Cake or Death

The process of really living

Death is a part of life. And such a challenging part at that. It’s not just the physical act of someone dying either. But the death of relationships, the death of a way of being, the death of a part of ourselves, the death of the world around us.

It’s something that we will experience countless times in life. And still every time it happens it feels like the Earth gets taken out from beneath us. We’re free falling cartoon styles. Arms flailing as an anvil also tracks it’s course directly above you.

Plummeting. Falling. With much speed.

You know that when you hit the ground, the anvil is likely to land on you too. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You’ll be flattened like Wiley Coyote. And whether you will be magically resurrected again is between a deeper part of you, the Earth, the Ancestors, your community and the Universe.

Often you don’t want that thing to die. You really don’t. And you fight with all of your might to water and feed that dying garden. Crying oceans as you watch the tendrils of what you’d so lovingly planted shrivel, like the feet of the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz.

Sometimes you do want these things to pass away too. Parts of your shadowed self that still need healing. Places you mistreated others and had not lived up to the standards you wanted to walk by. You will them to go, to show themselves once and for all. To be un-stitched from the pattern of your life’s quilt, never to be heard of again.

But this often isn’t how death works. These seeming strangers from yesteryear, these uninvited guests of the past. Bearing no dish for the potluck. Muddy shoes on in the house. They have something to teach us. They have medicine to offer. And it’s often bitter in nature.

You are human. This means mistakes will be made. You are of tender mind and meatsuit, you will falter. And if you are a good person, those things will consume you for awhile. The mistakes that you’ve made. And maybe they are meant to. Maybe peeling back the metaphorical layers of your onion is more painful than that analogy.

More energetic flesh and bone. Fire, wind and lightening. To be intimately honest with yourself. And with others. Even when it feels like you might die yourself.

And the tears will fall.

And create rivers where the ground was arid. And the trees that were meant to survive, will. And what is meant to die will also.

I often doubt my writing and my creativity in general. It doesn’t feel good enough to be of any note. Maybe it’s imposter syndrome. Maybe it’s healthy humility.

But I do know that my creative expression keeps me alive.

Especially in these times. It gives me so much solace when everything is crumbling around me. Somehow I make sense of the inconceivable.

Some how I can grasp the invisible and integrate the ghastly. So much of it has been bone searingly difficult. I have shut down and opened up many times within this process of life. Doubting my ability to continue infinitely.

And somehow I have come out the other side, with a lot of improvement and still works in progress. The work never ends. To believe it does is one of the worst lies you can tell yourself.

And if you ever receive the gift of someone telling you how your behaviour has affected them. Even if it feels all kinds of wrong in the moment to receive it. I recommend sitting with it and learning from it. As challenging as it is. Because this is how we die in a healthy way.

When someone has the bravery to express how your behaviour has affected them. Sit with it ever so gently. It wasn’t easy for that person to tell you their truth.

Ask your heart if you might have something to learn from this feedback. If there is something that needs to die within you, to be reborn in a new way. It is a gift to know of it. Of our blind spots.

Yes it sucks, yes it’s easier to sweep it under the rug. But the reality is the ghosts of that behaviour, of those reflections, will haunt you until you face them. And those ghosts need to return to the light. Which happens when you shine that light of awareness on all of the darkness within you.

Death is incredibly hard. It’s one of the most transformative forces in the world. But it’s one worthy of the life it brings after the passing’s slumber. For during and after all of the pain and grief. New sprouts grow in the compost you’ve fashioned from everything that’s no longer serving you, everything that’s laid waste at your brave and trembling feet. Cakes are baked, hugs are had and you remember how to dance with those feelings that you thought may claim your last breath.

You can have cake and death. It isn’t a choice between the two. And whilst in the throws of one of them, the other side takes a rest. The yin and the yang of life, with all of its suffering and growing pains. With all of its death and difficulty.

Well there is still cake. And the death well, that will help you to appreciate the cake and everything else that’s good in this world, so much more. Good on you, you brave soul. This human life is not for the weak of heart.

Keep dying, keep being reborn. Keep growing and claiming your shadows. You aren’t perfect and neither am I. But the world is better off with you, in all of your human, mistake making glory. Please know that. But you will have to die many times whilst you are here.

It will get easier, you will find joy again. And it will be so much better because you sat in the darkness and listened. When everything was telling you to run away…