Day 2

[Leanne Matton]

How do you fill the empty spaces?

If there’s empty spaces in your heart
they’ll make you think it’s wrong
like having empty spaces
means you never can be strong
but I’ve learned that all these spaces
means there’s room enough to grow
and the people that once filled them
were always meant to be let go.
–
Ernest Hemingway

She asked me: when do you most feel like you? Where do you feel that space in your body?

The answers made me long for days filled with those things.

Things that keep me in the moment, not the anxiety of the future or the grief of the past.

Things that challenge me as well as things that comfort me. But no more things that diminish or constrict me.

The soft fur of my cat as she ages and loses her hearing and allows me to care for her more.

The neglected garden that waits patiently for me and occasionally produces a colourful surprise for me in its forgiveness at my distraction.

The trees that surround my house and the nearby ocean and the sunshine and breeze that sweeps around us all.

The reading and writing of words and my growing abiliity to make space for them in my days, my growing courage to be seen.

The birds that drink and play in the birdbath, the comfort of my daybed by the window, the friends that know where to find things in my kitchen, the neighbour that brings me seeds for my garden.

The old wooden house that I slowly and lovingly repair, that lets me show people ‘see, this is who I am’ because of its unique character.

The growing ability to connect deeply and with increasing discernment as I learn my boundaries and rights and rediscover my joy at being alive.

The teachers who have shown me how to accept and sit with the truth of my introversion and my too quiet-ness and too slow-ness instead of trying to be something else, who have taught me to see the beauty in allowing these things to be as they are.

The work that gives me space to choose my hours and location, that allows me to make a difference and find purpose, that gives expression to the previously silenced parts of me.

The knowing that love is possible now, the healing that gave me that hope, the challenges ahead as I let go the distorted mirrors of others.

Safety for me was always in aloneness. Now I live in my own company with the knowing deep in my solar plexus that there can be kindness and respect and love, now I have choice about how I share my days.

These are the spaces I am claiming for myself.

Tell us, how do you fill the empty spaces?

[seadreamer60]

Empty Spaces
Love
Music
A Gentle Wind
Things that take up no physical space
But fill me with bliss
Empty spaces
Sustenance
Reasons to Live

[Leanne Matton]

Things that take up no physical space but fill you with bliss – this feels so real, like truth and beauty and love x

[seadreamer60]

Beauty! Yes. How could I forget. Beauty is my lifeline. Truth feels dangerous at the moment.

[Rosie]

Seadreamer 60. Oh My Golly Gosh. I read your reply and the statement ‘truth feels dangerous at the moment’ and I instantly had this crowd of voices chanting “feel the danger, feel the danger, feel the danger, feel the danger” filling my being like I was smack bang in the middle of some protest march! It felt incredibly liberating and then the chorus changed to ‘hold the beauty and feel the danger, hold the beauty and feel the danger, hold the beauty and feel the danger, hold the beauty and feel the danger’. I had this image in my head of holding on to this big bunch of white balloons (the beauty) and feeling and witnessing a cacophony of danger as I floated overhead and somehow appreciating that the ‘danger’ was possibly just a collection of signposts pointing me to the way of truth. If I just held on to the beauty that was always around me I could navigate the perceived danger and revel ‘in’ the truth I am searching for. Bless You for choosing to share Your Truth. I Am Grateful.

[Rosie]

How do I fill the empty spaces?

I would love to say with tenderness, invitation, grace and beauty.

In truth I need to say I fill my empty spaces with food, diet coke, grasping and despair – more often than not. It’s not like I haven’t known this for a long long time. It’s just my journey to tenderness, invitation, grace and beauty remains elusive. Maybe because I don’t stay long enough in the darkness to see the light. with gratitude for the ‘space to grow’.

[seadreamer60]

Rosie: tenderness, invitation, grace and beauty: what beautiful words. Seeing them wrapping and twirling around you like beautiful ribbons. with you wherever you go. xx

[seadreamer60]

Rosie & Writers of the Dark: Thank you for your lovely & powerful response, I felt the power of it – BOOM! I am so happy with my white balloons thank you. Yes, the beauty is MY truth. My truth is beauty. I’m really happy floating off with my balloons to greener pastures and landscapes I adore. The”cacophony of danger”, my family of origin, ah, how lovely to see them as sign posts pointing me to the way of truth, MY truth. Thank you.

In what I call “3D” life, it is my lovely step dad’s viewing today.I don’t know who thought of the awful idea that there should be a viewing when he wanted no funeral. I’m not going and I’m not going to the family meal afterwards. After 11 days of hospital etc I have had enough of humans and family. My mum thinks I am going to look after her when my brother goes back home interstate next week. I’m barely functioning trying to look after my own family. My mum and two brothers drive me insane. They talk. All the time. Utter drivel. The pitch of their voices can be distressing. Danger. I am a lover of silence. Beauty. Feeling.I’m so happy to have my white balloons to hold onto.

[Leanne Matton]

Rosie, there is so much honesty, humility and insight in your words, achingly real and relatable. Wishing you vast wide open space for all the freedom and growth you seek. I can visualise you coming out into the open, knowing you are safe now x

[Leanne Matton]

Seadreamer, I deeply feel the torture of that endless meaningless chatter just to fill and overfill the space and the longing for silence and\or deep quality connection instead. I adore the image of those white balloons lifting you up up and away to truth that feels safe, beauty you can trust, and love that never leaves x

• This reply was modified 2 years, 7 months ago by Leanne Matton.

[Rosie]

Bless You SeaDreamer for the gift of the ribbons. Love it and feeling compelled to get myself a collection of ribbons to decorate with beautiful words, mantra’s, quotes that can twirl around in the energy of this old/new home as I negotiate transforming ‘the family home’ into ‘my home’now mum is not here to share it anymore. Thank You for the In-spirit-ation. x I have a deep empathy for your yearning for silence when confronted by so much seemingly meaningless noise in your family of origin. I am personally struggling with the lack of real connection with my family of origin since my mum’s transition. I ache for connection but when I look to my family it just isn’t there in the form I would like it. We are just not on the same wave length. Nevertheless my personal struggle is not so arduous when I can remember that I too have not always had the awareness that I do now. I once lived without the consciousness I have now and thanks to a force greater than me I can sometimes have compassion for myself and my family members as we negotiate this thing called life. When I recently wrote a eulogy for my mum’s funeral I shared some things that she had taught me. Two of which were • Our greatest learning often arises out of difficulty, or the absence of that which we wish for. • Every one of us, is a messenger. When I personally get locked down in angst because I want something different to what I am experiencing (which is often), I try be present for the pain points and acknowledge how my future message can be so much more authentic because I have experienced the absence of that which I wish for. Thanks for listening. AND no I don’t get it ‘right’ a lot of the time. Thanks again for the ribbons, and trusting you can enjoy delicious flight time with your white balloons. Namaste.

[Anonymous]

I have become so masterful at filling empty spaces I cannot imagine how I would manage if I had a job, a relationship, a circle of friends or any of the things we are supposed to want in order to be happy.

Yes those things would be nice and even cherished by me if they brought something complementary and richer to my experience – yet often they are a disappointment or worse still a betrayal, and so I have become the adult child in hiding waiting for it to feel safer before I step into anything that might upset my life alone and free.
I am rich in explorations, creative projects whether it be growing things, making things, caring for things, satiating my curiousity or following my fascinations.
Empty spaces are more often than not happy spaces, yet from time to time I feel the loneliness creep in of not being able to share what I enjoy, or even part of it, and I wish I had a co-adventurer that gets it, that gets me, in a way that enlivens and energises us both.

[seadreamer60]

Andrea, I love it! A co-adventurer! Yes. I can’t manage the job, relationship, circle of friends or any of the things we are supposed to want in order to be happy but a co-adventurer, I do love the sound of. Someone who doesn’t drain me. Lol, I think it’s my dog.

[Maria Delaney]

When do you most feel like you? Where do you feel that space in your body?
These are questions I’ve been exploring lately. Did I ever get a chance to feel ‘like me’? It was only ever a hypervigilance about how others felt so that I could be a me that wouldn’t be somehow an irritant and a ‘failure’ and object of derision and punishment. Trying to find how I feel has meant many months of sleeping and healing old hurts and allowing myself to feel what’s in my body, moment to moment… and learning to notice changes and what they might signal. I’m feeling an opening in my heart – an opening to each moment and what’s before me.. and an unclenching of the tight ball in my gut.. a softening, allowing of deep breathing and awareness of the beauty here and now.
Special times of feeling most like me are in the company of friends who are like me.. friends who get it, who don’t judge, who see me underneath my anxious behaviours and clumsy communication. I feel that in my arms… the feeling of wanting to hug them, to stay connected, to keep sharing our safe space. But I carry them in my heart too, and I’m learning that I only need to think of them to feel how they affirm and celebrate the real me.

[Anonymous]

Yes Seadreamer our animal companion co-adventurers, hug your dog for me will you? I’m not sure my empty spaces would be so good if it were not for my neighbours cat ?

[Author]

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