'Tender' -- She Hears Me Well

I love that she hears me so well in the word ‘tender.’

 

We had a beautiful, gentle, spacious day of being together. We rested with one another, which is often hard for both of us to do in our actively inner and outer lives. She named her own reminding, how busy inside and out she can be, can love being-doing, and how delightful it is to land with me, to stop, to breathe deeply and be.  It was a smiling, listening pause for me too, in which I felt a release or an absence of my ceaseless fretting, have to do more in the world so on fire, need to do more to confront all the suffering around us. I loved feeling her body relax as we hugged hello. So familiar, so oxygenating within, even as there is usually a deep exhale too.

 

About an hour after she left, I realized I was in a wave of something, a tenderness inside. Was I sad she had left? Maybe a little, but I had had United tasks that had arisen that I really needed to tend. So I was tending to them before Brian arrived home. Had I not received something I had hoped for? Not that I was aware of… Yet I recognized the tenderness and sat with it, tried to listen it into speech somehow.

 

With Brian, I could name one paradox that touched the tenderness deep inside. I miss the generative, collaborative rhythms Lis and I shared for so many years. A shared task. A community birthing and our similar yet different relational energies brought to it, in tandem, in distinction too. We lived a richness together that nourished and stretched my own life so very deeply, broadly. I miss seeing her leadership presence, offered without thought or self-consciousness, being who she is in a circle. (Of course now I know there was a whole lot more thought and self-consciousness than was apparent to me, but we both nod to it as a natural and even beautiful part of this journey…). The paradoxical part of this is that I also don’t want to be holding circle twice a week, in addition to everything else that is active in our lives. I am leaning into the silences in my life right now, the open spaces, the uncertain “fallow” that these weeks seem to be for me. I am (largely) free of the fear of disconnection or being left behind, more content to be ‘in the moment’ than I’ve been in a long time. Perhaps ever.

 

Maybe I want the generative, collaborative rhythm feeling and connection without all the practical tasks and energies it took to live our circle lives into being, in the world. Except I do have access to that, I do receive it, seen clearly in how quickly Lis hears me in the word ‘tender.’ She called on the way home from her vespers offering, and it was a gift to breathe into what I was becoming more aware of...gently...inside me.

 

I think, at first, she was woven into a fear of ‘not being or doing enough’ presence with me while feeling the weight of her Facebook Live Vespers leadership that night. I smiled as she found words for her experience, wanting to assure me she was there, present…in which I had not experienced her as ‘not present’ or lacking in any way. I was touched deeply that she carved out the spacious time for us to be together. I thoroughly enjoyed our easy being time, landing on the porch, tending to a couple things as necessary, meandering over at the preserve. I cannot find my way so immediately, so quickly, to that kind of soul-space, that depth of breathing time with anyone else in my life. I receive this as pure-gift, at least when I am most present to my Self.

 

But she heard something I did need to come to speech about in the word ‘tender.’ And it did take some excavating that a voice-touch with her could provide.

 

For the first time in a long while, I was entangled in a self-defeating, fearful voice that I don’t often allow to come to speech in me (anymore?). You are no longer interesting enough, or good enough, or attractive enough for her to want to be with you. Our lives are so very different, with different choices and landscapes and experiences...why would she want to be around me? Or Do you think that she’ll love you if you don’t insure she needs you? Provide for her? Tend her needs?  I was aware of the accusatory fear, the internal judgments. I could hear the early-ness of them, of a little girl constantly insecure and uncertain whether she would be safe or seen unless she tended, served, insured… I knew the taunting tone and harsh words were unfounded and coarse for who Lisa and I are, who I am now in my more whole, tender, raw self. But wow, the power of the voice, the fear, the feelings of ‘not enough’ had me bound all the same.

 

One of the hidden gifts of this time, I’m coming to see, is learning, over time, that Lisa and I stay connected without my providing a function or reason for connecting. I don’t have to do anything to insure this connection, to earn her affection, her love. As a matter of fact, there really is nothing that I can do to fill any perceived gaps. Her life is full. My life is full. We are in a season of richness I cherish for us both. I have always valued this unearnable-anam-cara-spirit-friendship way of us. This way of knowing in real-time that I am worthy of love and belonging regardless of what I may or may not provide for another.

 

But still it is a tender and tough thing for me! (Us? Human beings in general?) The ego can so easily slip into the spirit-flow, after all, feeling what I have done or how I can do (xyz) is the cause of our connection.

 

I have been learning the hidden gift of this time in some new ways with Brian too, only possible because of being together over more extended time in a pandemic-required, quarantine proximity. Neither he nor I would have known how to relax into ‘simple presence together’ as often as we have been beginning to learn how in these months. He and I both are attuned to functional spaces, providing-for spaces, highly intentional time together, ‘doing’ our marriage more than being our marriage. My family of origin lived and breathed in functionality. So…I am living in the soup of that transactional way unconsciously and most often in my worlds…and bringing a more present way into my own home. Brian is receiving and learning, deepening in it, without my agency of course. Despite my agency. We find our way somehow...

 

Life with Lisa over these many years has been a much broader world of primary-P/presence, deep re-connecting, then moving into circle-birthing and mothering tasks/function. Both/and. As the last years of WWfaC circle-tending grew in number and then leadership things, the functional-tending naturally grew. Neither of us lost the P/presence yearning, reconnecting depths, and yet…my own ego and soul dance a lot of frenzy in the less-vulnerable, provision-work-function connecting. There were assurances in this functionality for me that I no longer have access to, or need, to be honest. Except when I get afraid…or fears like ‘not being enough’ from of old arise within me.

 

It was a gift for me to come to words about all this last night, to hear her gentle tone and understanding, her own learnings (fears?) coming to speech alongside my own. To be able to speak this vulnerable side of me, this fearful yearning side of me who sometimes can’t find herself seen and heard in all the other worlds I am blessed to know.

 

I am a cherished woman, this I know. And I love that she hears me so well in the word ‘tender.’