Waking

Tara K Howe
Aug 9, 2017 · 5 min read

Last night I found myself getting worked up. Then this morning. Default to patterns of past I did not realize I had to this degree. Leave them before they leave you. My right side, neck and wing area perturbed. Aching. Throbbing. Screaming, in fact.

Find myself distracting myself. Looking outside self. Back on Tinder. Craving. What?

I have someone right here with me I could turn to, but I recede instead. Think of the coolness I felt on Thursday night when we met, the strange sex. Think it had to do with me. Then I remember the softness, the holding like he didn’t want to let go, the offer for us to stay. I remember that, when I am not in intimate space, I do not walk around thinking it is all about me. He just started a new job. He just got back from Alaska with no time to even unpack. He still struggles with his ex having control over his daughter.

I am reminded, also, in searching bland tinder photos, that there is just more of the same old same old same old online and this is not where I will find answers.

I drop in. Though I avoid it.

Find the source of the pain.

Birth.

Again.

Stuck. Shoulder dystocia. They choose forceps. I go from fighting to numb. Aggressive to forced.

But I suddenly see another way.

A way I could have worked with my mother even if she did not know how to work with me, even if she wanted me out of her, even if, in that moment and many others, she also did not want me. The “me” in a mother’s not wanting is nothing to do with the soul. It was not “me” it was the situation.

Body recognition.

I have understood this before psychologically but not in my body.

This time I understand. I understand the other possibilities.

Ones I did not know at the time but can choose now.

I midwife myself.

I see a midwife for my mother.

We are each birthed, instead, with some gentleness.

Rather than forceps, I simply let my shoulder slip back, let myself go limp for the transition, not for the rest of my life. Surrender only to be birthed.

I do not know what my mom goes through. I do not need to know.

I realize in my body now, in my actual flesh, that this feeling of not being wanted, that this defense mechanism of leaving before they leave me, of hardening so I can stay safe, that this is in my way. It is also what is happening this morning as I go on Tinder, as I don’t even think, first, to reach out to the man I am falling for, that I suddenly conceive instead that his distance means it is over, instead of the opportunity to deepen into understanding.

So I stop.

I text and ask him how he is doing.

That I noticed he seemed tired Thursday night. Wonder if it is the new job. If there is anything he needs.

And he texts that he is stressed about his daughter’s mother’s actions.

This controlling nature she has.

Suddenly, we are each vulnerable to each other. I could be just like her, too, the other mother.

And of course, in my own way, I am. Controlling of my emotions, of my own protection. Which gives me choice.

I open Rilke.

A reflection on solitude in love.

“And just as we must take leave of one another irrevocably at a specific instant during this most conspicuous of changes, strictly speaking we must surrender, let be and let go of each other with each passing moment….People who are thus in love with each other summon infinite dangers, but they remain safe from the petty periods that have worn out and eroded so many great beginnings of true emotion. Since they continually wish for and challenge each other to achieve something extreme, neither of them can treat the other unjustly by imposing a limit…”

Surrender to the fact that each lover is going through his own journey, that she is going through her own. That they open to the simultaneity and the solitude.

And that feels something like love. Like honor.

It feels far more sustaining than changing the channel.

The more I go inwards to the sources of pain, the more I am revealed to myself in a way I can love.

It takes risk, yes. But far less than I thought. The rewards are far greater. The small effort to face pain becomes the enormous release instead. An endorphin supported rush I did not know in my earlier years. Childbirth, my several attempts. My studies. My witness to others. This has helped me learn and identify this necessity. This bearing down and into pain as the source of everything that is sublime. And mundane. Just life. Just life it is to bear into the pain.

It makes it seem amazing I ever avoided. That this avoidance, too, is what my mother practiced. That I wish for her a bearing down into in whatever ways she needs. That I wish this for any one. That I now have a certainty in this I can translate and emulate for my children. That they will know through my own certainty that bearing into is the way through. Is ecstasy. Is life.

Suddenly it is the biggest possible lesson I can teach; the biggest I have learned.

40 years avoiding that final descent, being willing to die instead, wind up forced. I suddenly see all I had to do was let my shoulder slide back. Dislocate. A temporary pain for a larger relief.

And I change the story. Change the memory. Watch myself instead do that. See myself come into the birth room and be held. My body massaged and touched, healed. Instead of cold, hard metal, I start soft. Instead of being born of stone, I am the water.

And the scream in my shoulder disappears. And the kinked neck my oldest had for three days subsides. And the man I am learning to love sends affection.

And my entire life is suddenly a new life as a result.

My whole body materially altered.

I watch kizomba. Her hips his shoulders.

I think how I should have been a dancer and a drummer.

I think of how much life I have left.

How I am already a dancer and a drummer.

My hips his shoulders.

Even water into which I cannot see induces rhythm with which to dance.

Tara K Howe

Written by

Writer | Healer | Educator | www.tarasutras.com

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