Blog

In mid-Spring of this year, I found myself driving home with a 6 week old female wolf hybrid. The runt of the litter. Part of a private rescue which required that 19 puppies belonging to three litters of various percentages wolf, be wisely placed in Boulder homes. This little creature, this impossible treasure, who would become to us Ruby Dragon Chickadee, was shaking and silent as she huddled in her new Auntie Alyssa’s lap. Ruby’s litter was the youngest of the three and the highest wolf content – likely 75% gray wolf DNA running through this little one’s tiny pulsing veins and ancient intelligent spirit.

This morning I am full of the most welcomed heartbreak. It’s a heartbreak that, as recently as last year, I thought I might not experience in this life time: the mother’s heartbreak of sending her oldest son off into the world to make his way, find his own brilliance and bring it forward. As recently as 12 months ago, I was trying to reconcile what it might be like to attend my son’s funeral, or visit him in jail…very different reasons for leaving home than the remarkably normal process of a young man fledging himself robustly, brilliantly into the world. 

As a people, those in industrialized culture, we no longer know how to listen for the larger story going on all around us and within us; the story whose substance is what allows us to be here, that when translated back into its original language, sounds like the hum of the land and the song of the chickadees. Rather we listen to the stories of lack or the distraction stories of ‘doing’ or ‘victim’. We worry that we have not paid our taxes, that the car needs an oil change, that we are strangely ‘depressed’, don’t seem to be able to sustain meaningful relationships or haven’t really experienced this thing we call ‘happy’.

This was an extraordinary year. That must always be true, but some years seem to require a more pumped-up celebration at the end, to have me truly feel like something remarkable and complete has wrapped itself up, right at the moment that something else, new and unknown, is sprouting up from its ashes. This year is one of those that needs no extra hype. It has been one hell of a glorious, treacherous, heartbreaking, exalted ass-kicking of a year. As a result, the dark days between the Solstice and New Year’s were a tremendous, big deal.

I wrote the poem, below, four years ago this week as I (and my then husband) plowed through the heartbreaking and arduous task of packing up two or three generations of a wealthy family's collected condensed belongings. My mother was the last of her family still alive, all three sisters and both parents having died long ago. This 3000 square foot house, a gorgeous showcase built to be just that, filled with silver, paintings, sculptures, rugs, furniture, bedding, and books. The books. Each item bringing with it a panic in my solar plexus, an immediate non-conscious increase in my heartbeat.