Painful feelings heal

Page 5

Tansi, ahnee and hello. Morning and the sweetgrass smolders. I enter the place where there are no questions.

All around me the soft fingers of the smudge reaching up through and around my world and into the realm of the invisible. All around m the connection.

Outside my window the world is giving evidence of coming back to life. Nothing is solid now. Everywhere creation shrugs its shoulders and moves as one body into the process of ebbing. Everywhere is energy. Everywhere a lesson provided by the Creator of all things giving grace and elegance to this earthwalk we share. Everywhere is living.

Just a short while ago a friend went away. It was nothing new really. In the years when I was still an active abuser of drugs and booze there were a fair number of acquaintances and so-called friends who lost the fight. Dying almost seemed like just another part of the game. A risk. But this one was different.

We'd taken the time to become real friends. We cared about each other. We did all the things that friends are known to do. We laughed. We joked. We shared. We came to minor disagreements and misunderstandings. But through all of it we allowed each other the dignity to be exactly who and what we were at any particular time. We accepted and we learned to carry on.

That's where the pain came in. For 32 years of my life I shut people out. In my insecurity and lack of self-esteem I believed that if I allowed people to really know who I was and what I was feeling they would go away. I hid myself and my feelings as long as I could behind booze and drugs. I became, and the song goes, comfortably numb. I never allowed myself

the freedom to feel.

Feelings. The word wasn't exactly an everyday part of my vocabulary back them. I existed primarily with I think and I guess. The words, I feel, had no bearing on the life I was leading then. Because I had come to accept and adopt the notion that men don't show their feelings. I came to believe that tears are a sign of weakness. I came to believe that the strongest, toughest and most independent were those who commanded the most respect. I was a man.

When I sobered up I learned that in order to have a successful recovery from all the abuse I put myself through that I would have to get in touch with my feelings. It didn't make any sense. They were asking me to throw away my greatest defense. They were asking me to be real.

I resisted. As a result, for a short time I drank and used again. I went right back into the kind of world which had caused me such pain for many years. I went back into agony but by the grace of my Creator I was given another chance. And I've learned.

It all began to make some sense when the Old One told me this story. He told me that in all the animal kingdom there is only one creature who commands the greatest respect from his animal brothers and sisters. This animal isn't the biggest, strongest or fiercest. In face this animal is one of the smallest.

Of all the animals in the animal kingdom, the Old One said, it is the tiny mole who commands the greatest respect. The first reason for this is because the mole lives within the earth and so is constantly in touch with the land. He is constantly connected and learning from Mother Earth.

The second reason was the most important. As the mole travels and tunnels his way underground he is always getting vibrations made my creatures walking around on the surface. He feels their motions. In order for the mole to learn what kind of creature makes what vibrations he must come up to the surface to investigate. This puts him at great danger because he might possibly be eaten by a bear or trampled by a horse. Nevertheless, the mole investigates.

The old people say that the mole knows when a man is walking by because he has taken the time to look when he felt man's vibrations. He knows when a bear is walking by because h has taken the time to look when he felt the bear's vibrations. The mole knows all the time which anmals are in his vicinity.

And that is why of all the animals in the animal kingdom the mole commands the greatest respect. Because even though it might be dangerous, even though h might be in pain, the mole always takes the time to investigate what he feels.

When my friend died there were tears. In those tears was healing. I became more. I felt great loss and great sadness. I felt love, and more importantly, I felt the motions of my spirit moving. I felt human. I felt alive.

Like the mole I need to investigate what I feel. No longer do I believe that a show of feeling is a show of weakness. I am what I feel. When I allow myself the freedom to feel I allow myself the freedom to be exactly who and what I am. More Wagamese, more Indian and more a unique part of all that is and all that can be.

Until next week, Meegwetch.