Something weird happened around my miscarriages…just a few times, but it was enough to make an impression.
Right after my first one, I met a woman in a bookstore, and we became fast friends. Her name was Antoinette. One of the first things I learned about her was that she had a rare type of cancer and did not expect to live for more than a few months. But she was exuberant. Her joyful spirit, the pure love and warmth she radiated in the face of such knowledge, was inspirational. My time with Antoinette was short, but I treasured it. Once, as I went to hug her goodbye, a shock wave ran right through me. Well, it was like a shock wave that was filtered through brown sugar and then ran right through me. Intense, urgent, all-consuming, but also harmless, sweet, and very, very warm. I remember feeling joy and grief all wrapped up in that hug. I still don’t know what it means…just that I felt it.
And then a similar thing happened years later after the next miscarriage. While my daughter and I were waiting in the parking lot for Anthony, we ran into a friend. She came to give me a hug, and when she did, I felt a shock run through my whole body. More of a lightning bolt this time. Again…intense, arresting. A couple of days later–same friend, same place, same hug: same shock. At this time, my friend had been going through some major adjustments in life. There was a reason that she would be feeling these electric jolts every day, but why was I feeling them now when hugging her?
A couple of months later, a friend gifted me my first massage. And it. was. incredible. I mean, I had never had a massage before, and clearly, I had been missing out. Human touch. Professional boundaries. Perfect! I personally loved the intimacy and safety of the massage experience–the same intimacy present in touch which makes plenty of people recoil from the idea, which I didn’t mind because of the built-in boundaries. I loved it, and to each his/her/their own, but…to lay yourself bare to another human, with all of your “imperfections” you mostly try to hide…instead, to say “I need this”…to be given to and have nothing taken……. I needed this form of liberation at this time in my life.
My massage therapist was excellent in every way. She was professional; she had warmth; she was skilled in her art. What’s odd is that I walked away from my massage feeling pleased with the service and also…melancholy. There was something of a loneliness and a homesickness in me…pervasive and strong. I rewondered: Was this coming from me or from someone else? They say you need to hydrate well after a massage, so maybe I just needed to drink more water.
Actually. I started to be a little concerned. I had never thought about being (physically) sensitive to the energy of others. But here I was, picking up on…something…that I couldn’t explain. So what if I was experiencing someone else’s mood/emotion/energy/whatever? And if that was the case, then what was I putting out there energetically for others to receive? For those more sensitive than I? I felt the sudden need to be very conscious of my own energetic workings.
And so. I started reading about positive energy and the like. Yes, I was geeking out quite a bit…and hiding the evidence (books and journals) under my bed so that Anthony wouldn’t see them and think I was nuts. That’s what makes the pleasure guilty.
During this period in time, I had decided to sleep in a different room a couple times a week. Nothing wrong with watching loud reruns and falling asleep next to an already-snoring spouse, but every night? After dinner and getting our daughter ready for bed…that was my only “me” time after a long day, and I was spending it numbing out on someone else’s show. Had Anthony been as interested in connection with me as he was in snoozing to Blanche, Dorothy, and Rose, I would gladly have shared this time with him. Alas, he wasn’t…and my desire called…so I skipped off happily to play.
What I really craved was substance…texture…depth. So I went into my little sanctuary–the “guest bedroom”–and soaked up these little things of substance, texture, and depth. I was in heaven in my spare room, which felt warm and nurturing compared to our large, under-personalized master bedroom with huge windows and sweeping lake views. I stayed up late every night, spreading it all out before me…my books, my breadcrumbs journal (something I invented to stay on an inspired path), highlighters, colored pens…. I would read and write and explore away. I got into poetry…Mary Oliver and Rumi were my first loves. I worked on emanating “positive energy” and I started running my own experiments, like: what would be the effect of sleeping to the sound of different frequencies? Stuff like that.
And, most importantly, in light of my curiosity and recent massage experience (because I had made up my mind that I would never be without massage again), I had the most fascinating idea for an experiment: I would use my intuition to guide me to a massage therapist with whom I could share this conscious intimacy.
And that was the ball that reeeeally set things rolling.
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