Month: July 2022

My husband and I hug each other at least twice a day. Sometimes, if I get up before him, it might be afternoon before we’ll look at each other and say, I don’t think we’ve hugged yet! We fall into each other’s arms and stand there a while, stroking and swaying, nestling into one another and feeling safe and loved.

We haven’t always been like this. There was a time several years ago when I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. I was angry with him. Enraged, actually. I was envious of my son’s studio apartment and wanted one just like it, one where I could be alone and lick my wounds.

But when I thought about leaving Bill, I knew that’s not what I wanted. We bristled in each other’s company for a good long while, like a few years, before my feelings started to change. I realized I still loved him and did not want to live without him.

We learned how to be honest and vulnerable with one another. To let go of trying to control one another. To live and let live. To let go and let God.

Hugs with my husband are like vitamins. They make me feel stronger. Sure, there are moments when we don’t feel like hugging, so we don’t. Those moments are rare, but we honor them. And I think that’s why we grow into wanting them again because we respect ourselves individually and each other.

Hugs are a sign of trust and vulnerability. That’s what makes a marriage work. That’s what makes hugs deliciously revitalizing and sweet. I give you my tender parts, and I accept yours.

Hugs are like prayers. They remind us that we are not alone. Not isolated. Not abandoned. We are united in this world, heart and soul. I pray that you have someone to hug like that; if not, have faith that you will.

I have given each being a separate and unique way of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.

What seems wrong to you is right for him.

What is poison to one is honey to someone else….

Say whatever

and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet blasphemy

is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world

is freed.

— Rumi, from Moses and the Shepherd. “The Essential Rumi,” translated by Coleman Barks

I’m sorry to say that humankind’s cruelty got me down yesterday. Last night I couldn’t sleep thinking about it, crying over it, wanting out of this world, of this being human.

Then the sun rose, and I read about more cruelty in the paper and cried some more as I walked the hills. Clouds hovered low over the valley, filling it with a blanket of white as the misty mountains rose above it, soothing and cleansing my heart.

I came home, turned on classical music, and ate a bowl of cereal while listening to Bach.

I will soldier on, for that’s what we have always done. The Book of Genesis, written and compiled nearly three, perhaps four thousand years ago, is full of stories about the cruelty of humankind. We have always been thus. This violence is nothing new. I had hoped we were past all that, but we are not. And so, I accept my fate as a flawed human being and continue to rely on God’s love and guidance, for without it, we, I, are/am utterly lost.

Is that what this world is for—a proving ground over which we must rise like mountain peaks above the mist that clouds our senses, our hearts, our highest selves?

I pray for strength, guidance, acceptance, love, and compassion. I pray for hope. I pray for peace. I pray.

The moment we ask for her,
see her, converse with her, love her--
she gracefully rises up
against all her ropes,
and they burst open whilst
the pins fly in all directions

With much love, some levity, and certainly deep longing, together let us all sit up too,
let us bust through all the ropes
and make all the pins fly too--
untying ourselves as we also untie the Strong Woman.

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May it be deeply for you.
May it be so for me, also.
May it be so for all of use, ever.

--Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Once again, even though it’s already won a prize, I am dithering over my memoir — how to get it right, to say what I want to say. My spirit guides say, Just write, Polly; we will help you. And what is it that I want to say? That we all come from dark places, and some of us struggle to survive and thankfully do, and that it is possible to not only thrive but soar.

I don’t know if anyone else will be interested in such a story that starts so dark but gradually, tediously, slowly gets better. Recovery and healing take time. One must be patient to survive and thrive on this green Earth. We are so complicated, so faithless at times, so ornery and selfish and mean. But God shows us compassion and love. How do I know? Because I have a magnificent body with lungs to take in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide that feeds the trees, and they, in return, give me oxygen. Because I have feet and bones that take me places, high up in the hills where I can view misty mountains in the distance, sometimes cloud-covered, sometimes smoky, other times serene and dark and soft.

Reliance on a Higher Power is what has healed me. That energy of love and compassion and higher resonance runs through my veins and pulls me up out of my own muck and mire. I love the mystery; I don’t understand it, but I want it like water. I am thirsty for this abundant Divine Energy all around me. I thirst and thirst when I am afraid and lonely and uncertain. Humans can be so vicious, so sick, so weak. I need God’s strength to get by, to survive. I need God’s love and compassion and brilliance to be who I want to be, to be who I Am.

"Escape to the mountains, lest you be destroyed." 
-- Genesis  19:17

God’s timing. Accepting life on life’s terms. Being grateful for now, this moment with all its precious wisdom. Let go, relax and go with the flow. It’s easy when I’m not in pain. When I feel loved and loving. But when I am in pain, when I feel self-doubt, or clueless, letting go is challenging. I want to force an answer, figure things out on my own. I must accept God’s timing even when, or perhaps most especially, when I am clueless.

I am not quite clueless now because I trust in God, because I have faith. But are faith and expectation the same thing? I must not confuse the two. I want certain things to happen. I expect them to. That’s dangerous, because then I judge my life’s purpose on the outcome, when my life’s purpose is this moment, making it meaningful simply by living it just the way it is. Nothing more.

I must have faith and patience for the changes that take time. I might die not achieving what it is I have wanted to achieve. I might. I don’t know.

I the meantime, I devour this life and all God gives me to enjoy, to ponder, to accept.

You Could Be the Water

By the scent of water alone,
the withered vine comes back to life,
and thus...wherever the land is dry and hard,
you could be the water...

from "Untie the Strong Woman" p. 250 by ClarissaPinkola Estés