28
24 I made a list of things I knew in our little rental by the bayou.
25 I came home to 25 red velvet cupcakes.
26 passed quickly, hardly noticed it, I was preoccupied.
27 was a challenge. I did all I knew to do when I get overwhelmed – make a list.
Now, 28. Unlike previous years, I don't have much to say. No list of introspective wisdom or encouragement to a younger self. No cupcakes. It is just silence. I know less & less it seems. I've taken to reading. All summer long. Instead of talking, listening.
Easy beach reads like this and this.
Hopeless romantic reads on the seashore in the 1930s.
Books about our mothers.
The constant battle with creativity.
Always this one, my safety net to a deep, wild, intuitive world:
...if you feel you have lost your mission, your oomph, if you feel confused, slightly off, then look for the Devil, the ambusher of the soul within your own psyche. If you cannot see, hear, catch it in the act, assume it is at work, and above all stay awake—no matter how tired you become, no matter how sleepy, no matter how much you want to shut your eyes to your true work.
How did she know? The true work is not less because no one is paying attention. The true work is not more because everyone is paying attention. True is not more or less. It simply is. We must not fall asleep to our true work despite the ambusher of our soul tempting us to quit the mission.
In reality when a woman has a devil complex, it occurs exactly like this. She is walking along, doing well, minding her own business, and all of a sudden—boom! the Devil jumps out, and all her good work loses energy, begins to limp, coughs, coughs some more, and finally falls over. What we might call the demon complex, uses the voice of the ego, attacks one's creativity, one's ideas and dreams.
The hardest part to swallow about this is that both the soul and the ego have set up camp within us – they reside in the same place yet they can't get along. Both try to protect in our best interest but the ego's approach, or maybe instead the hubris, is rarely successful.
It takes goodly amounts of faith to continue at this time, but we must and we do. ...all elements of the psyche are pulling in one direction, in our direction, and so must we persevere with them. At this point it is a work moving into the homestretch. It would be so wasteful and even more painful to abandon it now.
It is a work indeed. You have scaled one beast of a mountain only to find the light from the newly found sun has moved behind an even taller mountain. You are in shadow again. I used to think the "shadow" meant I failed. Here I am again unhappy, discontent, crying on the bathroom floor.
What am I doing wrong? Why does it always lead to here? Will I ever find the right fit of happiness meant for me? Fortunately, this is not the way it works. I am not doomed to darkness.
All I need to do is acknowledge the sun rises and the sun sets; the sphere we are on makes it so in a daily rotation. It's as simple as acknowledging one revolution around the sun brings us both dark and light seasons. Both are a necessity in the natural cycle of living. The Earth and the way she moves is our breathing example.
May we follow Her. May I celebrate another revolution around the sun.
Excerpts from Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
