Goals for today: go to the ghetto market (I'm not including the name; I apologize to anyone if it offends you that I repeat this phrase) to pick up chocolate that I have a coupon for sometimes I go to the schmancy chocolatier and sometimes I go to the ghetto market to get the chocolate I have a coupon for, send out more poems to journals, buy a nicer french press than the tiny travel one I have now I need to brew more than 16 oz. at a time dammit, and read / annotate the Joanne Kyger poems for tomorrow's class.
So far accomplished. Ghetto market. It was the first stop down the hill, so to speak. As I've mentioned, I've been using the white cane full time now. Yesterday, while discussing the integration of this piece of my identity into the whole with A., I had a full-on freak out. She let me go into the studio a sacred space and do yoga for an hour until I calmed myself down.
One of the first lessons I learned after beginning my sessions with A. --she does massage therapy / energy work -- some years ago now, was how to make my aura big, so to speak.
To paraphrase A.'s words as I remember then from that time: there used to be this practice in energy work, where practitioners would encourage their clients to create a sort of force field around themselves to protect themselves from fear and harm. But that is now seen as old school. The best way to protect yourself no that is not the right words, perhaps "allow oneself to fully be present in the world is to be radically open. So open that others cannot deny you your space.
I stumbled yesterday, mentally, emotionally, when I realized I would have to re-learn this lesson SO HARD TO LEARN... but with the cane now. Every time someone comes toward me on the street, I am negotiating a way-of-being with them.
I decided this morning that I would give myself permission to, once I was on the perimeter of the street surrounding the ghetto market, that I would fold up the cane and blend in. The ghetto market it being a) ghetto and b) a market is one place that causes me to want to blend in, not draw attention to myself.
However when I approached the ghetto market, using the cane felt so natural and seamless that I did not put it away until I was pretty close to the entrance. Which is where I would put the cane away naturally, when entering just about any building except the airport / train / bus station.
And then when I exited, I took extra time in the lobby to pack up my crap just so and I immediately starting using my cane as I exited the building. Just as I would any other building.
So, that happened. And I wanted to make a note of it.
Rad. Every day. You're doing it. Sometimes I have to look at myself and say those words: I'm doing it. I am succeeding at this. Look what I did. (You can add your favorite expletive noun if you like.)
ReplyDeleteAlso...at the Aad Guray mantra workshop, K. explained it like so: it protects you not like a force field, but with all the things that are wonderful about you. You protect yourself by radiating your strength.