Stories of Transition

This decade has birthed the passing of my parents from the physical. This great loss has felt expansive and life changing for me. I have spent a lot of time especially in the last few months since my dad’s passing thinking about transitionary stages of life. Feeling deeply drawn to art and creative expressions of all kinds where others open their hearts to share their journey through grief, loss, and transitioning on the other side. It’s cathartic and powerful to witness the rawness of humanity during these shifting times.

In response to these themes of transition, I’d like to share with you a piece of soul poetry I recently wrote about the experience of loss, letting go, and returning to a redefined understanding of Home. I may still feel quite lost some days but I am finding my way through this season of change and transition, moment by moment, returning … remembering.

To accompany my written word, I have included some of visuals which have inspired me lately. My photography of places that are Home to me, two exquisite films, Moon Manor and Come See Me in the Good Light, cinematic masterpieces addressing love, loss, creation, and death and a recently completed acrylic painting entitled, The Eye of Knowing, inspired by cycles of transition.

Home

Home- the forest which always welcomes me back time and time again

This is a transition story.

A tiny house,

Pink and Gray,

Salt-air worn shingles,

One bedroom,

Four walls of familiarity.

Nearly all childhood memories of joy tucked within.

Grief seeps in through the cracks of what was lost.

The World’s Longest Beach (supposedly).

Salt on the tongue,

Sand in the toes,

Ashes in the air,

Tears sting my tired eyes.

I dance even when it’s not allowed.

Yearning for a home I didn’t realize I had left.

Expanding paths through the dunes, walking or riding, always led me back Home.

A place of simpler times.

Fishing in the dark August seaside air, bitter and chilly.

Playing Life, over and over again.

Hoping one day, I’d beat the game and really learn how.

Losing at H.O.R.S.E. on a dead-end road of my development.

Being a sore loser vowing to never play again with childish indignance.

Only for the drama to be short lived, ready for a new challenger.

Falling in love for the first time with a tender faced friend.

Hoping and longing in the love-crazed way of early puberty.

An ode to growing up in a place that felt free, where weekend wonders stretched as wide as the sea.

Home- joyfully reminding me of my purpose in colorful strokes everyday

I’d go back but I’ve changed and so has She.

Everyone I once knew there is scattered to the coastal breeze.

So I will find a new beach to build my castle on.

Finding a joyful afternoon soft serve,

Chasing the waves in fear and delight as they nip at my heels,

This is growing up; shedding the urge to romanticize a past that was anything but perfect.

Redesigning days of old will not birth a new time.

Chapters are meant to be closed.

This is the natural order of evolution though revisited with loving eyes of understanding.

Transporting with the fresh view of a future time; a clarity to ring true.

This memory of transitional spaces is painful and tenderly precious.

Holding carefully like an unbroken shell, treasured in its’ own history and future.

Carrying it along as a reminder of a life lived.

Remembering all those who made my Home.

Ones who broke my heart,

Helped me mend busted knees,

Held my hand at the sea

Pedaled endless trails to well-wore destinations,

Discovered truths profound and sad,

Laughed until we cried in silent collapse,

Home- physically reflecting as above so below

Danced under solar and lunar light,

Wished for summer to never end,

Celebrated and mourned a good life.

A hard road— the Way of Learning.

You mean more to me than I know.

Haunting my dreams with kites, castles, and particles of a time come and gone.

The sensory experience of your memories are exquisite; I know this is inflation of my mind.

But allow me this indulgence for a moment, please?

Bigger and Sweeter, the five senses drenched in love and then a scoop more.

Yet, I look back on a younger face and feel the yearning for tomorrow so deeply.

To go on, my own way.

Be free in the nurturing sunlight of growth.

Time is a funny friend.

How in one moment, it stretches on forever in front of us.

Then in a snap - gone to the wind.

Like most things made of smoke and mirrors, inconsistency is its’ name.

Instead of chasing this time of past, come find me on the shores of Beard’s Hollow.

Ass in the sand,

Pieces of the Pacific’s roots strewn about here and there.

I know her, constant companion.

Predictable tides, perpetual gray.

I love her just the same; I want her still.

Come See Me in The Good Light is an exquisite documentary about Poet Laureate, Andrea Gibson’s life. It inspired me to begin dedicating time and energy to writing and living more presently everyday.

Deeply hard to let go.

Painfully resisting building a whole story around the joyful.

To just let the sting of reality blow in on the Eastern wind.

I whisper, “Take me away with you when you go?”

The response flutters by as a ship unmoored,

An anchor lost in the depths of an unforgiving flow

The port fully out of sight now.

“How will I find you again?”, I ask in dismay.

“Maybe… you already have.”

I’ll set out overwhelmed of the expanse of possibilities, navigating only on truth bumps.

A Northern star predictably rises with the night.

I’ll follow her… for now.

Maybe later Cassiopeia will lead me to a far off land.

An adventure those before me only dreamed of.

Moon Manor, is a powerful film about intentionality and choice in end of life care to celebrate a life fully lived. This film inspired me to explore more deeply my interest in Death Doulaship, leading to the introduction to INELDA, where I am planning to do an End of Life Doula certification through.

I’ll live for them and for me.

For the mistakes that were made in misaligned fear of a life void of alternatives.

Holding the one’s who lived in fear knowing that love is the only way Home.

Living out loud to repair for those who birthed suffering with every step mangled by blindness inside and out.

Only integrity can lead us back.

These words on the page are one of the only ways I know to keep the demons at bay.

A quiet act of resistance.

Hearing a powerful breeze of knowing flow in saying, “Forgive them, for they do not know what they do.”

An art of pure Love far beyond my ability,

A practice of eternal care, grander than any One.

Wider than Here and Greater than Now.

The Eye of Knowing- returning home in finding sacred practices and connections to my ancestral heritage

Keeping me rooted in arms of the original Home.

One with a time that was never mine to have forever.

I keep loving and living releasing the rocks of sorrow from my pockets to the ripples before me.

Taking the way lightly, knowing a little better now what I would miss.

Through the destructive storms of undoing, the stillness following brings a life-giving oasis of clarity.

I find my way Here again.

And one day, I pray long from the now, There I will go.

Passing through a veil so thin, I swear sometimes they are here again.

A smile returning back, I am Home.

Sand and Sea,

Red Rock and Sun,

Forest and Moss,

Rain and Mud,

Rubber and the Road.

This is where I belong.

With the Mother who came long before me and who will persist long after we are gone.

Home - a coastal town where the land ends and the sea begins

Fear will not keep us Here….re-learning Love will.

I can’t be certain of the How but the Why feels clear.

This is a love poem to Home past, present, and future (*Spoiler Alert* They are the same.)

Connection forming plugging back into the Source, an embrace bigger than any human arms though deeply familiar of the one’s I love.

I could keep going on and on… and I might.

For it feels so good to hear your voice.

The Your of one stream converging from many.

Leading us all back, many paths collide.

Moving forward in a remembering, so familiar.

Feeling our way in the dark, tingle after tingle.

I miss this when I walk away.

So I choose this Joy today.

Hopeful I will do the same tomorrow.

Praying for the Home of this present moment.

Certain I can hear an answer ringing clear in the breeze of a soul in motion.

You have arrived.

It’s always been right under your nose (quite literally).

A fist-sized connection consistently pumping with everlasting life.

Breath by Breath, Arrival.

I Love You by every name.

Oh My, True Home of Homes.

If you made it this far, I see you and appreciate your energy to share in this journey of transition with me. May we all cultivate more love today and always.

With gratitude,

Erica