Note from Louisa

​I have waited until the last possible moment to write this. 
I have not been inspired. I have nothing to say. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe that, for once, I feel like I have nothing to say.

Honestly, it’s a bit disorienting.

These are not easy times. This is true on the global level, the national level, the community level, and for many of us, me included, the personal level.

Right now, it feels that there is a tremendous amount of loss. An avalanche of grief. All coming at me from a variety of directions - a plethora of sources. Everything is in transition all at once and it is hard to find the ground.

At times like this, all we can do is breathe. We certainly can’t write.
___ 

There was a time when I would have said “In moments like these, I need to breath and hold on”. Now, having visited this blighted country more than once, I know that the more appropriate instruction is “In moments like these, I need to breathe AND LET GO.”

This is certainly the more challenging course of action, especially for someone like me who likes to be in control. “Let go? Are you insane?”

In the book, “Warriors of the Heart”, Danaan Parry offers us The Parable of the Trapeze in which we find ourselves in the liminal space between letting go of one bar of a trapeze in order to catch the next one, risking failure if we fall. If we cling too tightly to the solid bar of wood that we think is providing safety and surety, we are unable to grab the one that is coming toward us… the one that leads us forward.

It is an act of faith and trust, informed by a bit of abject terror that allows us to let go… for there to be a brief moment of suspension, when we are holding on to absolutely nothing. In between here and there, but in neither. A place where nothing is solid, and we are guided only by hope.

But this is what is necessary in order to learn that someone (or something) is there to catch us.

In order to learn to fly.

There will be ground again.

Grief, too, is impermanent.

For the meantime, in the words of my beautiful and so very wise friend, Deb:

“I am letting go”.