Shifting

Something is shifting.  I'm trying to figure out what will make my hips less painful, more functional.  I had a fall, and was carrying too much weight too early in my recovery from surgery.  (Oh my life just loves to hit me up side the head with metaphors, so apt they're funny!) The jury is out.  I may have a pinched nerve in my spine causing the thigh pain or perhaps it's just taking the muscles, which atrophied and foreshortened from my bad hips, time to stretch and grow. I track this and try that and hope the changing sensations will move more strongly in the functional direction.

But the shift I'm feeling has more to do with my last post about personal responsibility.  What I hoped for and sensed the day after the election seems to be happening.  People are standing up, speaking out.  Yes there are more knee jerk partisan positions but there is also thoughtful reexamining of what's real, of not countering the fake news and exaggerations with exaggerations and blame but with as truthful truth as we can tell and taking responsibility for our share of bad decisions.

I'm feeling the shift in odd things like keeping my kitchen counters and sink clean and put away at all times.  Who knew how clearing and empowering that simple consistency would be?  It came, as have several of my shifts, from some out of the blue misfortune that part of me decided was a gift, a challenge from the Universe to step up and into my life.  Perhaps it comes because I have no illusion that I know what's going on in this crazy world or how things will turn out.  Though I do sense that there's more going on than meets the eye; things are not simply black or white.  Times like these require a delicate balance of honest effort and voluntary free fall.  And being open to the subtle shifts of energy and willing to catch the change, in whatever domaine it may be.

Next week it will be 5 years since Gil's Easter morning death.  I'll be on the train with my 7 yr old granddaughter Piper traveling cross country to visit David in California.  I've been feeling Gil's presence a lot of late. I was at Piper's 2nd grade concert where they sang an assortment of jazz standards and I wept through the whole thing. Gil was palpably present.  I've had more conversations with him recently too.  All those posts where I wrote of waiting to be swept off into the next phase of my life,  Now I'm feeling like a cool breeze is blowing through an open door and that when I'm ready   I can shift my weight in a just a few little things and see how it feels to live my life in a new way.