Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Nine ~ Sunday ~ Finis

this is the 9th and final posting i will make to conclude this series i have done on the Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat. i purposely ended at 9 because in numerology, 9 is sacred. it is considered the Holy Trinity times 3. it is seems to represent 9 positive characteristics: selflessness, fulfillment, completion, universality, universal understanding, interrelatedness, compassion, idealism, tolerance, forgiveness, generosity, benevolence, humanitarianism, emotionalism, and justice. these were all things spoken of to one degree or another through the weekend, so i end this series at 9.

it has also been very emotional for me to pull all this out of myself and lay it here for public consumption, far beyond the security of the tribe. 21 months milestone passed and my Dragon is still gone. i miss him and will until i, myself, pass. but in writing persistently to get this all said, of how meaningful and near-perfect this weekend was, it has helped that 21 month milestone pass without the mournful flood of tears that come on the 8/9 of each month.

Sunday dawned and i was up early. more private photos of small things that have meaning. i was ready and waiting for the last sessions that were coming. another was to join us for the day, the Fiery Fairy's partner in their counseling business, in friendship, in everything women share when they are sisters and kindred spirits. she is our veteran. she has been a widow for 21 years. there was a collective gasp. she still lived. she had survived.

there was so much to ask her. there was her story to listen to. she had fallen apart as we all had. it was good to know that this strong woman sitting with us had melted onto the floor of her life when her husband had died. we were not weak. we were normal.

the sharing was extraordinary. i listened with awe at the strength in this woman's voice. i saw the extraordinary kinship our Fiery Fairy has with this friend and business partner. they were sympatico. the set up was perfect. we had befriended and bonded with our Fiery Fairy and then here comes the, by our standards, Matriarch of Grief and Joy by the sheer number of years she has lived with sorrow. her spine is strong. her hands full of expression. her eyes, yes, there is grief etched there, but also joy and laughter. she is living, which is beyond existing which some of us are doing at this time. but we are infants compared to 21 years.

when we broke for lunch, our Matriarch of Grief and Joy and our Fiery Fairy had shown us hope.

hope was waiting for us, for me. i knew it was possible and walking out of the restaurant after lunch, the sun gave a visual to remind me. {if that had been Dragon who had not known i had stopped to take a picture, he would have asked me, "what did you see?" when i caught up to him.}

we went back to the alcove and the next exercise was to say one word, or a hyphenated word about each other. we gifted each other with a name of sorts. you read mine for everyone in the posting about The Women. and now i presented our Matriarch of Grief and Joy. it was a moving exercise. i was the last to be named and i admit i was sweating. my hands were trembling. i have been called many names, and until the name "mom," and until my Dragon, and since his death, they have all been bad. and i have accepted it silently. but did not know what words would fall from the mouths of the tribe.

i will not tell you other than to say i was overwhelmed with humbleness. they really saw something in me that was good and decent. i like the word decent better than beautiful. beauty fades with time but decency is steadfast. i cried a bit. i did not know what to do with the words other than to hold them close for a time. i never know what to do with a compliment other than to silently nod and accept.

from outside the alcove, this exercise may have seemed silly, new-agey, a tree-hugger moment, but that thought would only cross a closed mind and a shallow heart. giving someone a name is a gift. in some cultures, there is a whole ceremony involved and the tribe turns out for it. your name is all you are and all you carry with you when you die. names are important. it is how others see you. screw the machines. it is instant feedback and you will react physiologically. your heart will race as you wait. your palms will sweat. your actions are not hidden and they speak to who you are. you will be named.

at our closing, our Fiery Fairy gave us a gift of a coffee mug to remind us of Tryon, the village. she also gave us a rose from her small daughter, a fairy to be sure. as ephemeral as childhood is and the innocence that is its gift, i think our Fairy's daughter will grow to be a woman like her mother. she wanted us to have a flower. and our Fairy found roses. red roses. in the language of flowers the meaning was not lost on me, hence the tissue box beside Bunny.
i received another gift. this one from our Matriarch of Grief and Joy. she is going to be my counselor for a brief time, before she has to move at the beginning of the summer. but she will be there through the holidays, through my birthday, and his death and funeral anniversary on Valentine's Day. she is doing this for me and i am speechless. when i think "what if." what if i had not gone. what if i had stayed locked inside myself while i was there. but the smallness of the group was perfect for bringing one such as me out of herself enough to register that i was actually there.

i hope and pray that my words reach out to other widows who may be looking for something like this organization. Soul Widows is small. i believe it will grow, but i know Elizabeth and our Fiery Fairy will keep the groups small so that intimate secrets can be spoken of in safety. they will continue on the path they have chosen because there are women out there who need to cling for a time. they cannot fall so hard and then get right up. they are not immediately empowered by their loss as to move in an aggressively positive forward direction. some women have a difficult time with that transition from wife to widow. they will need a tight sisterhood. they need a clan. they will find they crave becoming part of a tribe of women who only need look at sorrowful eyes and trembling hands that think they can wring the stress away alone.

no. you cannot. alone in the world. read it again. alone. in. the. world. it sounds like the title of a Wes Craven film. horror. fear. terror. we are not alone in the world. there are many foundations and organizations out there. Soul Widows was what i needed. i needed a candle for my husband and our love. i needed Elizabeth and her gift that allowed me to come. i needed the Clown of God to push me over the wall i had built so that i could laugh without restraint. i needed to meet the Goddess Diana to see the passion for justice and know that it is right to fight for yourself and damn the world for setting it up that way. i needed to meet the Ceramic Storyteller so that i could share my own history of the Angel Cards and how i used them with my own children during bad times, and to listen to her and validate her fierce mother's heart. i needed the Disciple of Grace to steadfastly keep reminding me that it is safe to call her Friend. i needed someone like our Fiery Fairy to show me that there are counselors out there, people, women who truly care and have made it their life's work to save us; to find us and save us all if she can. and to meet the Matriarch of Grief and Joy so that i have a hand to reach out to, to see that i will be able to talk and learn, to cry and find strength, and to know that i do not have to stay silent and alone. i now have a tribe of sisters to whom i can call to.

~

this weekend, Soul Widows showed me a way towards the light. Elizabeth and our Fiery Fairy, the entire tribe helped me see that there is a light out there for me. no, it is not the headlight of the oncoming train. but even if it is, i will not face it alone.

the light for me maybe still be veiled by my stress and grief and worry and anxiety and mourning, but the warmth it offers, the freedom beyond the curtains is worth fighting for.
never give up. "improvise, adapt, overcome." the Marine Corps motto. well, one of them. my Dragon never gave up, even when he was dying. i am not giving up. i never was, but now i know that i will have a tribe to call to when i am on my knees.

my love for my Dragon is set in stone. i cannot imagine any other standing beside me as i contemplate eternity. he was a powerful life force on Earth and now that his soul is set free, oh, my.....imagine what he is feeling and doing and seeing now that his great love of adventure is free to go wherever. Heaven. the Universe. joining St. Michael the Archangel and his Warrior Gang of Fierce Angels. my Dragon would join them and their fight for us all.
i love him. i love my children. i love my sisters. i love our Fairy and our Matriarch. i had said i would never love again, but when i wrote that in the intensity of my grief i was forgetting that there are many ways to love.

thank you to Elizabeth. thank you to our Fiery Fairy. thank you to our Matriarch of Grief and Joy. thank you to all the women of the tribe who accepted me and thought good things about me, and told me so.

~~

p.s. to all who read, please note, that the colors over the words Soul Widows and Angel Cards are hyperlinks to find the website and to find the cards. the Angel Cards, mostly to make sure our Ceramic Storyteller has it.

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

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Eight ~ Saturday ~ Wine, Women, & Song

the afternoon closed our alcove gathering for the day. it was time to think of food. we had fed our spirits. we needed to feed our bodies. what to do. what to do.

we went out to a beautiful restaurant called the Lake Lanier Tea House. the building is a huge log cabin and when we first walked in, i thought, "he would love this place." the food was fabulous. i loved that we sat at a round table. like Camelot, no one was at the "head." no one's face was obscured from another's. we were all equal. we were all seen. we were sisters in the round.

the photos started, of course. flashes. giggles. ordering. talking and talking....

we were loud. i was for a while as well. i know. i was surprised as well. but it felt safe to let a little of myself come out. let me explain that.

i felt safe saying a lot to my tribe. there are things i will never speak of to anyone but Dragon. he knew it all. it takes time to build trust. my Dragon loves me. he loves me and he was fierce. he needed to know these things if our relationship was going to grow as we evolved within our lives. these women i experienced this weekend with are genuine human beings. they are in deep pain and struggling to make sense of it, and why this happened to them in exactly this way and what they are to do from now on. live, of course, but that is a 50 cent word thrown on the table when someone does not know what to say.

i trusted this tribe with several things about myself, but to completely open up and be myself was frightening. i did not want to be too much myself and risk losing them, seeing even one of them turn away. i wish i had the fearlessness to tell you who i really am, who my Dragon saw, but in these last 21 months i have had too many other widows turn on me and turn away from me. i will be myself slowly. until then, i will stay quieter. i want to be part of the tribe for as long as i have breath.

at the Tea House there was a woman who sang. Daryle Ryce. her voice was achingly whiskey and blues and jazz. she held her guitar delicately but firmly; a precious and dear friend who will not forsake you but cannot follow you on their own. they must be carried. she played and sang from having been there. soulful. joyful. mischievous. mournful.

we closed the restaurant down and i walked over to buy one of her CD's. i saw her guitar. it is old. not a few years old but it is maybe the first guitar she ever owned. the case is battered and frayed. i believe her guitar is for her like his dog is to Siddhartha. when Daryle passes away, she will take her guitar. if the guitar is not allowed into Heaven, then she will smile sadly, but a smile all the same, rueful, and thank St. Peter at the Gate. she will walk away carrying her guitar to find another place to play. it will be Heaven's loss.

Daryle herself has the face of an angel. one of St. Michael's legion. she has seen things no woman should ever have had to see. just my impression from looking into her eyes. she played a song for me. i told her i was widowed, that the tribe at the table were all widows. i thanked her for playing "Fly Me To The Moon" even though she was unaware of the significance to me. her husky voice said this: "Sister, I want to play a song for you if you'll let me. Now, honey, It's a sad one but I think you can handle it. We're together on that road and a song is all I can give you."

she played a song of loneliness and misery. she sang it to the air. she sang it to the lake outside the windows. and she sang it to me. i watched her hands grace the strings of her guitar with a loving and familiar touch. they knew the way to the music of heartbreak. i watched her eyes. she was smiling at me as she sang and her eyes got misty. this song was not only for me. it was for herself and she was sharing it. if i never meet her again, i feel that Daryle is a sister in sorrow. i told her i loved her. she told me she loved me. it was expressed as only kindred spirits can when they know their meeting is brief and the only one they may have.

when i am here and i feel the panic rise up inside me; when i feel the familiar pressure on my chest and the crushing weight of my life on my lungs and my shoulders, i will put on a Daryle Ryce CD and listen to her sing to me. somewhere out there, someone else understands.

we went back to the inn and put on pajamas. we congregated in the room of the Goddess Diana to watch a movie about two 9/11 widows who are working to help the widows in Afghanistan. it was moving. it was difficult to watch. two of us had to leave and not finish watching. i was one.

there was one moment in the film when one of the Afghanistan widows said, "we were destined to be widows." all the widows were standing in line waiting their turn for handouts. it hit far too close to home for me. the pressure in my chest was building. my shoulders ached. i am no where close to the hopeless situation that they are in but the begging, it got to me and i did not want to start sobbing, to close my Saturday in such a deluge of tears when it had been filled with art and laughter and good food and music.

the miraculous to me though by Saturday night it should not have been, the tribe understood. my sisters knew that the Storyteller and i were affected and needed to leave the film unfinished. and that was okay. we were not abandoning them. we were only retreating from something that was a little more than we could stand at that moment.

sisters understand. they are intuitive. each of us matter to the other.

Soul Widows Spiritual Retreat ~ Six ~ Saturday ~ Breakfast, Talking, Angels, & Art Therapy

after my morning meditation, i went inside and joined the women for breakfast. we laughed. we rehashed what we had talked about the day before, at supper, and the night before. we enjoyed the feeling of family, of belonging. here we sat, different ages, different family situations, different everything and yet we knew each other's pain. we could tell when something had affected one of us. the mention of a song. the worry when a text message would chime on someone's cell. we were sisters. Hans Christian Anderson could not have written of a tighter group.then it was to the alcove.

candles on the shrine lighted. a soothing song played to calm ourselves, to center our thoughts to why we were there. we had some serious talking to do. our grief counselor knew she had to take our fragile selves to some very difficult territory, but she was there with us with the fire of her spirit and reminding us over and over of her presence.

she is not magic. there is no magic to be found when your husband dies. but she is there. we sobbed. we broke down completely, but we did so in the safety of our tribe. we did so beside the warmth of a fire in an inn that has stood for over 120 years. we did so with our Fiery Fairy letting us know she was not going to leave us there. she could not stop us from breaking. we will break. but she was not going to leave us there with platitudes. she has been where we are. she has experienced great sorrow in her life. she never left us.

so maybe i was wrong. maybe she offered a little magic after all. for staying with someone who feels broken beyond saving takes a little bit of fairy. it takes an openness to the eternal to sit there and not want to run. our grief counselor never budged no matter how bad the pain in our voices got.

bless you and thank you. you know what it means to us and that is the point, isn't it?

then lunch and after lunch our art therapist came. first she offered angels. angel cards. select one and then speak to it. i got Synthesis. i did not want it. it is boring to me and i wanted to talk about tenderness, or communication, or delight, or Creativity. hey! i am creative! fate on a 1 " x 3" card. ah, well, maybe the angels, or the card company that makes them, is trying to push me in a new direction. the art therapist, Diane Strazzer, tried to push me into elaborating, which i did. but i was a pill a little bit. but even in that, that is a step for me though i do not think she thought so.

i am the woman who raises her hand to speak. i am the woman who will not send food back that is wrong. i am the woman who lets people walk all over her, so being a little bit of a pill about not getting the angel card i wanted made me feel like i was still alive a little bit. i also knew that my tribe would agree with me. so i smiled inside. there is life in the 'ol Bun still. bring on the black leather and a Harley! i am ready to join the 2%!

but then it came time for ARt THeRapY!!!!!!! i love glue and scissors and paper. i love being creative.
we made books; journals to write in. oh, baby, i know how to write. the cover was to be a collage to speak to our grief. what we want to bring to it, or get out of it, or, you know, all i heard was glue and cut and sew the pages and grief and husband and i was off.
we got messy. we laughed. we chatted. no pressure. no depth unless it went that way. i love making things. i love, love, love it. the glue bottles were clogged which is no problem. unscrew the cap and it is time to get sticky. gosh, i love to glue things together. creation at its most basic. little kids have all the fun.

i know i got focused though. i got worried about getting certain images in on my paper. moon? definitely. and a flag. one of the women, the Goddess Diana, had found both and when she gave me the picture she had cut out of the National Geographic of a full moon, i sobbed. she knew what it meant to me and she just handed it over. she gave me the moon. sisters do that for each other.

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 ~ 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.