Morning’s motion sickness arrives while running with frozen fingers in the 17-degree dawn. But then, my fingers warm. Then, the sun comes out. I may not only live, but enjoy this.

Panic sets in when my fingers ache and burn with the cold. I’m much more comfortable in extreme heat. Cold scares me. Either are dangerous. Either can kill a person, but in my mind, it’s all about which way would you prefer to go? Even though I once saw a terrifying survival movie of a guy who died blistered in the desert, I’m still a heat kind of gal. I also read that short story by Jack London about the guy who dies of cold, and it sounded quite doable, like you take a nap and that’s it. But when I feel that pain in my fingers, I tremble as though in the presence of fierce gods.

On Sunday, for New Year’s Eve, Christopher and I went cross country skiing at Brainard Lake. It was a balmy high of 20, but the wind chill was negative 2. So, we skied through the trees to have some buffer. We ate lunch on a large log at the windy edge of a sunny opening. After stopping, my fingers ached as Christopher struggled to get his boot binding to lock in. I moved around to warm up a bit, but when I was done and his ski still wasn’t on, I started shaking and had to take Perelandra Emergency Trauma Solution to gather the presence to go and help him. We got the boot locked on, got moving, but I hyperventilated at least one other time with fear in that first 10 minutes. Survival seems so abstract until it isn’t.

Though he did fine on the way to our lunch spot, on the way back one of Christopher’s boots kept sliding sideways off his ski, and that ski then kept sliding sideways, driving him nearly mad with frustration. But he kept grounded, stayed present, and made it out. And I stayed present and patient and even warm and managed to enjoy the whole experience.

But then, on the car ride home, Christopher admitted how miserable he’d truly been, and I felt guilty. When he said he’d never wanted to go skiing and felt forced into it, I stayed calm and looked at my role in that. But when I admitted I was afraid I’d never be able to just have fun with him, he said that we had to heal the underlying pattern not only solve the practical challenges or yes, it could be a threat to our relationship, I felt my anger rise at last.

Because we’d scheduled for him to attend a meditation group at 4 p.m. and we were running late, I agreed to go with him. We arrived just as my fury reached the roof of the car. I thought as our boots crunched across the driveway that maybe some patterns are good to interrupt.

We walked up the small pathway to a green house on Jay Road and knocked. John Walpole greeted us with a hug. We took off our shoes and were welcomed with pillows and blankets and invited to find places to lie down on the floor. This would be a breathing meditation, a kind of re-birthing for the New Year. Claudette, John’s wife, told me she and John have hosted these meditations for years, and that there is always plenty of room on the floor for everyone. Still dressed in layers from skiing including a hat, and now lying on soft carpet in a warm room with my own pillow and blanket, I felt relieved and held in the soft light. After a few moments of rustling as others arrived and settled in, a beautiful woman with an Estonian accent, Julia Mikk, began to speak softly, telling us to breathe deeply and notice our bodies, to notice which place in our bodies sunk most into the floor. She asked how we could rearrange anything to be even more comfortable, said that doing so was act of self-love. She asked that all of us be held in a protective sphere of white light. I still felt my anger and I prayed that Claudette and the others would be protected from my process as my breathing sunk me deeper into my body and into the warm room.

Julia wasn’t the only facilitator—John and another warm man named Sage also spoke, reminding us all to breathe deeply. All this breath around my anger soon dissolved into tears. I stayed with the sadness as I felt my grief grow. I never get to do what I want. Then: So much longing for my childhood, for skiing with my dad, for all the things I loved most. I’ve lost everything that I value most. Then, as tears flew from deep within me, I’m sorry Daddy. I would have done anything to not betray you by growing up. I would have done anything to stay a kid. I would have given up my life in a heartbeat if I could have, but I could not. It was not mine to give. I’m so sorry.

A soft male voice says, “It’s okay. Stay with it. Breathe.” I cry quietly. I hear another woman sob more loudly beside us. Christopher is quiet breathing. We all breathe together in the warm room.

I know that I’m finally crying into the pain I felt when I hit puberty early at 10, and the light died in my father’s eyes. Everything we had shared, the most complete and total sun of a love that lit up everything, died overnight and there was nothing I could do to bring it back. Crushed, I reeled in shock, denial, and despair, then anger, and none of it made any difference. I could not make him love me again. I could not even make him look at me in the same way again. Soon after, a mean new girl in our class began to make fun of me and my changing body, then the others joined in. I knew they had discovered that I was, indeed, some kind of a monster. Soon I fantasized about slicing off my breasts and thighs. I divided from myself then in ways I’ve spent my life healing. But what I realized now in the living room breathing is that I’d willingly offered to give up my life to have my father back. It hadn’t worked, of course. But that offer, I’d never rescinded it.

I’ve done years of work reclaiming my power, my authority about being a woman, and healing my sexuality. I’ve grown into my own instead of looking to my wonderful dad, who had a crazy mother and so, issues about women. But at this first, most fundamental emotional level, I’d never taken back my offer to give up my very life, never decided instead to love my changing body, never claimed my destiny as an adult woman in a life worth living and loving.

Until I did. I just did, I mean there on the rug on New Year’s Eve. And I know it sounds weird, or impossible, but it wasn’t and instead it was the most natural thing in the world: I entered back into my life in progress all these years later and I started living it as my own again at long last. And when I rose at the end of the meditation, I knew I was at long last rising from my 10-year-old child’s bed a whole person, returned at last full circle to my own skin.

Before that happened, though, I felt guides offer to help me love Christopher more fully. They offered to help me heal to make this possible. I willingly agreed. And then I heard: This life is your own and it is your own whether you marry Christopher or not. And I knew then that knowing this would make all the difference between us.

Wound Healing in Process-NIH

My body expanded like warm butter onto the soft rug. I twinkled inside my skin. I smiled widely with my shut eyes in the breathing room. I knew then that I’d get to claim all of it back, including my dad, that I hadn’t lost him after all, because he was there inside me. And I hadn’t lost my childhood either…all those things I value most lie within. And it was me that I’d lost most of all, and now I would forever claim my own life, and my own power and authority about being a woman. I would keep this lesson of my lifetime. And I would learn to love again to the center of the universe, but this time, without giving myself away.

I rose from the mat, finally leaving my childhood behind and finally carrying it with me. I sought Julia and Sage and John to thank them, and we hugged and said goodbye. I thanked everyone and gave $15 for the love offering. I wish I had more. We traipsed together out into darkness diluted by an almost full moon. I didn’t know what would happen next.

And even though now this life is once again mine, it still belongs not only to me. I’m a teenager, a child, a woman, my own, God’s, the light’s, this life’s.

In from the cold after my morning’s run, my fingers tingle warm on the black keys. Thank you. I take this moment like a chalice and I drink deeply, breathe deeply, and exhale.