healing

5 months.

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Super-saturating the sky above my studio is always an option, especially when my heart feels saturated too.

It’s been 5 months.

I never imagined myself being the sort of person that kept track of these sorts of things. Then again, I never imagined I would be riding shotgun with such significant loss.

Not too long after Carl’s passing, a woman named Stacy reached out to me. She was about my age and also recently widowed. She was 5 months into her grief and, at the time, I remember pondering what a great mystery that distance felt like to me.

I assumed that Stacy was a friend of Carl’s since, after his death, I was getting a lot of messages from his friends. They shared condolences and stories and, quite honestly, those connections helped (and continue to help) in about a million ways. However, in a sea of new names and faces, my connection with Stacy stood out for some reason. Not only because she was in the middle of a brutal loss all too similar to mine, but…I don’t know. We simply found it easy to lean on each other.

It wasn’t until finally meeting Stacy in person that I realized she didn’t even know Carl. With stupefied wonder, we thanked Facebook’s strange algorithms for our chance meeting.  The men we had planned to marry had died just 3 months apart and were now buried in the same tiny cemetery tucked far-far-away in the woods, a peaceful place that only locals seem to know how to find. How unlikely. How strange. This new friendship, how perfectly God-sent.

My friendship with Stacy has taken on a life and goodness of its own. I am still in awe of the way the right people have come into my life at just the right time. Stacy…and others, too. Along the way, five months turned into some sort of mental bench-marker. Without rhyme or reason, it lodged itself into my head and there it stuck. I wasn’t consciously waiting for it, but I did know that one day it would just happen. And that’s exactly what happened. I woke up (late)…and half way into my first cup of coffee, I realized it was here.

I started writing the post above on April 8th. I wish I could have written more, but God said: “go to bed.” And, from there, it seems He is doing the rest of the work in my heart, at least until it comes time to write again. Five months didn’t come with ease and very little grace. And yet…there was grace. And a renewed wave of grief, complete with snot and tears and deep gratitude and more tears. There is so much depth and intricacy to all of this, and yet there are times when the human mind simply cannot construct the complexities in any manageable version of expression.

And so here I am. Showing up with undeveloped thoughts and a life that’s still sifting through.

What I will say is this: God is good. Even in the worst of it all, He has given me everything I need, every step of the way. I publish this here, now, only to remind myself that I am merely a work in progress. I am willing, dear God. To do this work, I am willing.

empty.

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“It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to a wholesome ease.”
~excerpted from “For the Unknown Self” :: To Bless the Space Between Us :: by John O’Donohue

This? This hollow start is where a new year begins? The big page of plans remains blank. I am empty.

Maybe empty is a good place to start. One thing I know is that my spirit wasn’t built for this much sadness. Or maybe it is. Maybe experiencing love to such extremes is exactly the point. It’s impossible to love this much without the risk of loss.

I am full of flatness and doubt this morning. I reach for God. I ask him to show me what I should do. I close my eyes and get a vision of bringing my upcoming solo exhibition to completion and then a sense of what is to follow. It’s just a glimpse, a feeling. The back of my head goes cold. The quality of light shifts behind my closed eyes. I know I’ve received my answer. Now it’s just up to me to trust it. I feel like fighting. I feel resentful today. I’ve been going through Carl’s clothes the past couple of days and the progress has been excruciating. His sweet smell fills my studio where I’ve gone to do the work. There isn’t enough room for his things in this little cabin. I progress at a snail’s pace. It takes more energy than I could have ever imagined. But I need to do this as a way of finding my way back to the easel. I feel like I’ve been hurtled backwards to that very first week of grief. I do not know how to change the glacial-like pace that this process seems to require. Logic and to-do lists do not seem to work in the precarious space I find myself in. A fragile eco-system, this current world of mine.

Yet I realize: it is only my own thinking that flattens the world around me. If Carl were here, he’d say, “You can do it; I know you can. I love you, baby.” Simple as that. A simple recipe of optimism and love. This was the basic premise of all our conversations. Constantly, we were lifting each other up, making space for hope, carving out possibilities. I stop to remind myself this. I do my best to recreate his voice in my head and heart.

Admittedly, I create an elaborate map each year. They are impressive. They are filled with goals, broken down into action steps, led by over-arching core emotional desires. It is colorful and organized, complete with images of the things I’m reaching for. This yearly habit has traveled me around the world several times. It’s built my business and strengthened my spirit. It brought horses and depth and love into my life. In other words, it has worked. Exquisitely.

But let’s be real. I wasn’t expecting anything elaborate from myself this year. Just something. Something to keep my eyes on the road ahead and my heart above water.

And so…on all this blank paper I would like to put three images and three words. I tried last night. I really, really did. But with all that trying, I found myself caught in a wave of exhaustion, in bed and asleep by 7:30pm on New Year’s Eve.

In the two hours that it’s taken me to sift words out of this inability to embrace a new year, a blue sky has begun to loosen itself from the clouds. I like the clouds. They seem safer. And yet…

I know this blank page is asking more of me than the safety of cloud cover. There is a mountain inside me. It’s been there for a long, long time. It should not surprise me that, all along, it was something only I could navigate. I’ve trekked the snow-covered peaks of the Himalayas and know from old experience that, at certain airless heights, there is only one way and that is simply, the surrendered rhythm of one foot in front of the other….
one
holy
step
at
a
time.

I love you, Carl. You, who have brought me to this most meaningful, important and profound mountain.

{originally published Jan 1, 2015}

through.

Some days are worse than others. These days, it seems that all days land on the scale of worse. But I continue to reach for a habit of gratitude and so, in this moment, I am grateful for…

  • purring horses munching on hay that warms their bodies on this cold, cold winter day.
  • the pull of my journal and conversations with God while snuggled in a semi-circle of sleeping dogs.
  • plans to go sit in a hot tub this afternoon with a good friend to relax my body and mind while in good company.

This is enough. For now, it will get me through. And, in truth, that is always all we ever need.

I love you, Carl. You will always be enough. Even being gone, you have given me enough love to last a lifetime.

{originally published Dec 30, 2014}

mapmaking.

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How do we live fully so we are fully ready to die?

I read these words yesterday, from a book given to me for my birthday from Carl’s sister, Christine. We were sitting on the bleachers of an indoor pool watching her kids swim when she gave it to me. For an entire hour, we were suspended. Held in an 80 degree tropical paradise. The white noise of splashing kids, an industrial air system and a whole pool full of water sounds. I wished I could bring a thick pile of blankets and pillows and books and stay there forever. I would have liked to make my new home in the far corner of the upper-most bleacher. But eventually we were spit back out into the cold winter night. It was a nice reprieve while it lasted. And anyway, now I had this new book to carry back into the world with me. It looked good. It held promise. It’s title? One Thousand Gifts (by Ann Voskamp). The cover has an image of a woman’s hands cradling a nest with two pale blue eggs held in its center.

Yesterday. Yesterday was a soft, but privately dangerous place. Dangerous only because I felt no desire. For anything. I ate a few chips. I repeatedly crawled into bed. I stayed in my pajamas all day. When I finally took a bath and got dressed at 8pm, I ran an errand and then went back to bed in my clothes. Ok, fine. Some days are going to be like this. But something inside of me knows that this can’t go on forever. It’s a comfortable place almost safe from panic, but creating its own form of anxiety, the kind that grows until it’s capable of locking its jaws around you. It’s a place where, if you stay there too long, things begin to die. This is, of course, the exquisite danger. It is a pallid place.

But inside this dangerous landscape I found something good. It’s a barren place stripped of all pretense, false ambitions and external expectations. Nothing matters and I realize that there is a tremendous amount of freedom in that. Since Carl died, there is only me, the shell of me. In all this nakedness, I am stripped even more bare. There is only one thing and that is the ground beneath my feet (if even that). There is also the great expanse of my future. Everything needs to be rebuilt. I have nothing. This can look any way I want it to. But first I need to be willing to build. It’s up to me to decide if I want to live fully or just empty.

Living empty is easier. Or maybe it’s just the best place to start. From this empty place, I am crying myself clean.

I can do this, right? I can pick myself up and move on. But first I need to extricate myself from this sticky web of grief. Herein lies the conundrum. At least for now. And in this now, it seems I am only capable of one thing…and that is surrendering myself to this quiet mapmaking. I’m impatient to get control over my life again. It’s impossible. I have bills to pay and animals to feed. I get scared. I don’t know how to tell this story. It’s too intricate. It’s too simple. It’s too beautiful. It’s too pathetic. For now, I’m caught in an actionless Neverland, a middle-of-nowhere. The only way out is to give myself what I need. This requires exorbitant amounts of faith (sometimes more than I have). It requires, more than anything, that I keep one finger, or even one strand of hair, on the pulse of hope.

Over and over and over my mind finds its way to the incredible plans that Carl and I had together. I can feel something inside of me, something that was inscribed onto my spirit before I even entered this world. It tugs on me even when I want to be left alone under the covers. It’s been running the course of my whole life and holds the same story that led Carl and I together. It is made of steep mountains and risks. It is bigger than either one of us. It always was. And we both knew it.

I want to run towards it and away from it, all in one breath.

I play with the threads of this pull. I unravel and braid and weave entirely half-crocked scenarios of outcomes and possibilities. It’s pointless and good. It’s like the weather. There’s a lot less control over it than we attempted to believe. We wove a sail, little more. We pointed our boat in the direction we hoped to go, but the rest, all along, was up to the wind.

As I write, I begin feeling like I’m talking gibberish. It’s all gibberish until I bump up against something real. And what’s real, anyway? My love for Carl is real. This unseen phenomenon that I feel pulled towards, that is real.

Last summer, Carl and I went on a trip to the farthest reaches of northern Minnesota. We took back roads all the way there and back and everywhere in between. We reveled in being such good traveling companions, both favoring the roads less traveled. We sometimes drove slow to make it last longer. He looked out his window looking for blueberries. I looked out my window looking for strawberries. It was a hot dusty day, windows down. We laughed when we realized what the other was doing. We had driven far off the main roads onto dirt roads that led us off the map and, from there, we bumped and scraped our way down unused and overgrown logging trails. We loved it. There was a sense between both of us that this is what our whole gorgeous life would look like…this open-hearted willingness to explore, fearlessly, together.

And so we are. Even after death, so we are.

I have work to do, but I’m still map-making. I write my way to acceptance of this. And I know my clients will understand because I’ve attracted them into my life for a reason. I cry with gratitude for their presence and their understanding. As I write this, I take a deeper breath than I have since visiting the pool.

Again, I ask myself, “How do we live fully so we are fully ready to die?”

And I realize that I’ve been doing it all along. I lean into a dream that I had yesterday. It was early evening when, after being struck by the gravity of that question, I felt a sudden need for sleep. In the dream, I was talking with God and Carl. Their voices were soft, optimistic, calmly eager, gently smiling, as if making great plans while trying not to wake the baby. I don’t remember what they said to me, but it was good, comforting. I was a hundred percent in on it. It was, very definitely, the best dream I’ve ever had.

I took this photo during that summertime adventure with Carl. But now I’m realizing that was only the beginning. We’ve already traveled far, far, far off the map and, in my heart, I know I need to rest up for whatever is ahead. I need to heal because this is going to be a very incredible journey. It’s a journey that started a long time ago. For now, I just need this resting spot. Just for a moment. Let there be this peace. Let there be this sense of believing. Please God, let my energy return.

I love you, Carl. You…who is always with me, always watching out for me, always ready for the next adventure.

{originally published Dec 20, 2014}

marvel and dispair.

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This morning I sat on a bale of hay and quietly watched the horses for over an hour. I wore Carl’s jacket over my own and so, despite cold temps, I was warm. While the horses gratefully ate their sweet feed and then started in on the hay I had put out for them, the dogs (Louie, Ella and Henry), moved together in a perfect triangle, noses touching, sniffing the ground and happily gnawing on frozen horse turds.

I thought about how, when these horses, Colorado and Dakota, came into my life, it was made divinely very clear to me that they would teach me about love.They would teach me how to love and be loved. Before Carl, I had never experienced a *truly* healthy relationship with a man. After getting divorced, I was single for nearly three years. Then one day, while standing in the kitchen, I looked out the window and, in my mind’s eye, got a flash of what true and good and healthy love looked like. I don’t know where it came from, but the vision stuck with me as clear as precious crystal. In truth, I didn’t think I was the kind of woman that could have that sort of relationship. Such are the limiting lies we sometimes tell ourselves. But during this time, every day, I was outside with the horses watching their movements, their give and take, their love, their care, their soft compromises for each other. They moved through the woods and the pasture, always with one eye and an ear watching out for the other. They moved as one entity, even with occasional distance between them. Their tenderness for one another was remarkable.

I observed and learned and spent an entire year untangling burrs from their manes and tails. My relationship with them grew deeper. I lost much of my jumpiness and got more comfortable in their presence.In the process, this endless untangling slowly built a bridge to a better relationship with myself, too. In learning to trust the horses, I learned how to once again trust myself. I found a solid and dependable place within myself that I had never before known. From this place, my friendship with Carl grew into deep love and mutual respect. I began to realize that he was the good man I had gotten a glimpse of that morning I looked out the window so long ago.

Carl and I talked about the horses every day. He loved them and was as interested in them as me. They became “our” horses. I loved sharing them with him. We made space for them in the possibility of every plan we made together. He knew how much they meant to me and would have done anything to make sure they would remain in my life, no matter what. I began to dream of moving deeper into a life with horses. Carl was, through and through, a part of that dream.

If it weren’t for the horses, I would not have ever stayed in Bemidji for as long as I did. I would have returned to Minneapolis full-time or maybe even moved somewhere else entirely. Had I done that, it is quite possible that our paths would have missed each other. I have always thought, since the beginning, that it was these horses that created the meeting ground for Carl and I to come into each other’s lives. God and the angels that surround us knew all along.

And so this morning I sat and watched Colorado and Dakota, reveling at how much alike they are to Carl and me. Plump, warm tears rolled down my face. I whispered Colorado’s name and he looked up at me with the sweetest, gentlest eyes. Like Carl would do. Carl cared so selflessly for me. And I for him. I remembered talking with Carl over the phone about how Dakota panics when Colorado is out of her sight. He said, “Just like you panic when I’m gone for too long.” His words were so true. Carl had an easier time with the miles that often separated us. I sat on that hay bale watching the horses and wondered: why am I the one who got left behind? I am the one who gets scared. I’m the one who has a harder time being left alone. And yet…I would never wish for him to be the one to be left behind. I love him too much. Never, never, never would I want to see him this sad, this lost, this scared.

Last night I dreamed that Carl and I went to find a wedding band. We were at Ken K. Thompson Jewelry where Dean, a very dear and old family friend, stood behind the jewelry counter helping us create our very own design. Dean was so thoughtful and caring. These weren’t the usual circumstances. Even in the dream, Carl was with me, but in the spirit realm. Somehow, Dean was aware of this. We decided on a simple band. On the inside was an inscription in delicate cursive lettering, “Until we meet again.” The outside had a single tiny star-shaped diamond, a reminder that Carl would always be my north star.

With the daylight, I wonder how I will ever find my way out from under this dark cloud. This morning’s gift, despite everything, is relief from yesterday’s horrible anxiety. Upon waking, the dogs were excessively snuggly. Kissing, kissing, kissing me until I could barely breathe. More love, it was a good way start to the day. While outside, I brushed a few burrs from the horses manes. I made coffee and put it in Carl’s thermos to keep it warm. I marveled at the amount of tears that flow from my eyes.

I marvel and despair over everything, a dependable and oscillating pattern that, if I can just find a way to allow myself to surrender to it, will lead me somewhere wholly true and good. These horses, as always, remain my teachers. In powerful ways, they continue to instruct me in love and trust, of the deepest kind.

Yesterday, while going through cards and stacks of mail, I came across the memorial program from Carl’s funeral. His sisters chose a bible verse that was included beneath a photo of him. It reads…

“Peace I leave with you,
My peace I give to you;
not as the world gives do I give to you.
Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid.”
~John 14

Everyone keeps telling me how strong they think I am. I am not.
But, because Carl would want that for me, I try.
I try.
I try.

I love you, Carl Bratlien. Until we meet again…
I love you.

{originally published Dec 18, 2014}

grief paced like tides.

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Once again, I do not know where to begin. I have been away from the depth of this daily writing ritual for too long. Even just a few days of writing absence (replaced by short posts) makes me feel upside down and asunder. I’ve spent the past several days simply holding out for a quiet space to rest in. Traveling and Miami Beach did not offer such luxuries. There were other gifts, but time and space to give myself over to the untangling of grief was not one of them.

I am relieved to be far away from the commotion and noise of Miami. To witness my friend, Kristine, achieve such high artistic success, that is why I was there. To spend an afternoon alone at Art Basel, led by Carl through a maze of some of the most powerful artwork I have ever seen, that might have been the other reason I was there. Moved by art in ways that I have never been moved before. I was stunned into deepest silence, an inner place, at moments causing heavy orb-like tears to roll down my face. I will not forget that. It changed me, as though I were some kind of soft rock being so gently sculpted. And possibly, there are even other reasons that I was led to Miami Beach, reasons that I do not yet know or even understand.

Yesterday I picked up a rental car and got outta there. It felt good to drive–windows open–through a complicated urban jungle of Miami roads and freeways. But after awhile, even that became too much. I’m too sensitive for such loudness and movement right now. Even the air traffic flew too low and loud. Nothing felt real, everything manmade. Finally, finally, finally…the landscape gave way to a gentler kind of jungle. One made of greens and blues, golden yellows and cocoa colored browns, moss and palms, sea oaks and sunset. I found dirt roads, unexpected pastures of horses and cows, orange groves and overgrown gardens.

The roads led me all the way to a sugary sweet cottage appropriately called the Heart Bean House. On it’s front porch, in a white rocking chair, sat my dear friend, Cynthia, waiting for me. I don’t even know if we said hi, but what I do remember is that I got out of the car and she wrapped her arms around me, her hand so tenderly holding the back of my head like a small child’s, and I let myself cry in her arms until the Christmas lights adorning her house became remarkably bleary and bright.

We gathered ourselves and then walked the block and a half down to the ocean to watch the moonrise. Dear God. The heart is such a small vessel in comparison to a full moon just beginning its ascent over such a salty sea. I felt peace. Utterly. The ocean, so full that it seemed a miracle that it didn’t just completely overflow. And it did. We walked along the moon bright beach for a long time, until the incoming tide began washing all the way up to our legs. A mysterious lunar pattern of waves…coming in just a little higher each time, then rushing back towards the moon with dizzying speed. The motion, much like Carl’s current presence of spirit and, at the same time, so similar to his swift exit from this earthly place. An ebb and flow. The tide, a rhythm that simultaneously, contrastively buoys and then steals the ground out from underneath. We walked and, as we did, I accepted this motion for what it is. It is what it is. I felt peaceful. Somehow held by something uncontainable. How that much salt-swelled water doesn’t just spill over its edges is a terrific wonder. How I (or any of us) survive this much love and loss is the greatest mystery I’ve ever experienced.

There are a certain kind of tears that I have been avoiding. I have mentioned this several times and, until losing Carl, I did not know there could be such an extravagant difference between the tears of profound grief and those that reach even deeper. You see, I have done my fair share of crying. I understand the great need for letting grief flow through me. So that I can heal. So that I can experience this fully. So that I might be made whole, both now and moving forward. But there is a certain place of tears that I have not been ready for. They will come. It’s unavoidable. But the tears that I flounder to prepare myself for, the tears that I sometimes must avoid…they are a place of God. They are the tears that reach all the way to heaven. They are a place of such extreme depth and BIGNESS that only angels can bear the expansiveness of it. It is the tears of great Love. I am too frail for this. Surely, going there will break me. To cry from that place is to experience God. Completely. It is no wonder that it’s written:

“You cannot see My face, for no man can see Me and live.” ~Exodus 33:20

And so my grief is paced like the tides. My tears come often, sometimes in dry wracking sobs and other times in fat watery drops. And then there are those moments that I just need to bolster myself to the weight or numbness of things, doing whatever it takes to hold myself to some form of steady. Other times I smile or talk, eat or even walk in a way that resembles something of a normal person. Teetering somewhere between vastness and being held, day and night, time and space, sun and moon, heaven and earth, ebb and flow.

The photo is one that I took last night. An outrushing tide. My heart being sucked out to sea, but also an old friend at my side.

And so we make our way, however precariously. My dearest Carl, I love you. Thank you for bringing me so close to God.

{originally published Dec 7, 2014}