It is sooooo easy, sooooo deep the need to want my son to choose life, that he should choose life as his body, mind, and spirit decompensate, as the desperate need for him to live and live a healthy life envelopes all of me. He's an 8 hour drive away, I don't have any idea where he is, don't know if he has his own phone or borrowing one, don't know what he means when texting he needs help. What do you need, I'll drive there, tell me please I feel the desperation of it all. When will he text again? More need to know, the needs are falling like torrential rains. Because I need him to choose life! How easy it is to have these wants, needs, and shoulds, and how easy it is that the stress of believing them unquestioned grows. However, what is true is that stress itself is the invitation, laying out the red carpet for Inquiry. Is it all true?
It's nearly impossible to just drop a thought, especially when life hangs in the balance, especially when it's my child. So, I don't try. I cry. I let that fear live, and I cry. It honors all of me, and it honors the situation. I know I can question it when all my beliefs, and reactions have lived their life too, not so scary anymore, it becomes a sacred experience of grief, of fear, of self-compassion. Doing this for me helps me hold the space for me, and for others, for my son. Sacred space, sacred feeling, sacred experience. The sacred shows up for me, holding me in it all, and holding my son in this too. In another quiet space, I wonder what else might exist other than the only story of needing my son to choose life as I wait for the next text that he'll go to the hospital. With the thought of needing him to choose life, I'm desperate. I'm in his business of what he chooses, a place I have zero control, not much influence at the moment even, hours away in another state, phone not working, magical thinking that if I need this enough that somehow energetically it will impact this situation, impact his choice, that somehow this need will help me. No, I simply and truly do not need this thought to help me, and it will not help my son to be in the stress of it. Instead, as I sit in silence, breathe and wonder what else is possible, who I'd be right here and now, in this crisis and without the thought I need him to choose life, there is more space for all of it, as is, as is! I am breathing, I am questioning my fears for truth. I know truth liberates me and my son from my imagined nightmares. I stop arguing with reality. He is on the streets, his mind and body affected by weeks, months, years of using drugs, does he even have the capacity to choose life when his body aches in pain and need of comfort that a drug can provide? What life? The life I think and imagine is best for him? Am I god here to now know what everyone needs, what their path is, to dismiss the many paths that any life can take, has taken? Who would I be, who am I without the thought of needing him to choose anything? Available. I need to choose life! For me, and for my son! This is the truest of all. Without my clarity, compassion, what I can contribute in peace and support, how I communicate from that place, we're at risk of worse conditions. I need to choose life, and show up in such a way that I am available and on purpose. I choose to welcome the life this fear and grief is apparently moving in me, I choose to question those fears. I know the truth will be revealed quickly, gently, and it can live in me. I choose that! I choose to give this renewed heart and mind to my son. I choose to be prepared if he texts again, to choose the drive to find him, scoop him up and get him wherever he needs to go, if he so allows. I choose his life if he welcomes my help. And I choose to understand that for now, he may not be able to choose life the way I think he should. These stories, assumptions, expectations, wants, needs and shoulds let go of their grip on me, and on my son. What remains, always in the revelation of Inquiry is Love. I love me this way, I love him this way as is, I send him love from this place, I am available for more love this way without the conditions that he make a choice I think he should make. I'm here for you sweet boy (because I'm here for myself). I'm here and we'll figure it out, together. It is so very true that the truth shall set you free, when you know it. Is it true that I need my son to choose life? No. Would it be nice if he does? Yes. What I really, really need more than that is love in the here and now, in the conditions of this reality here and now, to return to it in myself, to share it from this more peaceful place of meeting life as it is. It's been my experience that fear will most likely show up again, and again. And Inquiry can bring me directly to the truth where love lives. I choose that! Thank you, and so it is, and so it can be, and so it shall be. I choose life, I choose love. I choose to give that to my son. Text or no text, his choice or not, whatever may come. Drugs will not win here, do not win here. Love does! In gratitude, Joanne Richards January 28, 2022
1 Comment
Tamar Fagin
1/29/2022 01:48:22 pm
This hits home and is just what I needed to hear. I will save this to read over and over again as needed! Thankyou for this Joanne! 💖
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