Trial by Fire

I have FINALLY MOVED!

I have to admit, it was the mother of all moves
and I thought it would never end. In the spiritual community
we toss out the phrase, “we are spiritual beings having a human
experience” very easily. After two weeks of packing, carrying, schlepping
loading and moving boxes back and forth making decisions on what to throw away
and what to keep…at 3 am when I finally crashed on my bed
I felt every bone in my body groaning with pain…I was fully aware that
I was also a PHYSICAL being having a spiritual experience!

The strange thing is that I had completely forgotten how exhausting moving is.
People would say to me, “Oh, you’re moving,” with a pitying look or tone in their
voice and I would answer chirpily, “Yes and I’m really looking forward to it!” After
all this move was intentional. I wanted to move. I had chosen to leave L.A.
and I was ready for a new experience. I just hadn’t thought much about the
process you have to go through to get to the new place.

The words I think of to describe this move are Traumatic, Taxing, Tumultuous, Transformational.

It felt like a Baptism by fire bringing up all kinds of emotions, conflicts and core issues that I hadn’t anticipated.

Jim and I fought more in the past few weeks than we have fought in years. This was
MY move. He was coming along for the ride and that became all too clear. He checked out and made “work” his excuse. I discovered that he had scheduled a meeting in Washington DC three days before the movers arrived and from there would meet me in Florida. I was to do the move alone.

The move brought my POSSESSION issues.

I discovered how much stuff I have and HOW HARD IT IS TO LET GO of things. I would have ridiculous conversations with myself about the fact that an item was still good and had hardly been used or I’d spent good money on it and feel guilty about getting rid of it. Or it was something I liked but rarely used yet I would want to
hold on to it. I discovered that I had closets full of stuff that I had forgotten about because I couldn’t see it or reach but now I was having a hard time getting rid of it.

The move brought up my CONTROL issues.

I discovered that while I wanted to give stuff away, I wanted to CONTROL who got it and who was DESERVING. Suits should go to a charity where women who were going back into the workplace could use them. Computers to schools because they were having problems with funding. All this micromanaging took TIME AND ENERGY.

The move brought up my MONEY issues. I had work deadlines, had to be mindful of my health and was now left to do a cross country move on my own. I reached out to my friends for help. One recommended I hired an organizer who was skilled
at moving individuals. $85.00 an hour for something I can do myself?! I squawked. I was going to get a cheaper assistant. One by one suggested assistants fell out. One broke her arm. Another had transportation issues, another a death in the family.
I finally hired a perfectionist who took an hour to pack a box of china! I felt I was stuck in molasses, I was trying to work and move and resistance seemed to be showing up everywhere.

In my meditation I got a clear direction:  I was to do the move “Like a Whirlwind”.

I decided to hire the organizer. In four hours she helped me cut through the clutter of the two areas I most dreaded tackling and had tried unsuccessfully
to organize for years. My office closet and a wall unit. Boxes were filled, decisions were made, goods were assigned to be kept, to be given or thrown away. It was amazing. I felt much lighter when she left. But I still wasn’t ready to spend that kind of money. Now, she had done the heavy lifting I could do it with my assistant.

A week and a half later, I was still packing and still surrounded by boxes and clutter. Jim had left and I was now packing and sorting through
his stuff. I was fighting with my assistant and absolutely exhausted. I had two moving companies. One that moved our furniture into storage and another that would move the boxes we needed right away. When the movers came we weren’t ready and ended up having to deliver the boxes to Greyhound ourselves. My last evening in L.A. was spent driving down to the bus station to deliver the boxes.
We were in two vehicles and two of the boxes fell out of the truck. There we were on the side of the freeway trying to retrieve articles, papers and money flying along the side of the freeway! Tracey, my handyman was running alongside the freeway trying to retrieve money that was flying in all directions. I collected foreign money from my various trips and those were the notes he was retrieving. I told him to let it go, it didn’t matter. I saw the absurdity of all this stuff that I kept and had a hard time letting go of. How silly it was to clutter up my life unnecessarily.

I realized that despite all the stuff I had left behind, I had brought things I didn’t need. I swore to lighten up literally and figuratively and keep only what I needed and actually USED.

I caught a plane at midnight and arrived in Florida the next day absolutely exhausted. Jim arrived at the airport looking relaxed and tanned, without a care in the world. he was late picking me up and I hated him. it took me three days to recover from the flight and a week for us to deal with the fall out of the move. Jim finally acknowledged that his trip to DC had been his way of expressing his resistance to the move. Ironically, when he got to Florida, he loved it and thinks the move is a great thing.

And it is. It has been a baptism by fire that has given us an opportunity to look at habits, beliefs and ways of doing things that no longer serve us. We have create new agreements and commitments in our relationship as we begin this new chapter in our lives.

It is exhiliarating to be in a new environment, knowing no one and discovering everything anew. It is great to have a blank page that we get to write on and recognize we get to CHOOSE all over again.

At this time on the planet when people are going through so many changes and transitions this move has been a great reminder to me that even when we choose and welcome changes we still have to go through the process and sometimes that THE PROCESS CAN TAKE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE.

So, what ever changes you are going through be kind to yourself, be gentle and acknowledge yourself for the courage it takes to go through the process.

What transitions or are you going through and what are you discovering?
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