Low Water Holiday

Christmas Day.

It was actually a tough day for me as I spent it alone. Certainly, this was not my first holiday spent alone, and I actually enjoy my own company, but this year felt...harder.

It's usually my absolute favorite holiday, likely because my parents and certainly my grandparents really pulled out all the stops when I was a child. The smell of the real pine tree decorated with tinsel (which we were not allowed to have on our fake tree), the food, the presents, the stockings filled with apples, oranges, and walnuts, as is tradition in my grandfather's German family.

But the best part was absolutely being around family and loved ones. The music, laughter, and so many hugs.

As we have all gotten older, lives diverge, people move away...or transition to the Spirit world and family is sometimes replaced by chosen family. And sometimes it is replaced with emptiness and longing.

My grandfather passed 2 years ago, and while I have an amazing social support network, this year I spent the holiday alone and it was just...lonely.

I wasn't going to share it, but then talking to several other friends who were in the same boat in different parts of the world, I realized that in sharing we can then be connected and comforted.

I forced myself to get my body moving up and out of my house that day and went to Palisades to be among nature and her healing wisdom. I noticed how low the water was in the Cedar River and ventured out to the exposed sands and rocks. It was cold and refreshingly clarifying.

I remembered that life has its own tidal ebb and flow - sometimes the waters recede, exposing the heavy boulders in our hearts, the branches stripped clean and naked.

In the low water time we find that sometimes the holidays just simply don't feel good, despite all our longing and letters to Santa Claus that it would. Sometimes we find the grief laid bare and raw, and our hopes and cherished memories scattered like tiny shells on the shoreline of our mind.

And it's all okay - it doesn't feel that way, sure - but we all experience that tidal ebb from time-to-time. Just don't be seduced by the undertow of your ego thinking that you are truly alone, and it will always feel this way.

Go down to the river, yes, but look up. Look up and see the eagles soaring high and making their nests in the ancient oaks in safe, strong branches above the water line. They know what we may have forgotten in this moment:

The water will rise again. And you will find your joy in the flow.