People often ask me if there are ghosts and me life, and yes, there is one. Me. I remember myself, alone, disconnected frightened and falling apart. I was a ghost a few years back, drifting through life, connected to no one or nothing in particular, except perhaps my dogs, who kept alive the fraying threads of love and purpose.
Five or six years ago, a series of storms gathered around my life, and descended at the same time: divorce, recession, the collapse of publishing as I knew it, and a breakdown that left me incoherent and struggling to survive. I suppose they were all, in some cosmic way, connected, to have all erupted at once. I remember this ghost wandering from room to room, looking friends who were not friends, giving pieces of myself away, disintegrating. And yet, as I have heard and learned again and again, it is not the bright spots, the easy times, to peaceful moments that shape us and cause us to grow. It is so often the storms.
Out of them came so much beauty and light and love. And change. I was opened up enough to find Maria, who suffused my life with love, purpose and connection. For years I had leaned on other people to edit my work, trusted them to change it, take the life out of it, deaden it. Now, I edit my own work, and it is different, I can feel the emotion in it, I can feel it coming to life. Out of the storms came my photography, the radiant light at the center of my creative soul. Out of the storms came new editors who cared about me and my work, and are leading me to better places. And friends who are real, who give instead of take.
Out of the storms came new friends, spiritual awakening, and while Rose stayed by my side to get me through, there were new animals – Frieda, Simon, Lenore, Red, Rocky – magical helpers who opened me up, deepened my capacity to feel and love. Out of the storms came e-books, the maturation of my blog, the moving images we call videos. Out of the storms came health, no pills, faith in my body. Out of them came an understanding that fear is nothing but a poisonous cloud, a place for ghosts, not people, to live. And that anger is a poison that will eat up one’s spirit.
And out of them came my new life, my move soon to the new farm with the spirit I love most on the earth.
And perhaps most important, out of the storms came a different person, not a ghost, but a human being, more honest, more authentic, more aware, more awake. And yes, more connected. The ghost in the house knows that if you are not connected to something – a love, a cause, a creative purpose – then you are adrift in the world. A ghost in the truest sense. I spoke to the ghost last night, ran into him when I came downstairs in the middle of the night.
He looked awful – pale, wasted, edgy, hollow-eyed. “I know, I know,” he said. “I will be finding a new place to live, too, but the truth is, I am stuck. I am stuck.”
“Hey,” I said, “I am moving soon, I will not see you again.”
He looked at me for the longest time. “I know,” he said