The Rise of the Pink Zinnia

This pink zinnia rising up from the center of its leaves with a graceful curve towards the sun makes me smile.  Makes me think of fairies and all those magical things that are so easily lost these days.  It reminds me to have hope at all times.  It remedies me that I have one life and it's mostly up to me how I spend those hours, days, minutes that I am blessed to have.  For a long time when things started looking up, I felt immense guilt looking across my family bobbing in the sea of sorrow, lifejackets half inflated.  Family that refuses to dig deep within and instead chooses bullshit.  Family that wants what will never be and refuses that which is offered as a gift.  Family dealing with health problems rooted in their emotional unrest.  But I am changing.  And, this didn't happen by accident, my place of peaceful being.  My ability to stop and delight at this pink zinnia.  Maybe even relate to it as it rises from the earth.  When I was a little girl, my mother emotionally whipped me back and forth and up into the sky.  Without warning.  My dad sat in his study and read his books.  Much of my child memory is inaccessible to me.  I spent so many long hours in hypervigiliance for what might come that all my brain resources were consumed to sustain my very life.  There is no memory, only embodied feelings.   I earned a Ph.D. in psychology I suppose in an attempt to make sense of my early years, my history, my DNA.  I have talked and cried long through painful hours with physical therapists, analysts, social workers, psychologists, yoga therapists, yoga teachers mentors, meditation teacher mentors, massage therapists, a small group of beloved family and friends.  I have had weird physical problems like double vision, unexplained stomach aches lasting for months and heart palpitations.  But, I haven't wallowed.  Somewhere in me I had the balls and guts to believe I could do better.  And now I can delight in this little pink zinnia and feel peace.  And no guilt.