Coming Out of the Spiritual Closet
This is my first blog please forgive me for its imperfections, it is the bravest thing I’ve done in a long time. My favorite aunt “Adelaide” passed away this week after a two year battle with cancer. It was not her first battle. She, my Aunt “Bibba” and my mother, all sisters, had all battled breast cancer, but my aunt Adelaide was the only survivor. She was an amazing woman who supported me, she supported my art and she supported my “spitfire” attitude, when others saw me as “difficult”, she saw me as independent, and she was one of the few that not only embraced me as an outspoken teenager, she nurtured it. My mother used to say to me “you sound just like Adelaide”, and as my aunt would say “I felt right proud of that”. Adelaide had dyslexia, just like me, she also overcame incredible hurdles in her lifetime, she fought for the underdog and she was a trailblazer.
My mother passed away nearly eight years ago and naturally losing her sister has brought up a tremendous amount of grief. When my mother died, this is when my journey of coming out of the “spiritual closet” really began ….. very serendipitous and magical things began to happen to me when I opened that door. Soon after her parting when the initial shock and the numbness wore off and the real grief set in, I was on the edge of a great journey when I realized there were two deaths, hers and mine, because I would never be the same person I was when there was a world with her in it, and I had to figure out how to live again without her and of course I still had Adelaide to fall back on ………..until today.
I have a picture of the sisters sitting in my living room, it is an old black and white photo, they are acting in some type of play looking young and gorgeous in the 1940’s era. Early in the morning upon my aunt’s death, although I did not know she passed at this time (I knew) because the sisters sent me a sign. I passed by the photo just like I do every day and the frame literally fell off its stand, face down with a slam! I picked it up and said to myself, “ok I get it, you are together now and on your way to a new great adventure”. Now that I am becoming more and more familiar with the way that spirit speaks to me, it didn’t even surprise me that much!
I’m pretty much terrified to write, it took me 50 years to get to this point. If you are afraid of being vulnerable, the best way to feel even more vulnerable is to make yourself vulnerable. Yep, it’s true. As soon as I embarked on this writing journey my internal “itty bitty shitty committee” (stolen from my mentor “Jenifer Grace”) parade came out full force. In fact it was so loud at 3am as it marched through my bedroom, I was surprised it did not wake up my husband. “You’re not good enough!” “You come from a family of writer’s, those be some awfully big shoes to fill”. “Who cares? “Picture all these self-defeating remarks with giant clashing symbols sounds in the background. You get the basic idea. The point I’m trying to make here is I want to honor these strong women I am blessed to be related to and I realize how precious our time here on earth is, and if I am going to try to emulate these incredible women’s memories in anyway, the time to do this is now. So here I am terrified, vulnerable, and raring to go and writing you, the kind soul who is reading this, thank you!
So I have a few questions. Who wants to do this with me? Whose got a dream and afraid of rejection if it’s you then you are in good company in my opinion because that company is ME! Who is ready to come out of the spiritual closet? Turn the doorknob and crack open the door and don’t look back into the darkness. Why now? Because the world needs all the peace activists that are out there to be brave, show themselves and speak their truth. We need you, Yes you, to stand up for equality and dignity for all living beings on this planet. If not you, then who?
We are all “Angels with an Edge” on earth; we are all about 80% good and 20 % not so good. No one is expecting perfection just an attempt at some small goodness will probably surprise the heck out of most people. We are all on the edge of something! We all have things in our lives that we want to change. We all want to help but we are not sure how because many of us are spiritual “newbies”. No one knows where to begin so let us start right here.
How about a baby step right now? Why not try one random act of kindness today? I bet your soul will thank you for it!
Journey to be continued…
Elizabeth
