Struggling to Embrace the Living World

[x-posted]

My post about death led to a long and tough conversation with my teacher about my need to embrace the upper world as well as the underworld. (Tough for me because all my grief came up, not because she was in any way harsh with me.)

I've never been a goth, never someone who romanticized death, never someone who was morbid. But it's been more than a year now since Lohain's death, more than a year since I started working the Underworld path as a priestess -- and that time has not been balanced by very much joy or satisfaction in my daily life.

( Ascending Is Hard )

There is a part of me that does wish I was in the otherworld with Lohain. That's the bald truth of it. But that's not an option, and I need to be at peace with that, not simply resigned. There is much Work for me yet to do, much richness to still enjoy in this world. I need to embrace that, embrace the duality, not pine for what I can not have here and now.

I can not be a "dead woman walking".

I am a priestess, not a zombie.

Turning Point

Me: I have become a vortex. All of my energy has been going in and down. I need to change that. It's not healthy. I need balance. I'm thinking about Inanna and her ascent. I need to work with those energies again. Can I work with her again now?

Ereshkgial: Yes, you can work with her again now. You could not do so before because you would simply have done so as "part of the story" and part of your old habits. You needed to get to the place where you claimed the upward journey as part of this life, this cycle.

And a little later. . . .

Lohain: Losing you made me bitter and hard. I rejected life. I don't want to see you make the same mistake. You're on the upward journey. Embrace all of it.

Moving Toward the Sun

It's raining gently here -- a lovely change from the brutal heat of the past few days. I was happy to not have a hood or umbrella coming back from lunch, just taking in the feel of the rain on my skin.

As I walked, I felt like I was newly in the world again, newly open -- and I felt a sudden twinge of guilt and resistance.

Survivor's guilt is a tough thing. No matter how many times I come back to the intellectual knowledge that it's okay for me to heal -- that it's *necessary* for me to heal -- there is still something that feels wrong, feels traitorous, about it. Taking this latest step in coming back to life I have that feeling of treason more intensely than ever -- because I'm taking a much bigger, more conscious step than before.

During most of the past year the grieving/healing process has been slow and gradual. In contrast, I've processed a lot of ground over the past couple of days: first acknowledging a deeper grief than I'd been consciously in touch with and then consciously striving toward the upper world again.

Just walking half a block in the rain today I felt almost Persephone-like. Did she feel guilty, feel like a traitor to her husband, when she breathed fresh air again, felt the sunlight and rain again, and rejoiced? I wouldn't be surprised.

It's another stretch of both/and for me: learning to enjoy living again *and* loving and being in relationship with my husband in the otherworld.