Falling Into Grace
"THINGS ARE CALLING ME AWAY. MY HAIR IS BEING PULLED BY THE STARS AGAIN." - ANAIS NIN
Published by Bella Grace, 2024
Up in my home office, I sat at my desk beside the unnoticed pond, downing coffee, hopped up on cold medicine, working with a fever, on a deadline. Pushing through, one more time. Only this time, I saw myself. What am I doing? This cannot be the way to live a life. A creative director, a mom (though on the sidelines now that my youngest was off at college), a half-marathon runner, a friend to friends I was too busy to see, I was missing something. Racing through life, outpacing time, I was out of sync with anything like joy. Making money is important — necessary, even — but at what price? The cost might be me. In a stunning newsletter called “The Marginalian” by Maria Popova, I read this, “... letting life is a paradox of active surrender.” Letting life. Surrender. Radical stuff for a producer, like me. There I was in a confluence of my experience and an enticingly unfathomable possibility. As startling as the moon passing between the sun and the earth, eclipsing an accepted reality.
I hit pause.
After meeting the deadline and wrapping up all projects underway, I called the ad agency and told them I was stepping away from work for 90 days. “I need to get things headed in the right direction,” I said. I meant toward health, but also beauty and harmony. It was a drastic move, but it felt like crunch time. On life. I am 57 and have a languorous leukemia, which means it grows slowly toward me while I speed ahead. Even without a diagnosis, life does this. Coming at us, carrying us along its currents, down paths we did not choose.
So now, I sat sipping coffee on the couch, watching the rising pink light of dawn out the window, the cello strands of Yo-Yo Ma wafting over from the kitchen, a black Lab on my lap. What have I done? For the first time in a long time I was waking up into nothing pressing. No kids needed to get to school, no clients needed a campaign concept, no training schedule needed
to be met for an upcoming half-marathon. My identities as mom, runner, creative professional had been swept away. Left behind was a relentless openness, an undefined selfness. I would love to tell you this felt delicious, like freedom. Not even close.
Cozying up to the stillness of the world, with nothing tangible calling me to be and to do, felt uncomfortable, disconcerting. I saw a certain “get off the hook” benefit to living a have-to life. The familiar beckoned loudly. Like a recovering alcoholic, I wanted to take just one drink, one job, have one moment of the me I knew. Looking at my humanness without distraction, I felt the vulnerability and heartbreak of it all — mine, ours, the world’s.
And yet, as I persistently brought my untethered self to each new day, listening to the trees, un-habiting the habits, watching yesterday’s actions and reactions unfurl like wind with no sail, a quietude emerged. I felt myself being called toward the things that make souls smile.
Edging forward, fragile and curious, I took supplements, did IV infusions, and ate healthy foods. I ran short, slow miles and meditated. Eschewing words like “fighting cancer” and “battling on all fronts,” instead I actively surrendered to what I called “waging peace.”
I read poetry and children’s stories, philosophy and fiction. I met a friend for coffee and laughed in the here and now. I walked therapy dogs into elementary classrooms and watched brave young readers stumble their way through words like “dachshund” and “hooray.” I took an online art class that took me a month to get up the courage to start. I wrote two picture books, planned a weekend in the Blue Ridge mountains, and did goat yoga.
Many days felt like wading through the breakers on the way into the calm of the ocean. I panicked about money and being replaced, about the foolishness of seeking serenity and mystery. I was in bas relief, and I questioned what I might really be able to bring to this life.
And yet, instead of rushing my dog through getting the paper, I stopped and stood before the morning moon. Instead of racing up to my desk to create, I sat at the edge of the pond watching the turtles and alligators sunning on the bank. The person filling in for me at work called once and asked for insight on a project. A flash of missing my old, certain self was replaced by the fluttering joy of expanding into whatever might be coming. I was no longer hurrying to the beck and call of the noise but rather wandering at the behest of the stars.
Bella Grace Magazine, Issue 42, 2024
One day, I took my dog to a coffee shop. I lingered at a high-top and strangers came to pet her, sharing stories of their lives. Nothing but hereness and moments of usness. All my doingness would not lift the world, I understood now, but maybe our humanity could. I could dare to face the
beauty, to stand witness to something like sunlight I cannot grasp.
Though my respite would soon end, I knew I would not go back the same. On the coffee table beside me sat a jar of yellow tulips, withered and bright, surrounded by fallen petals.