I overheard one of my son’s coaches talking to the team after a game that we lost. It isn’t an exact quote, but he said something like: “You need to own it. Own it without any excuses. Own it; if you are afraid to make a mistake, strike out, miss a catch, own it.”

Brilliant. Really brilliant, because what we don’t own, owns us. What owns us, owns our game.

We have to own both what we do well and what we don’t. If we walk onto the field (into the room, onto the stage, or into a relationship), and we only own our abilities, skills, and gifts but are unwilling to acknowledge our fear, doubt, despair, or pain, those shadow parts will own us. It will show up big and ugly, and more often than not, we will project it into the situation or onto others. It will interfere with our best game and important relationships. The blemished parts and dark feelings we avoid separate us from ourselves, fracturing us and keeping us from our full force in the world. It is the bypassing and dodging that are the problem, not the uncomfortable emotional conditions themselves.

Calling it out, owning it, naming it — the shame, blame, pain, fear, and trauma— brings it into the wholeness of who we are. Admitting our weaknesses makes us more real, and we can show up in full form to perform at our highest vibration. Wholeness does not necessitate perfectness or flawlessness.

We are all damaged. Some of us don’t have any idea that we are, and we walk in the same circles hitting our head on the same wall for a long time. Some know it and hide it, exhausting ourselves with postering and a facade of perfection. Some know it and allow it to be part of the whole. Our ability to be whole—including our imperfectness and brokenness— positively impacts the team, family, or any one of our systems of belonging. It gives permission to the other members to do the same, and a reason to bind us together in community. Our lacking may even leave a hole for another member to fill.

Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese comes to mind.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Thank you, Mary Oliver. Those first five lines frequently echo in my mind and save me so often from spiraling in on myself for all of my imperfection and unworthiness. Telling my despair and pain, and hearing others tell theirs brings me from my knees to stand in my belonging of my own true nature and take my place in Nature, our first family system. Speaking my fear of doing another day without Edmond, the despair of being on the vacation he wasn’t on, and the gut wrenching loneliness of returning home where he is not, softens the brick of dread in my belly. The speaking it, the owning it, softens the pain that begins to melt into the part of me that can do another day.

Sitting in our rented room waiting out the storm that delayed our last day of baseball games in Destin, I considered what it was I needed to own and how owning it in this time of grieving has ultimately served me. I found some things, some more shadow parts to eat. I will continue to find more.

Surely, there will always be things lurking in the shadow of my being that are outside of my awareness. It is the way of being human and humble to not know ourselves entirely. Perhaps, for those rare beings who reach that level of self-awareness, when all layers are known, and when light shines upon all the shadows, it is then that it is possible to slip into the other realm effortlessly. Maybe this is the way it was for the Buddha, Jesus, Mother Mary, or any of the sages that have left us a legacy of practices and prophecy and promise. For the rest of us, it is a continuous process of self-discovery that most of us will not complete before we die.

Stepping into layers of awareness currently available to me, I have observed my observations and experiences. It gets pretty meta in my mind sometimes. The noticing, and then the noticing myself noticing are sometimes a way through the agony of what could easily take me down. It is a way of staying present through a storm of grieving. In fact, deepening my state of presence and awareness of my sensory abilities elevates my participation in what hurts terribly. To be clear, I am not analyzing, making meaning, reframing, or fixing. I am simply noticing, observing how, what and where it hurts. I am recognizing subtle shifts, focusing on the flow of a breath or where I might be holding a breath. I notice what is on the edges of the pain. What is my desire? Where is there softness? How can I stay here a little longer and not abandon myself? It is participation, not distraction. It is presence, and it is enough.

I have become acutely tuned in to the way time in this liminal landscape of grief often loops and swirls and doesn’t move in a linear fashion. Time here is not historical time. Liminal Time is where past, present, and future exist together suspended and mingling. I notice that memories move forward and backward out of chronological order. The ordering of events, even in my writing, is not sequential. The order of things is more thematic, sometimes stream of consciousness and dreamlike, holding meaning as the primary category. In this hologram of liminality, I can enter from any angle or part to find wholeness. Sometimes the unfolding is like walking into a dark room backward, and it is only in following the next step revealed that I find the freedom of a new purpose.

In fact, I am noticing that the chaos of puzzle pieces and gaping holes bring meaning more so than the ordered moments. Ordered time is mundane and flat. Leaving the gaps and holes allows for meaning to arrive spontaneously. If I leave room, life will continue to surprise me in a good way with new resources. Surrendering the control of knowing the next thing and refusing to fixate on a plan allow me to live a more mythic life, one where ritual and mythology are still married and visible everywhere, one where resources are abundant.

When I forget to own my need to be right or control the outcome, I lose my mythic lens for life. I am inflexible, rigid, and showing up on the field with my shadow parts owning me. It is painfully constricting. The storm was an opportunity to seek shelter, wait here a little longer, postpone what we were planning to do, and see again through a more mythic lens.

I noticed the relaxation in my belly that wasn’t there this morning when I was packing up for the day. The planning and organizing and considering all the tasks had me constricted, tense, and under a deadline to be sure my son was ready and at the field on time for his game. The storm changed everything, and games were delayed. Lightening and rain are powerful change-makers. Noticing what I own was revealing. I own my despair and grief, loneliness and anger, heartache and fear. I also own that I am badass at being a mother, caring for kids, nourishing and nurturing them. The moments when I was feeling my most powerful on the trip to Florida have been when I was in the role of Mother. Noticing myself noticing when I was in my power and capable is part of the whole of who I am. That part is friends with and a resource to the grieving part.

Owning it does not mean we will not lose the game, make an error, or strike out. Owning it does not mean we will not lose the ones we love, our partner, our child, or a parent. Owning it means we will be more whole and have access to the most resourceful parts of ourselves. Owning all of our parts allows us to play our best game on any given day.

Meta Mind/Waiting Out the Storm