From My Journal:
After such a hard day yesterday, I did some research on mindfulness (as promised) and found mindful.org and fired that up. Before I dug in I decided to go for an albeit painful walk (sprained my knee pretty bad recently) but afterwards felt a little better and decided to try a 20 min compassion meditation.
Holy. Shit. I had an experience.
It may not have been the one I was supposed to have but I’ll take it!
I have dabbled with meditation off and on through the years but never stuck with it (not with this heavy context either). Desperate times though.
Your mind wanders a lot when you first try it and I knew that would be the case. I tried to just let it – as the lady on the meditation track implored. And of course I thought about a lot of things . I thought about a very recent memory.
The twins were over and I was joking w/ the kids about me breaking out the DDR metal pads and playing till we got super ripped quads. I was pretending to walk around like my legs weighed a metric ton and they started imitating me and riffing on getting jacked so we were all pretending to thud around the living room (super buff people weigh a lot lol) – it was really cute and I hadn’t seen them smile and mess around like that in a while. <3
After I let that memory recede, I think I started to fall kind of sleep (haha) while I sat there… but as I let my mind relax, I started picturing basement Jess (see Jesi’s Workshop post) and in the spirit of compassion I tried something… First, I gently brushed her hair behind her ear… and I talked to her.
I told her, I loved her and it was gonna be okay. I even offered, though it felt uncomfortable, to embrace her, hug her, and she timidly fell into my arms and sobbed quietly, but gently held on with her head down – and we sat for a few min in the basement of my mind, on the cold floor just being there together. I noticed her body, and even thought – I want to get her some shoes or some warmer clothes, damn. Lol
But in my mind, in this weird dream state, I just held her and I told her next time she hung out in the “graveyard” I would go w/ her and hold her hand.
I sorta woke up out of whatever trance this was as the woman in the meditation track reminded me to focus on my breathe – woops. After a few min the end of the 20 min the track came to a close and the lady said to focus on what I was feeling in the moment. And as ridiculous as it sounds – for the briefest 10 seconds, all I felt was pure gratitude. I held back tears.
… I think it was from basement Jess – I think she sent that to me.
Am I crazy for imagining all that?? Hahaha