Life
changes... Insight from Martha
So here
I sit amidst my remaining possessions, all of which have to fit into
a house on my new property that is about a third the size of the
house I live in now. I’m moving soon, headed to a less arid climate
and a lifestyle with which I’m totally unfamiliar. I learn new
startling things about this lifestyle every day. For example, gophers
are evil. Who knew? Turns out they chew the roots out from under
young trees and create holes that are exactly the right size to
swallow a horse's foot and break its leg. There are literally
thousands of new gophers on my new property. This ranch is to gophers
what Manhattan is to Americans. I plan to address this with
diplomacy, but I have been warned that St. Francis himself would have
taken up arms if there had been gophers living in Assisi.
But the
anti-gopher offensive has not yet been launched. Because right now
I’m in the process of ending my old life, not yet beginning my new
one. My coaches will recognize this as Square 1, a time of death and
rebirth. We train to deal with many clients in this state of change,
because it scrambles the average person's brain like an egg. I’m
used to it, and was expecting it, which always helps. Nevertheless,
every death, from the death of the smallest hope to the death of the
physical body, throws most people into the cycle of grieving: denial,
bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance. This is not a clean,
linear process. It’s more like taking all those emotions, adding a
huge dollop of fear, and blending the entire mixture like a green
smoothie of psychological anguish.
When
people ask me “What would you do if you only had one year to live?”
I never come up with the exciting bucket list they expect. I would
spend that entire year trying frantically to take care of everyone I
would be leaving behind. This, believe me, is a bad choice. So I have
reframed my current minor death as weaning.
Weaning
is indeed the death of one situation—nursing—and the birth of a
new way of life for both nurser and nursee. Far from being a
catastrophic separation, it sets mother and baby free to embark on
separate adventures, so that between them there will be a far more
interesting assortment of experiences. Baby gets to develop
self-sufficiency and empowerment. Hooray! Mother gets to sleep and
shower without interruptions. Hooray, Hooray! So it’s all good—but
it has to be done right.
There
are two steps to successfully weaning yourself off any situation. The
first is to step it down. Not to gross out those of you who have
never given birth, but if you have ever fed a baby in nature’s way,
you know exactly why cows make that horrible sound when someone
forgets to milk them. You can’t go cold turkey in a relationship in
which much nourishment has been exchanged at any point. It’s
painful. It hurts the mother, and it starves the baby. A better way
to proceed is to subtract one of your daily nursing sessions, and
hold the new level for four days. Then subtract another nursing
session, repeat for four days. Etc. (Why four days? I wrote a whole
freakin’ book about it. Just take my word for it, it works.)
As you
step down the amount of nourishment being given and received, you
move on to the second step: substitutes. You must obviously find
something else to feed the baby. Trying to be a martyr, to get along
with less, is a noble but unworkable enterprise. If you are losing a
situation that nourishes you, finding other nourishment should be at
the top of your priority list. (By the way, if you are in
relationships that don’t nourish you, something is wrong, but
that’s another column.) For example, I am accustomed to receiving
weekly energy treatments from a magical healer named John Parker.
Sure, I can survive without this—but to do so would probably affect
my overall health. But I can’t just substitute any old massage
therapist for John Parker; he’s one of a kind. (Plus, if I ever had
a massage therapist come to my new property he or she would
immediately be eaten by gophers.) So I have to get creative. I have
to come up with something so physically, emotionally, and spiritually
renewing that it will create the same net effect of a John Parker
treatment. At the moment, I’m thinking this may involve Quaaludes
and a very clever monkey. I’ll keep you posted.
I can
tell you some additions I’ve made to my life that are beginning to
make up for this loss, and they may not be what you’d expect. (They
never are.) One of my substitutes is downloading entire seasons of TV
series I’ve never seen and watching them on my computer. I’m also
into visiting sites online where I can find tutorials on drawing the
human body in extreme perspective. Another is cooking with my friends
who will be living on my property. I’ve never cooked before, but
for some reason being several miles away from the nearest Starbucks
has inspired me. Also, I’ve stumbled upon a new system for
memorizing piano music. What does any of this have to do with energy
healing? Not a damn thing. That’s the point of weaning. You are
going to a whole new source of nourishment, not just moving from boob
to boob. I mean seriously, how is milk like grass? It isn’t! Eat it
anyway!
So as
your life changes—because everyone’s life is changing—use
step-downs and substitutes to wean yourself off whatever you are
losing. You’ll never find things going back to the way they
were—but you will find yourself forced into discovering delicious
new things you may have never even imagined. For example, gopher
hunting.
~Martha
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