sun, the eclectic charm of an old bed and breakfast, and the deep pain and longing we see in each others eyes.

this is the start of my spiritual retreat. and i have not even crossed the threshold to go into the inn. the unique magic to this scene i have tried to set up for you, dear reader, is that the tribe does not even know it has already started to link arms around the fire.

Soul Widows retreat ~ to heal or not to heal

she leaves in the morning; getting picked up around 9:30 am. the Bun is packed. she is ready to go and try to find something she thinks is missing from her life; her right to talk about him to someone other than her daughter and son.

she writes about him all the time. she thinks about him more. every stitch she takes with a needle and thread, or floss, is in his honor, for his memory. she even stitches her signature to sign her work with his initials and hers.

but she has not been able to, or been allowed to sit with someone to really talk about how she feels. okay. that is not entirely accurate. she got to talk to a nun who is a counselor. but for that one hour, the nun wanted to know about her ex-husband and those years. and then Bunny could not pay for any more sessions.

then she got to talk to that grief counselor through the hospice once face-to-face, but then only once more via iChat. she was told she was doing quite well for the life she had faced, the life she and her Dragon had dreamed of and then lost when he died, and the life she is facing now with her peculiar set of circumstances. "quite well." uhmm hummm. okie dokie.

but even if Bunny is doing "quite well," she felt it would be nice to have someone to talk to for a little while longer on a regular basis. "quite well" is all well and good, but there is loneliness and the feeling of not ever getting to really talk about her Dragon. to be able to just tell some stories with her voice, see someone else listen to her and acknowledge that they recognize what her Dragon means to her.

well, the Bun is packed and has dragged her bag to sit beside the door on the floor in front of the television. she has her camera and her new jacket. she knows it will be cool where she is going. she has her robe and slippers in case there is a kind of slumber party aspect later on one evening. she is excited in anticipation of getting to sit with a small group of women where everyone gets a turn.

now, now, Bunny knows her place. she isn't going to gab, gab, gab. she knows she is not that exciting to listen to, but she is just so happy to be allowed to go and share a little bit.

but will Bunny "heal?" what is healing anyway? Bunny has put a lot of thought into this lately. how does one define healing? is she healed if she smiles more? is she healed if she laughs more? is she healed if she gets her job and is more 'productive?' but then who is harder working or more focused than the Bun? oh, my gosh, she works upwards of 12 - 14 hours a day as it is? she bought a can of frozen juice just to keep in the freezer to hold in her hand to help ease the aches in her hands when it gets really bad.

what is healing? is she healed if she dates again? {yech.} will she be thought of as healed if she {gulp} gets in a relationship? she cannot bear the thought. she was married twice. once to a not-so-nice man. and once to her other half. she has too many scars. she has too many memories. she was so very happy with her Dragon. to have that again, seems as remote as the sun exploding tomorrow. to have something less will be a terrible thing to do to the other person. it would have to be something so different, so unexpected, but then her Dragon was so very unexpected. kismet. soul mate. once in a lifetime fairy tale stuff. and who is the Bun to think she deserves something nice again? she got heaven and the moon and the stars with her Dragon. what else is there?

so what is healing? what does Bunny expect from a spiritual retreat? nothing more than to be able to share what her life with her Dragon was like. nothing more than to be able to share how much she loves him. nothing more than that. she just wants to be able to talk a tiny little bit about her Dragon in a comfortable setting with loving and open hearts around her. she does not want to be judged, or critiqued, or dismissed. she wants to quietly and succinctly speak about her lovely Dragon and what the loss of him has done to her, to another human face who does not have her on the clock. that's all.
Bunny's babies are a little worried and clingy and sad. they saw her pack. Mr. Scootie Wootums of the Stardust Eyes who is Lord of the Dance is a little down. Bunny is having to give him lots of hugs and kisses on his curious little nose.
Miss Carmen Sophia the Wild Gypsy Girl with the Sensitive Soul has her goosey-goose toy with her and keeps trying to sneak it in the bag. she wants to go. but Bunny's daughter is taking care of her fuzzy babies. Bunny loves her fuzzy babies so much. they have been there with her in the trenches of grief. they have been beside her, pressed so close to her, when she has howled in deep sorrow and despair.

and if you remember, rabbits only howl in death. maybe it was her Dragon's death that happened but Bunny feels like she died, too. her goal? if Bunny can stop howling with grief in her mind in the dead of the night, she will believe some healing has, indeed, taken place. if she can simply stop howling over and over, get the night of his death to fade a bit, then the Bun will count her blessings and present that as proof that healing has taken place.

see, Bunny is better.

peace to all who read. peace and light to all who grieve.

is that all there is?

it came. the letter. i get something each month, at the end of the month for the month before. it is far, far less than what i had hoped for. it is far less than what i had even expected. no wonder the man on the phone had said, "it is less than what he deserves for what he did."

did i tell you that he had been captured once? he was. they only had him for 3 weeks because he got away, but they did things to him. they hurt him. after that, and for the rest of his life, it was difficult for him to find shoes that were comfortable for longer than 3 or 4 hours.

he deserved more recognition from his government, but i believe every widow of a veteran can say that. in that one thing i am not alone.

my ex got pissed at me this weekend for what i think of as a small infraction. i have no control over life or him. i just have to run the gauntlet. or maybe i should twirl and dance. harder to hit someone who dances to the song playing in their head, a music no one else can hear. but he is a pressure on my lungs that is like a giant rock. heavy. huge. he held off on my food money and my rent money transfer until this morning. yesterday was purgatory waiting him out. i did not write. i did not call. when he called, i endured the lecture pretty much how i always have, silently. and when i spoke, i chose my words carefully.

he huffed and puffed and all it got was windy. there is nothing he can do to hurt me more than the death of my Dragon hurt. i am so tired of being scared. i think i am just going to bury scared in the sand and walk away. i have too many other fears cropping up now and for the rest of my life to be afraid of someone who isn't really in my life anymore. not too too much anyway.

and come Jan. 1, he will only have one leash on me. the other lines will be severed. financially speaking, i am in the middle of a constant panic attack until i figure out if i have the job or not. wednesday. i need Wednesday's job interview to be perfect, and i am so far from perfect; i have never seen perfect. no one would call me even "right," but he did. my Dragon thought i was perfect. and he was flawed perfectly, the perfect fit for me.

i am ready for this to be over or i am ready for him to come back. one of the two. okay? ah, well, c'est la vie. it is what it is and it will be what it will be. i guess that's really Que Sara Sara. but that song did not fit my mood with the "Is That All There Is" letter from the VA. and i have always liked Peggy Lee's voice. kind of a smokey, torch singer in a basement jazz and blues bar voice.

i miss him. i am scared. sometimes i think i feel so much and so deeply that i am incapable of feeling much at all. i did panic my son yesterday. he called and i had been crying. i sounded like i had a terrible cold. he again reassured me that we will work this out. i will not be homeless or without food. hearing my son say that, the little boy i protected all his life, it feels surreal.

a woman from the old group left a note on my Facebook page last week, the personal one. i have not heard from her in 6 months, i think it is. 5 or 6. i have sent a couple of emails. left some comments to her postings on FB, but heard nothing back. and then she leaves a comment that we should re-connect. i sent her a private message that i would love to do that. i gave her my phone number again in case she had lost it. and i have heard nothing back. if a widow does not understand loneliness and financial hard times, or have time for another widow, then there is nothing i can do. my door is open. the phone lines are open. i will not stand on a porch waiting for someone who cannot find their own front door.

i have my daughter and son. i have my two little dogs. i have my Dragon, sort of. my memories anyway. i have the knowledge that i was good enough for him. he loved me. there i said it. past tense. you have no idea how big a step that is for me. but he is gone and whether he loves me now is beyond my knowing. i like to believe he does. but i know for fact that he did love me once. and i love him. if i am only good enough for one person during my life, then so be it. life has not been easy. i have weird things i have to deal with through no choice of my own. i can only do what i can do. and i am who i am. my Dragon loved me and i do find solace in that.

now i am lonely Beach Bunny alone. {i think there is a poem in that title.} i am struggling to get a handle on, not who i am, i know who i am; but on what the hell will happen to me. i just want to have a roof and food. roof and food. that's my mantra. screw health care. next up is applying for food stamps. i work non-stop on getting by every day all day. embroidering, quilting, sewing, and now waiting on that job interview and prostituting myself to others with a vibrancy and love of life i no longer have. but for a roof and food, i will smile and shine.

maybe one day it will all come together. maybe one day i will be able to relax for one day. one moment. maybe one day something will happen and i will not be panicked any longer. until then, i will keep working, searching for work, and taking it up the fluffy white tail from those odd people who race to the gauntlet line and reach out for a quick slap to make themselves feel good.

{Bunny does have a sense of humor.}

all i can do is keep hopping, twirling, maybe dancing a little, and cry a little. tears cleanse the eyes and the peanut gallery on the sidelines of my gauntlet will get their jollies from seeing me cry while i just keep going. and one day, they will all get bored with their cruel game. it is really win-win if you think about it. and if i get the Build-A-Bear job, i will be busy being like Mr. Magorium's assistant, not really, but sort of. you have to be inside my head.

for now, the Bun is alone. her Dragon has died. all she can do is hop along, twirl and dance when she can. she will just keep jumping through everyone's hoops. too bad some of those hoops are on fire.

but Bunny was made at Build-A-Bear and her fur is more or less flame retardant. until they hold her down and really work to destroy her, she will keep going. and, as the song says, if that's all there is, then she will keep dancing, but only under the light of the full moon.