Part 3 of My Awakening from

not choosing to live

The “Stuck” Lotus, image generated from Chat GPT

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Instructions for Having a Soul

Take it out in the rain sometimes.
It has vast, invisible wings that gather dirt 
and need rinsing.
When it tries to kill you
that is because it has forgotten 
to let it look into someone’s eyes
for longer than a minute.
It needs that the way a bee needs nectar
in the early morning dew.
Every so often, take it on a journey.
Let it read long, hard books
and let it stare into the depths of the sea.
Yes, you can give it chips and whiskey
but from time to time let it kneel
in a place that is holy
like the simple cathedral of the willows.
All it wants is to live, to keep becoming.
Nourish it, and it puts down roots, it opens.
But starve it, and the mind, the flesh is empty;
the world breaks down; symphonies go unwritten;
the rockets fall; the children die
in flames.
Listen. It is not too late
to wake it. Say the names
of the wild, the forgotten things:
bluebird, red wolf, robin; violet, child, clover.
You cannot save the world but you can open
the window for the trapped wren in the cellar.
Read a book to a blind man, to your father.
Tell a child you do believe her anger.
Make your life the first life you save.

Joseph Fasano

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I didn’t know my soul could long for more than just heaven. I didn’t know my soul craved the scent of pine and fir, the spray of salt, the prayer of a heron standing in a river. Until too recently, I thought my soul was only for the afterlife. What I have since come to understand is that our soul is here for something so much more than being chased away from the gates of hell.

It is May 2015 when I realized my soul’s fire is slowly suffocating, when it has no more than embers that are about to be snuffed out by the next giant gust of wind. Prior to this, the only detail I believed about my soul is that it needed saving, or I’d perish for eternity. From the time I was in my mother’s womb, I’d live under the threat of “Do this or else,” doctrine and fear, and it became my greatest threat and motivator. If I wanted to sing with the angels, if I desired heaven over its counterpart, if I wanted to see anyone after I died - anyone “worth” seeing - I needed saving. To be saved meant I’d give up the world. I’d wear my hair long. I’d throw out my blush and lipstick. I’d send all those tubes packing so I could look the part, look holy enough for the gates of heaven. This seemed to be all that mattered.

I now find it interesting how each denomination, and/or religion, has its own instructions for having a soul, and what that soul must do in order to be worthy of the kingdom. But what of this life that we are living here and now? And what of our souls, which each one of us has, inhabiting our bodies and casting a glow behind the colour of our eyes. Or what of the soul that we encounter for the “first” time - although it doesn’t feel like the first time - because that “kindred spirit,” who resonates and welcomes us into their inner circle, and instinctively, you both know that you are bound and destined to be mates for life. Also known as a “soul friend.”

One of my most memorable moments of listening to my soul’s deepest cry, happened while I was visiting St. John’s, Newfoundland, for my cousin Andrew’s wedding in that serendipitous month of May.

My father’s best friend Gerry reached out to him when he knew we travelling to St. John’s, and they made a plan that included me. Gerry, who has since passed away in January of 2024, was and still is one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. A man who’d been an anchor to me during those dismal days of my youth, when hell and brimstone were the main theme of every Sunday night church service. Gerry was different. He didn’t really fit into that scene and eventually he drifted away from it. On days when our families would dine together, I’d play for everyone in their living room. He would clap and praise me, after I’d sing a variety of songs and hymns. He regularly drew pictures of me with a microphone, on napkins and sticky notes, and that was long before I was any good. He spoke words of life into my soul. He still does.

Gerry invited Dad and me to join him at his monthly breakfast, affiliated with the Optimist club on Topsail Road in St. John’s. I was elated to see our old friend, who has always felt like family. My sister and I called him Uncle Gerry until we were young adults, and even as I’ve grown into middle age I still think of him as Uncle.

On Saturday morning of the May long weekend when Dad and I arrive at the dimly lit pub, Gerry’s smile is waiting. After him and Dad shake hands, Gerry and I hug tightly. He has thinned and aged but his energy is warm and cheerful.

“It’s so good to see you Jaclyn,” he says through his bright toothy smile, as he leans back, his shining eyes appreciating adult me. “You’ve grown up!”

It has been years since we’ve laid eyes on each other, after both of us relocated from Corner brook, having not crossed paths since he had moved to the east side of Newfoundland, which is a full day’s drive from my hometown. My dad spoke to him regularly, each of them taking turns calling the other. From time to time, Dad would update me on his deteriorating health, since having a brain aneurysm in his fifty’s and then complications afterward. On this day, Gerry appears to be the same vital, deeply connected presence I remember as a child. I love it when some things don’t change. He references his past life in Corner Brook as his “Gerry 1.0” and the one he lives currently as “2.0.” We laugh together and I get it, having known about the dissolution of his marriage but still seeing that he still makes the best of everything.

In true Gerry-style, he has already paid for our breakfast and he guides us toward the table he saved just for us. We sit and wait to be served our plates of greasy home fries, bacon and eggs. After all the welcomes and introductions are finished, a woman with mousy brown and curly eighties hair takes the stage. Her name is Rosalind Pinsent, and she has a gentle smile, bright eyes and a fair complexion behind wire-rimmed glasses. Heavy set, she wears flowery, flowing clothes. Standing behind a podium, she pauses before speaking. From the moment she begins, the entire room is hushed and all eyes are focussed on her.

Rosalind shares her roots about being born on a tiny island off the east coast of Newfoundland. Her story is relatable, even though she was born long before me, but the details remind me of me, in how I always light up like a Christmas tree when speaking of my parents, my original home and my connection and ties to the land of ice and snow.

And then her energy shifts, her body language changes and her eyes brighten. Almost as if she becomes angelic. Suddenly, we all sit up straighter, listening as if we’re afraid to miss a single word.

She begins talking about the fire in our belly. That fire, which needs tending and kindling and strengthening, especially after life throws its heavy hand at us. It’s as if her words are meant for me; she is talking about my fire and its being reduced to embers. Knowing that nearly every day feels hard to manage, tough to get out of bed, and hard to imagine anything different than the day in and out monotony of just surviving.

She describes the dimming of my flame and my emotions are too full to contain the tears have felt stuck. Now my face is awash with them. Gerry and my father seem not to notice, and then I cannot stop my pouring eyes; my sobs breaking from the depth of which her words land, right down in my belly. I feel powerless to stop and I am ashamed of this unexpected display of vulnerability, in front of my father, who’d I only ever remembered crying once. Or Gerry, who hasn’t ever seen this broken side of my life, in full plain view. I hope no one is noticing, and if they are, it isn’t obvious. Sometimes it is impossible to stop a certain kind of crying. And that is exactly the kind of crying that wants to heal you.

My fire has been dampened. I know this. Losing our son was the tornado that nearly blew out my flame. I tried to keep it going by working harder. But my fire weakened because I hadn’t thought I needed to add the kindling, or wood. I had not rested that faltering fire. I had not been tending to it, in a careful, sustaining or nourishing manner. Instead, I’d been tossing on gasoline, watching it rise and catch and explode into flames. And then, it would just as quickly die out, and I’d feel that flame quiet, dying down, when I was alone, which wasn’t often. I would sense its weakness as I climbed the stairs, the weight in my body overwhelmed by simple gravity and grief.

I ingest Rosalind’s words like they are a gentle wind blowing on my embers. They are oxygen for my starving fire. I inhale her message, this breath for my soul, as if I have been waiting my entire life.

I realize that if we’re alive, the spark is still there. And that spark is our soul. I hear her describe it as passion, or in my case, my lack of it. I hear her speak to me and say

“Jaclyn, build your fire.”

I know that this dim fire needs tending. I know my flame is faltering. I know that the past two years of grief has doused my fiery flames. The grief of losing a child is like that. It will take and take and take, and when you think it’s done taking, it will come back and take some more. I knew that Wes and I have been motioning through our lives, working ourselves silly and tired, to avoid the pain of our empty arms, the ones that had only held that lifeless body of our precious boy child, for a few hours before they took him away, to be autopsied, to discover where and what had gone wrong.

I know that I need my fire to rise again. I know I need to rise from these ashes and embers.

This is why my heart, which had been broken and closed off and locked up inside its stony cell, was now being revived by her words, her passion, her own roaring and warming fire.

My own fire is catching some of her flames. This awareness begins to awaken me.

Slowly over the next few months, my drawing toward meditation would deepen and I would sit in a red velour chair with bronze beads, in the cold, dim basement of our home, with my business booming overhead, and I would hear a small voice whisper.

“It’s time for you to want to live.”

I realize in that moment that although I had no desire to die, I’d been stuck somewhere in “no man’s” land, a place where death can easily snatch a life. I realize that my soul needs saving, from the private hell of grief, of turmoil, of hustle, of nothingness, and numbness.

That shell, that I’d built around myself, my soul and my broken heart needed to crack. It needed to break open, so that I could fully come alive. The shell I’d used to keep me safe was actually killing me slowly.

And slowly that fire in my belly begins to burn brighter, higher and up through, melting the shell so that I could choose to live.

So that I could look into someone’s eyes for longer than a minute.

So that I could be vulnerable.

So that I could find out that I was here for more than work and worth-proving and ego-driven accomplishment.

So that I would fully inhabit the space, my body, this beautiful life I have been given.

So that I could live with, and from my “wild and precious soul.” (Mary Oliver)

So that I could keep becoming, keep putting down roots, keep nourishing myself, and watch myself open, a lotus coming out of the mud.

Lotus emerging from mud to water

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I always enjoy and thank you for your personal emails and comments. Some of you have shared your own stories and struggles with illness and life, and I appreciate them so much. This week, please tell me about your own awakening. If you don’t want to share, write about it in your journal or your Notes app. It all matters.

Peace and love,

Jaclyn xo

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