Grandfather

As I was setting up the sweatlodge I noticed I was traveling with anxiety. This anxiety felt like it had a particular flavour. a particular kind of familitarty.

I noticed as I set up a feeling of a male presence, out of the corner of my eye. I chose to just hold this feeling, not making it wrong (judge it), or investing in  it being right (create a story around it). 

As I cleaned and prepared these two senses collided. My feeling/sensing became a knowing about my grandfather, my father's father who died when my father was 14. An alcoholic, he had died (from what I know) of cirrhosis. 

The anxiety I was feeling felt like my grandfather speaking to me, through my gut. This almost overwhelming sense of closeness opened up to other kinds of feeling spaces in the feeling-holding dialogue between my grandfather and my body. 

This new way of experiencing him, the strength with which he stepped forward and the way my brain linked the sensations with memories of similar sensation states felt grounding, my experiencing over time making a bit more sense.