I feel an ache today in my lower belly, an aching, a longing…a pain. I am aware of how much I have denied my own creative power, my passion and my love for life. Adoration, allurement, passion, desire…the creative fire that lives in each of us is ready now to become unleashed. This is the energy that will transform our lives and all of the expressions we give rise to. When did we collectively flee this powerful, life-force, native, creative-erotic energy? When did we decide to disassociate and deny its existence? When did we flee from the root of the root of our Souls and take refuge in the mind of logic, reason and control? We have paid a terrible price for this. I have paid a price for this. Earth and her people are paying a price for this abdication of creative-erotic energy. The denial of this energy…its existence creates and sustains violence. Violence in how we relate to ourselves, others and the planet. It contributes to our disconnection from the natural world…the plants, animals, water, trees, soil…if we are disconnected from our own native nature, our own wildness, our own organic creativity and sexuality…we will also be disconnected from the earth. This is the root of all violence…this distortion and separation from our own beauty, and power, and sexuality, and creativity has taken its toll on our living and our loving.
I have often thought that when we came and “conquered” these lands that have become America…when we robbed her of her Soul and her innate connection to nature, to wildness, to relationship and connectivity…that this is when we as a collective, as a nation, incurred an unimaginable Soul Loss. We dishonored and in many cases slaughtered the stewards of the Soul of this land…the untamed wildness had to be controlled, conquered, hidden.
Our untamed wildness, unbound creativity, and innate sexuality need to be liberated so that they can be in balance and in connection with our wholeness, with our hearts and with the good of the greater whole. Whatever is denied becomes distorted. Whatever is distorted becomes dangerous.
In the masculine this distortion is expressing as addiction, as fascination, as obsession and objectification…pornography, consumption of the feminine as a product to be devoured, and a denial of the masculine heart, sensitivity and vulnerability. This is causing harm to the masculine…this is causing harm to the wholeness of the planet. To reclaim the wildness our men will need to be willing to face this shadow…to go into this darkness and resurrect their hearts, their power, and their sexual wholeness, their full and powerful presence. This is critical to restoring the sacred balance of the feminine and masculine interplay and exchange of essential, life force energy on the planet today.
In the feminine this distortion is expressing as an imbalance in our sexual power…we either overly express our sexuality, using it as a tool to manipulate, to satisfy a need to be loved, to be seen and valued or we deny and mask our feminine sexuality…becoming rigid, hardened and over expressing the masculine which also does much harm to our innate vulnerability, our softness…it masks and covers the radiance that would heal us…and those around us. We must be willing to enter our own darkness, our own fear of being taken advantage of, decimated by the masculine and find the courage to reclaim the voice, the heart and the body of the Sacred Feminine. Her gifts are needed; her radiance, her compassion and her creative potency are what the planet is thirsting for. She is the wellspring of love and adoration that will renew and restore the planet and her famished ones.
I am on the edge of this question, of this issue. Spirit has brought me to this place and to this time and said…”if you want to see love on earth, if you want to awaken the collective sacred heart…you must be willing Anakha to dive into this issue of reclaiming our mystical erotic natures. They must be unified, they must be reconciled, they must find a way to infuse one another with their unique powers and find the exquisite balance that their fusion and their communion create.
This scares me. It is the last thing I feel “qualified” to experience, to express and yet I also know that given my history, my desire, my heart…that I am the one to dive into this question and to help others reclaim themselves as fully alive, fully embodied, divinely human, mystical, erotic beings.
I feel the fear and I hear Sarah McLachlan’s words in her song “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”
All the fear has left me now I’m not frightened anymore. It’s my heart that pounds beneath my flesh. It’s my mouth that pushes out this breath and if I shed a tear I won’t cage it. I won’t fear love and if I feel a rage I won’t deny it. I won’t fear love.
I am taking this journey into the mystical erotic, I am fumbling towards ecstasy. I won’t fear love.
I wanted to let you know that Nichole was transferred to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility (prison) on Thursday. She begins to serve her 55 month sentence in the medium security prison. She will be confined to a cell with one cell mate until her time approaches the 2 year mark and she can be transferred to the minimum security facility. Doing time in medium will be very different for her…it is a much, much harsher environment with more serious offenders and more restrictions. The officers on the unit are also trained to be more punitive and distant. Our support in loving her and continuing to invite her to the transformation and healing that has arrived and is arriving will be important…critical.
She can receive mail (and would love to receive mail). Here is how you address the envelope (needs to be done “by the book.”)
Nichole Dayleen Nicholson SID# 15684969 Coffee Creek Correctional Facility 24499 SW Grahams Ferry Road PO Box 9000 Wilsonville, OR 97070
Please make sure you have your full name and return address on the envelope. No more than 10 pages of print-outs or copies. No glitter on cards…no crayon drawings etc. Nothing that could be suspicious of carrying drugs.
If you are called to support Nichole financially during this time you can also put money on her inmate trust account. They are issued state shoes, pants and shirts. If they want lotion, toothpaste, aspirin, feminine supplies, coffee, books, envelopes, better shoes than the little canvas ones they are issued, radio, or to make phone calls they have to have $$$ on their account. She will be working and most prison jobs pay about $10-15/month. Following is the way to put money on her books.
How to deposit money in an inmate´s account
Funds may be placed on an inmate’s Central Trust account with either a money order or cashier’s check (note, we do not accept checks issued from bank bill pay service.)The Department of Corrections cannot accept cash or personal checks.
1. Make the money order/cashier’s check payable to: “DOC,” with the inmate’s name and SID number. Example:Payable to: DOC for John Doe, SID #1234567. On the money order/cashier’s, check you must write the name and mailing address of purchaser, including city, state, and zip code.
-and-
2. Mail the money order/cashier’s check to: Central Trust Oregon Department of Corrections PO Box 14400 Salem, OR 97309-5077
The money will be put in the inmate’s account upon receipt through the mail.
You can also send books to her through Amazon, the same way as sending mail. She will be starting a blog about her experience — sending me written accounts of her process and progress and I will post them to her site. I will let you know when that is live.
She sends her love and says thank you for your support and for your love…she is beginning again and receiving love.
With gratitude for any support — visible and invisible — you have given and are giving to this young woman!
I was up early yesterday, driving with Gene into downtown Portland to attend Nichole’s sentencing. I waited outside the courthouse in the 30 degree weather, wind whipping harshly around my face. The extreme frigidity was a foreshadowing. I moved along in line with the others, through the metal detector. Stared numbly at the elevator as the floors lit up as it descended. I arrived on the 5th floor walked slowly down the hall, looking for Judge Fuchs’ (fooks) courtroom. The door is locked no one was inside yet. I see Nichole’s name on a list hanging on the door. I turn and see a wooden bench…I sit, I wait, I hold my sacred heart journal. J.R. the DA that I have been talking with walks up and sits down. He knows I am not happy about the plea they are offering her. He pulls out a colored coded, plastic chart and shows me by pointing at this chart, how the 55 months is the “right” calculation of time based on her crimes and criminology. I am in disbelief that this chart holds the key, the answer to what is just, to what is called for in her situation. I know he is doing his job, I know he is trapped in a system that he doesn’t even fully believe in…I can see it in his eyes, I can hear it in his voice. I can see that my silence and deep presence are unnerving to him. He knows I know.
The courtroom opens and I move inside, sit on yet another wooden bench. The fluorescent lights shine in my eyes. I sit in silence as I watch the players take their positions…the DA, the court appointed attorney (who called Nichole a “tweaker“) and the Judge. What kind of game are we playing here? What madness is this? Why can’t we have a conscious dialogue and determine a course of action and accountability that will serve Nichole, public safety and justice. There is an intersection of needs…I know this.
The door opens from behind me and I turn to see Nichole being led in by an officer. She is in prison blues, brown plastic sandals with white socks. She looks pale and exhausted. Her arms are cuffed behind her and her ankles shackled. My heart sinks. I want to go to her and put my arms around her, hold her and remind her of who she really is. The officer leads her to the chair where she will face the judge. I stand up and ask the officer if I can speak to her. I am told I can say “hi.” Nichole isn’t allowed any “visits” while she is in court. I sit back down and Nichole turns her chair to face me. We look into one another’s eyes. Tears well up in my eyes. She says, “hi.” I say “hi.” My heart is screaming. I silence my outrage for her sake or for mine I am not sure…I start telling Gene and David about Jack and his two new playmates Jasmine and Fonzi. Nichole loves Jack. I see her start to smile as I talk about things I know she’d be interested in hearing about. I stop after awhile…it feels so futile…I begin praying…hoping that she has changed her mind and will take the plea. The DA has informed me that if she doesn’t accept the plea, he will proceed with asking for 75 months at trial and with her confession…the case is solid.
The Judge, DA and attorney come back into court and the proceedings begin. Statements are made, questions asked…Nichole answers yes when asked if she is accepting the plea…tears streaming down her face, she picks up the pen in front of her and signs the paperwork. I feel the weight of her decision in my heart, in my gut. It would be different if she hadn’t confessed to all of it. She would be facing at least 1 1/2 years less time if she hadn’t taken responsibility for her actions. But like I said, this young woman is a truth teller…it isn’t in her nature to play the game.
Then it is my turn to speak. The DA stands and addresses the Judge…Ms. Coman, one of the “victims” is here and would like to address the court. I stand and walk up to a chair with a microphone…they want my statement recorded. I pause and drop into the silence…no concern for whether or not people will be uncomfortable. I listen and begin to speak…I talk about “deep accountability” and the need for healing what lies underneath the addiction. That simply adding more time to a sentence does not guarantee public safety or rehabilitation…in fact in many cases incarcerating theses women and placing them in a fear-based environment does more to solidify the masking and numbing behaviors. I say what I need to say and then turn to Nichole. Look her in the eyes and say, “I love you and I forgive you and I have compassion for what has brought you to this moment. And I hold you highly accountable for making a new decision, for using this time to get underneath the addiction and understand and heal what drives these choices. I am sticking with you and we are going to have a contract you and I…it is time to draw a line in the sand…a choice point where you leave that life behind and step fully forward into the life you are meant to live now…into who you really are. Let this be the time. You will be 27 Nichole when you are released and there will be so much life to live. Know that I love you and I am here…for the long haul.” Tears are streaming down her face as she nods at me in understanding and agreement. I have one last request for the court…I ask to be removed as being listed as a vicitim. As a victim Nichole will ahve a no-contact order…teh Judge agrees and says I won’t be listed as victim on these cases.
I turn and walk back to the bench. The Judge looks at me and thanks me for my statement and agrees that what is needed is treatment and healing…and she says there are not enough resources in the community…that the only way to guarantee Nichole attends in-patient treatment is to incarcerate her for enough time to make her eligible for the program. I am baffled…we have the money to incarcerate but not directly rehabilitate?
The officer re-cuffs Nichole and gives her her paperwork which she has to hold behind her back as she walks away. The officer stops and looks at me and says, “Nichole would like you to know that she can’t have visitors again until Saturday.” I nod my head and look at Nichole…sending as much love to her, through her as possible. Silently praying that she receives deep peace from the Holy Comforter. David, Gene and I walk out of the courtroom and I stand as she walks away…down the long corridor…shuffling along with an armed officer walking at her side. My heart hurts, my head is pounding…stomach nauseous. I turn and walk the other way. Surreal. How did I get here? How did we get here?
I was asleep at the wheel. I knew that Nichole needed a safe place to live and when I moved back in November, I didn’t attend to what I knew was so critical for her. I let her go. I let her leave knowing somewhere in my mind that she needed to be in a safe place. I remember the last day I saw her before my move. I dropped her off downtown on my way to the storage unit where I was meeting the movers. I was planning on picking her up later that evening. She never came back…she left all of her belongings at the house for a month before coming to get them. She couldn’t face the idea of leaving what had been the safest and most loving home she had ever experienced. I failed her. I was caught up in my own life…and I failed to act on what I knew needed to happen for her. There is a time to allow someone to figure things out on their own and there is a time to show up and act on their behalf, to take a stand. There are areas in all of our lives where we need that kind of support.
When I arrived home yesterday from court there were two letters from Nichole in the mailbox. One addressed to Lisa and Jimmy, the other addressed to me. I opened mine….here is what the second paragraph said…
“Anakha, thank you so much for my prayer. I am reading it everyday, even the comments. I love the cards also. I knew it was your friend’s company from when we were at Gary’s. (smiley face). Good times. I remember when you were getting ready to move from there and the heartache I had from the unknown outcome of that move. I was so scared to leave there and you. But I felt like I should just ask to stay with you awhile longer or even at Gary’s. So I ran from there and left all my stuff. My weird way of holding a connection. Anyways, I am not sure where that all came from. I didn’t know how to ask. I am really scared of rejection (childhood) and one of the things I don’t know how to handle and deal with.”
Tonight my heart is clear that I played a part in the unfolding of this young women’s life over the last several months. I see the price I am paying and that she is paying for my own numbing and distraction and self-centeredness. I am aware of the consequences of not acting on love’s impulse, of not standing up inside myself and of denying the voice of truth that needs to be heard and heeded. I know there are many ways you might want to convince me that it wasn’t my choice, it was hers, that it isn’t my addiction, it is hers, that this isn’t my life, it is hers…that there is Divine Order…and yes, all those things are true. And there is also truth in saying that too often I (we) look the other way, deny the truth that wants to be spoken, that desperately needs to be spoken, we play nice, not wanting to rock the boat, we stay uninvolved and protect ourselves from the consequences of intimacy….of getting real with what is, of attending to the heart of matter.
I need this awakening…I need to see and own how my inaction causes harm, how withholding my truth in fear ultimately hurts others, and when I lose faith in the unseen solution I fail to act in integrity with the needs of the moment. Yes, tonight I make an amends to Nichole for my self-absorption, for failing to act on what was needed, for abdicating my responsibility, for being in my own fear and confusion about what to do.
I let myself off the hook too easily…attending to my own life and not wanting to fully be aware of our interdependence…what we do, the choices we make and don’t make profoundly impact others and the world around us. We can no longer feel okay and justified in attending to the small circle of our own lives without understanding the impact we have on the greater web of connections, the soul of the whole. If I could return to the month of October…I would be awake to this young woman’s needs, to the critical point she was at and I would not leave her flail about…looking for some one’s couch to sleep on each night, putting herself in situations and with people that would soon lead her into her addiction.
I am hearing Yeshua applaud these truths in agreement that we need to take radical responsibility for our lives and the lives of those around us…to be awake, to see with love’s eyes, to act with integrity, to respond with action. Yes, this is how we actively love one another. Be being willing to stand up within ourselves, to speak truth, to take aligned action based on the integral needs of each moment.
Tonight I vow to remember this teaching Nichole…to make a choice to be awake and aware, to speak up and out, to not let my fears for my own safety and security stop me from saying yes when the opportunity to love others presents itself.
I love you Nichole Dayleen Nicholson. And I will and we will keep on loving you until all the walls around your heart have been dissolved and you begin to come alive in yourself…until you find the way to love yourself…we will hold the dream of your freedom from all that binds and your homecoming to the truth of who you are.
I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.
Ho`oponopono Prayer
P.S. I received a call from Nichole that afternoon after court…we cried together…she said, Anakha I decided that I am going to feel my feelings, I am going to cry if I need to…I am not going to put on the prison posture and act like this is no big deal. This is a really big deal. And Anakha…I am finally beginning to feel how much you all love me, how much I have impacted you…I don’t understand why…I don’t understand why people that contribute so much would want me in their lives. But I don’t have to understand it…I just want my life to be different now. The operater comes on 45 seconds left…15 seconds left…we exchange rapid I love you’s and she is gone.
I am in the space where lover, loving and Beloved meet and dissolve in oneness. I am astounded at the beauty of each heart, of each being that graces my life…all loved, all lovers. I wonder at times, how this can be so, that I can love so many with such a full and expansive heart…without separation, without comparison, without lack or deprivation. This love is endless, and flows unrestricted. I have kept my love close to my chest for many years and now, after months of naked sacred heart alchemy — stripping, burning, revealing (remember the 4 D’s — disrobe, dismantle, disarm, dissolve) I am discovering the immensity and intensity of love that lives within my heart, within my body, within each cell of my being. My intention is taking root, coming into manifest form…the Divine has answered the call of my Soul…the plea to take me into the fires of love, to burn away all that is not love and to leave me holy, wholly free in love. My heart is being expanded and opened by each interaction, each experience. I believe that is always the choice…will I heed the call to love, will I answer the request for love with my open-hearted loving or will I ignore, distract, judge, constrict? Once the heart is set in motion in love…it becomes a choiceless choice. To choose fear is to create our own personal hell. To choose love is to manifest heaven on earth. A Course in Miracles says that everything is either an expression of love or a request for love and we choose whether we extend love or project fear. The only true response is always, all ways Love.
I am choosing to extend love…to participate in this radical and unstoppable flow of love that is our natural state, that is our birthright, that is our personal heaven on earth. I am a naked heart mystic, I am a radiant life lover and I am overflowing with love tonight…my heart feels a weight and a pull and a depth….a turning…my heart is turning, turning like a wheel, turning like the arrows on a compass, turning toward my Beloved. Turning towards the One that has come and taken arrow and struck my heart. I am dissolving tonight in love. I surrendering all that I am to this journey, this journey into love.
Yes, my Beloved has a thousand faces. All beautiful expressions of the One Love that brought us, and is still bringing us into manifest form. I am swimming in the sea, one drop in the Ocean of God, joining with others in the sweet ecstasy of oneness, basking in the exquisite union of our collective homecoming. One cell in the body of God…forming a new mankind through the journey into Love. We emerge two by two, resurrecting one another through the gaze of love, through the ferocity of our commitment to see the Beloved in each face.
Yes, tonight the Beloved has a thousand faces.
Tonight I feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the one that has arrived at the doorway to my heart…the one that has asked, seeked and knocked. The door is opening from the inside. I love you, I love myself, I love myself, I love you. Yes, dissolving into union…where lover, loving and Beloved are one.
My prayer is that we all become slaves to love…that our ego’s tantrums are tamed so that we can participate in this great initiation into embodied, expressed, extended Love. May we all come together now and commune in the ecstatic experience of loving oneness.
I am crazy and wild eyed tonight, paralyzed with love, eyes glossy, breath shallow…I wait for the next breath to move across my heart and send me into even greater depths of your love.
Bless you Sacred Heart of Christ for showing me the way into embodied, ecstatic love. All the darkness, all the despair…all of it worth it to spend just one hour in this place with the Beloved of Beloveds.
I love you, I love myself. Amen.
P.S. For those of you wondering about my experience with Nichole yesterday and the outcome of her sentencing, please go to www.divinemasculine.com and www.fireinthebody.blogspot.com to read Gene and David’s account. I will post mine soon…just need a little more time…
I am awake at 2:44 a.m., again. I am sleeping in Jimmy’s bed with his daughter Angela’s two dogs. She left for LA two days ago and I am watching Jasmine and Fonzi for her. They sleep with her and Nick at home…now they are sleeping with Auntie Anakha…’cause if they don’t they cry all night. They seem totally content and actually graciously both sleep on one side of the bed, leaving me my space….thank God, truly…thank God.
I am awake and thinking of my girl Nichole. Remembering the sound of the prison door slamming behind me…leaving me in a long, narrow corridor with 25 other people making their way to their loved ones sitting behind plexi-glass. I walk down past the women sitting in stalls and at the very end I peer in and there is Nichole. She looks up at me and starts to shake, head in hands, face red and tears streaming. Shame, disappointment, regret, love, gratitude, fear, doubt rush across her face. Dark bags of addiction and sleeplessness and depression hang below her eyes. She is thin, gaunt…the aftermath of meth. She is on the descent from the drug’s nasty high, the numb mind, the distorted brain, the crossed wires. She is coming back to reality and realizing the cost of one hit. The downward spiral of addiction and the chaos that she created in 24 short hours.
Yes, the darkness of addiction has cost her her freedom. The DA says 55 months is the best he can do for her. Sit in prison for 3 years and then we’ll see if we can get you into treatment for the last year of your stay.
I pick up the phone, she picks up the phone. We look at each other across the way, through this glass wall that now separates us.
“Hello Sweetheart.”
“Anakha, I am so sorry, I love you so much and I didn’t mean for this to happen Anakha, I mean it…I don’t know how all this happened…I mean, I do…but how did this happen?”
“Slow down Sweetheart, breath with me. I love you and it is going to be okay.”
“Anakha, you are more of a mother to me than my own mother. You are a mother to me. I don’t know why I couldn’t receive your love, I don’t know why I didn’t talk to you. I thought if I could just get stable again at the house, that I could start again with my recovery. I was just so depressed…I hated Christmas…I missed Isaiah…all I want is a picture of my son. I don’t even know how his hair is cut Anakha.”
“Honey, I love you and I am not leaving you.”
This was the gist of the dialogue from my first visit with Nichole several weeks ago at the Multnomah County jail. Since then she has been working with acceptance, forgiveness and looking at all of the decisions and choices she made that put her right back at the center of her addiction to meth. Over the last few days she has been talking with Gene…working through the plea bargain that is being offered…55 months. I am so grateful for Gene and for his fathering energy that he is gifting Nichole with. She has never had a father, she has never had a positive male role model in her life…until now. Gene said to me yesterday, “Well, I have never had a daughter!”
Nichole asked Gene if there was some way she could write every week about her process and her learning and have it sent out over email. He encouraged her to start a blog…to think of a name and we will set it up for her, receive her writings via mail and post them as they come in. She seemed excited to be able to share her journey, just like I am…her journey out of her own prison. You see, we all have our prisons, we are all, if we are honest, still breaking free.
I will be speaking with her attorney, the DA and the judge today to better understand her options. The DA told me that this is the best deal she is going to get…if she goes to trial he will be asking for at least 66 months. I believe her next court date is Wednesday. I will be there to make my statement to the court, to Nichole, to the system.
And this is what I will say….these women that are addicted to meth do not need more time sitting in prison. These women do not need to enter into an environment where fear and rules and punishment reign…where the cold, unyielding masculine holds court. These women need to be held accountable…yes…accountable to their deep healing process…to get underneath the addiction into the core of the wound that drives them to numb, to check out, to disassociate in such an exaggerated way. The deeper the pain, the stronger the addiction. Do not put this woman in prison for 5 years for stealing two cars…require her to spend 2 years in deep treatment and healing. Require her to take her recovery seriously. This will do more for her recovery, for lowering recidivism, for ensuring “public safety” than doing 5 years of time. Simply doing time does nothing. The feminine does not respond to this type of “punishment.” It is one of those illusions of control we have instituted in society…we can’t control these women, we can’t control their addictions…we can offer a radical compassion that holds them accountable and simultaneously sees that what they most need is a way to love the unlovable, heal the shame, learn to take in deep nourishment.
Nichole was a meth baby. She is 23 in age…12 in her development. She took her first trip at age 3…her mother had a lab in their apartment. Her grandmother came and got her just moments before the police raided the house. She spent the next week in withdrawals, her fragile system fried. She raised herself as she was trying to raise her younger brother and sister. Her mom a lifetime addict…pot, alcohol, pills, meth, cocaine, men…you name it.
I remember Nichole telling me one day that at age 19 something snapped inside her. She finally entered into the question, “what is so great about drugs that my Mom would choose them over me, over us?” That day she took meth for the first time, just 4 years ago. That led to losing her son, her freedom…18 months incarcerated.
“I would give anything Anakha, to wake up in the morning again to you doing yoga in the living room and Jack tossing his ball at me as I made my way downstairs to the bathroom.
I would give anything to not have resisted all the love…yours, Gene’s, Aminga’s, Caroline’s, Lisa’s, Gary’s, Jimmy’s, Crystal’s. I would giving anything to go back and have chosen to go home with you at Christmas. I really hated myself at Christmas Anakha.”
I have told Nichole that I am not giving up on her. That I am in it for the long haul. But, we will have a contract…I told her that I am only willing to “support” her time if she is willing to do anything and everything she can to heal herself, engage her recovery and prepare for a new life. No sleeping her way through (literally and figuratively), no writing male felons…no doing time pen pals. She is in the process of writing her part of our contract.
“Tell everyone I love them and I am sorry for letting them down, for disappointing them, for not being able to receive their love. Tell them if they have assignments for me, I will do them. I will do whatever you say Anakha, ’cause I know you know what I need to do.”
For now Nichole I want you to feel, feel all that you are feeling. I want you to feel the love and the support of the community that has adopted you, that have taken you as their own…allow this love to penetrate the walls, the layers and reach your core to support you, sustain you and encourage you as you face this next part of your journey…back behind the walls, the barbed wire…back to prison where you and I first met.
We nicknamed you Spunky. You were our youngest participant in our transformation and transition program. You were the truth teller in the group…you held us all accountable for our actions, for deepening into truth. You held wisdom beyond your years. And when the time came, the class asked you to represent their journeys at graduation as a speaker. I will never forget you in your little black dress, nylons and heels…trying to walk like a lady after years of only wearing sneakers. You did a beautiful job. You are a beautiful person.
I have to believe that the Divine’s hands are in this…I know the Divine’s hands are in this. I am not sure whose life she saved…ours, hers…through this situation. I have seen Christ’s face in this…knowing that she is my teacher…showing me the way of authentic loving…and radical compassion…not the sickeningly syrupy love…but the “I am a radical stand for who you really are and hold you accountable for living nothing less than your very best, sort of love.”
I have shared with Nichole my grief and loss of not being able to see her, to talk with her, to share freedom with her. We are like mother and daughter she and I. I am not sure why or how the Divine has arranged this soul contract for us. But in a very deep way, we need one another. We are inextricably tied at the soul level…I have said I will show up to love and nurture you as your mother. She has said, I will show up to require you to love beyond reason, beyond logic, beyond other people’s ideas of when enough is enough. I will require you to be relentless in love…to be detached in love…to learn that love is the only medicine that reaches the sacred wound.
I love her. I ask that you love her. She will most likely be transferred to Coffee Creek this week after sentencing. At that point in time I will send you her mailing information, so you can write to her if you feel inclined to engage in this ministry of love.
Until then, I pray for the Divine’s intercession into the hearts and minds of the DA and the judge. To make sure that this sentence is the one that brings her highest good and deepest healing into consideration…into the heart of the matter. I pray that I will heed the call if issued to take a stand for her and for all women living in the aftermath, caught in the jaws of meth addiction.
“I want to learn to do yoga this time Anakha. I want to be able to do yoga with you and Crystal and to meditate and run. I always was so jealous…I thought you felt more connected to her because she knew how to do the things you love. I was scared to try, scared I couldn’t do it. I am going to try now. I want to do those things too.”
She is so precious this one. And yes, for those of you thinking I may have a “chocolate heart” (that is the term correctional officers have for people in the system whose heart’s can be melted and manipulated)…I fully realize that this sweetheart on meth is dangerous to herself and to others, that she created an unbelievable amount of chaos in my life. I do not minimize the impact of her addiction and the choices that she made from it. I just happen to relate to her…how much hurt and chaos I created in my life and in the lives of others before I began my healing journey, when I was still in the darkness of my addiction…when I was still running from the pain of the past.
We are the same, we are one. The journey looks different on the outside…it is the same on the inside.
Thank you for letting me have an outlet for at least one part of the story tonight. This began unfolding for me on the 26th of December on my way back from Bend…driving in the snow, playing name that disco tune with my friends in the car…the phone rings…it is Jimmy calling from a plane on his way to Chicago…whispering (he was using his cell phone).
“Anakha, this is Jimmy. Nichole stole the cars from the driveway. She wrecked mine and is on the run. She on drugs. I just wanted you to know what you were coming home to. Gotta go, call you when I land.”
Fear ran through my body as I gripped the steering wheel…trying to find my breath, mind reeling, heart pounding. Senseless.
Now Nichole begins this next journey. A journey that will take her to the only female prison we have in Oregon…just south of Portland in Wilsonville. She will be held in a medium security prison. She will have a cell and a cell mate. She will do her time. We are encouraging her to use this as an opportunity to know herself, to listen for her authentic self and to follow her soul into wholeness.
“I can do prison Anakha, that is no problem, that is easy for me. I need to learn how to do life.”
Amen, Nichole. Let it be so. I love you and am sending you love…asking the Divine to deliver a special dose of encouragement and all encompassing love to you in this early hour while you sleep. I ask that you awake this morning having a palpable sense of how much we love you, how much God and her sweet universe love you, want you and adore you.
