This is my vision as I emerge from a snowshoe up behind my house. Snowshoeing is hard work especially in the deep newly fallen snow that is so abundant this February. One is aware of each single step as the upward climb beckons me to delve deeper into the woods. I sweat. I breathe hard. My butt muscles quiver…. adventure in every single placement of my snowshoes . Winter can seem so long and cold…it is damn hard work shoveling, hauling wood, keeping the fire stoked, keeping the spirits up…and the mind and heart focused on the life lying sleepy beneath the Earth's surface. The blanket of deep snow cover threatens to hold me down. This is February vacation week…one of the busiest up at The Mountain. I love to ski but I have resolved not to do so during the vacation week and I never do weekends. The beauty of living up here is that I can be picky about my skiing conditions. I'm wild about midweek skiing and find it helps move winter along. But my family is up enjoying the mountain today and I'm home on antibiotics for a UTI…something I haven't had in 15 years. It came out of nowhere. So, here I sit, reading, writing and otherwise cozy…but mindfully observing myself as a scaredy cat hanging back from having fun with the guys…feeling pissy because sometimes when my family is all together, I have a sense of not being valued as an equal contributor to the tribe. It is interesting to note the ways I have used my being the only woman of the family to accentuate my aloneness and increase my separateness. The old roles of "woman in the kitchen" and "mom at the hearth fire"…they can be so nurturing and sustaining but on the other hand they can swallow the need to pioneer as a woman. Under this heavy mantle of white, I feel deeply exhausted and hungry for light and warmth and laughter. I continue to move through my grief at losing Sadie. Her loss set up a cleansing of my whole heart that has kept me busy journaling all winter long. She has given me a rare opportunity to encounter myself as human animal. And my human animal eyes are seeing how my human self has quashed my fears and stored them in closets only to have them burst out fully alive …here under the unusual weight of winter, I find myself tromping down a path. I would like to follow a snowmobile trail…or a logger road…or even someone else's snowshoe trail. It is always easier to follow a well-beaten trail. First tracks in snowshoes is a commitment of heart…and it is difficult.
I listen to the silence and hear the sound of my heart beat. Thinking about the work of the heart, I am aware that life is a parade of single steps. I don't hear a many-layered pastiche of beats. What I hear is one thump followed by another followed by another. I see the scaredy cat human who has no tolerance for risk taking looking in the mirror at the human animal eyes of a fierce and powerful tiger who lives a fearless life using all natural born skills and intuition to carry him through her days. She is never too far ahead of herself and she doesn't worry about the future. And I am struck by the polarity of the image and the challenge of my life to hold both versions of myself in view. Clearly the image I prefer is myself as a real tiger…a go-getter, a proud and wise feline with strong haunches and the wisdom of the entire Earth. Ah…were I only that. But no…I am also that whining child who grieves her pet, her mother's debilitation, her own aging process and adapting to limits that change. I am that toddler who believes that sickness and accidents are a message of judgement from the universe and when I break my shoulder or get a UTI or cop out on a family adventure that I am being punished for something I did wrong. I am that female ego that is bruised by men having conversations that don't let her in and pissed off by unwritten rules of expectation that are manufactured by who???? By me of course.
By now, I have tromped out a circle. I have listened to the many fears in my heart and I have sensed the potential for fearlessness. The whole mess is visible…but at least now, I'm not hiding things from myself. I have begun to heal a lifetime of learning not to feel so I can blaze through another day. To soldier on has been my mantra and in doing so, I created me a heart wreck. Now there is a strong, wild cat in my mirror. She doesn't worry about the future and she is free from the past because she is fully present and has trust in the Earth. My walking is causing deep hard breathing as I step from the wooded edge of forest to the field ahead and the clear blue skies reach out for my blundering heart. I guess this is what it means to begin to love yourself.
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