La Noche Oscura del Alma

I wrote last week about saying some very tough goodbyes.  At the time, I was thinking of the people I hold dear in my heart.  But this morning, as I sit under brilliant blue skies surrounded by the vibrant greens and browns of trees and grass, I wonder if the hardest goodbye is to the woman who walked her solitary days at the cabin of healing.  The hardest goodbye is to the woman that showed up in this place two years and eleven months ago, lost and heartbroken and quite possibly ready to give up on life itself.  Many walks up and down the long driveway, sitting here on this porch writing, writing, writing.  Long (very long!) drives into town for work and groceries and doctors and acting lessons and a short stint of pickleball.  Podcasts and books and music and then more and more music the more and more I came into myself.  Day after day of meditation and soul-searching and a dogged determination to live, to find myself, to find my joy.  Just me and the turkeys and the deer and the hummingbirds and the woodpeckers and the canaries and the hawks and all the other birds I cannot name.  My sweet fat groundhog that visits about twice a year that I always want to call a beaver.  Coming home after work to my cabin bathed in midnight and more stars than you could ever dream possible with the night animals of opossums and armadillos and sleepy deer.   

I am so proud of her.  I thank her for every tear she cried, for every hard look she took at herself, for every moment she taught herself that she could believe in herself.  I honor you, Casey Gamblin, for you found yourself in the darkest night of your soul, and you didn’t run as you thought you would.  You didn’t stay in the chains of your own mind. You found a way to feel the pain of the chains and stay in the pain of the chains and through that managed to find the keys to unlock the chains from your mind, opening yourself up to living in your Heartmind instead.  I stand on this sacred ground, ready to live with a dogged determination to thrive, and honor the shoulders of the giantess upon which I stand.