When it's hard to leave or say goodbye...grieving the endings, embracing flow

it's ok to grieve, learned secure attachment, and loving things

“Life is hard, filled with loss and suffering. Life is glorious, amazing, stunning, incomparable. To deny either truth is to live in some fantasy of the ideal or to be crushed by the weight of pain. Instead, both are true and it requires a familiarity with both to fully encompass the full range of being human.”—Francis Weller

Terra Brooke, sunset view from El Zonte

What are you resisting?

I have been fighting against something lately in myself and that something is grief. When I sense it bubbling up, I tell it to go away. I tell myself I need to be more present. I need to enjoy the moment and the beauty around me, and I shove it back down to the cave from whence it came.

This has been happening more and more lately and so this morning, my conscious mind started to notice and to be curious about it.

Which led me to resorting to some techniques I have written to you about previously. I refuse to be on some pedestal of all-knowing teacher who says things about how to live, things that are for “other” people who are less evolved than me.

No.

Just no.

These techniques are things I use. They help me. They help me on this constant unfolding journey of expanding who I am. I am far from beyond them.

Get curious about how you feel

So, this morning, I got curious.

I stopped making myself wrong for feeling sad.

The sadness has been arising when I think of leaving.

Soon, I will leave El Salvador.

Not forever. I am a resident here now. For six months a year, at least, I will be living in El Salvador and in other nearby, affiliated countries. I am required to spend time in El Salvador and the respective countries for six months a year to maintain my acquired residency.

And that is not a burden.

It feels more like a gift to me. Although I resist anyone telling me what I must do, including what I must do to keep my residency. I don’t think I need a rules. I will spend enough time here regardless because I love it. In my mind, there is no need to track things, or to track me.

So, partly I am rather sad and there is a hopelessness in me around all the current tracking in the world. Maybe this grief has to do with that too? Someone showed me a threatening email from American Airlines recently that said they “had to” download an app because of a new CDC regulation, which would track them and everyone around them.

Tracking.

I avoid talking about such things here as there are so many divisive opinions. I worry about this even more when I am in the US. And that is where I am going.

Back to where I hold myself back from expressing myself fully.

I do this because I want to be kind and respect other people, people who feel differently from me and who would likely be uncomfortable discussing things and also simply may not be ready.

I am sad because it is harder to discuss things in the US.

But under all that, I think I am simply sad because I am happy. That is such a strange thing to say and happiness is something I want to cling to like my teddy bear when I was young. Happiness feels like a life raft in this tumultuous world.

My living situation here will change. I want it to. Change is good; it is necessary. I know it helps me grow.

Letting go of things is part of the process of life

Right now, I am sitting at my desk, in the room that is my home for now. All my things fit in a couple suitcases. When I go back, I will sell my car.

I am sad about that.

I love my car. It is the first thing I bought during a very excruciating divorce. Really, it is one of the few things I have bought solely on my own. I researched it. I found someone to consult with used to own a car dealership and went car hunting. I spent time researching things so I could negotiate well and I found what I wanted.

A Toyota RAV 4 with a V6 engine. I had to order the color I wanted in Pyrite Mica and drive two hours to Phoenix to pick it up.

The other things I have bought as a so-called adult are one condo in Durango. Now, two acres of land in El Salvador (hopefully, as it hasn’t closed yet), and maybe I will count a used car in Berkely before I got married.

I haven’t bought many big things. I don’t need many things. And I can feel my tears arise as I think of selling my little RAV 4 in a few months. We have had adventures together. It has been good to me.

Nevertheless, in El Salvador, a government rule says it is too old to import. I could perhaps import it through Guatemala and the complexity of that and insuring it is daunting. It is time to let it go, with love and gratitude.

But all of that is more what my head tells me regarding what I am sad about.

There is more.

This morning, I looked out my window. The river flows directly below me. Yesterday was Sunday, a busy day here in El Zonte. Tourists come from the city, and more tourists came to celebrate the Adopting Bitcoin conference. The park across the river was filled with vendors selling things. There was music. Families sat together in the river, peacefully.

I don’t see people laughing and playing as a community in a river in the US. In the US, we are busy. We are busy accomplishing things and making money and trying, harder and harder, to get ahead and simply survive. It is confusing.

This morning, the river is quiet. The orange-shirted lifeguards are gathered together chatting before they wander to their respective places to care for water-bound adventurers. The waves are crashing peacefully. I am looking at the waves. Right now. Listening to their gentle sound. There is a hammock on my porch. One of the lifeguards throws a ball for a dog, who races across the sand.

Your life has meaning

This morning, I made a list of things I wanted to do today, to accomplish something. My list helps me choose what I want to do each day and it also provides a sense of purpose and meaning to my life. The second reason feels like a US thing. That to be worthy of a space on the planet, I need a list and I need to do things. I need to accomplish something so I have an adequate-feeling answer for someone who says: “So, Terra, what do you do?”

I don’t feel I can answer with the truth. The truth is that this morning I walked on the sand and I checked to see if my footsteps made a fairly straight line behind me. I read once that a fairly straight line of footprints is a sign of healthy walking posture and I am curious about such things. At one point, I would put a pebble on my head whilst walking to see if I could achieve straight footsteps while balancing it. Here, women carry baskets of heavy things on their heads. I imagine their backs must be healthy.

During my one official and not-very-fun surfing lesson, my new teacher directed me to carry my large green surfboard on my head. I thought she was joking until I realized she wasn’t.

So, this morning, I checked the pattern of my footsteps in the black sand and the patterns of other early-morning footstep lines in the sand. All of them were pretty straight. I think it happens naturally in this kind of community where there is not so much desk-sitting and list-making.

Then I looked at the light on the water. There was white foam left on the sand from the waves that were gently breaking and the foam made a curvaceous path in front of me. This path sparkled and flashed its way towards dark rocks scattered on the shore like alien terrain, also shimmering with the dust of golden light-glitter. Light danced on the water flowing between the rocks as well. Glitter was everywhere, alive and sparkling. Further away, past the patch of alien rocks, the early morning sun was mirrored like an explosion of divine light on the sea. It looked more like the light was emanating from the ocean itself, from one bright spot, that I wouldn’t have been able to look at without my sunglasses. On the edges, more light twinkled like little fairies.

Sometimes I wonder if the wind, water, and photons are talking to me, in a language that my mind does not know, but my soul and body drinks in like water in the desert. The light feeds me. The astonishing beauty moves me into a state of awe.

And it is hard to leave.

Sometimes, when things feel hard, it is a good thing

“What do you do here, Terra?”

“Well, I make early morning lists. I am a writer. I am interested in energy. But really, what I do is look at footsteps in the sand and how the light dances on things… and I am wondering if you will judge me for that? I am wondering if you will look at me with disdain, confusion, or envy and tell me my life has no meaning.”

People are surfing. I have never seen so much surfing. I can’t help but see. People come here to surf because they love it. They have made it a priority.

Or they have grown up surfing here. One man uses a boogie board. I have watched him. He stands up on it and does multiple 360 degree turns while gliding along the surface of a wave, one hand holding the edge of the foam rectangle while the white water chases after him. He is dancing. Sometimes, he and his boogie board fly off the breaking wave, spinning, and land back on the glassy moving surface like an artist’s brush painting on a water canvas, that simply paused in the air for a moment before resuming its stroke.

Another surfer friend told me that man had to be the best boogie boarder the world. I learned that this new friend of mine used to be a pro surfer. He would know. He told me that when he mentioned that to the local boogie boarder, the wavy, sun-streaked, dark haired, beautiful young man, looked at him with surprise and said, “really?”

The boogie boarder doesn’t post on instagram. If he did, my pro surfer friend assures me he would be famous. But he’s not.

His life is secret and undiscovered by the mainstream. He is out there on his boogie board simply for the joy of it all.

I will miss that sense of things when I am back in the US.

In the US, my favorite place to walk near the river at my parent’s house has a new sign. The sign says that people are “NOT ALLOWED” to walk there after 4:30 pm. Dusk is my favorite time to walk. And I wonder about all the people working their 40 and 60 hour weeks and how they can’t walk after 4:30 pm. So much is “NOT ALLOWED” anymore, by someone who thinks they know better than something.

Your feelings mean something, they are a signpost and they matter

It is good I am sad.

It means I have found something I love. It means I care and I find myself nourished here.

I know there will be other moments in my life that feel exquisite. There will be people who come and touch my soul and I will grieve when I say goodbye, even if it is temporary.

It is ok to grieve

Grief and joy go together in a way.

I tell myself that if I didn’t care, if I was simply present and accepting, somehow I wouldn’t grieve.

I tell myself if I could do that, I would be like Eckhart Tolle.

But I am sure he grieves too and perhaps he would refer to the grief as The Pain Body.

But I am not so sure that is what I am experiencing.

You are on a quest to find a sense of belonging

I am on a quest to find a sense of belonging in the world.

I know that comes from inside myself.

Secure Attachment and Learned Secure Attachment help anchor you through things

I know it is related to something called a Secure Attachment Style, or more accurately a Learned Secure Attachment Style, which simply means I am relaxed inside and feel a sense of ease in myself regardless of the opinions of others around me.

Trusting

It has to do with trusting.

It has to do with not reaching outward for someone to save me or take care of me, and it also has to do with allowing myself to receive.

It has to do with some kind of inner security and trusting life to unfold before me like ripples on a pond. Or, as a friend said to me today: it is kind of like learning to walk on lily pads. There is a bird that learns to do this. The lily pads are thinly tethered to the earth, floating on the surface of the water. And they are enough support for the bird. Surprisingly enough. The bird doesn’t need to own a car to travel.

Perhaps I too am learning lily pad walking.

Your feelings matter, they point to something

Right now, I can feel that noticing that I am sad and letting myself feel it a bit, is important.

Because this grief is pointing towards what matters to me.

I love it here.

I love it that people look me in the eye and smile and say “Buenos Dias!” …Unless they are from the US. I smiled at someone who looked suspiciously like he was from the US yesterday and he didn’t smile back. He looked away quickly.

Ahhh….

And I love people in the Untied States. I am going back to see them and to savor them. I am going back to feel the wide expanse of the desert in Tucson and laugh with my uncle.

I am going back to spend time with my parents who are now elderly. I am savoring my time with them, even though the trail along the nearby river has signs that are threatening. I will listen to my mom tell me how often she has to refill the bird feeders. I will watch my parent’s daily routine unfold before me and chat with them about life and the state of the world. Dad will prepare the coffee machine the night before and ask me if I want some. I will wake up to the smell of fresh coffee.

I will meet my son for a long weekend, while he has a short break from his new job that keeps him busy.

And I will sell my car.

It is ok to grieve.

There is beauty in it.

Something is being seen and honored.

I think it is about what really matters to me.

I am going to savor this grieving.

What if your grief, or whatever you are feeling, is a good thing?

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Here is a photo I took early this morning. The light made magical and misty patterns invisible to my naked eye.

Misty early morning light, a candle, a notebook, and a view from my room of the sea

I wrote a bit of a poem and after, I wrote, as I often do, for guidance from the subtle realms. Here is what came:

My poem:

I walk in the misty field of the divine

Horizontal blessings of light

The world is magical

Beyond my mind

To be an observer

To be separated from life

I know this is not the answer

I don’t want to live from

a trauma response

The world is alive

I can’t help but touch

and feel it

breathe it

live it

I observe

I feel

And I cry

Because it is too much to hold

And nevertheless

I tenaciously cling to the beauty

I don’t want to let go of this world

Morning coffee

Friendship

I am alone and never alone

Especially not here

Disconnection is lonely

And from the guidance I received, (just as much for you as for me):

You are a soul on a journey dearest. Sometimes—always—the journey takes you through different terrain. Look at it like this dearest. You are simply moving through various terrains. Nothing stays the same for you are always changing and this is for the best is it not dearest? This is a beautiful thing. Simply unfold.