TAKE WHAT YOU NEED
A part of allowing a self-love affair, of granting self-permission to be nobody, has been telling the truth and accepting the consequences. I used to think that if I took the space I needed in the world that I’d be alone. I’d have nobody.
I guess that when you go through a tremendous loss and grief, you start to reconsider a lot of things. For me, it has been reconsidering the term, nobody.
In the considering of what it means to be nobody, its meaning has morphed. I think it makes sense to have things morph when you face the frailty of humanity that undoubtedly confirms that one day, YOU WILL DIE, so you need to learn to like yourself. Hell, that when you learn to love yourself, you realize that being alone is not so bad, and in fact, see Self as good company, and not just nobody but someone with whom you like to just Be.
At the time this was written, I had 2-weeks left at home following 4-consecutive-months at home with my family, tying-up all sorts of things for my Dad, and in the evitable end to our visit, it brought up all sorts of feelings about Being. Being with abandonment. Being selfish. And being in isolation. In the wake of losing my Father, I knew his loss would make me feel alone. While it does, and definitely has, the feeling of leaving my Mom and brothers is a new sense of loneliness unlike any I’ve ever experienced.
I think when you have both living parents you are spoiled or based on perspective, unimaginably blessed, and it took me losing one to realize it. It took me seeing how the loss of companionship not only is a singular loss of security, but it is in a group sense, too. It has shown me that having both of my parents alive was not only good for me as their child because I got to feel secure in their love and the security it afforded my being. But, also because I got to feel secure due to their love for each other.
I got to feel like Mom was being looked after by Dad and Dad by Mom. I got to feel safe that if something were to happen they’d be there for each other and comforted by that. I got to feel free being far away and their togetherness was what afforded me that.
The loss of my Dad has shown me a great many things about loss, grief, growth, and security. Many things about how we convince ourselves about safety and even how we define it. It has not only shown me how my Dad’s life brought me an inexplainable level of comfort, but also how I relied on him, and my family for it. How I place the stability and foundation of my being on them and make them more or less responsible for whether or not I receive it, but also when I have access to it.
Looking at the calendar days, ticking away to my departure, I am faced with the truth of how I have shown up for myself, my family, my Dad, and how people have shown up for me, and what I make all of it mean. At the approaching end of my visit here, I’m now forced to face not only what life and reality are like without Dad, but without him being here to give me the comfort of such, how he contributed largely to the stability in myself, and also that which I find in the World.
It is showing me that far before now I have relied on consistency in relationships to make me feel safe. I have required Shannon to behave in certain ways in order to have not only it, but believe I had access to love and friendship. I have forced myself to show up even when I didn’t have it and to rely on others to give what I didn’t have to give to myself. Namely, comfort, love, safety, security, and belonging.
Today, while meditating I contemplated ‘nobodiness’ and what it means to me. What it revealed to me is that I need to allow myself, now. I need to look at the energy, space, and time I don’t have to be there for people to exist, and in its existence, allow them to remove, revoke, or refuse love, friendship, and energy to me in kind. Because if me not being able to show up to be with them at all times is a deal breaker in our closeness, then I have to accept that as a part of their nobodiness to allow, give credence to, and regard mine.
After some time reflecting, I came back to the call to say NO THANK YOU and deny the opportunity for closeness. I looked at it in terms of what it means to me and really deconstructed it. I don’t have the energy. I want to be with Mom. I want to be at home. I don’t feel capable of presence. Any time I have to be alone, I need it right now.
All the voices inside that screamed, "you’re pushing people away." "You’re going to wind up alone.” “You’re going to be the old woman without any friends, and those without friends says something bad." I listened to everything the voices had to say and then I dropped back into mindfulness, into the heart space that showed me that ‘to be’ doesn’t require action, but essence. And, in that knowing, in the space of realizing that I was outsourcing my belonging, comfort, safety, and security to them by relying on being who they needed me to be vs who I AM and need from me, I crafted a heartfelt message to those who had requested to see me before I returned to Charlotte, and declined.
Every day I think of Dad multiple times per day. Every day I am in grief. And, every day that I am in grief, I guess you could say I look into my heart and challenge myself to hear what wisdom it has to offer. What wisdom Dad is encouraging me to receive. Today's sounds like, “Babe, Take What You Need.”
Take What You Need, babe, around admitting that parting is such sweet sorrow. That in departure, in separateness, we can feel sad and fear the unknowns about just how deep that sadness may run while we are in the depths of it, let alone what exists beyond that, what is unknown. That, in being alone, taking what we need from it allows us to see that there is not only what we know but there is also what we do not. And, we desperately need to understand that we can’t know what we don’t know, so the best we can do is be there for ourselves, allow others to be there for us when it feels good, and trust that we’ll know what we need from moment to moment, while we’re going through it, known or not.
Take What You Need, babe, around understanding that in community, we are loved and afforded comfort, but just like with love, the source of that security comes from within. That other is merely the stimulus inciting knowledge to feelings of safety, but never are they the source of it. You are. You always have been. Taking what is needed from awareness allows us to challenge Self to hold space for what is known and true. That stability comes from within and is apparent when we feel it when we are with those whom we love and are loved by, but is also accessible and reliable when alone.
Take What You Need, babe, around noticing bonds rooted in possessiveness are not for you. It’s important to acknowledge incongruent connections. Connections that don’t make you feel like yourself and in fact, can make us feel captive in relationship. It becomes about noticing the deep relationships that fuel you and what about those feel true and natural. For me, it came in noticing that if I can move to Charlotte, and still feel the lasting love of family even in distance, then I can hold relationships of that nature as not only possible for me, but as a sign of what allows me to feel most free to be. Taking what is needed from this can allow visibility into relationships that feel forced or are not fulfilling what you’re after, and do not support feeling loved or capable of offering love in a way that truly values independent relationships, nor communicates to the Universe what you wish to magnetize or intend to attract. FREEDOM, babe. Free to be.
Taking what I need now, needs to support the nature of my new living reality, which is to connect with my Dad at a distance and on a whole new plane. I now, again, go back to life in Charlotte which is connected to my family at a distance. I now see the Universe is presenting me with a new opportunity to see that while living separate is sad because everything has changed in an unfathomable way, I love and miss my family, and the comfort and support I have when I am near them, but I am being invited to embrace the truth of my humanity, which is and has always been, that I find tremendous value in space.
I find value in the space I need to be as close and as far as I need to be in relationships. I find freedom in the space I need to be responsible for what sources and fuels my energies. I find enriching and nutritious the space I find in being genuinely near or distanced when it is meaningful and in connection with those who respect me for who I am in my presence and understand that I do the same with theirs, together or not.
Taking What You Need seems to have a negative connotation around it. At least it has for me for years. Now, I see an opportunity for a perspective shift, one that asserts taking responsibility for how you feel, understanding what you need, and who you can be about it. It says I take responsibility for my feelings. I take responsibility for what they’re communicating. I take responsibility for what my feelings are communicating and how they’re showing me who I am being within how I am relating to this experience.
In this instance, I hear them say that I am sad, because when I leave my family, without them, I don’t already know how I’m going to face grieving the loss of my Dad alone AND when I won’t be able to see them and see how they’re handling it either. It’s showing me that this is another instance of “chord cutting”. It is another moment in my life where I am being presented with an opportunity to grow. And, taking what I need right now, means recognizing that while losing my Dad is a tremendous loss, another additional kind of loss I will be required to face is in the growing pains of evolving into a reality of living without my Dad, living it at a distance, and living it independently of my family.
In the days that lead to wrapping-up my time at home in Pittsburgh, PA, in my Mother and Father's house, I see now how it made sense for me to immerse myself in it. Maybe it doesn’t make sense to other people, but there was something about being there as much as possible that is reminiscent of getting all I can get out of it. Or, in the words of my Dad, ‘ringing the rag out’ of the experience.
I find it healing to be in my Father’s house. I find it comforting to walk the hallways he’s walked, sit in the chairs he’s sat in, and smell the places and spaces he’s smelled. And, just overall, feel the memories of me, him, and all those our family held together in our family-home.
I find being there and within his space cathartic, seeing it all honestly, and as me taking what I needed until I walked out, drove hours away, and went on living in a life where he is not only gone from that house but from me & this plane. No longer a phone call away. No longer a drive down a long highway. But in a realm that I don’t yet comprehend how to understand and be connected to.
I take the time I’ve had at home to the fullest extent of gratitude. It's not lost on me that not all people don’t get to work from anywhere in the world. It’s not lost on me that not all people get to create their own schedules. It's not lost on me that everything up until 2-12-2022 was divinely led and allowed me to be here for myself, my Dad, my Mom, and my Family. I’m eternally grateful for everything that allowed me to be there, including the moments after such a tragedy, that allowed me to soak up all the energy of my Dad and live in it, for a moment in time, in his space.
They say that life isn’t happening to you, that it’s happening for you. I imagine I’ll continue to reflect on the horrendous tragedy of losing my Father, finding moments of eerie synchronicity that allowed everything to fall into place so I could be there as long as I was, taking what I needed for so as long as I did, for quite some time. I also consider that I’ll reflect on it in ways that deliver more understanding and growth than I have ever felt possible because of the gravity of such a loss and who he was to me. But, I hope that I never lose sight of how from the minute I received the most terrible phone call I’ve ever received in my life, which was the demise of the great man and human that embodied my Father's life, I, Shannon, jumped into a full-on presence, full on heart, and the Universe has supported me, all the way, in doing it.
I, Shannon, chose to live from my heart despite any opinions, taking what I needed.
I, Shannon, chose that no matter what anyone thought about it, I was going to Take What I Needed in order to show up from a place that would not only do right -according to me- by my Dad, Mom, and Family, but by who I was going to see when I had to look back on it in reflection.
I, Shannon, hope I never forget to live as my Dad did, so boldly, so full of heart, and with value of the moment, in the spirit of laughter, joy, and ‘ringing the rag out’, to have the audacity and the wild, loving, courage to take what he needed.
I, Shannon, choose to take what I need, be the nobody I am, live as inconsistently as possible, and BE.
I hope we all take what we need in this life. I hope we take it with heart and passionate compassion, with intention, integrity, and will. I hope we take it for the person we are today and the person we know we are in our hearts and intend to be with trust for ourselves that the Universe wants us to be fulfilled. I hope that no matter highs or lows we find the grit to trust that the Universe has our backs when we choose to take what we need and have it too.
I hope we take what we need not only when it feels easy or ‘good’, but when it hurts, when it feels insecure, and when it feels scarily honest. I hope we all learn how responsible it is for us to get our needs met, not just in tragedy, but in all ways, always. I hope we allow ourselves to know how getting our needs met not only makes us a person we love, but a person we love being so that when we recognize its maturity, accountability, and heart in another, we don’t try to dispute, disparage, or destroy it. We celebrate it. We encourage it. We stand up alongside it and say, you take for you, I’ll take for me, and together, by doing that for each of ourselves, we will fully, audaciously, wildly, lovingly, courageously, and responsibly, in the spirit of Dad, Bob Schultz, and all those who lived fully like him, go all the way and take what we need.
With Blessings,
