If you’ve been following my blog from the beginning, you know that I started by talking about clearing the launch pad: letting go of nearly everything in my life that gave me strength and identity. Losing or letting go of my familiar comforts - home, doggies, horse, garden, people I thought were friends, the person I thought I’d spend my life with, even my car and some possessions - left me feeling both bereft and more than a little helpless. During this same time, important people died, moved away or grew ill. Coming to Italy separated me from all the remaining external comforts and distractions: family, friends, even work. In many ways, I’ve been left with a sense of impermanence, a growing suspicion that there’s nothing I can count on, and the paralyzing fear that I can no longer trust myself.
Enter the wisdom of Clarissa Pinkola Estes, a renowned Jungian therapist and cantadora, who tells the story of La Loba, the bone woman, who searches for the bones of wolves in the desert and sings them back to life. First she gathers the bones and carefully, carefully reassembles them. Then she sings once and the bones become covered in flesh. She sings again and the flesh is covered in fur, and again for the newly enlivened wolf to breathe its first breath, leap up, and run again into the desert, speeding toward the river in great bounding strides. There, as the story goes, as it runs it transforms into a newly impassioned woman, magical in her instinct and untamed spirit. Estes teaches that for those of us who have been domesticated, separated from our strength, and deadened to our passions, it is sometimes necessary to be boiled to the bone and enter the desert of the soul. There, if we are not afraid to wait for her, we can be found by La Loba and be sung back to life. Estes teaches that an instinctive woman will do just that – drive herself to be the bones of who she is, find the pieces of herself that are permanent and unchangeable, enter the desert of her soul and slowly become re-enfleshed. It’s no joke and it’s not hyperbole: this process has often felt like a long, slow scalding that somehow I am responsible for, but now I see a deeper wisdom at work and I’m starting to fall in love with it.
Suddenly, instead of being paralyzed and bereft, I realize I am a woman cradling the bones of her soul and singing.
Here in Italy, other traditions tell the story of the bones. It’s not so rare here to find a reliquary: a place where the bones of someone anointed by God, usually a saint, have been preserved. As I write I’m sitting next to the church where Saint Catherine’s finger and head are kept. I’m looking across the panorama of the city to the Duomo, where digits, thigh bones and arms of other saints are preserved in glass cases for everyone to see – and to remember the miracles that define sainthood. Many people find them grisly or even absurd, but what could be more sacred than once-living reminders of the unchanging and the miraculous? Our bones are, in the words of Geneen Roth, “what remains when everything that has been lost is gone and everything that can die is dead.” And it’s our bones that give us strength to stand again.
The bones aren’t imaginary; I’m learning to love them in practical as well as personal terms. I’m learning that my writing gives me strength, that it’s okay to rest when I need it, and that I don’t have to be perfect or give up when I’m not. I’m learning to be proactive in asking for help. I’m finding ways to do what I love without over scheduling myself. I’m remembering how much I love to walk and how much I love to push my body hard. I’m remembering how much I love to play. I'm learning that grief comes in waves but that I can survive them. I’m learning to anticipate the peace that only comes after a good, long cry. Sometimes I’m delighted by the cacophony of bells and screaming babies and laughing and drums that is Sunday morning in Siena – and sometimes I am delighted by the silence of my room. I’m finding that I have no idea how to express what I recognize as a simmering rage inside me, an anger born in the knowledge that my complicity is no excuse for others to have consciously contributed to my pain. I’ve promised myself that I will no longer participate in my own degradation. I’m learning to find companionship that’s undemanding or just plain fun…and that people like me just for me. I’m learning not to panic when I feel completely lost. I’m learning that there are wise women (and men) everywhere and that more than anything, I want to be one of them. I'm learning that sometimes, I just don't know how to move on.
Most important of all, I am discovering that there is something left of me that is precious and indestructible. I have a long, long song to hear before I can leap up and run, but I’m gaining a sense of my ability to build a life without the fear that I will be destroyed by its loss. I’m gaining a sense that I can trust myself to find what I need or patiently wait in the desert. I’m becoming hopeful that someday I won’t have to perform the role of Anna anymore because I love my bones and won’t betray them. I’m learning to trust my instincts. In short, I’m re-learning to live my life as my life. I just hope I can remember how when I'm re-entering the pressures of life back home - but I'm learning not to, as my mother would say, "borrow trouble." And I'm determined that it's possible to build the kind of life I want to lead, even there, even if it's not popular.
A good Sunday to you all.
Anna
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