Letter to my Children: Hanging the Cheerleading Wall, Again

Dearest Beloveds,

The older I get the more it feels as though life is both a carousel and a huge lotus flower unfolding new petals.

We have the yearly carousel: holidays, birthdays, seasons. We plant seeds for winter greenery. Our bees swarm in June. Every year we split and stack and move firewood to burn in the woodstove.

We have the daily carousel. Once Baba said to me plaintively when he was in the throes of dementia, “I thought we just DID the dishes! We need to do them AGAIN?!”

“Yup Dad, every day… sometimes three times a day.”

“Oh.”

And we have the carousel of psychological and spiritual challenges.

When I was your age and into my twenties these challenges mostly had to do with interpersonal relationships. Using my big voice when faced with peer pressure, romantic relationships, job kerfuffles, family dynamics, etc, etc.

In my early twenties, I vividly remember praying for a life that would stretch me and help me become brave. The bravest version of me. I imagined I would be like Ronja in her book (Ronja the Robber’s Daughter) practicing not feeling fear by climbing the craggy rocks over the raging river. In other words, I would have choice as when and where I could apply bravery - a difficult conversation, an exciting job opportunity, etc.

It turns out, my dearest children, that I can choose to be brave, kind, loving, compassionate, helpful, etc even when I haven’t consciously chosen to put myself into a difficult situation. I can be brave when I fly out of the nest and ALSO when I have been “thrown out of the nest,” as Pema Chödrön would say.

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. To live fully is to be always in no-man's-land, to experience each moment as completely new and fresh. To live is to be willing to die over and over again.

When she speaks of being “willing to die over and over again” she is talking about the ego - false gods as David Foster Wallace wrote about in This is Water.

To help me be brave I have rehung onto the study closet cheerleading letters. Notes sent to me during my princess tower bone marrow transplant time to cuddle me and feed me during this time.

Humans are the animals who pray.