Today, as I sit down to write, I wonder if my writing will happen; if I will find my flow.  Right now, it feels effortful.  I worry I will run out of words before I run out of life.  Then Tigger throws up on the carpet and I jump up to scrub the green vomit before it becomes a stain.

During that task, my thoughts come in the form of sentences that need to be written.  Often, when I process internally, my thoughts come out this way.  Based on that evidence, I can’t imagine I will ever run out of words.  It is just a concern that we writers face: the dreaded “writers block”. 

I tell my author clients to sit through that place.  To sit through the discomfort as they stare at a blank screen.  I tell them to write their experience.  Write how they don’t want to write.  Write the resistance.  Write the fears.  Write it versus being consumed by it and allowing the concern to take them away from the commitment to write. For it is in writing, that we know that we are writers.  To merely talk about writing isn’t enough.  As I have said before, the book won’t write itself.

At some point I will go back and read what I have written up to this time.  I will learn from myself.  I will see “how I am doing”.  I may understand some things that don’t make sense right now.

Last night, David and I talked about the “lessons” that will come from this experience.  I realize I don’t need to know why it happened.  I do need to know how I will grow and that I will grow.  Not that I was all that bad before, but I want transformation from this.  I demand transformation.  If we can’t be better, stronger, faster on the other side – what is the point.  That’s a ‘Bionic Man’ reference for those who are not in the mid-forties…  Actually, I do not want to be faster.  I want to be slower – much much much slower.

I want to appreciate the small stuff; to be more in the moment; to love bigger; to feel deeper.  I want to be bolder; sassier; richer, rawer.  Recently, a man I met (and hoped to have as a colleague) told me I was too intense for him.  He said, I triggered him and reminded him of a relative that he struggled with.  It was interesting to hear his view of me.  I saw elements of truth – I am intense!  And, it is a hard earned intensity after so many years of being shy and self-conscious, my intensity turned inward in the trap of addiction.  In his assessment of me, he skipped over my soft underbelly and decided he knew who I was without even caring to inquire.  It was quite yucky to be on the receiving end of that.  After some frustrating dialogue via email, where I decided to banter with him to see if we could get to the other side, I read his emails to Dusty and she implored me to delete them all and cease and desist.  I complied.  When a Goddess orders a command, it is wise to follow.  He wasn’t going to change his ill-conceived view of me.  The more I attempted to communicate, the more evidence he had for my “triggering” intensity.  I permanently deleted the email chain.

Why do I bring this up now?  Does it even matter at this point?  I wish I could say it didn’t matter at all.  Caring what others think, especially where we feel misunderstood and disliked is a stumbling block for many.  After all these years, it is more of a stumbling block than I would like to admit.  I am ready to burn that block to the ground.

This reminds me of a session a year ago with one of my coaches where she suggested I study – and embody – the Goddess Kali.  Sometimes referred to as the Goddess of Destruction, Kali is known for her boundless freedom, passion and fierceness.  Her destructive power is for the purpose of recreation.  And what she destroys is sin, ignorance and decay. She is equated with eternal night – the transcendent power of time.  Kali brings the death of the ego as the illusory self-centered view of reality.  Sign me up!

I am ready to discover the metaphors for fire.  I seek a mystical explanation of this grand adventure.  There have been plenty of signs of the mystical operating in the back and foreground.  I am not ready to share all of it yet, but I know it’s there.  And, it is coming.  It is part of my transformation.

I cannot help but think of Ann Appel and the Lucas’s as I write this.  I choose my words with the utmost respect for their souls and their families who love them.  Yet, I must find my own way.  I must find my metaphors.  I was spared a fiery death.  They were not.  That they perished is beyond tragic.  I must walk this path of a survivor and for my growth; I must journey into the flames.  The metaphors will haunt me if I don’t stop and face them.  This is my healing path.  I continue this written exploration not knowing what is to come in my words, but needing to follow this train.  I continue with an honoring heart.

Who I was is burning up.  In this process, it is slower than the wildfire that consumed my home.  First, the heat wave takes me to the ground and sucks all oxygen from my lungs.  Shocked, without words, stunned – a deer in the headlights I stare blindly at the impending destruction.  Then the force begins to break windows.  Shards of glass fly through the air piercing my skin.  Blood runs down my face and body, pooling on the floor.  I see the world, as I knew it collapsing around me.  I am losing strength and the will to go on.  I may fall on the floor and never get up.  (Right now, I pause in the middle of writing this unsure if I can go on.  I didn’t know this was coming.  I am taking deep breaths.  Breathe with me, please)

The flames have reached me– the crackle and pop has a disturbing melody.  I am lulled into numbness.  Will I drift away?  Will I come back?  Do I want to come back to this uncertain, dark world?  Why is there so much pain?  Can I bear it?  I am not sure.

I feel the heat on my skin, I smell the burn.  It fills my nostrils and there seems to be nothing else.  I breathe deeply and feel my lungs fry.  The floor falls away beneath me.  I am plummeting through space.  Where will I land?  All around me are flames.  What once was solid is turning to dust.  Ash fills the air.  Walls are crumbling, floors are falling, metal is dissolving.  Above the fierce cloud roils on.  Nothing can stop it.  The power of nature is beyond ferocious.  There are no words to describe it.  It is unstoppable.

Trees crack and pop, branches fall, grass is burnt to a crisp.  Elements fuse together, glass becoming water, swirling around and picking up fragments of what once was solid.  Reality is crashing down all around.  Soon there is only smoke, flame and rubble.  Nothing that was remains any longer.

Soot fills the air and coats everything in black.  I can’t breathe.  There is tightness in my chest that won’t go away.  Ash is everywhere – in my eyes, hair, ears, on my teeth, in my stomach.  It coats my system and comes out my bowels.  Will I ever be anything but ash, a mere remnant of what I once was?  Will I ever take form?

Rains come and wash away the first layers of soot.  But it is so deep, so thick, it seems that it goes on forever.  Nothing can take the blackness away.  It will never return to what once was.  A layer of snow falls covering the blackness.  Suddenly, it looks different.  The destruction is blanketed in white.  I know that it is still there, yet for a moment is remains out of view.  The snow melts and reveals the blackness – but is there less?  A few green sprouts emerge from the ground.  Are they hope?  Will they make it?  They are so small it seems they can’t ever make a difference.

It rains again.  Some of the smell dissipates.  I only catch wafts of it now, traces of burn.  Or is it I am getting accustomed to the new fragrance?

Groups of angels descend and begin to pick up the pieces.  Slowly, surely, steadily, the rubble is removed.  Treasures emerge from the mess – little signs of something.  Reminders of a life lived.  Reminders of love given and received.  The site continues to transform.  I don’t know who it will be.  I don’t know who I will be.  I don’t know who I am.  Yet, I do know.  I am a Goddess emerging from the fire.