Don’t let go of 2020 before you harvest its Gifts
Gather the Gems of 2020 and Feel the Grief before you move on
Before you throw away 2020, gather the gifts and tuck them in your heart.
Soak up the resiliency you and so many others have had and let it flow deep into your bones. Store them in your genetic, ancestral data bank within your bone marrow for the next rounds of intense challenges and pandemics of future generations.
You may be thinking, Sounds cute and poetic, Celia, but how does one like, actually, get stuff in and out of the bone marrow data bank? Great question 🙂 I use my imagination, and a physically doing some shaking and repetitive dancing…get those bones vibrating. A little ritual can help, too.
While you are at it, how about honoring the people of our ancestry who have lived during the times of pandemics past? We have a shared experience with them now, we have a common language.
Write them a letter, say a prayer, recite a poem – anything you wish. If you feel inspired, call upon the reliance and assistance from them, and in the same way you would imagine future generations receiving your blessings, receive theirs.
Remember how you felt during the rise of Black Lives Matter?
If you have a certain amount of white privilege, recommit to the transformations you wished for in the creation of a more equitable world where the move vulnerable people among us are always valued and protected. Do the anti-racist work, and donate if you can.
I cannot give advice to those of who have experienced racial violence and oppression, that is not my place. But I can see your bodies and beings have taken on a lot of pain, sadness and grief. Remember shared pain is lessened pain.
Emotional Clearing of what is not yours
Clear off the excess stress and emotional burdens that is not yours. Blow it out your heart, all around in 365 degrees. Release all which is not yours but came in along the collective waves of bodily burden and extreme stress.
I do this frequently, but still, not enough. If you are highly sensitive or an empath, or very much aware of what is going through the collective, you may need to do emotional clearing often. The following is one way to do this.
Emotional Clearing and Egg of Protection Practice 101
- Sit, lay down or be still. Come into the present moment.
- Breathe into the top of your head, as if there is a round door that is opened, letting air flow in when you breathe in.
- Bring that breath to your heart center by physically feeling your upper chest expand.
- Exhale and imagine that your breath is going out through a place at your heart center. As you blow out, see/feel/think that your are breathing away all that is not your own, things you picked up from other people or the collective. I start with the center of my sternum and work around the chest/ribs/back clockwise. It takes somewhere around 8-12-16 breaths to make my way around the chest. Don’t forget the back of the heart!
- That’s the technique: breathe in through the top of the head, breathe out the heart center, blowing away that which is not yours. Do that until it feels complete.
- Affirm that you anything that is not yours that is able to easily be released has been released.
- Breathe into your heart center and feel what it is like now. This is your own space. Feel it as a piece of you, that you have ownership over.
Create an Egg of Protection
Imagine an field of protection around you, like an egg that is of light or whatever image captures you. This is your natural energy field. Just imagine it and know it’s there – that’s all we need to do.
You do not have to work to make it or hold it – that would be very draining! It is natural and inherent. We all have warmth around us that comes from our bodies; this is the edge of where we being and the world. A thermal camera could take an image of this edge.
This egg of protection is not just a physical boundary though. It can work energetically in unseen ways, too. Or at least it can when we use our imagination to explore it and what it means and feels like to us (to learn about the imaginal realm check out the work of Robert Moss). The egg of protection is a place where external thoughts and feelings that are not ours are filtered out.
The edge of our being/body is like a part of our energetic/spiritual immune system, tagging things that are not ours as “not me”, and if it is up and running well, it will stay out there. We still can feel and be in relationship with others and the world, but we don’t have to take it on and add it to our workload, so to speak.
But it is no problem if things get in that aren’t ours – this is not about “purity” or perfection or control. That is normal. We have the choice and ability to clear it off.
Grieve the grief that IS yours, fully, with love and space
All of the heart aches and chest/lung grief that is part of the normal, natural ways of us all, especially in the midst of so much loss- what to do with that?
With the sadness regarding what happened to the most vulnerable among us, some at the hand of systemic violence, as well as our own personal grief?
Grief needs time
Give that grief as much space and time as it needs. Please don’t move on from this year without feeling and expressing your grief.
To grieve is a most human process (or earthly, I suppose animals grieve too?). It is a part of our biology, and this year many of us did not get to make the physical, in-person connections our bodies and souls craved. There is a reason we have held death rites, burial rituals and grieving practices since ancient times; these practices gave our body a way to physically process the emotional intensity of grief.
Grief cannot be rushed or pushed. But it does need to be held, embodied and hopefully shared. Who can you share your grief with?
Share your grief
Again, this has been a massive challenge this year, as people cannot gather with their loved ones as they are sick or dying, nor can they convene with kin. We are pushed to being creative in how our grief is expressed and shared, and I am sorry that we are forced to innovate in this direction. Still, grief is grief is grief and it has needs of its own.
Honor EVERY bit of 2020 to excavate the Gems of this year
Before you say goodbye to this year, hold a vigil now for all that is heavy in your heart with love and honor, for yourself and others.
Then the celebration that follows will be all the more full and rich.
Tend to the house of your soul and
Spending a little bit of time exploring the places where aspects of bodies, hearts, minds and spirit are still threaded into the fabric of 2020, listening to them, seeing them, and honoring them may not seem like a fun, uplifting thing to do. Yet it is necessary for healing, and honestly, for trauma reduction.
This a Plutonian exercise. Going down into the deepest depths of this year, which in itself is the healing “work”. The journey is the work. But the point of the journey is to find the beautiful gems of resiliency and durability. When we return from the Plutonian excavation, we hold the gems of 2020 their brilliant light will guide our way into the creation of the year (and years) to come.
Happy end of 2020 to you all!!
If you’d like to read about how Hawthorn can help us with healing, check out this article.
