After 40+ years on a healing path, with dozens of visits to Lama Foundation and around the country listening to deeply gifted masters who had been through fires of their own, supported by extensive psychotherapy and various forms of trauma recovery work, I had a deep well from which to draw, and was living a productive life of service to others who valued the wisdom teachings I passed along. Then, one morning in October 2023 I was informed of the suicide of my youngest child, 46, the well went dry and I had nothing. It all vanished in a puff of smoke and I was cast adrift into a sea of disorienting confusion, left with nothing from which to draw. Where did all those wisdom teachings go?
Since that day I have done my best to put one foot in front of the other, one long day after another. Everything I knew and believed vanished, my support structure was stripped away and all that is left of me is gratitude. Now, I am trying to figure out how my life will work, how my relationship with the world will take form and how I will spend my final years missing one of my three children. Last week Mirabai said it was like a very important part of me had been amputated, and it will not grow back.
I have no answers, and even the questions escape me, so my work is to quiet my mind, open my heart and listen. That's where I will begin; that's where I will end.
by: Mark Dixon
Holy Lament Member
