Day #2 of my joyful joblessness, I did a sort of strange thing: I had a 1 hour session with an "intuitive coach" named Linda Elmer. My wonderful friend Christie turned me onto her "meditation marathon" back in April & May - she encouraged people to meditate, at least 10-15 minutes a day, for 30 days straight and see what happened or didn't. And when I saw that she was offering her coaching services on a sliding scale, I thought what the heck?! At a minimum it would give me someone besides my husband to talk to about what a big deal it feels like to leave my job.
Linda's website (http://www.thejoyfulguide.
"As an intuitive coach, I guide you to both understand and take action on the issues you’re currently facing. Confronted with our own problems, we can get confused and lost in the momentum of our thoughts. My intuitive abilities can perceive the root of the issue—and assist you in identifying the right actions to move through it."
The first step was filling out a form which was quite a few questions, definitely took some thought and time, but once I got over that hump, it was a simple matter of setting up a time for the 1 hour call. Non-West coasters, be sure to mention your time zone when doing this! We has a small misfire for our appointment, because I was speaking Central time, and she's on Pacific.
Now, despite what I have opened my mind up to in recent years, I still have a limit with how New Agey I can comfortably get and I've never called a psychic before or anything like that. So I had slight trepidation about how "hippy dippy" (my neologism, I think) the call might be, especially once I discerned from her area code that she's in the Bay Area (sorry Judy! :). But I was happy to find it was a lot like a counseling session, with a meditation bent.
The first thing Linda had me do was take a deep breath and bring my attention to where I was sitting (a distractingly creaky old desk chair, unwisely). And then we basically had a conversation based on the questions I had answered, and what Linda intuited about me and my situation. The first thing she said she was getting about me was that my main focus right now needs to be letting go of my past, which just rang through my body like a bell with its truth. To help do this, she advised me to take lots of deep breaths, exchanging the old stale air for new. Just this one gentle suggestion has been helping me daily ever since.
We talked a lot about my health concerns but I'm sure no one really wants to hear about the anti-Candida diet that I still haven't fully committed to, nor my reasons for wanting to do it (Candida symptoms being neither pretty nor pleasant reading). She told me to make time for the walking/jogging & yoga/meditation that keeps me on track, mentally and physically (for I'm still trying to lose 10 pounds, make and hold my Weight Watchers goal weight, finally). But also to be sure to let myself write regularly (the reason for this blog), even if it was just journal entries and not my memoirs quite yet.
And then at some point Linda asked me "what about your Dad"? Crying, I told her what it was like to have just quit my safe middle-class desk job when I grew up with a man who walked around the house saying things like "Life is Work!" and "you need to get a J-O-B" - and I speculated maybe quitting was a bit of a belated F--- You to him? Then she said the most amazingly insightful thing: that for men of that generation, most of them were/are secretly terrified and that's where some of that harsh authoritarianism comes from. Their parents, who lived through the Great Depression and suffered WW II, taught the terror to them, I'm sure. And our society doesn't allow men to experience or know or express their emotions, least of all Fear.
But there was more: Linda said that many men "don't know what to do with daughters," especially headstrong, willful daughters with their own ideas about how to live their lives (as was/am I), especially after a certain age, puberty, when begins the awkward breasts and the dangerous boys (but that's another post). This made sense to me, I've actually similar thoughts before, and my husband has even said thank god he had a boy, he didn't know how he'd be a father to a girl, that he'd probably end up in jail cuz he'd kill the first guy to touch or hurt her (I think he was kidding, but maybe only slightly).
So, I'm ostensibly writing about joy but I end up talking about my "obvious daddy-issues" (as Meredith on Gray's Anatomy sez), go figure. It makes sense, I once said to my husband that in our family "he was the reason for everything" which doesn't do my mom much justice, but there you are. But if the mantra is "let it go, let it go" then maybe I can even let go of the feeling I've had that I would never get over his sudden death.
For those who don't already know: it was a hiking accident on a boy-scout trip (that my younger brother was on too), he was only 54 years old, and it pretty much ripped my life apart - I'm sorry if that seems melodramatic or maudlin but it's true. There was my life before my dad died and my life after and there's a huge wall between those two lives. And it certainly didn't help to reduce my fearfulness.
Shortly after it happened I wrote, in a poem:
...they come offering hallmarked sympathy, the cliches
we all say in our helplessness, such pretty
flowered condolences, and the food to fill the
emptiness: we eat grief like gourmet
chicken, drink wine the color of blossoms
and keep thinking of the one step
he took in error, in error
we keep thinking of the beauty of the world
and the terror
There are no road-maps to help navigate grief and it doesn't end at any tidy time or place, sometimes it takes years to process. I guess I am still processing it. But at least I now feel like I can start letting go. Because - it may sound a little cheesy, but - I honestly believe it's in the letting go that you let joy in.
For exploring the idea of having your own joyful guide, see the following web site:
http://www.thejoyfulguide.
