Promises to Scott

i spent sacred time yesterday

with a friend

who knows he is

dying.

we aren't so different,

him and us,

he just has a hyper awareness

that his resting in peace

will be soon.

mine could be too,

who really knows?

he is not pretending anymore,

the masks are off,

the facades gone

and there is a real human

appreciating every drop of life's lemonade

he has left in this story.

god, that kind of honesty and authenticity is so refreshing

but when did i become

such good friends with death

and these angels who are dying?

i suppose it was when i learned

exactly how to sit with suffering.

he shared with me

his funeral party plans,

played me every song on his list,

and i listened like it was the first time

i had ever heard each note,

and like it was the last time

i would ever hear them again

with my friend.

it would be.

he opened his journal

and showed me his final chapter,

every line written by his own hand -

he told me not everyone gets this honor,

having their dying wishes brought to life.

he wants us to celebrate,

because life is a celebration.

he wants us to inspire,

because we are inspirational.

he wants us to dance and sing and share our stories,

to sit peacefully in this silence,

and of course he does,

because that is the essence of healing trauma,

and in my story, he is the entire reason

i became a childhood trauma repair teacher.

he told me if he was going to learn the lessons

i have dedicated my life to learning,

it would only be from me,

that it did not matter if we disagree politically,

i spoke in a way he could understand.

and that is the core

of one of the swords

that i would die on:

spiritual contracts written in the blood of heartbreak.

it is my belief that when we were still star stuff,

before we decided to put on fleshy meat suits

and birth into this earth, i think

we made agreements with one another

about the lessons we would earn

and who we would learn them from.

every single one of us came here to be a teacher.

we all hear the call,

but very few of us will pick up the phone

because the laughter of shame is louder.

we whisper to ourselves:

“who me? no, not yet, i am not ready”

and that's a problem.

what if

somewhere

one of your students

is suffering alone because

they spiritually agreed to be

unable to see and hear all other teachers

until you come through and speak their language

with the lessons you agreed to deliver to them and only then

will they experience the great aha!

and begin to understand why?

now

do not go

getting a savior complex,

if you fall into the drama triangle

then you have lost the entire point and confused

compassion with trying to fix another person’s pain for them.

try being a heart with ears instead.

so anyway, scott said to me,

with no knowledge of this belief,

that he would only learn how to heal

from his childhood trauma if

i would be his teacher.

one of my students looked me in my eyes and told me with their heart

that they were going to suffer

until i got through my own shit long enough

to be the teacher and the change that i was born to be.

it is a promise i am still making good on.