Flight for your life

Step on the gas, go, don’t stop.

 For a few years, after I got sober, in the morning, grief sat like the weight of a house on my chest keeping me in bed. Sit up, brush your teeth, put your sneakers on, and open the door.

 A brisk walk down Powers St. in Brooklyn. Talk to the trees, especially that one you love. Get up, keep going. Driving, flying, and walking (a lot) have always been how I dealt with conflict. 

 Too much? Get in the car and drive far away. Across the country. Don’t stop. Not even to pe, just GO! Get out. Leave. Smoking and driving were how I regulated my nervous system. Too little, too slow? Walk out the door and get as far away as fast as possible.

 Bawling my eyes out driving on the PCH listening to Landslides. Up the canyon to the top, I could walk through the eucalyptus and get my healing session. Therapy for 7 years straight never missing a week.

 I remember why we are alive at the edge overlooking the cold, vast blue Pacific.  Screaming on the phone with generations of voices that were never felt.

 The car gave me the space I needed when I couldn’t make it for myself.

 Learning how to stay has been the most intense devotional medicine. How to stay close to myself, and others. How to not just take what someone else says about me to be the ultimate truth as I dissolve into a puddle of worthless shame on the kitchen floor.

 How to allow disappointment, disagreements, and so many things without extreme dysfunction all the time. Yelling, name-calling, violence etc. These were parts of my history.

 In my blood. Generations of abuse. Wisdom too.

 The violence and addiction ended with me. But not without a fight.

 To put down the fight and to soften into safety has been the most rewarding WIP I have the Grace to devote my consciousness and heart to.

 To be able to be present with others is what I came to do. 

 In the spaces where we can drop in. In classes and training and retreats.

 Now I enjoy the space and can come close. I choose that drive, even if it does spring up from moments of overwhelm or temporary panic/confusion.

It’s not about perfection, it’s about choice. We are here for liberation, the liberation of love.