There often comes a time on a spiritual path that everything appears to fall apart, and that it takes everything falling apart to find the courage to make a leap – into another space, another life, another self.

Five months into the healing of my fractured right arm/shoulder, Hurricane Helene hit Asheville NC, the place I had called home for thirty-three years. Not being able to take a shower or wash my hair by myself, or open a jar, or pour a glass of water, or butter my toast without help for five months, and with a sciatic nerve issue in my left hip, I already felt like things had been falling apart. And now, on the morning after hours of torrential rain and howling wind, on the day of each week that my dear friend Margo would have come to help me take a shower and wash my hair, I found myself alone, in the dark, with no electricity, no water, no internet, no phone, and no idea what was going to happen next. Putting on a sweater, I ventured out the front door. I was relieved to find that the beautiful space where I lived, and Max, my Kia Seltos, undriven for months, both appeared intact. I sent my gratitude to the great beneficent Universe. There were no big trees close to my place, but elsewhere all along the road was a mess. Trees and powerlines downed everywhere, some on rooftops and cars, the rest strewn across the road.

Big Sky. On the road in Longmont, CO

After days of living with flashlights and bottled water that friends brought to me from distribution places, and with supermarkets closed, life felt surreal. I ate mostly what I had on hand. Everything in the fridge and freezer ruined, I subsisted on left over defrosted bread with almond butter and organic fruit spread, thawed fruit, canned tuna and salmon, apple sauce and a few other pantry foods.

A neighbor brought me buckets of water from the flooded crawlspace beneath her house to flush the toilets. I thought cooking food with one good arm was difficult, but now I had to figure out how to lift a heavy bucket of dirty water and pour it down a toilet. I wound up using one of my good pots to scoop the water out with my left hand, turning it quickly upside down from above the raised, handicapped toilet seat, hoping it had created enough force to do the job. Most often it had not.

Toward the middle of the week, several cell phone companies had connected up their towers and there was sporadic service in certain locations. I found that my car got some reception. A couple of times a day I charged my phone and tried to make a few important calls, one to my sister in Colorado. She begged me to come to stay with her for rest and rehabilitation. The thought of what I’d have to do to make that happen was overwhelming, and my relationship with my sister was often challenging. But after almost a week, I accepted the invite and started putting things in motion. It was exhausting, and there were times I could hardly bend over. I had to borrow a suitcase, buy plane tickets, arrange for a wheelchair at both airports, find airport transportation. My car became my office, hoping I’d get enough internet time on airline websites to make reservations, and phone time to hire a car service.

After eight days, on October 5, 2024, with a suitcase full of dirty laundry, and feeling inhuman, with really yucky hair and ten days of only washing up at the sink with my left hand and a bottle of drinking water, my heart and spirit in tatters, I left for Longmont, Colorado.

REST AND REHABILITATION…NOT

What happened during the three weeks I stayed with my sister is long, intense, and inappropriate to recount here in too much detail. What I will share is that I left feeling battered to the bone. I did not know or recognize this sister person who began revealing a deeply wounded part of herself I could never have anticipated, and a longtime anger toward me that exacerbated all the grief and pain I had gone there to heal. She had no idea at all who I was. She seemed to hear things I did not say, interpret the meaning of anything I did from what seemed to me her distorted projections of a person I was not. She hurled her hurt at me, defiantly told me I was “just like” my often difficult and self-centered father, which I knew I was not.

I was shocked by the amount of anger that still seemed to fester inside her for so long, especially since taking care of our father in his later years and through his death was something she had “lovingly” signed up for. She had a very different relationship with him than I did. And she reiterated the resentment I knew she held toward me for not being or doing what she thought I was supposed to be and do in that situation, most of which I honestly never understood.

One morning my sister, in her “therapist” mode, told me in no uncertain terms that she had been up all night and it came clear to her that this was not the right time for me to make a move. She expected me to accept her “professional” assessment. I, however, had already made the decision to follow my own inner guidance. When I told her so, she looked almost startled. She told me again that I was just like my father, that I did not consider her in my decision, that I would somehow, as he did, make her life a misery. Part of this probably came from the fact that I was somewhat incapacitated at the time, and also that I had not yet driven my car since I hurt my arm. It felt like she saw me as forever needy. I, however, knew that things “come to pass.” I was learning to trust implicitly in my own ability to heal. And I was absolutely sure that by the time I returned to Asheville I would be able to drive.

Even as I deeply felt that moving to Colorado for me was the right decision at the right time, it had been an extremely difficult choice, especially in the midst of so much condemnation. One thing that reassured me was that I had other family there that I was looking forward to reconnecting with after many years, supportive family that seemed to live from the heart.

Once my sister had somewhat adjusted to the fact that I’d be moving, she agreed to drive me to the leasing office of an apartment I had looked at and decided to rent. It was less than two years old and had a good feeling, and an open view of big Colorado sky in front of my door, with mountains in the distance to the right. After that, my sister and I stayed out of each other’s way as much as possible. Upstairs in my room, I began to make plans. I filled out the over twenty pages of online leasing forms, set up utilities, opened a bank account, and made endless lists and notes. I had a website client/friend who offered downsizing and packing services and I called and hired her to help me on the other end. I contacted several moving companies for price quotes. The smaller ones wanted $11,000! Ouch. But one of the big companies was able to offer me a much more reasonable rate and I arranged an appointment for when I got back to Asheville.

And since my new apartment was so much smaller than the place I was leaving, I bought new bedroom furniture, including a low platform bed, two night stands, two lamps, and a compact desk as my office. There was no actual dining room, so I also ordered a small midcentury modern table and two chairs that I would place against a portion of the wall in the open room that contained the kitchen and living room combined. The ten foot ceilings helped give it the illusion of a little more space.

A large part of the “rightness” I felt about moving came from the fact that during the four years since the pandemic, I’d watched myself retreating deeper and deeper into my cave. The pandemic itself was part of that, but I had also been through four eye surgeries resulting in some issues, the unexpected necessity to take care of my ex-husband of thirty-four years during his illness and death, and afterwards, thirteen months of dealing with probate and the mess of his affairs. Then, just as I felt some forward movement, my body and spirit becoming stronger, agoraphobia and depression beginning to lift, in a weird freak accident, I fell and fractured my arm. While being at my sister’s, I felt the painful reality that if I went back to Asheville, to live alone, with all the destruction and no potable water for who knew how long, still needing help, and no Whole Foods delivery, or even regular food deliveries to the few supermarkets that were open, I might shut myself in my cave and quietly fade away. I couldn’t have imagined in a million years that I would move halfway across the country to Colorado, a place I had never been and was not drawn to. Yet I knew I needed to take this blind leap of faith. I had to believe, as Toni Morrison wrote at the end of Song of Solomon, “…if you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

Toms Canyon, Mesa, CO

BACK TO ASHEVILLE

When I got home and walked through the door of my lovely, peaceful space, I collapsed into tears. I felt broken in body and spirit, and the sadness of leaving a living space I loved, and a place that had once called to my heart tugged at me. For a couple of days I did nothing but coax some food into my belly and sleep. When I felt ready, I began taking care of practical things — setting up a definite moving date, making arrangements to have my car transported, letting my wonderful landlord, Joey, know I was moving and that I was leaving all the furniture in every room except the living room, including my solid teak dining room set with two leaves that could easily seat ten, hoping he would pass it on to anyone who needed it. We were both close to tears.

I took some quiet time each day to allow thoughts and feelings to move through. I contemplated how, despite the aspects of my sister that had come to light, I intended to continue our relationship. I was beyond holding on to the heavy burden of anger or resentment toward anyone. But I also had to understand that my sister and I lived in different worlds. From my perspective, I would say we vibrate at different frequencies. It’s like how radio stations work. If you’re not tuned in to the station’s exact frequency, you can’t hear it. My sister vibrates in the world of duality, fear, separation, not enoughness, a world I am evolving beyond. Although I can understand her world, since it’s the vibration of conditioned 3D reality, my sister might never understand mine. She has never ventured beyond 3D into the higher frequencies that I’m getting better and better at holding these days. I call it staying “above the fray.” I knew that the hurt I still felt after my return from Colorado might stay with me for a while, but I also knew that the only way for me to go forward in relationship with my sister was to honor her chosen journey, and continue to come from the heart as best I could in all our interactions.

In front of me, however, was what felt like a monumental task. And even though Liz would help, there was still so many things I had to sort through myself. There was no room for even one extra thing in my new small space. I began with my office closet. The first box I opened was what I’d labeled Memories. It contained gifts of words and special things from people I loved, and some I gave myself, all of which I’d kept for decades. These things were personal or sacred. I could never throw them out or give them away.

There were long handwritten letters from close friends George and Bobbie (who is no longer with us in body), well George was the letter writer, when they had moved back to Hawaii in 1996. It was the year of my fiftieth birthday, and since they wouldn’t be able to come to the party I was giving myself, George included these gifts:

— Dried ulu ulu flowers from the indigenous rain forest at the top of the mountain on Molokai, where they lived. The name, he said, means gathering, or assembly.
— A special piece of hollow coral from Poko’o Beach just down the road from their house.
— The first rock they found on the day they arrived, “the likes of which I’ve never seen again,” he wrote.
— And mana’olana – hopes, literally “floating thoughts.”

From my dear, now in spirit, friend and soul sister, Tara, who channeled those I affectionately had called The Dead Guys. [see my memoir Rare Atmosphere: An Extraordinary Inter-dimensional Affair of the Heart] there was:
— A carved wooden box decorated with an image of Ganesha, the Hindu elephant god, which contained two tiny plastic bags. In one was Vahbuti, sacred ash from the temple of Sai Baba that a friend of hers brought back from India, and which she shared with me. In the second was rice blessed by Jeshua, although I honestly don’t remember where this came from or who Jeshua’s blessing came through, but that, too, she lovingly shared with me.
— Black sand from a beach I think on Maui, that she brought back for me when she went to Hawaii.

There was a lovely small woven basket from my friend Stacy, which held my collection of river rocks and other trinkets. And sand I had “taken” (don’t tell anyone) from the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt in 1990. Also there was what I call my small “crystal city,” one of the hundreds, maybe thousands, of crystals my ex-husband Frank brought back from a trip he and a friend had taken to dig in the crystal mines of Arkansas in the 90’s. And a slightly damaged ceramic mug that I bought from a potter at a Florida art show in 1974. I keep a stained glass heart ornament, made by my dearest friend Carolyn, hanging on the side of the mug. And more…

When I got to Colorado, I found a place for many of these things on the window sills in my kitchen.

And then there were the books. On each move I made over decades of time I had to divest myself of books. I was already down to five thirty-two inch shelves holding a majority of books I would never part with. There were hardcovers, paperbacks, and volumes of poetry collections by beloved writerfriends. Each had a personal inscription written inside. They were all going with me. In addition, I chose a few other books that had special meaning, including Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson, and Possession by A.S. Byatt. The rest of the books I gave away. There was no space for even one small bookcase in my new place, but there were two shelves in the corner of my new kitchen really meant to hold pet food and such (dog lovers abound in Colorado), that I would use as my bookshelves.

While at the computer one morning, I remembered a poem I had written after a move I’d made in Asheville long ago, a contemplation on things kept.

Moving On

Boxes rest in random drifts,
a corrugated avalanche of cornered
fragments sealed too long.
One by one I slice
through time, search for living
memory, rescue what still breathes.
Here the entrance chime I thought
you’d kept — Swedish inlaid teak
and walnut, oiled and singing.
Here a clustered weight
of amethyst, half an opal moon,
my favorite globe of rosy quartz.
And here a thousand million syllables
bound by centuries, black-set
on weathered pulp. Exposed
and beckoning, his Sonnets lie,
well-fingered edges frayed.
I lift them gently. At twenty-nine
they cleave apart, jasmine pressed
to thy sweet love rememb’red.

If you’re still with me through this deluge of words, I will end with this. I somehow managed to get everything done and arrived in Longmont, Colorado, my new home, on November 9, 2024. After several weeks of all the challenges a move such as this can present in many arenas, I now feel relatively settled and at peace. My sister came over and helped me with things that were still difficult for me — unpacking boxes, lifted things onto high shelves, hanging art, making my bed. I was grateful.

I am not, however, the same self I was when I began this leg of my journey. I feel somehow larger, more open. But that’s a telling for another time.

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NOTE: As I wrote about the devastation of Hurricane Helene in WNC, I couldn’t help simultaneously thinking about the current horror of the California fires, and the pain and grief everyone there must be feeling. These are unprecedented times. Sending blessings of peace and healing to all.

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