In the past month we have been living in the sacred times of Ramadan, Navratri, Baisakhi, Passover, Easter, and National Poetry Month. And that’s just what I’m aware of. There is so much more. I hope you have been able to celebrate these in community, meaningfully in ways that honor their significance, whether the rituals are inherited or carved out from your own intentions and values.
Within this blessed time I crossed a milestone birthday. It was the end of an era, it was a fresh start. After two years of deep isolation and all the illness, loss, and grief many of us have faced, I needed to awaken my joy. I had succumbed to pandemic pajamas as a fulltime uniform in the drill of daily life, and I needed to embody how I wanted to feel. So that’s what led to the Return of the Fabulous Femme. This process started with a list of forty F words that match these intentions - fierce, fresh, festive, fun, feisty, fragrant, flourishing, flavorful, frolicking, fashionable, forging, fiery, free and more. I traveled to France with friends. I wore only what made me feel fabulous, whether it was earrings or pajamas or pants. I reclaimed my joy by being with who I love, by doing what I love, and by exercising all the freedom I had. This was not easy, given my ongoing immigration hurdles, but I jumped through all the hoops and crawled under the barriers and did what was necessary.
One day, during this trip, I got a phone call. I found out that a beloved aunt who had been recovering from breast cancer was now rapidly declining and was in hospice. I was heart-broken. The next day I got a text letting me know that my dear friend & soul sister had given birth. She and the baby were healthy. I was in tears again, of joy and relief this time.
This cycle continued through my trip. Another phone call, another beloved elder, another cancer, and he was gone from this earth. Another phone call, another soul sister who had worked so hard for over 30 years to earn her financial freedom had suddenly and magically bought a house. Another joy, blooming unabashedly next to another death. I cried from joy again. I cried from sorrow still. I kept moving over the terrain of my travels, sometimes in solitude, sometimes with friends old and new I met along the way. Always, with the divine feeling that I am never truly alone, with each step being guided, guarded, and gifted to me. Along my path elders turned into ancestors and I felt their spirits soaring around me, above me and the Ligurian sea. The beauty was endless too. I felt so vividly that every day we live, we are walking a tight-rope with life on one side and death on the other. Every night, life curls up next to death, and every morning, one of them wakes up and carves the day. This carving ripples through the lives of everyone we are intertwined with.
As an empathic person with high emotional permeability, I can feel my emotions (and other people’s) deeply. One might think that this works both ways — with joy and with grief — but I have noticed that I tend to notice suffering and move towards it, wanting to help heal. There are many people who are shaped similarly, often survivors of violence who are highly attuned to pain, including people impacted by the repeated violence of structural oppression. Life shapes what we feel, notice, think and do. We all want healing and to feel our wholeness, and it is compassionate to want to support it in others. But if that is the only thing one notices and does, we can get drained of our vitality, and miss out on the beauty and aliveness that surround us daily. So how do we do both? How do we walk the tight-rope with balance and grace?
How does that commitment to healing grow from tending a wound into a commitment to thriving?
How do we nourish our dreams like they are our true liberation?
How do we continue to affirm and amplify life around and within us, while accepting death?
How do we hold ourselves and each other through many forms of grief at this time?
How do we wield our strengths in service of our joys?
Our grief is a river that needs to flow freely, sometimes above ground and sometimes deep underneath. Our bliss is a sacred flame that must be guarded and fed too. It must be allowed to be seen, because it shines with hope and can nourish the light in many. So if you are experiencing joy as we continue to live through illness and loss, let it shine through you. Your joy adds to my joy, and our collective joy is a healing balm amidst our collective grief. And when the grief comes right back, thick and yearning, slow down, be still, listen and tend to what it needs.
A dear friend shared this timely quote with me from the wise universe of instagram - “There is grief in my celebration and celebration in my grief.” I carry this in my heart now, always, as the journey continues.