So, I could only see her back.
Which meant she couldn’t see my face. Making it hard for her to see how her words had somehow hit the mark.
We were musing about the journey. This crazy path called life. The mountains we climb. The traverses we cross. The pot holes we bump. Sometimes over, sometimes around, sometimes through.
We mused the random polarities that are inherit. Creating and guiding the course of change. Consciousness thrives on change. And it’s change that makes us grow. But not all things that grow are good.
Some growing things are far from good at all.
It was not only her words, but how she said them to me. With her eyes I couldn’t see but knew were filled with concern for my own. “You have to do something that brings you joy Rache. It’s the joy in your life that will be the first thing that dies.”
Was it because she said my name? Or voiced the fears held in my life? Or was it the one word in the midst of all the others?
Joy.
It was this one word that stopped my breath. That made me silently cry. She couldn’t see my heart had stopped. She couldn’t see my belly tight. She couldn’t see because I didn’t let her. I didn’t even let myself. I just held her word in my suspended space. The single syllable seeping through my skin. To feel into the change that was happening inside.
Think heart openers, pelvic openers and forward folds.
The oxford dictionary defines joy as “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness”. In sanskrit it is known as “annandha”. The buddhists believe if we love someone, we simply want them to be happy. Compassion is when we want them to be free from pain.
It was the word Joy that I felt inside. The noun as well as the verb. Somewhere hidden within. Somewhere that I held onto so tight – I had dared not let go.
Wondering if I did let go, might I in fact fall apart?
I kept my tears quiet. Hidden softly in her words. Her strong counsel so real. Her life then, where my life is now. The fine lines of change around her eyes, now starting to weave around my heart.
And in my suspended silence, I really tried to listen. To the change that was happening within. To what was growing on around me. To what I was yearning for inside. With her one word, my one acceptance. One of hope. One of faith.
Of where we are. Of why we are. Of who we are.
How the journey reminds us to support each other. To love each other. And that the joy of being able to journey up, down and around together is the part where we can share our joy together.
Really together.