As we’re getting down to the last few scraps of 2025, it’s probably a good time to do a little bit of reflecting on what this past year has been like.
Speaking from the perspective of my own emotional recovery – my own spiritual healing – the work’s been pretty difficult, and at times, it’s just been downright exhausting.
But there’s one thing I’ve learned these last many years, and that is, that when you plow deep, you’re going to hit some big stones. It takes a lot to dig them out, but when you do, buried beneath them, you can usually find some pretty good, rich, fertile soil. And that’s definitely been the case this year…
If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
As a kid, you walk into a room and you feel anger there…well, you feel angry, so you must be angry. You feel sad, so you must be sad. We learn to internalize those things, to take them on, and to come at the world from the perspective of those things that we’re feeling – believing that they’re our own.
As we get older and lean a little heavier into our work, hopefully, we begin to sort some of that stuff out. We begin to learn what’s ours and what’s not; what we can let go of – what we can hang onto.
And this can be incredibly difficult when we see people we really love going through a tough time. One trap in particular that it’s easy to fall into as someone who’s empathic, is the fix, save, and rescue trap. We see someone suffering, and we want to fix the situation. We want to save them from it; to rescue them from their peril.
Sometimes our motivations aren’t as unselfish as they seem, whether we’re aware of that or not. Part and parcel of growing up in a house full of emotional instability is often the dance of codependence: “I love you because of how you make me feel.”
In the presence of suffering, especially when it’s the suffering of those we care for, we don’t like the way we feel when we see them suffer, and so we want to rescue them; to stop their pain in order to stop our own.
If you’d like to hear more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube…
One of the great blessings of my own healing work has been that I have found myself in the presence of teachers who, consciously or unconsciously, have never been afraid to show their humanity. Some of it has been extremely noble, and some of it hasn’t. But the wonderful thing about that, is that I have learned lessons along the way that I could not have learned any other way.
I have gotten to see people being completely human in my presence, and that has opened up space and allowed me to do the same…
As we progress through our healing work, there are parts of us that are going to kick and scream at every attempt that’s made to heal them. They see this work as a fight to the death.
We know that you don’t stop falling until you hit bottom. When that happens, something’s going to shatter. But the only thing that shatters is the lie. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. But that’s what breaks.
And what gets up and walks away, the truth, is a little more healthy than what hit bottom.
Really living through that experience; coming to terms with it and allowing it to be what it is in all its glory: the light, the dark, the love, the hate, the anger, the joy… all of it, that’s really the only way we’re ever going to heal. That’s really the only way we’re going to come through these things and to find the gifts that they carry wrapped inside them…
It’s the day after Thanksgiving. I stepped out onto the front porch at 4:30 this morning to catch a few breaths, and noticed Orion, prominent in the West – undaunted despite the orange glow of a streetlight in front of our house.
I’d already been up for a couple of hours, but the sky was incredibly clear, so I stood outside a little bit longer, then went back in to brew a pot of coffee.
Now it’s a few hours later, and I’m hip-deep into three big kettles of soup stock.
It’s a known fact in certain circles, that I plan on making soup stock every year on the day after Thanksgiving. The family pitches in with turkey carcasses, and my wife and I scrounge up every mushroom stem, onion skin, and vegetable scrap that isn’t composter-worthy. I also collect the juice from most of the meat that I cook, and strain it into ice cube trays.
Each year, preferably on this date, the entire mess goes into as many kettles as necessary, and what follows is a process that’s best described as equal parts alchemy and chaos.
When it’s simmered long enough, I strain everything into a single kettle, and render it down to somewhere between two and three gallons.
The ingredients vary from year to year, so it’s always a mystery until it’s done.
My wife affords me plenty of space, which is either deep consideration or a keenly honed sense of danger on her part. Truth be told, it’s probably a little of both. The first time I cooked in our kitchen, she took one look at my mandala of spices and oils, and an army of bowls filled with various ingredients – all laid out in the order in which I’d add them – smiled, and said, “I’m just going to walk away now…”
It’s been years since then, but as I write this, I’m thinking the exact same thing:
…and at this time of the year, when we see the trees that are either bare or on their way there and the leaves on the ground, it’s easy to reflect on those things that have fallen away from our own lives. Some we’ve given up willingly – others have been taken away from us by the strong winds of change: friends who’ve passed through our lives who are no longer there, family members we no longer see or maybe who have died, places we’ve gone, things we believed, ways we’ve acted.
All these things that have come and gone.
Another metaphor that’s reflected upon this time of the year is that of the harvest – the things that we collect, the things that we bring in and fill our cupboards with that nourish us through the long, cold winter.
And while it’s easy to look at that side of it, there is another side to the idea of the harvest, and that’s the things that get left behind. Not only the obvious – the seeds that’ve fallen from the plants, but also the stems and the dying leaves and decaying roots. All those things that once supported the fruits and the vegetables that we’ve harvested, but now get left behind to die and to rot – to get mixed in with the soil to begin to support those seeds that have fallen…
Well, the killing frost has finally taken the Basil.
The tomato leaves are turning black, so I was outside in the garden today doing my best to rescue whatever I could. Our plants were extremely generous this year, so there’s still a lot of unripened fruit on the vines.
I pruned the ornamental apple tree, and cut back the Russian Sage and the gigantic mum in the raised bed in front of the house.
It’s a necessary process, this killing frost; an offering up of what came before to open and sanctify space for what will come.
I’m thinking, as I write this, about a particular dear friend, Elder, and teacher, who, when his time came to step away from ceremony, relinquished his role with humility and grace – one final lesson for those of us ferocious enough to receive it…
There was always something that kept me just on the edge of it. I always felt like I never quite fit in…because the truth of the matter was, I didn’t. But I didn’t know that was because Something much larger than myself was looking out for me. In my own despair, I saw myself as always being just a little out of touch…
How many times in our lives are we handed something that’s perfect as it is – where all we have to do is simply step back and let it be?
I think of my own experiences in carving. Sometimes, I’ll have a spoon that I really love which I’ve worked out of Cherry, or Mulberry, or whatever. And as I stand there looking at it, I think, “Ah, man, I just need to make this one more cut.” And then I do… and it ends up being the one cut too many. Suddenly, I’m left holding something completely different than what it was intended to be.
The same thing happens with my writing. Often times I’ll edit the shit out of something, and what I’m really doing is stomping the life out of it. So, I end up going back to what I originally had, and that thing lives and breathes on its own.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about this process of spiritual healing – of deep emotional recovery work. So often we get bogged down in the fucking weeds with this, and we feel like it’s never going to end. We feel like we’re getting buried.
We have these arbitrary goals that we set for ourselves: the way things should be; the way things need to be. When they don’t line up, we start to blame ourselves. We start to feel as if something is wrong – as if we’re not doing something right.
And that’s really what this whole thing is about. It’s the idea that there’s a process unfolding, and all we can do is show up for it, do the work we’re called to do, not worry about the results, and just let the thing live and breathe on its own…
Bonja the Bodger 