What goes together hand in hand.
Relearning some forgotten arts.
I didn’t know just how much I was constantly doing until my life came to a screeching halt. Those of you who have experienced the acute grief of losing someone you love are familiar with the place I’m in now. After death, year 1. Month 8 to be exact - to the day, as I write this. I’ve done and am doing my best to really meet this moment. And in doing so have come to learn that it seems fairly rare to have the space and/or resources to tap out of work and responsibilities and actually, truly, pause. Part of my grief has been grieving our communal lack of access to full on, out loud, grief. On our own, or with each other. The pause has felt deeply nourishing and wildly uncomfortable. Nourishing because when I feel into what is mine to do right now, nothing feels truer than mourning my Mom. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more on purpose. And uncomfortable because I, like most of us, have learned to equate stillness with doing nothing - and “doing nothing” for too long kicks up my survival brain. How will all the things be taken care of if I’m not the one taking care of them? It requires deep trust and even deeper faith in the people around you, God/the intelligence of our system, and yourself. We may have different edges, but no one’s immune to having them tested.
This hasn’t been the kind of romantic stillness at the surface of a forest lake. More like the goopy stillness of the ocean floor. Dark, mysterious, you can feel you’re not alone, but in the way that you can’t quite make out what surrounds you, what’s down is up, and what’s up is down. It’s impossible to know which direction the shore is and no matter how fast you try to move it doesn’t feel like you’re making any headway and so all there is left to do is stop fighting with force and give into weightlessness… That kind of stillness. Grief wrings you out, which I imagine is what the puritanical stiff upper lip is meant to counter -
Grief isn’t productive but it takes a lot of stamina.
And it is essential. And ecstatic in a way. So ugly it’s beautiful. At times psychedelic. And unavoidable. Because despite how much we’re sold all the mindset hacks and manifestation techniques. There’s pain, illness, and death here (Earth) along with pleasure, vitality, and constant rebirth. We’re meant to taste it ALL. And as Martín Prechtel says “Grief is Praise, because it is the natural way love honors what it misses”.
Grief is holy. Because grief is a part of life. And life is holy. Beginning, middle, and end. The beginnings of things tend to be easier (mostly). If not easier, then at least what we collectively orient toward and value. The pure potentiality of what may be. The new baby. The new relationship. The new job. The new passion project. The middle is trickier because we have to contend with what is, but we still get to feel around the room for where our freewill starts and fate stops. And then there’s the ending - looking behind us into the big what WAS where you can make meaning, and your sense of truth, but you can’t fuck with facts.
And the fact is, what was, is no more. Regardless of closure, it is complete.
I suppose I’m actually talking about something beyond stillness. And that’s receptivity. You can feel the subtle difference now if you want to. Still your body… feel the pause. Not quite rigid, but a little stiff, it might feel brittle, or solid. Now take a deep breathe and feel yourself receive. You might be able to feel it on the exhale too. You become a little more porous, fluid, flexible. Much like resting back into the weightlessness that lifts you to the water’s surface. Stillness fortifies you, receptivity asks you to give in. Expand.
To the outside eye they look no different, but the inner posture is night and day.
In 2018 I created my first meditation painting1 and it was living at a small bodywork studio in Flatiron that I was also doing energy work out of. I didn’t know it at the time but it was the precursor for the work I’m doing now. It was the beginning of my very underground but public practice and I was finding my way. A woman working with another practitioner saw the painting and asked about me - I’m not sure the details but she asked if I worked remotely. Her mother was dying and she wanted to know if I would do a session with her. My first reaction was terror, I immediately called my mentor to make sense of what to do and why this came to me while I still felt so green. Not everyone is meant to work with everyone, that is TRUE. But she asked if what I was feeling was that I genuinely did not have medicine for her or if I was simply afraid. Because one of those things was about me and one was about her. I decided to not make it about me, and trust Spirit. I spent a lot of time preparing myself, to meet this with reverence and care. I was prepared to meet the heaviness of the situation. But as I sat with them, and read for them I was truly shocked by what I found.
The deepest sense of true beauty and joy.
I think we were all a bit surprised, at least the daughter and I were. The mother couldn’t speak, but her daughter told me she was smiling. A woman on her deathbed. With all the things we think that means. Everything I thought that meant. And she was experiencing something totally different. I expected grief and instead found praise.
I think of this now because I know my Mom is guiding me towards feeling pleasure again.
Not to numb or soothe, but to savor life.2 I’m out of practice so there’s a relearning happening. Often to the outside eye they look no different, but the inner posture is night and day.
And my big learning currently is around rest and receptivity.
Because I’ve been in battle mode (as the vast majority of us have been or are still to some degree). Not just last year doing my best to advocate and care for my Mom. But before that too. Surviving the litany of traumatic events we’ve been enduring since 2020 + being self employed which has it’s own traumas. The thing I keep reflecting on since the beginning of last summer is:
Survival mode robs you of life.
What a balancing act it takes to be alive. We’re so resilient and so fragile.
The cultural zeitgeist is increasingly talking about rest. Cause we tired - I don’t have to tell you that. But where and what we’re meant to rest into feels a bit more elusive. How to feel trust and safe in the resting, more foreign still. Especially since that same zeitgeist has for so long framed rest as a reward, not a basic need. The ever dangling carrot. And so when we meet the times in our life where rest is not elective it can feel like we’re getting swung straight into some abyss. It’s giving “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” and I hate that for us. Because that makes sleep feel annihilating. That’s a common fear around grief, that if we let ourselves really go in, that we won’t be able to get back out. And there is some truth to that, because we won’t get out… the same. That’s what the Venusian Mysteries teach us - Inanna, Astghik, Ishtar - and Easter too, that we are on a constant life - death - life cycle. Heaven - Underworld - Heaven. Not simply opposing forces, but sisters.
Pain Pleasure.
Forgetting Remembering.
Tears Laughter.
Immanence Transcendence.
Horror Awe.
Rigor Receptivity.
Sleep Wakefulness.
Grief Praise.
All sisters.
All providing sacred context for the other.
The deeper you know one, the deeper you may know the other. You must leave home to return home. You sacrifice innocence for wisdom, a broken heart for compassion. Becoming love is the promise.
I’m finding that’s something to rest into.
Your Fellow Wanderer,
Allison
I’ve quietly reopened my books both for The Opening (my 1:1 oracular readings) and small Custom Meditation Paintings - Ignite. I’m working on site updates and easier booking. But for now, if you feel the call you can just email me directly at allison@allisonstrickland.CO
Sometimes, to catch our breathe we have to numb or simply soothe. No moral judgement there. It comes down to knowing for yourself what behaviors, plants, foods etc are actually helpful and for how long. What is medicine and what is addiction. Only you can know which is which for you.
Thank you.
not simply opposing forces, but sisters ✨🙏🏼💗🫶🏼