Memoir Handbook #9 Occupying the Gap
Several years ago, a mother in our neighborhood died suddenly, while on vacation.
Her last text to my husband was “off to restore!” which just made us wince in pain. She had children, and one was an infant. It wrecked and silenced and humbled everybody, even the prickly ones on my block who never managed to subtract suspicion from my arrival on the scene.
I moved into the home my husband had once shared with his ex-wife, so some neighbors treated me like the secretary he ran off with, which I was not. But after this tragedy, even the most suspicious and prickly ones hugged me. For a moment, we all came together to grieve the innocent children who lost their Mom.
At the time I was bloated from fertility treatments, constantly sobbing, wanting a child so badly that my body ached, and not getting pregnant. I wrote the song Out of Time during these years. We started trying in the summer of 2013, and this was two or three years later.
I had already been through years of careening out of control and slamming my foot on the gas of controlling outcomes. By the time our neighbor died, I was starting to surrender.
I consciously volunteered to walk the breastfeeding infant who had lost his mother. We went to the park full of trees near my home. It was a balmy California fall day around Halloween. I sat on a bench and took him out of the stroller to just hold him. To pray and ask God why on earth would you put us here in this moment, me aching for a child to breastfeed, and him in need of his mother’s milk?
That balmy day, I held the baby and rocked him, quietly crying. Suddenly, a circular canope of lush leaves swirled and bowed to us, making themselves known through mysterious sound and cool air. It was loud enough that we both looked up in an instant, fully present. I remember his wide eyes, looking up with such intent. I wondered if his mother was there. I called him by name and asked aloud, “how did we get here, you and me?” I sat mystified by this impossible predicament, fully feeling pain, but not swallowed by it. I was present and stoic as this baby, who most certainly had it worse than I, found contentment.
With that, he peed. He peed, and peed, and peed. Soaked through my pants, both legs just drenched. I laughed through tears, happy for him. He felt safe in that moment, and I was glad. Because the body doesn’t lie, I trusted this might’ve been healing for him. He hadn’t been breastfed by his mother for weeks. No consciousness is as sophisticated and pure as an infant’s, adjusting to the constant fulfillment of needs without words or independent mobility. He had been through a heroic attunement and was surrendering for a moment, just like me.
It was a blessing I’ll not ever forget. We were Occupying the Gap.
It pointed me to the cruelty of nature. But it wasn’t the kind of cruelty that promotes victimhood. It was the majestic, expansive paradoxical gap, revealing the cruelty of nature that every ageless woman embraces and accepts, thereby rendering herself younger looking than even the most nipped and tucked. It changed me, in an instant.
I left that excursion with the infant grateful that as a stepmom, I could love two kids as my own and also count on and savor uninterrupted creativity while they were at their loving, reliable mother’s house - the kind of time birthmothers do not get. I accepted my age, my health, and thought about sleep. This tiny moment was a seed that eventually bloomed into a new path and a new dream for myself. It wasn’t immediate, but I gradually let go of attempting to conceive with clinical help after this event. It catapulted me into a new season.
Occupying the Gap requires faith. It means not needing the answers to be content. Surrendering certainty was a lost art before 2020, but now it’s a relic. Disgusting, immoral people and evil sociopaths have groomed and convinced innocents that as long as you have billion-dollar, no liability corporations and regulations to match them, certainty is achievable. ‘Tune into this channel, bow to this fact checker, resist all conclusions of your own, and certainty is yours now, mere mortals on earth!’
The gap is grey. It’s the in-between.
It requires suspicion where it matters, like with the health and longevity of your children. It means doing research and falling asleep at night without all the answers. It’s not the sermon, it’s the way you treat the waitress after church. It means failure, errors, and falling. It requires willingness that doesn’t contain even a shred of enthusiasm. It requires emotional maturity, which I define as having the stamina to hold opposing emotions at once.
Because we have a corporate structure devouring society by vying for the role of state clergy, and placing tag lines on big-league headhunter websites like “crying at work is professional“ it is crucial we reconnect with emotional maturity. Crying at work is not professional. It’s emotionally immature and breeds insecurity in the self and the work community.
Occupying the Gap requires focusing on the self. It involves ethical, civil, stoic, measured rebellion. It leaves judgement to God.
We need the gap. Membership in the 30% awake and smeared, attempting to persuade the 40% who may listen to the self and wake up, requires agility in the gap. Folks using their religion to judge others share values with the hypnotized 30% holding back progress in this medical tyranny covid religion mess.
I consult a devoted Christian in my life regularly. She’s a married lesbian. She’s hilarious and I learn from her. I have another Christian friend that would judge her, who scares me with Scripture, and sometimes makes me tired even just from one text. I love them both just the same, I just know one needs to be in the gap to accept the lesbian. The gap is where forcing someone else see your conclusion includes witnessing how much you need them to see your conclusion.
Dr. Northrup lives in and teaches from the gap. I’ve learned a lot about it from her. As she will tell you, we share a history of the disease to please, and it is my humble opinion that the one good thing we both kept from it is not wanting anyone to be judged or left out. We are both meditators and seekers who trust in Christ. We are enjoying the Founder’s Bible, because our passion for freedom has led us to learn more about the principled devotion of those that started the incredible experiment that is our great country. An ongoing and curious correspondence about judgement produced a text chat on this the other day. No judgement in the gap! Your business if you want to come to a conclusion about my friend who is both a lesbian and a believer. But that’s between you and God, not you and her.
Nuance. Paradox. The see-saw. The gap.
It’s going to heal us, it’s going to quicken the persuadable 40%, and yes, yes this IS a plea. Because now I’m just downright impatient. It is indeed a sociopathic system in our way, but it is also us in our way, and that only helps the sociopaths that groomed and abused us in the name of public health. Get in the gap so we can send them all back to hell together.
Here’s a physiological component I taught for many years that can help you with it. Inhale, and hold your breath for 3-5 long counts. Then exhale and do the same. Try not to think while you do this. Be like the infant I took to the park, startled by the trees. In fact the most effective way I could ever teach you to meditate is to tell you to act like you’re listening for a baby crying. Then stay there, in that, and breathe. Do this long enough to have the actual experience of Occupying the Gap. And if you don’t get there, know you’ll need the gap to help you let go of your expectations. I told you it involves paradox!
You might need a paradox song. I always wanted to cover this song officially on an album, but for now, accept my heartfelt and very rough acoustic demo. Scroll down to the last song and enjoy.
Lovely story to illustrate the times we are in. I enjoy your writing and perspective 🦋