(Alt Title: Jupiter In Sag Kicked My Ass—In The Best Way)

It was March of 2017 when I started this little baby blog called To Our Depths. It was born of a jet-lag fury across the other side of the world—Bangkok, Thailand to be exact—alone in a hostel common room. It was 3:30 AM when I sat down and opened my laptop, and I had never been so awake, so alive, maybe even since. Of course, it had been gestating inside of me for much much longer. And so it was: in what felt like one swift motion the whole damn site, the first blog post, the bravery to throw it out there burst out of me. Queue a fifty pound weight lifted off of my chest.

As I moved from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, I published another post, woke up to hundreds of views, to comments, to shares, to people eager and impacted by my words. I remember being so taken aback—so relieved to have finally done it—that I laid in my hostel bunk bed alone in tears. But from 8,362 miles away, vulnerability feels slightly lighter.

When I got home from my trip, person after person began to talk to me in real life about my blog posts, ask me questions about what I was doing next and where I was going. And I found pretty quickly that my pride was overcome with the desire to sink into the floor and disappear. Yet slowly, I went from desperately embarrassed to proud and excited. To be a writer, an artist, and put your work out in the world sometimes feels like the most deliberate, yet desperate act of rebellion, of vulnerability, of authenticity that you could possibly pull out of yourself. So it was. I walked around in new skin—not yet calloused.

So much has happened since then. I moved to the beach for awhile; I’ve road tripped to multiple different states. I drove around the entire island of Iceland, stayed in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, spent weeks in Mexico and Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic. In true Lizz fashion, I’ve wasted hundreds of dollars on last minute flight changes, spent too many nights on airport floors, and made offices around the globe. It has been exhilarating and exhausting all at once (and you can read about most of it throughout the rest of this journal).

In November of 2018, I found the most perfect apartment right in the middle of my hometown and decided it was time to burrow into York and live alone again. With lots of concern from my mother and others who didn’t get it, I quit what would be my last serving job in the same month, deciding to walk my talk all the way. To trust. My savings were not enough to live on long term, but the voice inside me was deafening. The option wasn’t quit or not quit: it was ignore my Truth or continue to work in an environment that was sucking the life out of me.  I chose Truth and I will always choose Truth. I chose to trust in the way that I have always been provided for, and in the resolve I had to create what I knew was coming—without any real certainty of what it even was.  

♥ ♥ ♥ 

It was right before the end of November, and the end of that job, when I met Sonia Karas. Only four days before, I’d found myself in a car outside of a ‘friend’s’ house being violated in a way that I didn’t think was possible for who I was at the time, for the ways I’d grown. The details don’t matter—and in the end the event was minuscule in comparison to events in my past—yet it shook me to my core more than any of them had. I was too awake now, conscious, sober, alive.

I shut down for days after. I talked to almost no one. I watched the Kavanaugh trials for hours straight (Divine timing never failin’, am I right?), and I sobbed enough for what felt like the collective. I slept too much. I noticed the ways my body immediately began to recoil like a frightened rabbit, shrink and hold shame. I knew I was healing something heavy and long-standing. I knew I was being forced to confront the ways I was still small, still afraid, still hesitant about my own needs, my own voice, my ability to say ‘no.’ I knew I desperately needed support, needed help to pry his hands off me. So I did what I know works: I prayed. For the right teachers, healers, voices, and readings to show up in my life. Then I took another nap.  

When I woke up and mindlessly opened Facebook, a review for Sonia’s reiki services was the first thing that showed up on my news feed. I had actually texted a friend who gives reiki before I fell asleep asking if she had availability, so when I saw that Sonia had an opening the next day I booked without hesitation. That session, for lack of words that hold enough weight, changed my entire trajectory for the year—and more honestly and sentimentally, forever. I felt both held and healed, yet cracked all the way open. And suddenly, I knew the way forward. As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears.

What happened from that session to now feels like an old-time, sped-up movie reel, all just moments flashed up onto a screen: grainy, incomplete, shuttering. In only weeks, Sonia gave me my level 1 attunement. By January, I received my level 2. And by the end of that month, I listened to the nudging again, and with her blessing, opened the doors to begin giving reiki myself. It was soon, and I’d be lying if I wasn’t terrified and full of doubt about my abilities, my experience, my right to be of service in that way. However, I had a response so immediate that there was no question that I was on the right track. I was only a vessel; this was God’s work.

But while I’m being honest here, the response was more than I knew what to do with. It was as if my nervous system wasn’t equipped to handle the work yet. In my heart I knew I needed to slow down—that it was too much too soon—but I wouldn’t allow myself. I thought, “If I’m capable, I need to show up. If someone asks me, I need to be of service.” What felt magical and Divine for a while, by mid-Spring felt grueling. I found myself more days than I wanted to admit on my knees in tears just praying for the strength to give a little more.

My quality of life, my Spirit, my enthusiasm, was a ghost by April. I know now that it was an obvious digression, but at the time it felt like I woke up one day and was gone. I started to wonder if I had given myself away, if who I was had just run out. Each morning would start in an earnest attempt, but by afternoon I’d be back in bed, usually in tears or dark and spiraling thoughts about what was wrong with me. I was neglecting my relationships; I was neglecting my health. I had no interest in anything I loved. I got so desperate as to contemplate pharmaceutical medicine—something I chose to leave behind five years ago. I was achingly afraid. And mostly, I was pretending I was okay, anyway.

“We All Live In a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.” —Tennesee williams

I have to add that I was always able to serve in spite of myself, my fears, my exhaustion, my shortcomings. Spirit always showed up. That’s the way this works—both reiki and life—and this experience proved that to me. Thank God for that. I never walked away from a session during that time feeling like I wasn’t carried, like the person on my table wasn’t cared for in service of their Highest Good. And what became increasingly obvious—and absolutely humbling—was that it had almost nothing to do with me.

And yet still—I was aching. The house crumbling in flames around me.

♥♥♥

What I have yet to mention is that the entire time all of this was happening—this new path of service, serious cliff-jumping, probably a bought of depression—I was falling in love. (I think I buried the lead on that one, baby). I had spent over two years alone with no real intentions of changing that, and all of the sudden I, Lizz Dawson, was falling in love. I had no concept of the true magnitude of it at the time. Actually, I didn’t want a thing to do with it—but I was definitely falling in love. And by falling, I mean the harshest connotation of the word. By falling what I mean is it felt all the way like falling—as overwhelming, as daunting, as embarrassing, as uncertain. And what I mean is, I was terrified.

Sometimes, for some reason, we are chosen to experience the greatest gift of a lifetime: the person we chose, choses us all the way back. Sometimes, for some reason, despite all the obstacles that appear to be in the way, despite logistics, despite readiness, despite deep and heavy baggage, despite ourselves—we are chosen and they are chosen all at once. And sometimes, for some reason, both people submit, throw their hands up, allow themselves to be pulled into the current, into the river, the storm, the mud, the fire… There are endless songs and novels and movies, plays, essays and documentaries, dances, church services, poems produced in an attempt to make sense of it all. I won’t pretend to have a metaphor that you can’t find elsewhere. Anyway, none of explains it at all.

 What I will say is, in our version of falling, the landing was the softest, coziest place I’d ever found myself. (I’ve found myself a lot of places.) What I will say is, sometimes, for some reason, what feels like the impossible becomes possible and all the sudden you are there—in their home, emptying the dishwasher while their son and his friend jump over the couch in matching Mario and Luigi hats, and warm, plump tears are rolling down your face. All of the sudden, you are doing headstands with their daughter, you are sitting at dinner for their sister’s birthday reading natal charts off your dumb cellphone, you are bringing so many plants into their bedroom that you can only hope they’re still cool with it. All of the sudden, you are laughing at 7 AM, you are crying in their arms, you are held in all of your mess, all of your grief, all of your uncertainty. You are seen—more deeply than you’ve ever allowed yourself to be seen. You are cracked open. You are home.

 All of a sudden, you are here, and it doesn’t make any logical, reasonable, rational sense. You are here, and it’s unlike any here you’ve ever been—certainly unlike any you would have chosen for yourself.

All of a sudden, you are here, and it’s the easiest choice you’ve ever made.

And choices are not my thing, friends. Not my thing. Falling in love? Wasn’t really my thing either.

Still here? Stay tuned for part 2 next week.