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 ~ 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.