The Art of Unexpected Transitions
What have we lost that turned out to not be a disaster?
Hello! I hope you’ve had a good week. Mine has had its ups and downs as I continue to have dizziness and fatigue, adjust to my new circumstances, and begin a new semester that is already moving my writing in new directions.
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In the background of a busy writing life, I’ve been thinking about how to mourn, how to let go, how to move forward, as the daylight increases a bit each day. It’s now fairly light when I rise at 7:15!
Unexpected Transitions
Then yesterday evening I felt in need of a little Elizabeth Gilbert. Do you ever feel that way? Her “Letters from Love” never fail to make me feel less alone in the messy parts of life. So I picked a video at random, and it could not have been more pertinent or uplifting. She writes on the subject of “unexpected transitions,” an apt theme for me right now, and perhaps for you too. I encourage you to read it all or, better yet, listen to her read it. She writes, from the Spirit of Unconditional Love:
Trust that something extraordinary can always be birthed from the ashes of perceived loss.
Even when the greatest losses strike you — and yes, we see you remembering Rayya now, and her terrible absence — trust us. Trust whatever is happening. Trust that slammed doors and broken hearts and shattered expectations are birthing grounds and invitations for astonishing waves of transformation, and opportunities for ballistically fast evolutionary growth.
. . . . Remember, too, what Byron Katie taught you: Love What Is.
Shed your doubts, shed your fears, and trust. There is a process to everything, there are multiple strands of reasons for everything, there are new doorways opening to new universes at every moment — if you trust, trust, trust.
Ah, thank you, Liz! I’m working on trusting that health will return and I will find myself in a new place richer than the one I was in.
Then this morning, I opened a new book I picked up a few weeks ago.
I’ve been wanting to read more poetry and I’ve been trying to incorporate a poem into my daily practice. The poem for February 8 came at the perfect time for me as well: Elizabeth Bishops’s “One Art.” Do you know it? I did, but this time, after two and a half years of wandering and successive transitions and losses, it felt different to me, as if I could have written it myself (if I happened to be a brilliant poet like Elizabeth Bishop, which I definitely am not).
I can’t reproduce it here, for copyright reasons, but you can find the poem here. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47536/one-art
It begins:
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Now, in the comments, I invite you to share something you’ve lost that has not been a disaster (although it may have felt like it at the time). What new universes opened to you after losing something that you valued? I can’t wait to hear your reflections on this!
Much love to all of you in your own transitions,
Anne
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No other way but through. I'm not sure the origin of that phrase: I first heard it spoken by a woman facing the return of metastasized breast cancer. A little over 8 years ago I faced an enormous forced transition when my husband of 30 years was killed in a road accident. We had been looking forward to planning retirement, travel, returning to things we'd enjoyed when we first met-- instead, I have learned to take on life alone and (mostly) enjoy it. Life, I am learning, is loss. It is inevitable: we are finite beings. Yet, we also walk in eternity. It surrounds us. Occasionally it breaks through. If it is love, it is an austere kind of love. I am under no illusions that my singular life is of much importance to anyone at all except me; but to me, of course, it is precious. The journey is precious. And life, after all, is beautiful!
Beautiful writing from you today. I thought I'd gone through two major traumas - the unimaginables - two harrowing events my loved ones went through. One survived and the other is a twenty-year cold case, but I had more transformation to go through. Eight years ago, I was involved in a near-fatal car wreck in the middle of the Baja desert after whale watching. It took five abdominal surgeries in fifteen days to help me survive from blunt-force seat belt trauma. The seats in the rental van didn't have shoulder harnesses. The event showed me that unexplained miracles are also part of the transformation. Today if you saw me, you'd never imagine anything happened to me. The Boss (the God of your understanding) rewards courage and paved the way during each tragedy by putting things in place that made things better and more helpful. I'm writing a memoir. This is year five of the process. That's been one of the hardest things I've ever done yet the most rewarding. On the other side of a loss is love. It's always there.