… it comes…

… and it goes…

and we are often reminded that “if we blink we will miss it.”

But what exactly is it that we will miss?

I, like most folks in this western society, have grown up in a world where time dominates. The clock is the almighty ruler of our waking and sleeping, our work and play, our meals and snacks, our rest and worship, our education and much of our life experience.

Clocks have been reminding us of the passage of time since the 14th century…

… and as the years have passed we have created for ourselves easier and quicker ways of staying constantly in…

… the race…

against time, with time, for time….. but what is time? As I write in this current moment I can hear the second hand tick of my old clock in the distance… This tick reminding me that seconds are passing and there really is just not enough time to get everything done in my day. Excuse me while I go and silence the tick that is now not serving me in any way….

Okay, I am back and I must say I find it very interesting how I was previously unaware of the ticking of my clock until I began writing this piece. A noise that I had once used to help me sleep and calm my nightmare nerves is now a disruption to the stillness that I have come to find so valuable. Without the sound of the ticking clock, what new sounds do I hear? The waves rolling on the beach are louder, and I hear the chirping of birds that I am not sure I heard before. I can hear the steady purring of my cat as he sleeps beside the open window taking in the warm spring sun. But most of all…. I feel my pulse slowing to a calmer pace.

I woke this morning with an old style movie playing in my mind…. of how we once simply rose with the rising sun…

and rested under the glow of the moon… our bodies in rhythm with nature….

Oh, for the days when seasons guided our hands to the plow and to harvest, to work and to rest….

But alas, time has brought us to this place in history where the clock decides our rhythm and we no longer flow. How is it we came to giving so much power to something that is inanimate yet it functions as a dictator?

So, here I am, making daily choices, while being considerate of others, to take back the power that I have given the clock. How do I find my way to healing my inner wounds and being present with my grief and my joy if I allow the clock to determine when and where my grief is allowed? The lack of time and the chaotic busyness of our society has silenced our sorrows and our stories, and the saddest part is… we have allowed it. I look around me and I see the magazine articles and the book covers and all the social media…. pushing the image that the successful people are the busy ones wearing a plastered smile. Right? I used to buy into that whole message…. and it cost me my whole Self. Always too busy to fit in the extra time needed to sit in the presence of my true Self, and sadly, everyone around me was in the same sinking boat with a large clock at the helm. I needed out of that boat. If I was ever to find the me I was looking for then I was gonna needed to jump ship and gather whatever floating thing I could find for a life raft.

and that I did….

I took off my watch one day when a fitness coach told me I looked at it every five seconds. In taking off my watch it seemed that I took worry off with it. I stopped driving against the clock always afraid of being late (which I think might make me a better driver?) and suddenly found myself being early. I began to eat when I was actually feeling hungry and lost ten pounds… funny how that works. I now rise with the sun and rest with moon and even though I dream some terrible dreams of my own trauma story, I feel more in touch with the world around me than ever before. I work hard when the sun shines and I love to watch what grows in the cool of the day as I sit in the late evening sun. I find myself feeling a deep sense of gratitude in all things, especially in the depth of how air now moves so freely through my breath.

Slowing down, as I have, has allowed me to listen to the world around me and to that which is within me. I have heard many stories this past few years about sorrows and wounds that time has not healed. Stories that have been silenced under the belief that time heals everything. Stories that need to be spoken and silences that need to be broken. In our race against the invisible man-created competitor, we have silenced hearts and become to busy to listen to stories. When we got too busy to listen we forgot that stories are the truest way to teach.

Time, I have been told, is a “great teacher” and that “all things come in time.” But if we wait for time to teach us, I am afraid, all we will learn is that we have lost the most important things. It is not time, that forever elusive thing we lack, that will teach us anything nor give us anything. We learn by listening, seeing, experiencing. Listening to our inner voice, listening to the stories that fill the void in the world around us, listening in the stillness and the quietness. What needs to be silenced is the outspoken media that fills our space with nonsense, igniting fear and panic, creating an unsettled striving that will supposedly settle our inner longings, creating social distancing and a false sense of safety. Time, as it passes, is not healing or teaching…. it is simply leaving us empty and tired from striving for more and racing to keep up.

There comes a point for all of us….

when time will run out…

and when it does, what will we say of it? Will we wish for more?

I have recently heard the story of young girl whose time ran out way too soon. She was five years old and a joy in her parents hearts. One moment her laughter rang through the air and suddenly…. time stopped. I asked her parents, whose grief has endured for over fifty years, if there came a time when the depth of their loss had eased…. but not a day passes without her memory and the tears of what never was…. “would she have had children?” “What would she be like?” “Would she look the same with her long curly hair and big brown eyes?” “What would she have grown to become?” These questions will never be answered and, for these parents, time has not healed this wound. I think often of the story of this little girl and her short life reminds me of the precious moments I have had with my own children and grandchildren. I am reminded to remain grateful for every breath that I get to share with others. It also saddens me as I am all too familiar with loss and being witness to the passing of days, weeks, and months where wounds grow deeper and deeper and silence becomes the norm.

Time truly is an essence. True time is not measurable and cannot be saved nor used in advance.

Experience has taught me that the hands of time do not go round a dial of various forms of numbers….

but rather those hands create the beauty that surrounds us….

and calls for us to rest awhile…..

So as I journey ever deeper into the healing that time did not provide, may I always be mindful of the precious essence of the moments that I have been blessed to live and breathe in.

I write today in memory of my cousin Sonja. Many years after you have gone you have become a blessing to me. Within your short story is a love that is so true, so deep, and so precious and I am deeply grateful for you. You remind me that time is not what matters….. for a day is a thousand and a thousand a day.

in gratitude,

Kim Lehmann

Really worth…

a thousand words???

Yes, I really believe a picture is worth a thousand words and…. I also believe a single word is worth a thousand pictures….

Anyone who has lived knows what a word can conjure up in the mind, a flashback so-to-speak, creating stress or joy and all the negative and positive collections of self-talk that we employ to explain us to ourselves. The pictures that race forward from our memories and flood our present thoughts are miraculous in my thinking. Miraculous simply because it proves the complexity of our brains. We know that pictures can contain many symbols that “trigger” word associations and words can “trigger” many picture associations that gather our entire life experiences and brings them all forward to present time, often without warning. And, depending on the “flashback,” it may get stuck repeating one scene over and over like a scratched vinyl record or run through a loop of scenes like the old movie reels before they were cut to a second reel and they would go round and round and continue playing the same movie.

So….. as often as pictures are worth a thousand words…. words are worth a thousand pictures. Words trigger our minds to race through our incredible bank of memories and bring forth pictures from what can feel like a thousand years of experience.

Pictures help us remember words and words help us remember pictures. This is both precious and it is painful. I love that I easily remember the faces of my babies though they have long since grown. I hate that I remember the faces of my abusers. I value the intelligence of my brain to remember pictures of medical algorithms when I need to treat a patient in an emergency. I am challenged by the capacity of my brain to replay the emergency over and over causing me to question my decisions.

Flashbacks, caused by a word or picture, unsettle our hearts and minds and seem to transport us to a place and time we would rather forget, but, the brain, as miraculous as it is, does not care to hide that which caused us pain any more than it hides that which caused us joy.

I have spent many, many years trying to hide, ignore, and reject the painful memories of growing up in a family such as mine.

I felt worthless (a mothers lack and abuse of words are strikingly powerful) before I knew what it was like to feel worth. I felt like air was wasted on me (a fact according to my brother) before I understood that air was free. I felt like “shit under my [fathers] shoe” (his often repeated words in quote) before I even knew what shit actually was. I wanted to shut it all out. I tried desperately to ignore all the shameful and painful words and pictures of the past. Yet, in mastering the skill of rejecting the painful, I also, unknowingly, rejected the precious.

Until just this past year, for me, hell was always the darkest places in my mind where all that had hurt me was kept hidden and, heaven was potential peace that was, far too far, out of reach. I was afraid of my own shadow. I did not trust my own soul. I could not feel my own heart. Yet, my spirit was relentless in begging me for freedom. I have spent six years trying to find my way through my own personal hell and began to believe that freedom from such a slave holder as complex childhood and Big “T” trauma was not possible….. until the day I was done. Ready to give up, ready to surrender this life of hell to death and whatever hell or peace laid beyond. That day, I learned the power of surrender. Surrender to the reality of my desperately broken childhood, to the memories of traumatic abuse at the hands of my mother, father, and brother, and to the crooked path it launched me into. A path of hate and rage, of fury and revenge, of drugs and jail, and a life of poor choices…..

That day I allowed the memories to return and I gave them the space to be. I allowed myself to be present in the deep grief I had come to learn was the most important gift I could give myself. I made room for the presence of death that I had been running from my entire life…. (I know that sounds weird, especially to the churched, but only my story belongs on this page, not the opinions or judgements of others who did not live within my experience nor am I required to justify myself for I have already been justified). Death was a presence that tormented me until I sat quietly and let it be. I wanted to know why I had walked a lifetime with death, which translates to constantly pushing away thoughts of suicide. I had come to discover the only way that I would ever have answers to all of my painful questions of “why?” would be to sit in presence with all that I was… all my memories, all my shame, all my pain, all my wounds, and to choose to be brave. I came to discover, that day and the days since, that being brave is not doing something that is easy for me, being brave is doing what I have been terrified to do. To make space for all of me, to sit and be still, to allow room for all of my brokenness and all of the darkness of my days, that was brave.

The path to emotional, spiritual, and mental freedom is not easy and, unfortunately, it is not easily found. There are many that say they know the way to heal the wounded soul but, there is no “one” way. A person must be willing to try many ways. I found many that represented themselves as guides to the path to freedom, yet they had not yet found their own path nor done their own work, some had resigned themselves to the slaveholder of their own trauma and were either afraid to break to free or did not even believe they could. Others saw themselves as free even though they were terribly bound. So how does one guide a person to freedom when they have never found their own way. In the search for freedom, one must choose wisdom in spite of self doubt, and if one is looking for a guide, look within, for the power to heal is within each of us. I have learned, through great trail and error, that not all who claim to be wise or safe guides actually are. What I really needed was a trusted companion that could walk with me in the darkness that I was in.

The conductors of the underground railroad that helped slaves escape to freedom had already found their own freedom. Many had done so with only a companion or two. When they returned to help others, they never took the same way twice. They all learned certain skills for the safest travel and the most important ones were; they only travelled in the dark; and, they never went the same way twice. Remember, TAKE THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED, it has less distractions, and is available whenever you are ready. The cost? Your willingness to stay in the fight, your willingness to be authentic, your willingness to show up for you.

Many have asked the same questions over the history of slavery, bondage, and abuse….. Is there freedom? If there is, where is the path? Who can guide me there? Where is the underground railroad that will take us from slavery to freedom? And then, If we find it, are we willing to be brave enough…. to risk everything for our freedom?

Some would say there is nothing that compares to slavery….

I would agree.

But if we believe that slavery occurred only on plantations and in factories and to certain people groups, then we are sadly misunderstanding of slavery….

Slavery has many faces… it wears many masks… it has no concern of ethnicity, country of origin, language, sex or sexual orientation, skin colour, age, status, or time in history.

Slavery is defined as “submission to a dominating influence.”

I know what it is like to be a slave. A slave to a person, an experience, and a memory….. I have experienced the horror of the unleashed rage and felt the searing pain of leather, stick, or hand against flesh. I know how it feels to be forced to submit to a dominating evil.

I am familiar with shame. I know the pain that rips the mind apart and leaves the soul lost in darkness. I know the dark power of words spoken and words withheld. I know what its like to long for freedom….

Traumatic stress is like a slaveholder. Unrelenting is the hold it takes upon a life. The mind becomes the slave…. A slave to memories that haunt the soul… to dreams and nightmares that steal away sleep… to a pain so deep that no balm or medication exists to soothe it… to the hyper aroused senses that find no peace… A slave to that which no one can see…

Scars remain on the flesh of the slave… Scars that tell the story of ownership by a dominating influence… But its the scars on the mind that tell the story of the fight to cling to every ounce of hope… It is the unseen scars that tell of courage and will…. The will to survive… To endure the pain for survivals sake… For freedoms sake….

The underground railroad was a journey into and through the darkest of nights…. A journey of hope…. And the courage to endure….

There is an underground railroad for all slaves… Hidden from the dominating influence that is the slaveholder…. But one does not accidentally happen upon this path to freedom… Only with the courage and sheer determination to search, will it ever be found.

Not all trains lead to the underground…and to the passage of freedom…. But if freedom is what you seek, then you need only a tiny thread of hope because hope will eventually light the way, you need only a sliver of bravery because bravery will keep you moving forward, and a small amount of trust in yourself that you may come to learn to sift through all the fluff to find the real stuff that will feed you along the way.

So… why do I write this piece today? Actually, I have been trying to write it for several days because, a few weeks ago I had to talk about why I have severed all connection, purposely burning every bridge to ashes, with father, mother and brother. Simply their names flashed a thousand pictures before me and I had to choose, in that moment, to honour myself and my heart and soul and to remember that I had found the path to freedom and they no longer held power over me. I let the pictures flash and continued to remind myself, that was then, though their abuse lasted forty-five years, it is no longer. I have created the space for my emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and physical safety and, I am here now, in the free present, with those who truly love me.

Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words and a word is worth a thousand pictures. I now have the opportunity to choose, not only to manage those dark words and pictures of the past, but to make space for new memories and pictures to form and take hold as I learn to decorate my train with love, compassion, grief, and sorrow in such a way that it may be a tiny light for other seeking freedom.

I write this piece today in heartfelt gratitude for those who precious friendships have sheltered me in the worst of storms and have encouraged me even when understanding me was impossible. I also write this piece for my lovely daughter/friend and her amazing husband whose love is both a miracle and a gift that has sat with me for many silent nights of sorrow. Thank you all for helping me form new word-picture associations that are truly a blessing.

with gratitude….

even as time passes and memory fades….their story somehow remains….

This article is not to commemorate the life of a man, it is not sing his praises or tell his dirty secrets, it is not to condemn nor is it judge…. this article is for me to find my own way to process a part of my story that was shared with another. This is a story between two people. This is no one else’s story nor is it shadowed by anyone else’s input. It is part of my story, my truth, as I experienced it and know it to be.

My father has died. He died on a day that is called the Epiphany by many churches, but, it was also an epiphany for me.

The word epiphany means, according to Webster’s dictionary, “3 a (1): a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something,” (2) “an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking,” and (3) an illuminating discovery or realization.”

Death somehow can have a way of causing one to have a sudden perception of an essential meaning, an intuitive grasp of reality, and or an illuminating realization. It literally can have a way of turning a light on in a rather dark place. Well, if we are open to these things it makes it more likely that we will learn to see in ways we never could before……

When my oldest and closest friend died several years ago, I was not open to anything. I was lost without him. I was hurt, angry, confused, and in such pain that I thought that I too was going to die. But, since then, many dark times have taught me to become open to the lessons that surround my every day experiences. And so, my father’s death was appropriately on the day of epiphany…..

When I looked to the calendar to see the day he had died, and saw “Epiphany” in bold letters, I quickly asked myself what I was needing to perceive, understand, and discover.

After sitting in quiet contemplation this past week, I began to see something very important…. call it an intuitive grasp of a reality that I was trying to ignore… but my story exists because of his story. Without him, and my fathers before him, I simply would not be. Without all the pieces that create the landscape of the person I know as me, then I who would I be? I am deep and creative, adventurous and courageous, and I am not afraid of the skeletons in the deepest darkest recesses of any closet. How did I get to be this way? What was it that formed my strengths and gifts so strongly that they would endure with me through my own personal hell? These questions caused me to look back, to wade through all of the brutal abuses that I endured at the hand of the man I knew as father, to find the man and the part of his story that has woven its way through me.

As I write this, I look out at the storm on the sea and I feel like his love for the waters of the world is where my love of the sea came from. I feel found when the salt air reaches my sense of smell for it tells me I am home no matter where I am in the world. I simply close my eyes and breathe and all becomes still within my own deep waters. The most amazing and powerful dreams I have often contain the sea or deep, dark water. The sea has been my refuge in many of the storms I have survived in this life of being the daughter of a tragically abusive father. And from the depths I find the words….

The first time I ever wrote anything, I was about ten, and it was a poem about the sea and its mammoth, crashing waves. I understood the raging sea back then because my own soul was in such torment. I would watch as the storms would roll in and somehow I would feel like I was not alone, as though the sea knew the horrid pain that lived within me and gifted me the words that would release my pain into the wind and water. Looking back to the man, I can see that his soul was like a tormented storm that relentlessly raged and crashed and damaged everything it could reach. And… in the aftermath of damage he too would write. He could craft a line of words that would express his remorse and whatever it is that he needed to say to convince people that he was not a dangerous man that should be jailed. For whatever the purpose, he still had a gift with words.

I once read a something he wrote about his adventure leaving Germany as a young man and what it took for him to get to his dream land of Canada. His use of words was captivating as he told a piece of his story that would forever disappear after his death. I tried to write what I knew about him but the darkness of his life overshadowed the light that I needed in order to see the words form on the paper. And so, for the most part, the story of his adventures has gone. Yet, as I pass by a mirror, I see his face in mine and a realization suddenly occurs…. we share a story. A story of courage and adventure, for it would not have been easy to leave his home for a land where no one would understand him as he spoke only german. Ours is a shared, dark story, filled with sadness, torment and destruction but, it also is a story of shared gifts. The things about me that are my gifts…. like the written word…. and a courageous, adventurous spirit.

I have been writing as a way of healing the pain that was locked tightly away in the depths of my soul for many years. The written word was my only voice for both my parents silenced me before i can even remember.

But death has a way of breaking the once forced silence. Silence…. a belief he shared with my mother…. that children were only to be seen when necessary but never should they be heard. It seems that the silence he demanded of others has now been forced upon him while my silence is courageously being broken.

This is another illuminated discovery for me…. It has been a growing purpose of my life over recent years to listen and write the stories of others. Strangers who feel that no one really knows them, young people who fear using their voice, homeless people who feel invisible, children whose creative imaginations are pushed aside, drug addicts used to being ignored, women forced into silence as their abusers torture their bodies and souls, they find me somehow and as they speak… I listen. I listen not to reply but, to understand. I use my gift of writing to help others break their silence. This I do because of the story I share with my father, a silencer of voices.

He was also a very strong minded man. He was not easily swayed by popular opinion and was quite happy to go against every flow. Unfortunately, he continually tried to force others to believe and think as he did, which was often very twisted and manipulated and many could see right through his confused ideals. This, for him, caused many people to loose faith in him and it certainly forced him out of positions of leadership that he tried to get into, but, he was unwavering to say the least. I see that in me in many ways. I am not easily swayed nor easily convinced of anything. I have an unwavering way about me and when I teach, I first learn and experience so that my knowledge is real. I am very strong of mind but I am equally strong of character and, as such, I have grown into a strong leader for I give and teach from my authentic self. I am quick to admit a wrong and to correct it. From growing up in such a manipulative family, I learned that authenticity was always going to be my policy.

There is a part of me that wishes he knew me, the child I was and the woman I have become, but time passes and opportunities are lost forever. But what is not lost is me. And now, I see the path behind me that holds more than destruction, I see the path of blessings and gifts that were meant for good that have been passed on to me. Oh, I once was lost….. very lost…. and I pray for the strength to continue to walk this healing journey through all that it will bring and, like the Pilgrim, that I will remain faithful to its end where I will be found.

So as I look out the sea before me, I have a sense that the tapestry of my life has a single thread woven through it, a thread which is the blood of the “man” who was my father, whose gifts I carry in my soul but whose memory I shall let fade. As for the damage he caused, I thankfully have another very beautiful thread that is stitching those brutal wounds closed because… “therefore, by the grace of God, go I.”

I finally get to close that chapter of my life called father and place it upon a shelf where with all the other books of tragic world history. I love shared stories…. some I read again and again…. but this one needs to gather dust.

So my father… thank you for being the conduit of the gifts I hold dear, and now, as you set sail over the distant waters…. I hope that your tormented soul has finally found peace.

Why does honesty feel more like it’s kept locked behind a steel door than simply a way we all do life?

I am deeply entrenched in the throws of a radical journey that has possibly been the most challenging road I will ever travel in this messy society in which I live. Messy because we are all flawed humans with our own minds and ways that we see and choose to interact with the world. Messy because we are all trying to communicate in a foreign language. Why foreign?? Because we communicate from the language developed within our unique selves, it is our personal language, formed through our own trials and challenges and our own truths as we know them to be. We are really unaware that no one knows our soul story well enough to know the little nuances the make our language us. The idiosyncrasies within change how symbols are seen and understood by each individual person.

So how does one know if the world and the people around them are honest?? There is no real black and white answer to that question. Two people may be in the exact same incident yet experience two distinctly different things thereby, each one has their own truth as they know it to be. Both people authentically experience according to their own processing of symbols developed by their own personal previous experience. For me, it comes down to authenticity and trust. Is a person different around different people? Do they say one thing to me and something different to someone else? Do their words and actions line up? Do I trust them to be who they say they are? Do their children trust them to be who they say they are?

Some days I feel as though my messy storm is passing, however, I am now realizing that messy never goes away. Accepting that life is messy allows me to navigate the deep waters I used to be afraid of. Even the lens through which I view my childhood experiences has shifted. Some things, like events and details, matter less while other things, like instinctive thoughts and behaviours, now matter more. My core values that developed during those traumatic childhood days are screaming to rise up and speak. It is time to stop accepting excuses for the lies being told around me, it is time to stop turning a blind eye to injustice, it is time to expect integrity from those who I spend time with as I know they too expect honesty from me. I am frankly over-done with masks, false personas, and lies. I am over-done with the excuses for lying, whether the lie is white (whatever that means) or justifiable (is that real?). I really just desire authentic honesty. I know first hand that the truth is not usually easy and that each person has their own unique experience of the truth, however, this does not negate the fundamental role of honesty in our day to day existence.

I am learning that the aftermath of complex childhood trauma is likened to a hurricane that regularly rips through my life and demands I take stock of who I am. I need to remain in a place of being willing to constantly re-evaluate my world including my choices, my attitudes and instinctive behaviours, and those who I have permitted to be in relationship with me. Honesty, integrity, and justice have always been resident within me, but lately, these character traits have stormed to the forefront as the primary tools I have come to employ in this re-evaluation process.

I grew up in a world chocked full of lies. My father was as dishonest as the sea is deep. He claimed to be a man that he was not. He was a destroyer of minds, hearts, and souls. I was witness to how destructive it was to withhold the truth. The harder he tried to be who he was not, the more dangerous he became. To grow up never being able to trust the people who are meant to protect you, teach you, guide you, and love you is a training ground that is as unstable as quicksand in an earthquake.

Is it impossible to see what spineless lying does to those around us? Is it impossible to see how emotional and spiritually destructive it is to live in a world of masks, facades, and spineless lies? Do we not realize what message we send to those who trust us to be honest with them? Why do we choose to turn a blind eye and justify injustice? Desmond Tutu said it the simplest way, “If you choose to be neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Injustice is oppressive. When we are dishonest to serve ourselves, we are unjust. In the story of Golda Mier, her dishonesty was meant to spare the lives of others. During the Rwandan genocide, lies were told to spare lives. Do we justify our dishonesty because we are trying to spare lives from certain death OR with the excuse of sparing the pain of truth just so we can live the way we want? This question is deeply personal, yet it must be asked from a place within that requires authenticity of heart and soul.

I have longed for a tribe of companions that choose authenticity over simply looking and sounding good. People have come…. and gone… and few remain…. but the few who remain are the solid in a sinking society. They are rocks that stand the test and continue to stand as they are continually tested. Oh, we all know how hard it is to be authentic in a fake world, we have all paid a price to be real, we do not hide and we wear our hearts on our sleeves. It means we risk being shunned, hurt, and rejected…. but still…. we rise and we stand.

I have heard it said,”If you do not stand for something then you will fall for anything.” This is so very true of standing for truth because; those who do not stand for truth fall deeply into a false world constructed of lies.

I am choosing to write about my experiences in the darkness of mind and memory throughout this blog because I have often wondered if there was another soul out there that could understand the horror and terror I have known. I have had to fight in many arenas in order to get to where I currently am, which is on the sidelines of a raging war, seeking reprieve and catching my breath in preparation for another round. I want to be candid and authentic so that anyone who reads these words and relates may know they are not alone in the dark.

My desire to heal from a life of brokenness has taken me to where I never imagined I could go, and not only go, but stay. I had to stay and face the demons and ghosts that have haunted my life because I knew, if I ran out, I might never have enough courage to go back in. I entered the dark places of mind and memory and allowed myself to remain present as I fell hard into what felt like a suspended abyss.

The only way I can describe the sense of abyss I experienced is to be deep under the surface of the sea where all is dark, where there is nothing to reach for and nothing reaching back, where alone is an understated word, where you simply hold on to the nothingness while the passing of time feels more like an invitation of death than a time of healing.

I waited in this darkness until I could no longer return the way I came… ~~~~ I began to feel that I had, in fact, entered hell, but not the hell I used to believe existed…. ~~~~ This hell was a vacuum that emptied me from the inside and yet was never satisfied. I felt stuck in this complete darkness… void of sound, light, colour, smell, taste, and touch. I began to beg for a way out, a rescue, an end…..

I wrestled with the darkness of mind and memory until I had nothing left in me to fight with. I became too weary to hope in a life beyond such separation from all that I knew life to be. My faith ran dry and my hope wore so thin that it seemed to have vanished. I had always been hopeful of a time when I would be free from a past that was toxic, destructive, and not meant for any human to live. But one day, something changed, and I fell into a deep darkness…. my hope for freedom ceased. I was now living moment to moment by sheer choice. I became terrified of what I saw in the dark, of what I felt inside, of the growing awareness that I was defenceless against the past.

Fear, the very emotion I forced into silence, had made its way to the forefront of all that I was, and with it surfaced all that I had been running from for forty years. The presence of nothingness caused indescribable pain in my body, soul, mind, and spirit. I felt as though I left footprints of blood everywhere I stepped and I could not stop or control it. I had lost control…. I was being swallowed up by memories that flashed before me like a video stuck on repeat. I could not fathom what was happening to me and was sure that I was nearer death than anyone knew, including me. I became afraid of even myself as I grew more and more weary trying desperately to hang on to nothing…..

Beauty had vanished. Love had been replaced by hate and rage. I pushed at everyone I knew giving each person a way out of being in relationship with me, and most stepped away. I needed to know that those who remained would have the capacity to fight for me when I could no longer fight. A few fought back and chose to remain present with me even though I fell silent as thoughts of death overwhelmed my waking hours. I was no longer wounded…. I had splintered into a thousand tiny pieces.

I am still in the fight, I have not given in to giving up. Just because something is broken does not mean it is worthless. I am always gluing broken things back together…. I keep an endless supply of crazy glue at hand because I need to know that was broken can still be. I don’t need the cup with the broken handle or huge crack to use it, I need the cup with the broken handle to remind myself that broken things still hold value. Actually, once I repair things, they are not like they were, they are different and more special somehow.

Kintsugi Art, which is an ancient Japanese art, also repairs broken things. But not repaired to what it once was, rather into something of higher value. The broken pieces are held together with a type of pitch which is then coated in gold or platinum dust. This special process takes what was broken and worthless and turns it into pieces of highly valued art. It is also known as “the art of precious scars.”

I am Kintsugi Art. I am not what was. I am becoming new even as I am covered in precious scars.

I am still in this dark journey but, even here, I am learning to see glimpses of the beauty that is only found in the place called dark. Beauty that finds its way past the demons and shadows and reflects a little light to remind me that I am on the right path….

As I continue on this journey in the dark place of mind and memory, I sense I am growing stronger even as I feel so weak. I feel freer even as I remain bound to a past that is mine. And so, I close my writing for today with a sense of peace I have never known and an awareness that hope can grow when all seems completely hopeless…

“Dive deep… Move into the flow… The currents of time… Take me… Deeper… Darker ~~~

The cold brushes my skin… I feel it in my veins… Memory flows… with ancient pain… Wounding… Reminding ~~~

Hold me in this sea… Keep me… Touch me now… That I may know… I am still alive ~~~

I reach… Into the flow… Guide me… Take me deeper… Submerged in sorrow… The sea of tears… The child’s heart… Knows only shame ~~~

Reaching… Grasping… Begging… Pleading…

Take me deeper… Beyond this place. Hide me in the darkness… The place of tears ~~~

Let go now… Currents flow… Moving me… Holding me…

Anger rising… Into my being… Rage comes like waves… My soul cries out……..I have been betrayed!

Move through me… Touch the unloved… Hold me here… In this place called deep ~~~

Before I was… I now am… Present here… In what is to come… Moments, hours and days…. ~~~~”

In gratitude, Kim

… a practical look at hope….and faith…

So what is faith? In this time in history faith looks different for many of us, including me, then it used to. Science, technology, the breakdown of the church, environmental destruction, and the catastrophic mess of our political world is in, are a few causes to shaking faith.

Faith is trusting that something was, is, or will be as we have come to believe it to be.

As a child I trusted everything that everyone older than me had to say. I thought they knew the facts simply because they were old and, at that time, old meant smart. As an adult, trust is not so simple. Now, the road of trust/faith is a journey that evolves as I move through life. I am a questioner of life. I have had to learn to navigate a world that, I learned very early, was not trustworthy. But, as I am learning, all things are possible… ~~~~~~~ So, back to faith…. how do I tangibly practice and develop faith/trust when, in the very core of my development, there is very little to work with? How do I teach myself to trust the unseen or unknown? This is not simply a question of having spiritual or religious faith, this is also about faith in other people’s use of such words as friend, or faith in a person’s capacity for truth, or even faith that life itself has purpose….

While in the midst of asking myself these questions and considering the value of faith/trust, I had an interesting experience…. one that could be chance or happenstance however; I have decided to believe that nothing happens by chance. I sat down yesterday morning to read a book that is written in such a way that I have been required to read a dictionary at the same time just to absorb some of the content. It is a heavy read and one that requires me to be very present. I opened to where I had left off and the very first line said… “Faith is the substance of things hoped for…” (Hebrews 11:1). Seriously??? A book for doctors on infant trauma opens a chapter with a statement like that?? I did not expect it. I read it over and over…. could this be speaking to my current struggle with both faith and hope??

Faith is the substance of things hoped for…. Hope is because of faith/trust…. without faith, hope is lost. I am right there… I suddenly get it. My childhood faith has all but vanished and with it went my hope. Faith is the substance of hope. Wow… This deep contemplation took me into the forest where I learn so much…. and this time… it would be the wind that would be my teacher….

I did not realize that I practice faith every time the wind blows around me. I simply trust the wind exists. Though I cannot see IT, I do see the evidence of its existence…. the evidence of something unseen. So, believing (which is trusting) that IT is, in fact, wind, is faith. Practical faith.

I have spent a great deal of time contemplating faith/trust and what it really is. To simply trust, without question, is honestly difficult for me. However, in understanding what faith actually is, it now becomes possible. There are statements such as, “this too shall pass,” “it is always darkest before the dawn,” or “there is a light at the end of the tunnel,” that all require faith to trust that those words are true. And what about the trusting of Self, or God, or in anything that is simply not seen by the naked eye?

I found myself walking my favourite trail yesterday morning as the sun was high over an open grassy field. I was in deep thought about what had just read about faith when the wind picked up and caught my attention. Words poured into my soul that caused me to stop and be part of where I was.

“Let Me Move You,” says the Wind… I watch as the tall grass is moved by the wind… Dancing with an invisible partner… Synchronicity with a force that is both gentle and strong….

This wind calls to my soul…. “Dance with me. Let me move you as I move the grassy seas… Dance with me.”

My heart is captivated by the unseen… Reaching out my hand I accept the invitation….

I feel the winds gather me ~ Holding me…. It is here that I choose ~ To surrender to the dance… To let go of all that I define myself by…. Of all that I fight… And all that I hold….

The wind provided a practical lesson of faith… the very substance of hope… ~~~ This is a beautiful lesson for me, one that I will hold onto in my heart and mind forever. For in this lesson of faith, I also understand there is choice…. the choice to believe in something…. the choice to trust. This, for me, was a gift to renew my hope…. Hope that there is healing from a broken past, hope that there is love and joy beyond loss and sorrow.

As I was settling down to watch my favourite Netflix series before bed, I nearly fell off the couch with how the opening scene began… Father Brown’s opening statement was… “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.” I burst out laughing!!! All I could say is, “Okay, I get it!!” My day opened and was now closing with the exact same words from two distinctly different sources. I could not ignore the impact it was having on me. And, in that moment, I became aware that as my faith had became weak so also did my hope. I sensed hope is not some random word that is light and meaningless. Hope is why any of us get up in the morning, it is why we keep going in the face of all that is raging against us, it is what keeps us when all else fails. Hope is the essence of life. Where hope has worn thin, so too has faith.

The wind alone flies our treasured emblem of hope. Hope for all nations. Hope that freedom will remain. Hope in humanity. Hope in our constitution. And faith is the substance of that hope….

Faith… the tangibly intangible substance of HOPE.

GRANT ME THE COURAGE…

Dear God… I reach my inner voice out into the void… To the deep… To the place where only Presence exists.

Where I have been blind…May I receive the gift of sight. ~ Where I have been deaf… May I receive the gift of sound. ~ Where I am hard… May I be softened. ~ Where I have held back… May I surrender. ~ Where I have refused release… May I forgive. ~ Where I have been silenced… May I learn to use… My voice.

I look into the place, Of the Sacred Fire… And I ask for your presence… To journey with me… Into the darkest of nights…..

I take off my shoes, For in Presence I stand ~ I take off all my identities, And all that I have imagined myself to be, I I lay down my wants ~ And ask now… to receive the gifts… of my Forefathers…

Where you lead, I will follow…. Where you are still, I will wait… Who you serve, I will serve… Who you love, I will love….

Grant me now the courage… To journey onward… Down into the deep. Grant me now the wisdom… To remember… In my dark hours… I am not alone.

Grant me now, I pray… The courage to be a light in the dark.

Can sometimes be overwhelming and even painful…

I love the forest. It has become my classroom as I journey through this part of my life. The lessons I may miss in the busy chaos of the concrete world seem to find me among the trees as my mind and heart open up to the ancient grounds I walk upon. A unique, beautiful, and deep wisdom resides among the trees whether they are dying or living. It is here that my mind is stretched and I am asked to be willing to receive what I cannot yet understand.

“A mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

I came upon this oddly shaped tree last year on my first time through my most favourite running trail. I have needed to stop to look at it every time I run through here. I found it odd yet amazing as it seemed to speak to me of things I could not yet understand…. until recently that is.

It has been an incredibly challenging six months for me. I have struggled, wrestled, fought, and taken to the sidelines in retreat many times as I try to process what seems too deep and vast for comprehension. I have had to look at my life square on and find a way to acknowledge and accept it as it was…. and it was a challenge… actually, it was more like the war of occupied Poland than it was the life of a child. My roots were tragically damaged and as I grew, my internal and external Self developed in great confusion. As the storms about me raged, before I had the capacity to process them, I was quickly knocked over.

Suddenly, standing in front of this twisted tree trunk, I saw myself within its design. I began to see the story of the life of the tree as it unfolded in my imagination…. A sapling… too small to have roots deep enough to help it push upwards, it appears to have surrendered to lying upon the ground after it had been flattened. External adversity changed the course of growth for the little tree as it remained ever close to the safety of the earth. Time passed and the little tree did not die, for its tap root, which is the source of its strength, had not been broken. And so, the little tree grew the only way it could, hidden among the underbrush, until one day, through a hole in the canopy above, it felt the warmth of the sun. The little tree had grown a solid trunk as the tap root grew deeper into the earth, nourishing it and holding it steady, but the time had come for the tree to reach upward. It would have taken many years under great strain for that tree to change the direction of its growth. I noticed how thick the bent trunk was in comparison to the the rest of the tree when, suddenly, I found myself captivated by the tap root which ran in the opposite direction of the tree trunk. That root was the anchor for the tree. When it was time for the tree to turn upwards, it would be the strength of the tap root which would give it the strength to change course. That tree, now heavy as it lay close to the ground, had to reach up, it had to want the sun, it had to be willing to endure the cost of growing in a whole new way. This is me. I am the story of this tree.

I spent days pondering what I had learned in the forest that day. What did this really mean for my life? Did I have a tap root that had anchored me? Have I finally begun to grow upwards towards the warmth of the sun? I have felt flattened and hidden under the brush of sorrow for far too long? Could I reach upwards? Do I have the strength and courage to change the direction of my life?

Yes, I have a tap root. It is solid, steady, strong, and has not wavered as I have questioned and doubted. My faith in God has kept my soul alive even as I have longed for death. Oh, my faith has worn as desperately thin as my hope, but still, it remains because my tap root remains. Now, I must depend on my tap root to continue to anchor me through this healing journey as the direction of my growth has already begun to change.

Yes, I have the strength and courage to reach toward the sun. I have, many times of late, had to dig very deep to find my courage, and I have learned to lean on others for strength, but the forest reminds me, these trees do not stand alone. All of us are stronger when we stand among those who know our authentic Self and who love us in spite of us.

During this time of deep learning, I am grateful for the teachings found within the beauty that surrounds me. I pray that my eyes, ears, heart, and mind will remain open as I reach upwards toward the warmth of the sun.

We all need a help in this life… It is how we survive… and thrive…

I know from personal experience what hope worn thin feels like and, as one who is a listener of stories, I am aware that this is not an uncommon knowing. How did we get here, to this place of feeling hope is lost? And how do we move from hope lost to hope renewed?

The latin root for the words hope and despair is the same. How does hope and despair come from the same place? Roots… that which provides the nourishment of life…. How can both hope and despair find life in the same roots? The word despair is an alternate word for the original word hopeless. Hope and hopeless begin the same in their roots but something changes how the tree grows. One tree grows ‘less’ than the other and before we realize, in our rat-race lives, what is happening, we are suddenly in the shadows and without light to properly feed our roots.

It is, for some, like walking along a gentle path through life when a sudden change impacts and shakes their entire world. I hear it described in a variety of ways such as, but not limited to, “a sudden drop into darkness”, “the lights just went out”, “a shock”, and “falling into an abyss.” For others, like me, it is a lifetime of holding on to the knot at the end of the rope while slowly moving closer and closer to seeing the rope as a way out rather than a lifeline to keep us in. As a paramedic and a firefighter, I have been witness to far too many folks, both young and old, who came to the end of their rope and chose to turn it into their way out. To be very sure, it creates a great conflict within me to find myself standing in those very shoes wondering if I can hang in for another day.

Is it a positive attitude one lacks? Is it only a pessimist that looses hope? Is lost hope only justified by catastrophic trauma or those who lives are complicated by such stress that their hearts and minds fail them? Is hope that has worn thin always depression that requires medication? Is there really a box we need to find or create for a society loosing hope? No to all of the above and to all the other boxes we use to pathologize a heart and mind whose hope has worn thin or which has broken entirely. The answer to why hope wears thin is found only within each persons story. The boxes we have come to use to place hopelessness into are, in many cases, only serving to amplify the pain and deny the freedom one seeks.

So then what do we do when hope wears thin? At a time in one’s life when all feels lost and aloneness grows into isolation…. what can a person do to restore enough hope to survive even one more day? When praying feels empty and even one’s faith is not enough… what then?

I know those questions well for they are my own. I have stood face to face with my own mortality and felt more alone than any human should and, until I gutted my contact list, I did not really know who I could trust to simply hear my truth and hold me in the darkness. And so I came closer and closer to choosing my ultimate end. It was then, in my desperate aloneness, that I took a risk and picked up the phone. I had four phone numbers memorized and I had to try one last time…. I needed help to just get through that moment and I needed to ask. I didn’t need to be fixed and I wasn’t looking for the magical words that would free me (though wouldn’t that be sweet), I only needed to be held by one person who knew and accepted my whole, authentic, messed up, Self. I needed someone with a backbone strong enough for two. I needed only to know that someone had the courage to tarry with me through my own personal hell. I needed pure, authentic compassion. The origin of the word compassion is very ancient and means simply “to tarry with” rather than to “do” or say anything in particular. And I desperately needed someone to tarry with me through the hell I had fallen into since before I could form words and memories.

I survived that moment, which lasted a few days, and I learned just what it means to have even just one person who knows my authentic Self and has the capacity to hear my truths as I know them to be. I have a journey to stay in, one that is filled with a history of abuse and loss, sorrow and terror, shame and guilt. I want to be whole and well as I age and I have come to see, at this place in my life, that less really is more, that simple really is sweet, and the cover really is not the book.

For you who answer my call…. you are teaching me what true love really tangibly looks like. For you whose stories sound, in many ways, just like mine…. know who your life lines are and please…. pick up the phone.

We all need a splint now and then…

I was out for run in the forest the other day and, as usual, I noticed something new and amazing which seems to happen every single time I run that path. I am not sure why it is, but the things I notice seem to carry a message just for me of something that is specific to where I am in life. Some would say the universe is talking to me, others call it random, still others say that I am looking for meaning within meaningless things….. I think God has a way of talking that is not some booming voice that thunders from the sky but rather a simple moment that causes me to stop and take notice. These, for me, are moments of impact. Moments that speak to my soul and awaken something that is otherwise lost in fog…. moments that lift me and foster a deeper curiosity… moments that speak where no voice could reach…

During my run that day I was listening to a single song on repeat for over an hour and I did so as an attempt to settle the restlessness that was causing a storm to brew in my brain (which I will dedicate another post to…). The sun poured through the trees filling the trail with a light that was golden, touching the earth covered in fallen leaves, and creating a glow that was breathtaking. I had to stop and stretch out my arms in effort to absorb the fullness of the beauty that surrounded me. The moment I was in seemed to slow right down…. as if time stood still long enough for me to truly see what was in front of me. There it was, right before me, a tree with a bent trunk that was stuck to another tree. It caught my full attention even before I could see the fullness of what was actually before me…. and as I stood there, simply taking in the picture, I could suddenly see how it came to look as it now does. I imagined that in the early years of this bent tree, there must have been a great storm that caused it to fall. The fallen tree was caught by other trees on its way down and as a result its tap root was not torn. Years must have passed while this fallen tree remained alive only because it was splinted by another tree. It must have taken years for the bent tree to get strong enough to reach for the light, but reach it did. That tree, with its bent trunk, stands like a tower reaching high into the forest canopy beside another tree that is as straight as an arrow. As I continued on my way I began to see splinted trees throughout the forest. I stopped at each one to take their picture when I began to realize that this was simply the way of trees. They did not decide if they had the time nor turn a blind eye because of their own struggle to rise up. What a beautiful thing it is to have your eyes opened to the lessons that nature holds if only we take a moment to listen to the wisdom of the wild.

I stood in those moments, captivated by what my eyes could see, feeling the story of that tree in my soul. I am like those trees. I have been splinted and I have been a splint. Storms rage about us that cause us to stumble and fall. But we can and will rise again and again and again if we are splinted. We all have the ability and the choice to rise up in authentic compassion and splint the broken around us. And if we gather in community as trees in a forest, then we will not be asked to splint the masses (which is an impossible burden on one person), rather, we will only splint those in arms reach.

I have had my branches caught on my way to the ground and have been splinted, just like the trees, in some very dark hours along my life’s journey. I have had many different splint trees over the history of my life, and some whose names I cannot remember but whose faces remind me that they were there. I find myself looking back across time, which is such an important thing to do, and I am grateful for those with the courage and backbone needed for two. May this experience in the forest hold my heart steady when I feel isolation fall like a shadow along my path.

To all those who have the courage to stand as a splint for another… may you also know who your splint trees are…

May we learn the value of authenticity and true community so when we are called upon to be a splint we will have the courage and strength to do so….