Where Wil You Place Your Gaze

My heart aches to learn of the passing of Dana Reeve, wife of Christopher, who lived as our Superman even amidst his challenges. She stood as his angel, advocate, soul partner and divine mother to their son, ever a model of courage and grace. I’m sure she had her moments of despair along her path, perhaps even those moments where you wonder if the sobbing will ever pass. Even these moments are a part of being an ordinary human, for her packaged in a famous body, that we must learn to embrace, but not stop there. It is only a point we pass on the journey of unknowns. It is our work, our calling to get up one more time than we stumble.

Breathe, breathe. Sometimes that is all we can do as we await the rising of the phoenix. It can seem an eternity, but we must hold the intention to rise. She did. She arose over and over as she stepped beyond any doubts or fatigue she might have had, and handled even her own illness with Grace.

How could it be possible that this ill-fated experience could touch their family twice, leaving their thirteen-year-old son without his mother and father? How do we make sense of this as we stretch to comprehend the loss of such icons and role models? Where is the lining of happiness here in the reminder that bad things do happen to good people?

We probably only understand a thimble full of life, and with our limited vision, resist it’s perfection because it out-reaches our ability to accept what is. When I step out of my immediate feelings to look at the bigger and more magical picture I can bring into focus the huge web of support and love that was woven, fostered, facilitated, expanded and strengthened by the opportunities given by such illness and tragedy. Hard to see, but it’s there. Hope and love unending. The gift of what seems incomprehensible is always the reminder… to live fully and love deeply, to stay in conscious appreciation of each moment we have and each person we love.

As a family they seemed to live each moment fully, continuously reached out to serve others, and modeled a lifestyle of love, inspiration and manifesting miracles for their son. He will grieve supported by the wings of many angels. But, there is nothing like the embrace of a mother and father who love you. The hardest part of loving someone is letting go, and yet when we love authentically, we must learn to embrace this as a necessary part of loving at all. This feeling of emptiness is the harsh reminder that we do not have control of the circumstances, but do have the choice each moment to open our hearts to the lessons offered by them, even the hard ones, to be touched and shaped by them as the invitation to step into our own magnificence.

For every loss,