December 3, 2021
Looking Back, Looking In
By Amba Gale
As the end of this year comes upon us, for many of us it is time to stop, to pause, to reflect, to look at our lives, and to be with those we love and have loved.
Covid, if we have listened in a certain way, has given us many Teaching lessons – gifts of discovering patience, living graciously with uncertainty, dancing with the unfolding of the world, experiencing the beauties of nature as a healing balm, experiencing grief, and loss, finding ways to live with our fears and worries in a way that they can be included, and perhaps, even, embraced, rather than become the steering wheel of our lives. It has been a time for creating compassion, finding ways in which we can flourish, tapping into our creative imaginations, and bringing gratefulness and appreciation to our every day, turning what is ordinary into what is extraordinary, through shifting our perception, like a lens on a kaleidoscope.
It has also been a time for some of us to experience, to move through, our loss and grief. When people pass, especially when people pass suddenly, or, when we look years later, we see that we have not said everything in our heart that there is to say, to fully express our love, our appreciation, even in small things that we would have wanted them to know. I have found that with people in my life who have passed, my relationship with them continues to grow, even though they are not here, physically, If I continue to bring them into my imagination and converse with them. Davide Whyte, one of my favorite poets, speaks to this, and I have taken his words to heart, and tried that practice on. You might want to do that too.
Before the year ends, you might want to explore this yourself. Take pen to paper and let your heart speak, whatever it wants to say to someone dear to you in your life who is no longer here with us, physically.
In my husband Don’s new CD, Looking Back, Looking In, he does just that: he speaks to his mother, who passed in 1979. He creates a healing for himself, a completion, a wholeness.
I have so appreciated hearing from so many of you throughout the year, after one blog posting or another, knowing you are out there, knowing you are listening, knowing you are reading, knowing I am contributing to you in some small way, or some large way, through my writing, or through our work together.
As a gift from me, and Don, as well, to you, here is that song, “Momma.” May it, in this secret, dark, and silent time of year, in your reflective space, contribute to your own inner journey with yourself and the ones you love.
