Covid-19 – JoyBasics

releasing the old

When we hold onto the things, places, and people that we love for too long, we restrict our own growth and evolution. We remain grounded like a caterpillar who refuses to transform, believing she would not be safe if she lifted off the ground and was free to fly.

Our planet is in a state of transformation. We are not alone facing growth and evolution. As a global community we are experiencing a rebirth. Rebirth is messy, painful, confusing, exhausting, yet fruitful. We are in the process of bearing new fruit to be enjoyed by all. But first we must go through labor pains.

Since Covid landed on our shores, I have been navigating a personal upheaval of growth and evolution. The deep loss of a child, a move to the Midwest, early retirement, and the vast profound loss of my childhood summer home, handed down since my great-grandfather’s passing. The two cottages now had to be sold. We could no longer afford the taxes.

They held places where I sat with my grandmother and watched Perry Mason, in black and white; where I braided her long silver hair, after she let down her bun for bedtime. Where our family gathered for meals in a Sears catalogue cottage on the hill overlooking blue Crystal Lake below and Lake Michigan, appearing as a bowl of soup on the horizon.

Places in my aunt’s cottage, where mom, dad, aunts, uncles and cousins gathered on the cement patio with their clinking cocktails, while us younger ones nibbled on nuts, olives, crackers and cheese. Where, as an adult, I watched glorious sunrises reflect on the glassy lake, inspiring me to write from the soul.

Last month, the great old cottonwood tree in the center of the hill finally released one of its large lower branches to the ground, no longer able to support the weight, the circumference of which was twice the size of my waist. Where we carved love initials in the upper branches, where we climbed higher for a better view of the lake. The tree had lived a long giving life, but had to be taken down for safety reasons. It had been planted generations ago on the site of an old wooden outhouse. Good fertilizer for growth. Its demise symbolized the end of an era.

In a recent acupuncture appointment, I asked my acupuncturist to set me up with needles that would allow for letting go or something of that nature. With needles in place, she dimmed the lights and left the room. As I lay there on the heated massage table, relaxing, I heard the word, “Surrender.” And then, “There is grace in surrender.” And then, “Let yourself be lifted from the old.”

That final phrase, I slowly realized, put a positive spin on the process of letting go. It indicated that I had been burdened by the old. And, in many ways, I had been.

It is time to break out of the cocoon, and be free to fly.

Womb Life

When we think of human lifecycles, we might think in terms of infancy to elderly. But there are other cycles or changes, not discussed in biology, that are unpredictable, yet they are waiting in the wings at any stage of life.

For 23 years I was an administrative assistant at a college in New England. When covid hit in March of 2020, we were all sent to work from home. I loved it! I felt like the introverts of the world had won the lottery.

The following fall, they wanted us to return to the office. I did not want to go back. Covid cooties! I prayed for an offer of early retirement. It came. They offered. I accepted.

I had been working part-time for my daughter remotely as an executive assistant. Now that I had more free time, she increased my duties, my pay, and my hours. Awesome. I loved working for her, and being in touch with her daily. Our close relationship got even closer.

She had been battling breast cancer off and on over the years. We thought her double mastectomy would finally be the end of it. But in October, the cancer returned. It had metastasized to her liver. More chemo.

Around that time, my husband accepted a better position with his company that required a move to their headquarters in the midwest. He’d have to fly back and forth on weekends until we moved. The job started in January 2022; I started packing up the house.

By March, we were loading furniture and boxes into moving pods. One Sunday amid the chaos of friends helping us empty the house, I received a text from my daughter’s wife that she was failing fast. I dropped what I was doing and flew to Brooklyn, a four hour drive. Halfway there, I got a text that she had passed. I stayed down there for the week to help with the granddaughters until their dad took them in.

I had lost my daughter, my job, and soon my house. I just kept going through the motions of moving, packing, tossing, donating, selling, cleaning, and searching for a place to land. We still hadn’t found a house to move into.

Finally in May, we closed on a house. We sold our New England home in June, made the final trek to the midwest, and moved into a new house, in a new area where I knew no one.

My identity had been shaken up like craps dice. I used to be an administrative assistant, mother, crafter, songwriter, and performer. Over the years, I had co-founded and sung in a top-forty band, formed a four-woman a cappella group, and created Melinda Marie, a stand-up comedy act. In my junior year of college (at age 63), I wrote and performed a one-woman musical.

Now, in my new life, there is silence. I’m now drawn to local libraries and reading books. Meditating. Yoga. Practicing mediumship. Now there’s an abundance of alone time to go within. Plenty of time for healing and grieving. Reacclimating.

Soon, fall will fall into winter when I usually hibernate inside. It’s like I’m in a womb, preparing for some kind of rebirth. My new identity is yet unknown, no sneak preview. The Universe has me on a “need to know” basis.

I feel no inkling of a desire to be out there performing…or hunting for a meaningless job for that matter.

Womb life. Kept in the dark. I’m being held in the warm belly of the Universe until it’s time for a rebirth. A new life cycle. (I kinda feel like sucking my thumb. Is that wrong?)

2020 Vision

The year 2020 has been a huge reset button. A year of truth-telling, shining light where there was darkness.

My sensitive nephew became my beautiful niece. My step-daughter left an oppressive and emotionally abusive relationship, my colleague went public about a festering issue at Smith College.

For me, being forced to work from home since March, gave me the bandwidth to reexamine life and come into my own.

Without the 40 minute commute each way, I had more time to give to the things I love: crafting and building my website.

I realigned with Source and filled my heart with gratitude. I produced guided meditations and visualizations to help ease fears for myself and others. This has been a time of rebirth and self-re-examination. My purpose became crystal clear:

“Use your gift of clairaudience to help others. Come out of the shadows publicly as a psychic channeler to give more readings. Release self-doubt and fear of reproach.”

There’s no more tolerance for lies and deception. We are embarking on a new decade, a new way forward. Going backward is not in the cards.

How has 2020 changed you for the better? What’s your 2020 vision for your own future? What are your unique gifts bestowed upon you to inch humanity forward?

Up at 3 a.m.

There’s so much unrest in the world! The pandemic and police brutality BOTH affect communities of color. It’s heartbreaking! I know that’s a grave understatement, but I’m feeling the pain for all people.

Spirit Guides respond:

The positive is that Yes! This is being exposed finally in a BIG way! Change is bumpy, disruptive of status quo and routine. There is national outrage more than ever. Good! There should be. Let this play out without fear. Change is difficult and slow to move. It requires pandemics, crises, “earthquakes” to move mountains.

There will be lives lost, but we will emerge fresh, stronger, changed as a society. The final push! T will show his true colors in a crisis, both with the pandemic and with riots and protesters. He already has. Biden will prevail in November because the world will be ready. It can only withstand so much darkness before demanding Light. Biden is the lesser of two evils and people will want and are ripe for change and leadership they can get behind and feel safe with. T has shown the opposite which has helped fuel this eruption and his own demise, ironically.

Roll with the rattle of change. It always brings a brighter, better outcome. Love is the common denominator. Love is the larger force in the world; we just don’t hear about it on the news. We hear about the less than 1% who are lost in hate–of themselves first and ultimately of others.

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” ~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Importance of Hugs

I never knew the importance of hugs until covid-19 kept us six feet apart. My hug-o-meter is on E. Running on fumes. Easily angered or on the brink of tears watching American Idol.

Yesterday, I graduated from Smith College. The commencement–a day of pomp and circumstance–took place outside my house on the deck. My husband set up a big screen TV to help give me the feeling of being at a real commencement. Soft breezes nudging my thin black gown.

Like many graduation ceremonies this May 2020, it was virtual. No picking up my sister at the airport. No making beds for my daughter and two granddaughters to stay a night or two. I felt un-tethered, texting them to make sure they didn’t miss the flash of my photo and name on the screen.

Names and faces flew by at record speed. No walking up the stairs and across the stage to exchange handshakes for well-deserved diplomas. No flashing cameras held by proud and teary parents. At the end, my husband videotaped me as I threw the mortar board up, into the backyard.

I felt the absence of my parents more deeply than the respective days they died. I’m 64. Still hoping they’re proud of me. Still wanting Mom to help me don my regalia. Maybe it was their spiritual presence that overwhelmed me with grief as I dressed in the bedroom alone before the big event. No hugs.

When the commencement ended, I ceremoniously moved my tassel from right to left. They never instructed us when to do so. I guess they assumed it would just be done. But we were watching from all parts of the globe at different times of the day and night. I felt disconnected. There was no patchwork of live faces on the screen–like on American Idol–with whom to share this rite of passage.

When the screen turned blue, we packed up wires and tissue boxes, went in the house, and watched TV. But not before I got a hug from my husband who said, “I’m so proud of you.”