I can feel my hands on the steering wheel, the grinding pressure as we skid across 432 feet of the highway – stay straight, stay upright, stay straight. Skid marks etched into the road we travelled so often, after the hit by the speeding uncontrolled driver.
I heard a voice, “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re okay.” The luminous voice was not my own and yet so clear. You’re okay.
We moved, numb, as we made calls, pulled out cards, and wrote reports. My hands trembling. We had to get Barton out of the van and rode in the back of an ambulance home. And then the barrage of calls to insurance companies, airlines to reschedule flights, repair shops to pull Barton’s wheelchair out, the wave of logistics. The frenzy embedded in trauma.
Time didn’t exist in that moment, there is a reverent awe that we didn’t roll, turn, run into a posted sign. The GM truck hit in the middle of the van, right behind my seat. There was no concept of how bad the wreck was until I went to pull things out later, my hands running over the full imprint in the frame.
Waiting to get on the plane, we downed drinks to take the edge off. We looked into each other’s eyes with no words over the buzz of people around us. Bruised ribs and sore muscles, we both had headaches that night from the impact.
Trauma collapsed with trauma.
Why did God save us if we couldn’t be parents?
We should have died that day.
And then, the body awakening from its catatonic state. Every sense enhanced and heightened, the beauty of the world we pass by without a thought every day.
The first day I walked back to work after lunch, I could see the storm cloud approaching. Of course, just before I arrived, rain poured over my face and shoulders. Standing under a tree branch while water streaked down my shoulders and back, I could feel the frenetic energy after trauma cool.
Days of walking to work in the spring and early summer heat, I was struck in awe of the cedar, the fairy tree blooms, morning dew orbs on blades of glass, the hawk’s calling above. And even at home, the smell of an orange opening every pore. Light filtering through the bedroom window. The texture of ground and gravel.
In the months that followed, we sucked the marrow out of life and gave every ounce that we had to give. Wow – did we live! I don’t know how we could have fit one more adventure into the year. Visiting with soul-family in Tucson, a concert with William Ackerman for my dad, Barton’s hike up Mount Adams, gathering with family over the raspberry pie, driving through strikes of lightening all around us, the little bear popping out, visiting the Alamo, I saw Marie Forleo speak in the most gorgeous church, the house – oh the bursting oven and pipes, giving it our all in California, the gift of road-warrior “I Feel the Need…The Need for Speed” wheels freedom – shocked beyond belief at the support we received. We dove into the arena all out, our faces marred with dust and dirt.
At the end of the year, we had pinnacle dreams fulfilled and dashed – the highest peak and the lowest crevice all within the same week. The crevice stung with bias as 2020 began; I felt stunned by a bazillion jellyfish. We were in new waters and at the time, the world seemed dark, moments without hope.
What brought me back was the surrender to what we could not control and feel that the light that is always present. No matter how bleak it seems, light comes in all forms. It is inside each one of us, if we choose.
Since working at home, every morning I’ve written by candle light, a reminder that light is still ever-present.
And we are so, so thankful for every single day we wake up breathing. Every day is a miracle. What a mind shift – to know, know within every ounce of your being, that today is a miracle.
We are asked to pause, a stop sign in the middle of the road that smacked us all in the face.
Today, so many people are moving in trauma. Retreating inside from the unseen and unknown. Surviving the best way we know how. I am saddened by the divisions that are still so present and visceral in all of this, knowing that there is no more normal, and there is forward in hope.
Yesterday I asked Barton how we make decisions about living, about doing anything. No one knows. We are doing the best we can to wrap our heads around this evolutionary shift, and in shock, our minds can’t compute.
We are all in stages of processing trauma, finding our way through.
I am in awe of my friends who has re-discovered creativity, working that that project, writing a novel, building a house. This surge of energy to do all that seemed left behind or put off to the side. This moment, where every moment is savored is divine!
I remember that surge of energy from the car wreck. And then, sometimes the busy-ness covers up what we need to process. In the slowing down, there is the deep work of recovery. There are times where it is all I can do to stare at a tree, and that’s okay. How do we make the best decisions we can? We are all striving for that, the best decisions to survive this mess.
What are the reminders to bring us back to center, to the pieces of ourselves we know and can trust during this time?
I’ve gone outside our bubble dawning a grey face mask and blue gloves, sensitive about everything I touch and the air I breathe.
So many metaphors about breath, breathing, expansion/contraction, the lungs of the earth, breathing each other’s air, creating a bubble. The earth’s breath. The stillness at the end of a great exhale. For me – I can forget to breathe. Breathing is a miracle.
This week we re-designed our kitchen board. A reminder of who this is for. When the hyper-focused / quarantine fog sets in over the mind, when we fight even to move, when the truck run-over feeling of fatigue sets in.
I am still here. We are still here. Who is this for? It is not just for us, it never was.
It is for our families, our colleagues, our friends and mentors. It is for people we will never know, people we will never meet.
Be kind to each other during this time. We create impact everywhere.
I know we are resilient, that there is a way through, that even in this terror there is beauty, that in loss there will be healing.
I know what for today, we are alive. We are here. We are awakening.
What will today be?
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