One Year Ritual

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I am going to go back a few weeks now, almost a month actually in a few days to June 2, 2009. My sister wendy came a few days ahead and helped me get ready for the ceremony. We stayed out at the Fern Cove house on Vashon, and started the unwinding process. We took a long walk down on KVI, a beach famous for its agates and special rocks. Later that day we sat by the water's edge with kleenex in hand and went through the guest list. Asking the question of why each of these love bugs were invited and what lesson did their love for me help to guide me in this past year. It was a chance to go back and to try to call forth those memories that Ativan has tried to place in a sleepy nightmarish zone. As the gift/lesson these lovebugs was evoked I wrote with a pink pen on the rock the lesson. I chose pink, a colour that I would NEVER have used before breast cancer. But I chose it because there is a simple allowable moment even at the grocery store now of accepting myself. Accepting that I have become a breast cancer survivor, and I find myself even buying the organic olive oil with a pink ribbon on it now. Its yet another tribe I belong to.
Everyone came that was supposed to be there. Summer gets busy and many folks couldn't make it, and for those that couldn't you were there in spirit. For a few days prior I had tried to think of a vessel that I could use to tangibly be in the center of the circle and hold all the grief, all the sadness of everyones and my ickiness of the past year. Right before everyone started coming I took a walk down the beach and came across a piece of driftwood that I felt had spent its entire life for me! It was perfect. It had been worn into a cup at the top and into a sharp pointed edge at the bottom.
To speed up this story...

I had gotten these cute butterfly cards with lots of sparkles on them. Before the ceremony started I asked for everyone to write on their cards what lesson they learned about themselves this past year, that was evoked through their journey of being witness to my journey. I told them they could share it or not later in the ceremony. Many people chose not to share, but many people chose to take part in writing their thoughts down. I did this because I feel that in life we do not get enough chances to think about what we learn and how it is that we grow and then rarely do we have an opportunity to share our growth.
My friend Jacqui formed the circle with a beautiful invocation to all the directions and at this point I called forth my Nana as she is living on the Oregon coast and is too feeble to make it out of bed now.
After the circle was formed I invoked the driftwood to be a chalice of pain, and pierced the earth with it. I asked everyone to put the initial shock of hearing my news, the sadness, the grief, every icky feeling to just channel that energy into it through the ceremony. This was one of the biggest things for me, as I wanted to let go and not carry all these fears any longer and I wanted everyone else to do the same.
I went around the circle, stepping to be inches away from everyone's faces and spoke to each and every body there, about what they did for me. And in their doing how I had to learn to open, to surrender, to receiving. This was such a huge part of my metamorphosis this past year. In receiving there is surrender, opening, letting go, ect. I recalled a lesson a past therapist and I spoke of years before. And how I was not sure how I was actually going to learn how to receive. I recalled that when you are busy giving and doing you cannot receive. Well, cancer forced me to. I had to stop doing, stop everything, absolutely everything and lay in bed and just be. Just be and receive. To ask, to be brave enough to ask, to risk, to be okay with the no's the sorry's, letting go of expectations, letting go of the disappointments, accepting, sometimes going to doc's by myself, people have lives, just because cancer didn't stop didn't mean that peoples lives stopped. I learned to be by myself. This one was the hardest. One person in particular taught me this. To be by myself. To make it through the toughest parts of my entire life thus far, with someone, but really absolutely alone. This was the hardest part.
Luckily I have such a network of love around me, that I was able to draw on. But really, that little saying, "you come into this world alone, and you go out the same way..or however it goes" is true. It is true. No one could be there with me, well except my sis and my best girls. They got it. But when you're sick, you're just sick, and all you need is someones love and someones hand on your back on your hand, being there.
Okay, back to the ceremony. So handing out everyones rocks was huge for me. For so many reasons. I wanted to thank everyone, and help them understand what it was that they did for me. How I took their deed(s) and used them to grow. To expand.
After that, my friend Gen spoke and a few other brave souls. There were many wet eyes, and kleenex being passed around. Then I went to the center of the circle and relived my initial phone call, my initial doc visits, my surgery, all the sadness, all the sickness, all the future fears, ect. and put it all into the driftwood chalice. Then I asked everyone to form a tunnel by standing infront of one another, in pairs, and they made an tunnel with their arms and I walked holding onto the chalice and walked to the waters edge and threw it into the water. Letting go of it all. As I walked through the tunnel again, I was being born again, letting go and moving forward. My friend Gen had made a crown of beautiful flowers for me, and placed it on my head. Then we ate and visited.
Very simple. Very moving. Very necessary.


Immediately after the ceremony I noticed as I slept how much extra space around me. And I was sad and happy at the same time to recognize how much extra space around me there was now. Realizing how much space HAD been used to worry, to be sad, to feel all the ickiness. I let go of it all. I don't have to carry it any longer.