we do not have to become heroes overnight

Today, I'm feeling particularly vulnerable. Even worn-down.

My energy, physically, has been very low since this past Monday. But, last night, the fear swept in like the fierce winds that rattled the windows.

I woke with anxiety around 12:30 a.m. and laid still to drift back into sleep. Even so, I couldn't quell the feelings in my gut and chest.

So, I practiced what I teach. I did a "relaxed" version of self-Reiki. By relaxed I mean I didn't want to sit-up and go through all the hand positions as I felt I was still on the edge of sleep...believed that there was hope I'd slip back into the dream world.

I started by calling on the angels, ancients, ancestors, healers, sages, elders, shaman and Reiki masters who have come before me. I called upon my own wisdom from across time, space, light, sound, vibration...and I started where it all begins - the root chakra.

I worked my way through all 7 chakras (energy centers that run-up the center of the body...root, sacral, solar plexus, heart, throat, 3rd eye and crown), allowing my body to guide my hands as I spoke with my Self.

Yet, the bundle of nerves remained.

Next, I moved to the full hand positions. Yes, I did notice some changes, but I realized then that my body needed to let these emotions OUT.

That my healing might simply be the willingness to sit with this big vibrating mess of energy at my core.

I cried slightly. Prayed. Cussed. I curled into a fetal position and rocked myself to sleep.

Pondering my practice this morning, I realized (yet again) that everything is changing. Tools that worked once have shifted shape and form, like the world around us.

And, we are all learning to navigate uncharted realms...depths that are ours to claim, as well as those from the generations here before us.

We are called to this time. This space. It's not a mis-take we are here.

Yet, our feelings are valid. I have no income, like millions across the earth. That causes very real stress as this lingers...this pandemic.

And, for me, the greatest dis-ease of this time is the fear and panic covid-19 has brought to the forefront.

It's agitated nerves that were long ago stressed by the culture in which we were born. By four years of hearing and witnessing the improbable all around us.

By division and divisiveness.

And yet, we've continued forward because on some level we are intimately aware that these times are why we are here...what we are called to process and shift.

How do we know this? Simple...we are here. Now. In this world.

I know in my heart we couldn't be here if we weren't meant to handle this somehow. To help the healing process of the planet (and her inhabitants).

Nevertheless, when you read about thousands dying a day - it's hard to see the good. Or, when another bill comes and the bank account appears bleak - the panic starts to wrap around the chest and throat.

When we know so many are grieving in isolation....even while we grieve for the dead, as well as feel for their loved ones.

We are often agonized as a result of a wide-spread climate of fear and "me first" exhibited by so many.

During such times as these, it's hard to hold to faith.

But then, I remember my Grams and how she survived polio.

Or, how my Grandma Cookie arrived on Ellis Island solo at 14 years of age to marry an older (42+) man in Chicago...a man she'd never met. How she then got her ass back on a train and went to Cleveland after letting a half-brother know she wasn't going to marry that man. She didn't know a soul.

The courage and determination she displayed as she navigated a city speaking only Polish. How she soon married a man she met at a church and created a life and my family. How they fell in love and survived so much, including the loss of two children to diphtheria only weeks apart. 

Then, how this young couple raised three children in the midst of the Great Depression. The magic of how my Popu, uncle and aunt taught each other and their parents to speak English and never realized, until later in life, the depths of their family's poverty.

Some of us have relatives who died horrifically in concentration camps. Others', loved ones who survived them. From genocides to wars, we still find ourselves here, standing...rising.

Since the dawn of creation,  we've miraculously survived, in community, through the Ice Age, travels across barren lands and open seas, the Black Plague, leprosy, Spanish Flu, small pox, mumps, malaria, AIDS, racism, even "the war to end all wars", nuclear explosions and the pandemic that has cost the most lives world-wide since the beginning...starvation and abject poverty.

And, I ponder this knowing that if we are here, we are made for great things.

That our greatness lies in owning our fears as well as our Light. In realizing we've done hard things as humanity since the dawn of time.

That this, too, shall pass. Tragically, it will take lives along the way.

But the deepest injustice and wound will be if we go back to the "old ways" of living once this pandemic has moved into history.

While I don't have all the answers, or even a handle on what I'm doing right now, I do know this...at the end of the day we have to be true to ourselves. Own our fears as well as our Faith.

There is no way out of any challenge other than through...hiding is not the same as sheltering.

Cleaning, cooking, grounding all can be very therapeutic; however, we still have to sit in the pit with the fear and hold the hand of death to complete the hero's journey (google Joseph Campbell for details or watch any Marvel story).

And, you don't have to do one fantastical work to be a hero.

As the divine icon Eleanor Roosevelt explained, "We do not have to become heroes overnight. Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it as not as dreadful as it appears, discovering we have the strength to stare it down."

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