It does feel like I’m a reporter afield. The feeling of not being home just doesn’t go away.
We’re slowly accumulating the things that life requires in this world, all while wanting to skip it all and just get to the part where everything changes so that we don’t have to replace anything at all. There’s a sometimes brutal process of letting go, and I’m learning much from self-observation.
Last Friday was the first day that a crew would be going in the house to start removing the wreckage from the fire. By the time I got there, they’d been at it for 3 hours already. I walked into my now empty living room, complete with an unrestricted view of the burnt windows and peeled paint, exposed beams and the void space where the big picture window used to be.
In the driveway were two big dumpsters, one halfway loaded up with the partial remains of our downstairs living space. That was very weird, and a deeply sad experience, to be honest. Here I’d been saying that I could let go of everything as long as I’m with my daughter and my cats, but this event has shown me otherwise. There are always levels and stages to the letting go process. I imagine that the 5D experience would relegate most all of the angst and anxiety generated by the fire into grand moot territory.
The following days were spent retrieving anything else that didn’t deserve the dreaded dumpster death. Another aspect of my work at the house has been really pretty satisfying. I’ve been keeping a lot of my Dad’s stuff in the garage for years now, and as I looked over what was there, I seriously wondered why on Earth I still had it. Flinging those things into the dumpster was kind of the bomb, not to mention finally being rid of all the stuff sitting around because I either didn’t know what else to do with it, or I had guilt about putting it in a landfill. Think old cat beds, broken stuff, old headsets, etc.
Very freeing it’s been, after that initial shock. Here’s the thing about that, though…I’ve had help moving through the process. Remember I said that I would write an update about Nova? She’s really fine now, and the miraculous credit for that goes to Christopher Standing Bear. When I posted an update here from our second hotel saying that the very loud and disruptive cleaning of the air conditioners sent her into a panic, he wrote in offering to help.
We gratefully accepted, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that overnight, our survivor kitty came out to play and do her normal catly things. Of course, just as it is with us, everything is a process, and as I updated him to report on her behavior about things that still upset her (loud noises in particular), Christopher would do his thing again, and she would calm down. The duration and severity of her upsets became greatly reduced, and now she generally is her fine and lovely purring, playful self.
Helping our cat led to Christopher’s starting to work with the Young One, and eventually with me. Going to the house on that first dumpster day was pretty awful, but the next time I went, I just got to work clearing stuff out and flinging the unwanteds enthusiastically away…there was no trigger. I was still exhausted from it, but not weepy or taken up with sadness.
Yesterday was my final walk-through of the second floor before the destruction crew goes to work up there. I boxed up books that I wanted to keep and did a final grab of things I missed on the first five forays into saving stuff. In 2 ½ hours, not once did I feel like crying.
My next visit home will be on Saturday, when I meet the Habitat for Humanity folks who’ll come pick up the 20 unopened boxes of wood laminate flooring I’ve had sitting around for years. I laid that flooring in one room with it, myself, and I must say…I did an awesome job. I never got further with the project though, so now that material will be able to fulfill the purpose for which it was intended.
After that, my next visit will be when the first two floors are down to studs, all rooms emptied…except for the contents of the attic. The guys will take all of that down and put it in the living room for me to say toss or keep. Once that’s all addressed, the real fun begins.
That’s when we’ll meet with the contractor to discuss how we’d like to reconfigure our space and start making decisions about interior design. The worst part is over, you guys! After the gutting, the dumpsters go away, and in their place comes a POD to store the keeper things that will eventually get cleaned and returned to us.
I still haven’t opened all the boxes with our cleaned clothes. I mostly don’t feel like doing that, nor have I been super motivated to clean and organize the things we brought here to the rental house.
And not that I recommend this technique to anyone, but the fire diet has proven to be quite the effective one for me. I now weigh the same as when my high school freshman gym teacher put me on the scale all those long years ago. Life is funny. Imagine being a 17 year old and getting a glimpse of yourself more than four decades into the future, still skinny but sporting a few additional features that I’ll just call the seasoning of the self.
Anyway, I appreciate all of you being here with us through our phoenix dance and evolution. We feel your kind and loving energy. No doubt, there are many people in this world who’ve been dealing with unaddressed trauma (like, everyone?) somehow or other. We really are literally and collectively the walking wounded, because nobody escapes the Earth experience without some sort of damaging event that we can’t process alone.
You all know that this blog is not about promoting anyone’s business, but I would be remiss to not share our experience of Christopher’s energetic and spiritual assistance and guidance. Check out his website if you feel inspired. I can’t recommend his services enough, really. Once the heart of the matter and cause of trauma reveals itself by whatever means, he goes right to it to help rewrite the program.
https://bearfoothealing.org/
