Finding Annie (from 2015)

  

What does it take for a woman’s body to become her own?

A week before my 46th birthday,

I came a whisper’s distance from finding out,

from getting my first tattoo:

a tear on my left cheekbone,

another on my lower right cheek.

Two spots of aquamarine,

salt on blood, ink on skin,

signifying an entire lost world of feeling,

denied to women, denied to men.

 

On your face? my friend’s text read.

On your face?! erupted another,

in her body-wise ways.

ON YOUR FACE? shouted yet another,

stunned, seeing a gang-mark in the tears.

Murdered someone, have you? She teased.

Receiving someone, I tendered.

 

Long after I thought the discernment was over,

the discernment began,

welcoming a new force in my body

Adolescent Annie, driving my bodycar

without a license,

hands clenched at the wheel.

She wanted to be found,

Willing to mark my body with

permanent tears if necessary.

 

Because…

 

First, this body belonged to my mother,

whose lifework was to mother.

When I tried to grow up, leave home, she said

“How could you do this to me? You are dead to me.”

All chaste energies then belonged to my father.

“Faith has no feeling,” he said,

feeling his faith deeply in mine.

Then it belonged to my husband,

an ex-attorney finding his feeling life

connected to the church I had once served,

which he now calls his own.

 

My body has been this bridge to cross

for men and the women who love them

a safe emotional, erotic home

for the Seeking to find the Sacred.

 

Is it ever too late for a woman to learn

her own body is valued, beautiful

just as she is, holy created, holy enfleshed?

That she is not made “to be of good use?”

(thank you, Marge Piercy)

 

I felt a difference, began to receive

my own body as mine when mirrored

in the faces of women who loved me.

My face somehow mixed with their faces,

Seeing for the first time their shock, their sadness,

at permanent tears, etched in skin in blood.

I never want to mark their faces with tears.

What urged me to mark my own?

 

I'm glad Annie arose in her wordless way,

claiming this body as her own

as I am willing to enter into its mysteries,

receive its beauty and value,

know at the deepest core of who I am:

Our flesh is sacred, sparked with the Divine

through and through.

 

I think it takes a mark of welcomed need,

a gentle touch of women’s care, fierceness

finding a home in the heart, through the soul,

held in the faces and spaces of women.

No tattoos are necessary here

for the bodyheart to open, need and allow.

 

Annie is finally home, fully licensed,

slowly accepting that we don’t need a tattoo.

Still Within It All...We Are

I am not who I was even a month ago, so of course, neither is my dear anam cara, Lisa. So much to celebrate in our journeying, so much to grieve, and receive just as it is. How am I feeling about that tonight, this season of Lent, this week after a couple days of beautiful snow, sunshine and alteration of rhythms? 

I opened a metaphorical door this week as Lisa and I reconnected via phone, planting a second seed of wanting to see her, wanting to be in physical space with her. I had actually knocked on that door last week, though it was more a knock and go quiet. The image that comes with a smile is a little girl ringing the doorbell and running away from the doorstep. :) We both heard it, I think, but we didn’t move into any direct conversation about it. This morning, I actually invited us to open the door and look in, though I had not anticipated or planned on it. Perhaps it was the visceral yearning that arose with the image/idea of sitting in front of a fire for an evening, sharing stories and pictures and more… I am glad for that time for her and I noticed my own yearning spike with the imagining… So...a door opened, and I’m curious about its movement, its landscape within, beyond.

These months have offered a familiar and regular sense of connection with Lis, via phone, but also the longest spells of not seeing her, of being unable to touch her, receive her hug, drop into the gaze... In many ways, absolutely nothing has changed in my sense of connection with her. I think of her regularly throughout the day, offering up a prayer when I do, sometimes texting to nudge in, often not texting in but smiling with the gift of her in my life. If I’m having a sad day, for whatever reason, sometimes I don’t text in and/or I feel a sense of lack, a wave of grief at how things have changed in our rhythms. I ‘see’ her life moving in new directions, sacred work I’m no longer directly connected to, with a feeling of fear and loss. Yet acceptance too. Breathing into nonattachment and prayer for whatever is our best life, hers and mine, ours. I recognize that several pathways of invitation have emerged in my own life with which she’s not directly involved either: embodied mythology, learning-walking with Dutchess, CrossFit… So we're connected as we've always been, and...in other ways, lots has changed.

I used to derive a lot of strength, even steadiness, within an idea of the two of us, an anam cara flow of being special, being necessary, being uniquely for-one-another in traditional and nontraditional ways. Devoted to the Sacred in one another--devoted to one another in the Sacred--with the passion and purpose our singular affection offered. Back then (and for years), if I didn’t get regular signals of this uniqueness, I felt threatened somehow. I felt grounded in the world because I knew who I was with her, in this Sacred Flow. I drew confidence and strength to BE more of who I am because she, we, held this extended energetic field together. [I don’t honestly know if this “idea of us” function(s)(ed) in this way for her too, though I suspect not. She seems less swayable inside, somehow, though we both smile at the very real phenomenon of “coming around again,” or “it’s my turn to feel overextended or vulnerable” now.] This “steadiness in the Idea” has been a governing storyline in me with her, with us, for as long as I can remember an ‘us.’ And it’s not untrue, in the end. But of course, it’s not the only idea, nor the only story of our Us.

I received a tremendous sense of visceral connection to my own body, simply by being with her so extensively these many years now. She is such a tactile person, and I desperately needed such normal tactile presence, friendship, deep belly love… For years. Decades, really. When I was unable to reach out to her, physically, or her to reach out to me, I could literally sense a panic attack starting. On the one hand, it’s endearing to yearn for someone so completely; on the other, it can get to be a heavy weight between human beings quite different from one another. This pandemic year has both forced and invited me to stay visceral, stay tactile, regardless of whether she is physically present with me. That's both a gift and (for me) a sense of loss too. Something in me felt Real or Alive because of my Need. I realize that the primary way I do this now--being in my body, for me--is CrossFit and dedication-health eating/food-prep, etc. My husband remains a largely untactile person, though I know he craves more human touch connection than we share. Touch for him is almost always sexual while touch is largely sensual for me, sexual sometimes. Nala shares her energetic field with me way more than my beloved Brian...and that’s okay, whether for now or for forever. So much of these years has been coming to love one another precisely as we are, without performatives or presumption. We are freer in this strange in-between time of a LOT of extensive time, he and I, with less tactile time. Lisa and I are freer with my own stability, steadiness here. I miss her. I yearn for physical space and time with her. And I trust it will come, feeling both familiar and quite different for us both. The part I wish were not true is that I can easily avoid intimate, vulnerable space now...and pretend it doesn't matter. I had to do that for so long, it's an easy defense-strategy for me. But then I turn insular and unresponsive, to myself or to others. I don't want to live my life like that...and yet I do, pandemic style. I know more ease inside if I just pretend my need to be seen/known doesn't matter right now...

It’s so very strange for me to feel a bit less woven into a daily-divine-sacred flow with Lis, though we continue to dip into moments, finding ourselves in sacred-listening like we do. This has both focused me to be more active, for myself, and it’s been a thing of grief for me too. I love finding ourselves in the serendipitous Flow of Invitations together, both unexpected, unexpecting, yet Met in the Sacred, together, and as individuals. I recognize now that it was easy for me to trust her sense of Leadings way more than mine, to not explore something if we were not both going to explore it. Neither of us want that for me, I know, but...it was easier. :) Now, I find myself noting invitations for me that may or may not come up in conversation with her at all. Feels strange, but also just right. Her sacred work has become spiritual direction listening for several hours a day each week. I don’t need as much ‘seeing’ as I used to, and she needs her energies for her work more than she used to. I do smile and remember how sometimes it’d be an hour a day, we’d find ourselves listening, praying aloud, wondering at the strange Energies that were pushing us along so forcefully sometimes… Whew! We’ve surely grown and we’re more efficient than we probably were. We can find ourselves dropping down unexpectedly, for a couple moments, before returning to the daily rhythm of the Now. It's not like we're in completely different rivers, but our trajectories are different, and there seems to be a sensitivity about language in our differences.

One of the most substantial internal changes for me here has been trusting we will be returned to one another, in physical spaces, as way opens for her, for me. For years, I would attempt to anticipate ‘by what next day/time’ we could be together again. Then there were the logistical, mostly unplanned, but generously convenient ‘swing by visits’ for a quick shower, cup of coffee, a hug as the day would unfold. I am a woman who needs more personable contact in her life than comes ‘readymade’ with my family choices. Brian doesn’t need to tend this for himself--he already has more personable contact in his work than he can often digest, as the introvert he is. But even before pandemic things, I knew I needed to tend this for myself. So, circles of women, quick touch-ins with Lisa, on-campus work things (usually last as a healthy strategy, as the community is not as easy to be in as ‘community.’) Today, months into the global pandemic, I can breathe easily and openly into days on end, not knowing when I’ll get to see her again, but trusting way will open. I can go for days now, not anticipating seeing much of anyone beyond Brian, Nala... CrossFit helps this for me, of course, but that's a different kind of 'seeing' space. Mostly, I can be in the rhythms of my day without the edgy or panicky energies that would sometimes rise in my body prior to several days with little outside personal contact planned. I don’t think I’m back to the PhD or academic-hermit days I used to craft for myself, in near-defiance against needing anyone at all, ever. I’m too thankful for overwhelming abundance I’ve been Given to know...really opening into it these last seven years. But I've been returned to an ease with extended solitary time I've not known for years.

I know I”m not the same person I was, nor is she, so Lisa’s and my rhythms post-pandemic will figure themselves out amidst all that is new for us both. Not least of which for her is a booming spiritual direction practice and incoming grandchildren, the economy plan (one set of twins :)). But eventually, I’m hopeful for easy swing-bys and visceral connections that always bring me more into myself than the various ways I tend to myself and body-learnings now. I have much less idea or presumption of who we are becoming in these days-months, but I have no less wonder and curiosity that she and I get to be in this life together, however we are. One-ing, and Two-ing, like we do.