And on this hot bright Sunday morning I am 11 months sober, have just spotted a new bronze fennel popping up alongside the drive, self-seeded. The dog yawning at my feet. The soi-distant lover still asleep.
Life is good. In some ways the same life as before by lived by a different person. In other ways a new life with new challenges and new relationships. Unsettling and scary but also wonderful.
As a child I so longed for the day when I would not be afraid of the dark anymore. And now it is the hope that is itself scary, the light-filled possibilities and strangeness of change. So much has to be rethought and understood anew. So much surrender. My dreamwork is very busy these summer nights, not unlike the magical cobblers mending dancing shoes and clogs with invisible stitches by lamplight. So that I can go on by day, trusting to an inner wisdom that prefers to stay out of sight.
Reconfiguring the way ahead, taking a deep breath at all the unknown territory waiting just over the next rise. Wondering where to replant the dark and copper-bright fennel, what to write next, how to speak into absence, how to embrace that old fear of the dark and acknowledge the fear of dazzling and unsparing truth. Not yet ready for rigorous honesty. Not yet living in the light. But the door to the sunlit garden is ajar.
Just don’t plant the fennel near any other herbs or vegetables.
It doesn’t like company, it seems- an early expeiment on our part confirmed this, as it killed off the sage and rosemary!
Love,
Terri in Joburg