Embracing the Hummingbird

Reading through my journal entries for the past year, I began to see my life in a much wider context, not just in terms of how my journey is impacting me, but how it is touching the lives of those around me and how it fits into the long line of ancestors who have birthed me in this time and place. The fears I carry have been handed down to me by generations of women who survived famine, emigration, poverty, persecution, and isolation from others and their deepest selves. Their determination to survive gave me my life, gave me my privilege, and gave me my trauma. What would they think of me now? What would they make of the work I have done and the choices I have made with all they have given me? I imagine them criticizing my lack of discipline and practicality. I imagine them bewildered and saddened by my choice not to have children. I imagine them angry that I use their savings on self-indulgence. They buried their deeper longings in service of duty. They were too consumed by their daily needs and limitations to waste time on the larger meaning of it all. But the security they struggled to pass on to me has given me the opportunity to delve into their griefs, to heal what they never had the safety to acknowledge, and to unearth and nurture dreams they never knew they had.

On New Year’s Eve, I noticed the rising of a subtle sense that I am finished with my past and that my attention is drawn from what has passed toward what is coming. I may never feel fully healed or fully clear regarding the diverse forces that have shaped me, but I feel complete with them. This beautiful “love at first sight” apartment has worked its magic of healing me and now lingers as a reminder of what I have already shed. These past months – the savings I have tapped, the new hobbies and treatments I have tried, the reflecting and writing I have done – have transformed me in the way that I hoped, leaving me ready for what is coming next. The closest thing I have to a resolution is a sense that this year will be full and rich, and I want to greet it not with my traditionally anxious way of preparing for the worst, but with a lively sense of curiosity over what magic may come my way, borne of the way I have learned to reframe the events of my life and the story I tell about who I am.

The first unfolding of that Beloved Mystery came on New Year’s Day during my cashiering shift. The opening of a new store has diverted enough business that none of the seasonal temps can be offered permanent positions. This means I will be out of a job in less than two weeks. Oddly enough, I was not surprised. Part of me was numbed by denial that what has become a community rich with abundant feasting and lively banter will be lost to me. Part of me welcomed the irony as typical – that I would have sacrificed time with friends, energy for side projects, and my general health in a bid to impress the very people who ended up unable to reward me for financial reasons that had nothing to do with my performance. A deeper part of me recognized that although a large part of me always longs for the security of routine, this time in my life is about the other part – the part that knows I must continue to dissolve and that all the sacrifices I have made are now leading me toward something more expansive.

Despite my recent writings regarding letting go of the idea of travel, with all its risk and broadly applicable metaphor, the moment I was alone I was flooded with those familiar visions of evaporating out in the world – of waking up to tend sheep on a drizzly Scottish hillside, of viewing the rolling golden Tuscan hills between olives branches from the top of an orchard ladder, of reading at a tiny table set on cobblestones outside a café, of watching generations of knowledge carve the jungle into beautifully layered garden plots. These dreams are of living and working in community in the center of breath-taking landscapes, of feeling the timeless beauty of those places and practices subvert the very last scrap of my attachment to my identity in this time and place and dissolve into the cycles of sunrise and sunset, planting and harvest, just as a caterpillar liquefies in its cocoon before its form ever hints at a pair of wings. I dream a butterfly’s dream.

At what point did the decision to embrace such a profound change take root? Was it the first time I was in Italy 15 years ago and simply knew I would walk those same streets again in this lifetime? Was it the deep knowing that I would never take the trip the way I needed to if I stayed in my marriage? Or at my job? Was it all the ways I unconsciously rebelled against those sources of security so that they would release me to pursue that dream? Was it the feeling of strength and clarity during my road trips last year that made it all feel suddenly possible? Was it the first weeks at my new job last fall when I saw how quickly I adopted the new routine and made new friends, and realized I could do this anywhere in the world? Was it the moment earlier this week that I admitted I was beginning to feel bored at my job, stifled by my solitude, and anxious over my dwindling savings and window of opportunity?

My ultimate decision to begin this journey feels much like I imagine one decides to start a family. It’s not a practical choice; it’s an emotional one, it’s one I make simply because I feel it is something I must do, and I realize I have always felt that way. I trust myself to make solid choices based on the support, fresh food, deep sleep, warmth, and time alone I know I need to thrive. I trust the Beloved Mystery to gift me what I need to overcome what each day brings when I reach the limit of my control. And I trust that my life will be richer for it – that I will become unrecognizable because of it, and I will look back with overwhelming gratitude and wonder how I could have ever lived my life in any other way. My life has always been what Liz Gilbert describes as the flight of the hummingbird – not one of clear passion, but of following the draw of each flower and scent, and cross-pollinating the world with what I discover. And I am ready to step into that life with faith, serenity, and grounded curiosity.

I now face the task of reaffirming this dream every day, with full awareness of the risks and in the face of numerous temptations to veer off course. I have begun to receive a flood of invitations to stay – another offer for contract work, an update on another grocery store opening, a retreat with the board I am completing service with reminding me of my professional gifts, our community’s need, and my deep affection for my colleagues. My mind can drum up dozens of practical reasons to stay from retaining my affordable apartment amid the increasing cost of living, to the dangers of solo world travel, to the tedium of planning multiple legs of a journey sure to morph many times based on circumstance and my shifting interests. I face a potentially endless and overwhelming list of practical tasks I must complete in order to fold up my life and bring a new one into being, while beginning to grieve all the things that I still love despite it being time to let them go.

But this thread of what feels like destiny will lead me, sooner or later, to the moment I walk out my front door for the last time, having cleaned and kissed the walls of my sanctuary, and tucking my friends, my self-love, and all my knowledge and resilience inside as the home I take with me. I step across the threshold of no return to follow a deeper love. I hold my identity, my security, my community, my dreams for my future and vision for this world up in my open palms, letting them fly free and knowing that what comes to rest again will be truly mine. There is tremendous nourishment lying in wait for me out in the world, and I must lift it from the earth with my own hands. The moment will come when I feel my body warm from primal use, rest my eyes on the glow of an ancient skyline and feel my heart drown in the sense of having arrived at the bedrock of my being. I think of all the women who came before me, of their sacrifice and drudgery, and I envision them at peace knowing I am reaching towards a kind of freedom they never knew. And I cannot imagine a better thing to live for.

Nancy

“You have been walking the ocean’s edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry. You must dive naked under and deeper under, a thousand times deeper. The ground submits to the sky and suffers what comes. Tell me, is the earth worse for giving in like that? Do not put blankets over the drum. Open completely.” – Rumi