Making Change In The Context Of National Crisis.
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If you lose your partner, the common wisdom is you don’t make any major changes for three years.
Not unless you want to go way off the stress test charts, and maybe expire yourself. But no, my beloved Norwegian husband is not six feet under. And I thank God for that!
Trond and I are alive all right, but there is a pall hanging over us, which you too must be feeling. It is exactly as if there has been an unexpected death, or two, in our family — one in the world family of which we are all a part, the other in our aging family of two down on the farm.
The first death of which I speak is the demise of nearly every value and ideal I — and I dare say we, as a people — hold dear, following the election of Mr. Donald J. Trump as President.
One hideous, destructive misstep and outrageous Cabinet appointment follows another. And lie follows lashing lie, the President projecting his odious deceit and distorted reality onto the media, the former president, and anyone who threatens his vulnerable, frightened self.
Day by day, the very ground on which we thought we stood is being yanked brutally out from under us, as a shocking percentage of us still gleefully cheer Donald on.
Worse…those who, if the tables were turned would be making a terrible uproar, are unwilling — almost to a man (and, sadly, woman) — to utter a bleeping peep. All the while, the boy emperor struts his forlorn, naked self about the land, pillaging and pillorying as he goes.
In this new kingdom, which must not become the new normal, fear reigns. And wherever there is abundant fear, love and its sister, compassion, must be invoked like never before. It’s the one and only antidote. We who refuse to close our eyes and shut up in the face of massive injustice and unkindness must be all in for love.
Our campaign to bring love to the fore needs to begin, as all love must, with a self-love so powerful we’ll have to break our hearts open and bathe in it, so as to shower love on others. Not an easy assignment in these disruptive, destructive times.
The need for extreme self-love brings me to the second death. It’s happening right here, as Trond and I move into the late stage of life. That death is the conclusion of 45 years of our lives — and a way of life — we took for granted, until we recently began to dismantle it.
The second death got underway soon after we returned this winter from the West Coast, where we’d gone to find a new home. Both kids and our four grandchildren are all now settled in California. The plan was to move to join them. The self-loving thing to do, we thought.
Here’s the rub. To move to California, we have to sell our farm, the sanctuary we have called home for almost a half century. On these hallowed 55 acres, with its 205-year-old stone house, barn and five outbuildings, we have lived and loved, birthed and raised our babies — and a herd of black angus cattle.
We have chased stubborn cows through blizzards, and watched hungry sheep make short work of flower beds. We planted 500 saplings and saw them grow 30 feet tall.
We tended a vast veggie garden and reveled in generations of bluebird and cardinal fledglings. We cherished and buried countless horses, dogs and cats (yes, Trond dug graves for the horses). We have welcomed family and friends to the guest quarters built by Trond and son in a classic barn-raising, a sacred space where I write and which housed a woman’s meditation circle.
A month ago, our wonderful children dropped everything and came to help us clear it all out, all but the furniture, artwork and books, which stay till the house sells.
Trond said it felt like a funeral. For him, it meant sorting through decades of recollections stirred up by sheds full of equipment, tools, lumber, nails, screws, and detritus large and small. Not to mention Grenager family treasures and photographs from his childhood in Norway, which he had shipped back after his mother died decades ago, but never opened. Phew!
Nearly everything he touched evoked early memories or represented a project completed, half-finished or imagined but unlikely to get done now that we’re elders and moving on. The kids have gone back to their busy lives. But we are still filling a second dumpster, after we throw whatever burns onto a great bonfire. Yesterday the contents of the basement went up in smoke.
The attic was where I lost it. Weeding through boxes and files became a heart-rending life review. One afternoon, while the others worked outside, I sat alone on a broken chair by an open attic window, chilled but fascinated by what was left of me amidst the dust, debris and sun rays.
For hours I devoured my creations, from Mayflower Hotel ads in my copywriter days, to elaborate proposals — for a Master’s thesis and syndication of my Philadelphia Inquirer column. There were dozens of articles and a proposal for a book approved by a top publisher which I chose not to write. There was a play, and many unrealized pitches to share my work.
I turned up thick issues of a newsletter I edited for the Philadelphia Board of Education, a publication that garnered awards and congratulatory letters galore, all of which I seem to have kept. I unearthed my letters to the editor, published in faded Time and Newsweek magazines.
I spent the most time pouring over countless files documenting my 20 intense, transformative years as a Kripalu devotee, Yoga teacher and Network regional leader. I found fine writing about Yoga that I had done for the guru’s never-published book, years of detailed student lesson plans, and outlines for the support group leader workshops I was terrified to lead.
Most compelling were warm, supportive letters written to me, by long-deceased family members, sometimes forgotten friends, bosses, colleagues, even Superintendents of Schools — Philadelphia (where I worked) and Oakland (where my grandkids were enrolled, of all things).
I am pretty sure I didn’t take in all the kudos way back then, when I needed it most. But I found those kind words deeply moving now. Most poignant of all though were the dozens of handwritten epistles from two men. Both loved me so much it nearly broke my heart to read their words all these 50 years later, not least because I probably broke their hearts all those years ago.
By the end of my attic afternoon, I felt as if I had been watching a monumental movie about someone else’s life and, okay, a little like I’d been attending my own funeral. I was astonished and cheered by the richness of the life I had lived. Did I really do all that?
But I was at least as sobered — and saddened — by how utterly over those many life chapters are. Putting them to rest had the finality of death. Where did that life go? Who has it helped me become? What now?
So here we are, Trond and I, down to the bare bones, in pretty much every sense of that phrase. Things have been cleared out and stripped away, and it should be time for us to go — if not yet to the grave, to California to start a new life. But we are not sure we can do it.
Having relegated the stuff of our lives to the funeral pyre, and that against the backdrop of our country’s horrifying democratic demise, may have been enough upheaval for now. Tearing ourselves from this solid, familiar ground we call home for an uncertain future far away could well send us off those stress charts — and sooner to the grave than need be.
Moving to California right now might just be one death in the family too many. We’ll see.
Please add your voice to the conversation. Do you, too, find it hard to make changes in the context of our national crisis? How are you loving yourself through this challenging time? Have you ever felt as if you were attending your own funeral when a life chapter ended?
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Suzanne Grenager is a sister-seeker, awakener and scribe with a well-honed gift for helping people see, appreciate and express their particular greatness. Off to teach and travel in India before the Beatles, she followed a breadcrumb path starting as an Annenberg School NBC Scholar and Philadelphia Inquirer columnist. A breakdown following the death of her oldest friend led her to Kripalu Yoga, which she practiced, taught and wrote about in Yoga Journal and at SpiritSite.com. Certified in the body-mind Rubenfeld Synergy method, Suzanne was an early transformational life coach. And in 2012, she screwed up her courage, held her feet to the fire and published Bare Naked at the Reality Dance. It’s her achingly honest book about what it takes to wake up, fall in love with ourselves, and make the difference we’re born and dying to make. She hopes you’ll visit her blog.
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