Karen Monroy

Some losses are so big; there is no place for them in the chambers of our mind. We collide with the loss in horrific, brutal fashion. Lost for words, lost for feelings, we are amputated from life itself.

My first collision with no-place-for-it-loss: my 6 yr. old and 9 yr. old boys were kidnapped.

I wanted to scream at everyone. Didn’t they know what happened? How could they move so slow, ask such stupid questions?

I needed to make sense, flipped into emergency functioning, clawing for each syllable of a word to convey to the powers that be what had happened, who took them, how. The shear panic, dread and terror at my lack of control.

Fighting against the collision of loss, I found no room in me for this kidnapping to be true. How would this unfold? How would life go on if the worst were to happen?

The truth is life does go on.

The world keeps going and this knowledge tears at us when we are amputated from life. Lifeless, hallow vestiges of whoever we were before, simple activities are offensive as they imply, “life goes on.”

The kidnapping was lifetimes ago. Thankfully I quickly got my children back. Not so thankfully it took years to undo the trauma. That of course was preferable to the other possibilities.

I have been reminded over the last few months of the collisions with unimaginable loss we can suffer in our life. These events have been a poignant reminder for me about living, about not missing life.

Morgan Harrington’s mother, Gil is undergoing unbelievable loss. Morgan is dead. A monster murdered Morgan and dumped her body in a farmer’s field. From Gil’s blog: (http://findmorgan.com/category/family-blog)

From Jan. 31^st:

“Who would ever have thought it would be mine to see every image of Morgan’s life – from her first faint shadows on fetal ultrasound to the gaping orbital hollows in her skull? An abomination to witness this ending.”

From Feb. 15^th:

They gave me your bracelet back

Tarnished now, rusty and black

It’s the one I had as a girl

The one you wore as you left this world

The one that witnessed mortal harm

I’m wearing now on my arm…

It’s impossible to read Gil’s blog and not cry. It’s clear the collision with loss is massive. I’m awed at Gil’s bravery and honesty in facing life.

In January I was reading a beautiful book:  Saving Cee Cee Honeycutt. In the book, Oletta is explaining to Cee-Cee about grief,

“life’s out there….even the leaves on the trees is movin’….life don’t wait for nobody”

A mother, who lost both children in a car accident in 1979, told Beth Hoffman, the author of Saving Cee-Cee Honeycutt, how much that line meant to her.

Life had gone on, and by some miracle she realized she had gone with it.

I wondered if I had endured what either one of these mothers have, would I go on?

How do I live now? How fully preset and alive do I meet each day?

How alive are you?

Is this even a question on our radar screen? Does the ‘to do’ list crowd out our living? Truthfully, I think we forget with or without us life goes on.

The only remedy I know is awareness. Awareness of the essence of life, the taste of life, vibrant and ever present on your tongue.

There was a point in the family healing from the kidnapping I knew I was being left behind. The boys clearly were steps ahead of me.  Life was going on and I was stuck on what happened.

Thank you God for Grace. I don’t know how I laid down the anger and resentment and began to put my toes back into life. I don’t know how to mark the process, it was ever so slow.

I do know how many little ways we don’t participate in life. I know how driven we are to make a goal and then get caught-up in the goal and stop living. Unlike Gil’s or the reader of Beth’s novel shared, this is a self-inflicted amputation from life.

I am grateful for the heartfelt reminder to live. Collisions with life do happen, and life does go on.

I’d like to invite you to join me in praying for the Harrington’s, witnessing their courage, and supporting them in what-ever way feels right to you.

From Gil’s post on March 26^th:

“A campaign to limit violence is really basic, the lowest common denominator. Our mandate should be respect, cherish. But it is a beginning, so lets start here.”

It feels right to me to share with you this idea of life going on, and ask as you re-evaluate your reverence for life, you think about violence and what you can do to help end it, as your life goes on.

Peace.

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My parents used to swear I was a fish in a past life. Growing up with frequent time on the beach, all I knew was the at-one-ment I felt there. I emersed in the water until my mom would declare if I spent one more second in the water I would grow gills.

At 12 I was caught in a strong raging under-toe. I was a jr. Life guard, accomplished and strong swimmer but I couldn’t compete with this under-toe.  It dragged me down the beach and out to the ocean. I can recall the terror I had knowing I had no control. My mind was in fight mode; I swam as hard as I could, making no progress out of the under-toe until I was exhausted.

There wasn’t anything else for me to do but try to float, and I could barely manage that. I had been yelling and the sensation of salt water in the back of my mouth was overwhelming. I thought yuck, is this what fish taste? My focus and attention on the taste of salt water in the back of my mouth was highly inappropriate given my circumstances, but I am convinced it saved my life.

I felt myself being bumped like when I washed up against the side of the pool when I was floating on a raft and my brothers were doing cannonballs next to me to piss me off. The cannonballs always shoved me, protected by the padding of the raft into the pool wall and I would change direction.

I looked around and could see nothing-but I was exhausted and my looking was brief.  There was the bump again. And Again. Gross this salt-water taste is awful; I need to focus on keeping my head above the waves. Bump again. Now I feel like I am moving solidly in a direction. I am content to not care, exhausted I have one job: trying to keep more of the salt water from going down the back of my throat and experiencing that awful taste. I remember thinking how I might be having a priority issue. It was very strange the awful taste of salt water was my focus, because it wasn’t like I didn’t know I was going to die-and soon. Dying, not so bad. The taste-eeeeww. Strange I thought.

I find myself in the surf, I can’t really get my legs under me try as I might. I manage to let out a few loud and impressive screams for help. I collapse, feel myself go under the wave and I remember thinking of the irony of drowning so close to shore.

With in seconds big strong arms were lifting me up, up high above the waves, I was being asked if I was okay, if I was attacked by a shark, where was I hurt?

None of the questions made any sense. No I wasn’t okay, I almost died, but had no strength to really talk, spitting up and spitting out what felt like volumes of seawater from my lungs and throat.

The man with the strong arms said he saw me going out farther and farther and was very upset because he didn’t know who my parents were and couldn’t tell them the transgression against good judgment he felt I had made for swimming out that far. He said he saw fins all around me, he saw me coming back into shore, heard me shouting and ran to me to help.

That night I dreamed I was being carried by dolphins. I was being transported to unknown locations, but wherever they were taking me I was fine with it. In the morning it all made sense, the questions from the man, what the bumps were, angels with blowholes.  For years I had been wearing a dolphin necklace. I never took it off. I lost it in the water that day. I felt it was the homage I paid. The acknowledgment of my debit to the dolphins.

What changed on that day was clear: I wasn’t a fish and the love of my life could easily kill me. The ocean was no more my home than the top of a tree. The world didn’t make sense any more.

I began healing with an uneasy truce with nature. I’d bargain; I won’t go into the water again. Okay, I’ll only go in up to my knees. Finally I settled on I’d only go into the water up to my chest and it wouldn’t kill me.

I got over the experience, became enamored with the seas once again, took to surfing and sail boarding but with a watchful eye and cautious demeanor. I didn’t heal from the experience until I had a change in perception. What ACIM deems a miracle: I stopped thinking of myself as someone who needed to fear, someone who almost died.

I read a story about a man who was very ill, recovered and then was involved in a car accident, recovered and then was stabbed in a robbery and died.

With each not-my-time experience I have felt the uncontrollable urge to fight, fight and fight some more when I thought I’d had no fight left. In each one of the experiences, when I finally surrendered to what is, all the help my frantic nature was pushing away now was available.

I also noticed that the focus on something else that will not kill you, like the bad taste of salt water in your mouth is what helps save us. I am sure I would have stayed frantic until I couldn’t float without that focus.

I notice too, that whatever our distraction is during the crisis, we need have none in the healing if we are to genuinely heal.

In the end, the overcoming is accomplished because we take everything on the outside and bring it in.

Into us, where we can deal with and face the fears we encounter in our life.

I have never seen healing when the Outside fear remains outside. In fact, the most dangerous place for the fear is on the outside where we can continue to make it a bigger and bigger beast. On the inside, it is met with understanding of it’s rightful place in the pantheon of life lessons.

Outside In morphs into Inside Out.

It’s the fuel for any good thing that ever happens –happens from the inside out.

Whatever the fear, remember the first step is Outside In.

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Also you might want to check out this post too: http://karenmonroy.com/cm/ezines/september_2009.htm#Article2