I exist

 "I exist".  This image came from a very deeply felt painful and moving experience of holding my heart, listening to my heart with deep attention.  My heart spoke, she said "I exist" with all her soul intelligence, with all her life experience, so often doubted, so often ignored, so often made less of... but her voice, was very tender and clear, "I exist". 

This took me into a very dark place, as though the emotional weight of discounting and ignoring heart were pouring over me... Growing up my mother had such a guarded heart, my father had such a forgotten and shy heart, they could not model for me what it was to give heart her full-bodied acknowledgment.  Nor was it part of the culture. The particular intellectual culture that doubted spirit and soul, that had no words for speaking of it.  

Though I give my mother great credit for her search, as an anthropologist, looking far and wide, looking into the her-story of history, looking to the soul poetry of the Navajo, yet not fully able to own it, though it was what perhaps moved her most deeply, but not being able to own it, she could not let on that she knew my heart-soul existed.  I felt I could die so many times growing up.  Heart untouched, untended to in so many ways, pain ignored because it was too overwhelming and there were no words, no one knew how to hug. I learned how to years later and taught my mother to hug.

When I would break down on occasion, unable to put on a brave face any longer, it was my father's tender heart who came to me with a kind word summoned forth from his tender heart.  But mostly he was absent from the time I was 9 or 10 onwards (though his workaholism began sooner), when I had no idea where he was, in town, out of town, in the country, out of the country. 

After my father's death, there were people who worked closely with him that said they had no idea he had a daughter, though by then he did call me weekly.  From my mother's diaries, I know that my father did not want to have children.  I seem to remember he wanted her to abort.  But as a small child, he was my favorite parent, the one who carried me on his shoulders, the one who took me for A&W Hamburgers and shakes when I was hungry. It makes me very sad to remember how neglected I actually was.  There are pictures of me as a young child, hair unkempt, clothing unkempt... 

Though as a little baby before I learned how to walk, I was so bright.  Such a shining light. My mother said before she died how she wished so dearly she had spent more time brushing my hair, and caring for me. She cared for me in other ways, mostly of the mind, teaching me to write and to read, encouraging me to remember my dreams upon waking.  When I was 4 and 5 we often did yoga together.  So it was not as though there were no resources given, even in the midst of neglect of many material and emotional kinds. My mother struggled a lot with depression, and low self-esteem despite being one of the most articulate and brilliant people I have been graced to know. "They" say, most recently I heard it from Elizabeth Gilbert, that depression covers anger and rage, my mother could not tolerate my anger as she could not tolerate her own anger.  

So my soul heart says "I exist" and I realize that I still struggle to care for my heart emotionally, often over-ride or ignore, just as I was taught by example.  It is a life-long journey... As Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen says, "Life is a practice". And maybe somehow in all of the is the truth of what has been said "wounds are where the doorways are"... some of our greatest gifts are birthed of the wounds...