An Open Letter to the Universe

…after two flat tires didn’t even hurt the camel’s back

YOU saw it. From inside me and from outside of me.

YOU saw, during the days or weeks before I discovered it, how two of my van’s tires became flat.

YOU saw me as I prepared to go out on the morning of the discovery, donning special weather-appropriate clothes, packing my village-adventure-survial-kit, writing my lists.

YOU saw me suddenly discover my tires were flat, and YOU saw as it became clear to me that using my van for ANY adventure was, for the forseeable future, OUT.

YOU know how sad I felt as it dawned on me that this meant I couldn’t personally deliver the care-parcel to my daughter, nor shop at the further-away store that is less expensive and carries my favourite chips.

YOU know how angry I felt that these tires are wrecked, including the one I got brand-new this summer, taking funds I had wanted to give to feeding my purpose.

YOU know how angry I felt about how, to be able to use my van again, it would take funds that I want to give to feeding my purpose.

YOU know how angry and scared and sad I felt as suspicion dawned on me, that someone might have intentionally damaged my tires.

YOU know who that someone is, the same someone I suspect might have broken my bedroom window at Christmas time. YOU know whose footprints those are, still in the snow near that window. And though I saw no footprints near my van, YOU know whether the marks on the tires are from a blade.

I am leaving that one with YOU. I don’t want to know who did the window, nor if the tires became flat by accident or by intention. I hereby decide that these circumstances came from YOU….FOR me.

I KNOW, as I am sure YOU know, that the part of the person I am thinking of, the most essential part of him, would never do such things. His Being is so kind and considerate, he is a guardian, a creator, a lover. He does have another part, a reactive, destructive and irresponsible part, as all we humans do.

He has that part by the same mechanisms that I have my own reactive, destructive and irresponsible part. Conditioning and trauma set down survival strategies in each of us. That this part of him would enact violence toward me could be understood… in light of the fact that he is… my son.

I am the mother whose choices, conscious or not, are implicit to the conditioning, trauma and survival strategies set down in him.

YOU know how scared I am to encounter him. How scared I am that he might still be using herion, that he might turn on me once again in reaction to a word, a tone, a gesture interpreted as the antithesis to the pure love of my Being.

YOU know us both.

YOU know how, day after day, for hours and despite great pain, I am doing what it takes to transform my reactive parts, to recreate “me” as a space of radical responsibility, love and integrity.

YOU know how glad I feel, so glad about how little time it took me to choose to turn away from my now-unuseable van. YOU know how I celebrated having already chosen to prepare, as I had, so that I was able to begin walking, immediately, toward the near-by shops.

YOU know the joy I felt when I swung by a local tiny library to donate some books, and found in it for me two books that have been on my list for years!

YOU saw how smoothly I put my daughter’s parcel in the mail, got groceries, and moved with the low intensity feelings I felt, when the places I went did NOT have my favourite chips.

YOU knew the thoughts that arose in my mind about what else might be created out of these circumstances as I did these errands.

YOU provided the idea of writing this letter, and the coincidentally timed team meeting, later in the day, in which the idea became an agreement.

May YOUR magic be present in my son’s life as it is in mine.

May he, too come to such a place as I have come. A place where I decide for me that no matter the straws laid on my back, I choose my life. I choose continuing transformation, and to play an extraodrinary part in a story much bigger than myself.

YOUR story.