How to Be With What is Dying
I saw a friend and after we hugged, he lobbed these words to me.
“Ricks, something in me needs to die.”
Whoosh.
While these words were a lil aggressive upon landing, they actually felt familiar.
I knew what it felt like for something in me to be ready to die.
Old narratives that don’t quite feel true anymore. [If you do this, they’ll love you more.]
Habits that once brought a lot of satisfaction but now feel meaningless and time consuming. [Zombie phone scrolling]
Voices that were born out of protection but now just feel like a burden. [Stay small and quiet.]
This last one.
Stay small and quiet.
It’s been a great protector, this one. It’s a voice that I’ve been working with for some time.
Perhaps it has its origins in my Asian heritage, in being a youngest child, or in being a woman. It doesn’t matter much.
It’s been a friend. It has taught me to be a keen observer and an active listener. It has taught me to be thoughtful and intentional when I speak. It has protected me from potential rejection or embarrassment. It has also given me too much false credit for being “chill.”
It’s been a foe. It has limited me from being bold. It has kept me hidden safely behind the bigger voices around me. It has kept me from making mistakes and growing. It has kept me from listening to my desire to speak and share who I am with others.
So, to this voice that has instructed me to “stay small and quiet”,
Time is up, it’s time for you to die.
This work as a death doula is big. It’s disruptive. It requires advocacy and a firm voice. Staying small and quiet won’t work.
So, I’m here to let this old narrative of “stay small and quiet” have a peaceful death so that “I’m a death doula and I know something about death” can live.
I was trained by a wise death midwife named Olivia Bareham from Sacred Crossings and one of the most salient lessons she taught me was this:
“We give birth. We receive death.”
When guiding people on their path to a peaceful death, create an atmosphere for them to feel safe to continually
“Open and relax. Open and relax. Open and relax.”
I could choose to attack my old narrative with brute force. I could be loud and defiant and clench my teeth and shout “I’ve been silent for too long!” and let it die that way.
Or, instead of challenging or fighting death, I can allow it to reveal and express itself to me. I can open and relax into what it means to let go of being small and quiet, feel that loss, and move confidently into using my words boldly and honestly. I look forward to learning a lot about being with death in this way.
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.
Pema Chödrön, “When Things Fall Apart”
In the spirit of writing and in honor of all those that show courage to write, I recently encountered a literary map of the US – a map of 1,001 novels. It offers stories that show us “how every state is really many places” but how no matter where we live, we’re all united through our common fears, dreams, and relations.
Be happy!
Erika