loss | Linda Chubbuck

When Michelle Obama swore on the Stephen Colbert show and thousands of people shared the news, it hit me at a vulnerable moment.

You see several years back I read Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In and was really inspired by it. Yes I could do it. I could be a mother, and a successful entrepreneur or writer besides. Heck, she could do it. Sure she had a great husband and money by now but she probably didn’t have all that when she started. She was pretty honest about the obstacles she had run into and I was very inspired.

I grew up passionate about becoming a parent. Specifically becoming a parent in a different way than I was raised. I cared so much about it I could not imagine not having children. I did have a career, but was not deeply attached to it and when my first child was born in the mid 70s I stayed home to be a full-time mom for a while.

But feminism was rising. As an educated liberal woman I certainly identified with the feminist causes. Who wouldn’t? But for me I still wanted to raise my children full-time. As the months and years went by, there was more and more criticism from the culture and sometimes even from friends about my choice to stay with my children as opposed to getting a “real job.”

At a beautiful art fair one summer day I ran into a childhood friend who was now active in the state arts commission. I had both babies with me as well as the stained glass projects I had been creating for sale. I was really glad to see him. Until he asked me what I was doing. I told him I was raising my children and doing stained glass.

“Oh,” he said and moved on. My choice to be with my children apparently was so uninteresting to him that he had nothing more to share with me. That was a fairly common response although his was conspicuous.

I refused to give up on my passion for being with my children and for parenting in general. I read books, I learned. I tested out what I was learning on my children who were of course ready participants in my experiments. Meantime I became an artist in a variety of ways and a small business person. These ventures allowed me to stay with my children and to be available while supposedly bringing in some income.

No matter how creative my ideas were as an entrepreneur, however, years went by with none of my projects really taking off as a viable business. Forever the optimist I continued to try new strategies and occasionally new ideas.

A few weeks ago I completed my 70th year on this planet. Sometimes those milestone birthdays get to me. While I still feel healthy and energetic and useful, realistically I can acknowledge that my life is past halfway.

Then, 10 days ago on a hiking trail in a Costa Rican jungle I fell hard on a slippery sloped mud trail and broke my arm. We were in a remote area two hours from the closest hospital. When my son and my husband helped me back up the path to reach assistance and our car, we passed a giant snake on the left as well. Right beside the path.

The combination of all of these factors and the disability that goes with having one arm in a cast threw me into a state of mind that I can only describe as awareness of my own mortality. And with that comes a voice inside of me that is panicking that I haven’t achieved what I intended to in the world.

I haven’t become the superwoman I intended to be. I haven’t written a bestseller. I haven’t made hundreds of thousands of dollars. I do not have a highly regarded career. I do not have my own retirement fund. I’m not superwoman. In fact I feel pretty fragile right now.

I don’t have a real job.

I did my best to lean in like Sheryl Sandberg said but somehow it didn’t work for me. What if I’m approaching the end of the trail and this is all I ever have? Can I look back and say I’m proud of it?

I am deeply proud of all I did to learn to be a good parent. And I’m deeply grateful that despite the financial hardships I spent as much time with my children as I did. I am in awe of the fact that now I have three little grandchildren that I’m able to be present to, to offer unconditional love to, and spend time with.

But… I still don’t have a career. I still haven’t written a bestseller. I still haven’t made a big splash in the professional world.

Perhaps you have no judgment about that. The sad thing is that I do. I judge it myself. For 40+ years, ever since I was a young mother and the feminist movement was expanding, I have believed that I should and could do it all.

But I have failed. I have failed to accomplish what I wanted on one side of the equation. And I think that I’ve spent too much time suppressing that awareness and instead trying harder, harder, harder. I have never quite given myself the unconditional love and approval that I believe in and try to offer to others.

When I put all this into words I end up crying.

If a friend told me all this I would comfort her and tell her that our spiritual practice is about being present and loving – which is what you chose and what you did. It’s not about achieving in the world. So give yourself a break, acknowledge what you have accomplished and give yourself that long overdue unconditional love and acceptance.

It’s more difficult when it’s myself. I feel like making excuses, I feel like a failure, I still want all those success-in-the-world dreams that I’ve had for years.

Here is what Michelle Obama said last week: That whole “so you can have it all.” Nope, not at the same time. That’s a lie. And it’s not always enough to lean in because that shit doesn’t work all the time.

Perhaps if I take her words to heart – the frankness of a woman who appears to have it all – I can find a balm for my heart and my soul.

I know there are many elated with the election results. But most in my circles are despairing. Or fearful. Or both.

There’s an End of the World feeling. We – naively – thought the world was slowly becoming a better place. And suddenly we wake up to the fact that roughly half of our population defines “better” in a stunningly different way: more angry, defensive. More reactionary. More hostile and racist. More anti-minority of every sort.

In my mind I try to grasp… how can this be better? How can this be “great”?

In the middle of the night on election night, I had seen the direction things were going as I went to bed. I was trying to sleep anyway, pray and think positive. No success.

In my semi-awake state, the thought shot through me… “I’ll hear fireworks. And it will mean Trump has won.” NO! I screamed inwardly and rolled over once again. Sure enough, about 90 wakeful minutes later, I heard the loud boom of fireworks in our suburban neighborhood. With fear in the pit of my stomach I climbed out of my dark bed (still no sleep) to check my iPhone for the results. Yes, he had passed 270 electoral votes.

Back in bed I sorted through my options… we could move to Canada. We could move to the country – somehow, somewhere. I began to sort through friends who might let us move there and build on a piece of their land. I considered whether I might prefer to die, than to watch the next few months and years unfold. Maybe the arc of history bends ever toward justice but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to wait for it.

The end of the world. My mind was racing with end of the world thoughts and terrors.

But a couple of nights later, with the end-of-the-world cycle still spinning, I remembered I had been here before. I had experienced events as a personal – or even global – end of the world. Still, here I was, alive, and up until now, pretty happy.

To be honest, there were several over the course of my lifetime. Someone close to me had died, and other losses and barriers.

Here is one of my most painful end-of-the-world stories. After being single almost 10 years, I had married a man I had known only a couple of months. My children thought he was great, and my friends were happy for me. He was brilliant, talented, funny, colorful and really loved me.

Two days before the wedding he unexpectedly raged at me and threatened to call it off. I was a wreck, consulted with a friend, decided to apologize and beg forgiveness. We married. That cycle became a pattern. Within 6 months, under pressure from him, I had sold my home of 18 years and was living in temporary housing with him. I had closed my business and had no income because my customers were farmers, primarily men, and he considered that inappropriate. By the end of 12 months I was living with emotional violence constantly and was afraid of physical violence.

We were living in a used RV on my business property, on a road travelled by my community daily. My circumstances were very public for my neighbors to witness. After weeks of prayer, tears, and a very public exposure – – I left.

I was homeless. Jobless. Emotionally devastated and physically sick. Completely defeated without a clue to my future.

Humiliation was my word. I was humiliated. Privately. Publicly. I took refuge in my mother’s home while she was away for the winter, left lights on 24 hours a day, and cried.

For me, it was an end-of-the-world experience.

I won’t detail the path from there to here, but I will tell you that 15 years later, I owe my joy, my spirituality, my community, my life and my wonderful (current) husband to that end-of-the-world experience.

Without that profound loss I would not have left that rural area. I would not have met my husband Stan a few years later. I would not be singing harmony with Stan and my dear friend Judy. I would not know or be part of Unity and my community here in Kansas City. Most of what I cherish now is a result of that loss and my moving out and up from there.

On my refrigerator is a faded scrap of paper that I posted in1994. From A Course in Miracles, it reads: The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into heaven.

As I lay in bed fearing the end of the world the first nights after the election, I remembered all my own personal end-of-the-world stories, and how they played out over time. Then that quote came back to me as well.

The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into heaven.

As the winner’s victory sunk in, I imagined the next few days, weeks, months, years, and was terrified. I read news accounts of hate crimes and hate slogans boldly splashed on walls and streets in these few days since the election results. End-of-the-world.

But then, as my tears continued to fall, I saw other things. I saw many friends hugging each other through tears in public places. I saw a woman speak of her mixed race 12 year old grandson waking up terrified of what will happen to him – through her own tears. I heard another woman speak of her child with cerebral palsy and that in her mind the video of the pres-elect’s ridicule of a handicapped person keeps playing like a bad movie. More tears. I heard women encouraging each of us to be where we are emotionally – to feel the despair and the fear and the anger. I witnessed people wearing safety pins everywhere, before I even understood what they represented. I heard of one young woman university student wearing a hijab who was verbally accosted and went back to her room fearful. At that same university, following this incident, an administrative request for volunteers to walk students who felt afraid to class and work was answered by a hundred volunteers.

I read stories of a young man, Derek Black, heir to the white supremacy/white nationalist groups, who publicly left his father’s group and teachings, in favor of diversity and connection.

And so much more.

I woke this morning with joy in my heart. Not joy that I was pushing myself into, or doing as a conscious spiritual practice. This joy is the loop based on what I’m seeing in the world and feeling in myself.

I’m going out on a limb here. If you are, like me, on a conscious spiritual path, and you have been working for, praying for, the world to wake up, to become more loving… if you are on the progressive spiritual side of the spectrum – I offer that (though I could not see this a few days ago), the progressives had to lose to answer this prayer.

The progressives had to lose for the prayer for an awakening world to be answered.

Why?

Because many of the progressives – like me and my friends – are committed to spiritual practices of consciousness, much needed-shadow work, forgiveness, meditation. In the face of a tremendous loss, we will turn to these tools and hopefully merge them with activism. For the most part, those of us who “lost” will not take guns or bombs and blow someone or something away.

For humanity to progress, the progressives had to lose, to recommit to the practices that will raise consciousness on the planet. To do the work that Love must do to make the changes needed.

Perhaps even to give the hard-right the reins and see what they do with them.

My eyes must be changed to see this, but it’s really there.

The end of the world is not its destruction, but its translation into heaven.

Tag: loss

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