Wake up! Wake up!
When the Challenge Brings Me Home
Many, many years ago, when I was happily married (the first time) and doing good work, important work, I would frequently refer to my life as Dorothy falling asleep in the poppy fields on the way to the Emerald City. It made no sense. I was clearly awake. I was on the front lines of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, assisting people in living and in dying. I had a very strong community around me. My life was good. Of course, chaotic and stressful in the way that any nonprofit social services can be and with an intensity that accompanies a pandemic. The latter, I think, we all know something about now, having survived 2020.
Even then, I knew there was no more important time – would never be a more important time – than the one in which I was living.* With every friend and every client that died, and every volunteer and every survivor with whom I engaged, my life was important. Every life mattered. History may forget us individually, but our stories would still be told. Bloody, bruised, and battered, this was all that mattered.
And still, the poppy fields were always in front of me.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Do not go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want. Do not go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Do not go back to sleep.
- Rumi
Four years into this work, I left to become a massage therapist. Others in AIDS were lasting, on average, 18-24 months. I had done well, and I needed to heal. I didn’t expect massage to become my profession, but it did. And part of my healing was assisting others who had suffered trauma: physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
And then, four years into this work, I went on a retreat in Tulum, Mexico. It was a training for Internal Family Systems, a psychological healing approach. While receiving a massage on the third day, I had the most extraordinary experience of feeling my head pulled up out of the water and breathing for what felt like the first time in years. I was on a table in a hut, mind you, but the somatic sensation was deeply visceral. At that moment, I knew I could not go under water again or I would die. I knew everything had to change. Everything.
Since then, I’ve had similar experiences, though never quite as dramatic, but with varying hues of intensity. My sister has said that I run away. But the truth is, I have always been running towards something, not away.
If there is such a thing as direction or fate, this is my life: Discovering how to stretch myself and stay awake. Over and over again, “the breeze at dawn has something to tell (me), do not go back to sleep.”
When I came to Italy in 2020, I was afraid. I hadn’t traveled outside of the country in nine years. I didn’t know if I could pull it off by myself. I didn’t know the language. Everything about the idea seemed daunting. At the same time, I knew I had to go. Something inside me was dying. Only in doing the difficult thing, the thing that scared me, could I survive. So I went, and five days later, Italy locked down. I stayed for four months, alone, and I became irrevocably bound to this place.
In Sicily, I discovered I was home. No one was more surprised by this than me. Yes, there is the landscape and the people and everything else that mirrors my early imprints and supports my research. But now, as I reflect, I realize there is something else. It is a similar home that I discovered when I returned to school and completed a PhD. And when I sold my house that I loved dearly and moved to Oklahoma five years ago. And even when I left my marriage and HIV/AIDS work. Every time I stretch myself, move forward into the fear, despite the fear, accompanied by fear, I find my way home.
My goal is still to live in Italy full time. It won’t be easy. It will, in fact, be difficult AF at times, for a huge slew of reasons. And this dream is still another year or two away. Still, I feel absolutely compelled to do this. My soul calls me home to myself through this place and through the experience of creating home here. I am called home through the difficulty.
I don’t know if Tom will join me and this, of course, makes it even more challenging. Certainly, he is accompanying me on the journey, for which I am grateful. But will he live here full-time? Probably not. Yet, my doing this, my courage to grow, directly affects him in positive ways. It has always been so. Only when I had the courage to leave my previous marriage was my wife able to step into the next perfect moment of her own life and marry the woman she has been with now for 23 years. Only when I had the courage to go back to school was I able to influence other students as a professor. Even my being in Sicily during the Covid19 pandemic, and writing about it, somehow – amazingly – inspired others, not the least of which was my cousin who left an abusive marriage.
The greatest gift one can give is their own transformation. – Lao Tzu
This isn’t grandiose. This is the butterfly effect. This is the hero’s journey. When we leave what is familiar and enter the unknown and conquer our own demons and dragons and resurrect ourselves in a new way, we vivify those around us. The boon we bring back is life. Our own life vivifies the community, the world.
I’m in Sicily now for a few days more and getting here was fraught with difficulties.
As I mentioned in the header of my last post, I had Covid for three weeks, and the resulting dehydration and GI issues landed me the ER. It was brutal. Amazingly, weakened as I was, I recovered enough to fly 8 days later to Chicago and attend a memorial service for a dear friend of 36 years. And then, on to Italy.
My flights were smooth enough but there were problems with my lodging near the Rome airport. The promised shuttle no longer existed and, unwilling to spend aprx $75 for a taxi, I had to figure out how to take the local bus and then walk 1.8 miles with my luggage on cobblestone streets. The next morning required the same problem-solving skills, only in reverse.
Then there was the last minute full-speed run to my gate at the airport. In my defense, it can be confusing when your gate isn’t announced until 25 minutes before boarding. While trying to board, I discovered I was in the wrong place. My flight was at another gate, at the same time, as far away from where I was in the A zone as possible. I had to run. Really run. Along the way, I lost a treasured golden bangle of my mother’s that somehow fell off my wrist.
But the real hiccup of this trip is that I am not well. Only four days into the trip, I woke absolutely convinced I had Covid. (Again? Still?). I tested negative, thank goodness. But then, I tested negative in Idaho and still ended up in ER a few days later with Covid. Now, after days of fatigue, head congestion, and a sore throat, I’m pretty sure this is just a head cold. But it’s a head cold I can’t seem to shake and so I am, again, back in bed.
There will always be glitches in life. Only when I fail to take myself out of my normal bubble are the glitches a problem. Ants invading my home in Sicily? Sick in a foreign country? Plans that fall through? None of this is really an issue. They’re just stories and opportunities. Glitches require me to stretch. To dwell in possibility. To learn and grow.
And this is why I’m here. What appears to be a challenge actually feels oddly comfortable and invigorating.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Do not go back to sleep.
Do the hard thing. Courage can bring you home.
* no more important time for me. There are many tragedies happening ALL the time, too many to list. I only mean that for me, losing my father and so many friends to AIDS, that moment in time will always be unparalleled.
Beautiful post, and timely too, as always. Heal. Blessings dear friend. Much love.
I hear ya. That same sort of drive has shaped my life. For better, or worse. But it's been something.