A Cracked Heart
Published September 27, 2021.
It is a dark grey day outside as I look this truth squarely in the eye: Two nights ago, my soul sister Lillian Pearl Bridges passed, a month after I lost my dog. Making a heavy year heavier yet.
She was surrounded by pure love in her passing, physically by her sons and daughter-in-law, and energetically by a giant tidal wave of love from countless people whose lives she has touched.
The marriages she has saved,
the kids she has parented,
the parents (and other adults) she has supported,
the tears she has sat with and helped to release,
the artists and musicians and tender souls she has encouraged to open up and blossom,
the healers she has healed and the nurturers she has nurtured,
the fancy dresses and shoes and lipsticks she has tried to make us ladies grow into (some of us more willing than others, to be fair),
the feasts she has cooked and teas she has brewed….
like drops in the ocean of love and beauty that was Lillian.
She was and will always be the queen spider who has woven a web of silk strands of love, tough enough to weather the storms of life. The physical spider at the center of this web may be gone but her web is still here. and spider’s webbing is good medicine and one of the strongest materials on earth.
Let us honor and celebrate her legacy by continuing to weave her web, by reweaving any holes the storm wind or a passing cat may tear into it. And let us each now build our own webs of love, from our own centers, a million tiny spiders doing the hard work of weaving spider medicine, creating silk and beauty and strength from the center of each of our beings. And let us continue to support each other by the web that Lillian wove for all of us, to hold all of us and each of us, so that none of us experience her loss on our own. Let us trust the strength of her silk floss of love as we each surrender to be blown in the wind to land somewhere else, making new connections and weaving new webs, from Rothenburg to Tel Aviv, San Diego to Dublin, Orcas Island to Vienna, London to Slettestrand.
I got to hold her hand on Wednesday and pour all my love into her, and she heard me and felt me as I passed on all the love from all of you who were unable to say goodbye to her physically. She heard you and felt you. And I promised her that her work will be continued by each and every one of us. Each of us shall now rise to the occasion and manifest what she has passed on to each of us, in our own lives. That is our Ming now, our destiny. I promised her I will write her book on Ming that we had been talking about. I will figure out how to channel her, somehow. We will all have to learn that skill now.
Lillian is the most spiritual person I have ever known. She will figure out how to communicate with us.
She transitioned in peace and beauty, as her immediate family sat by her side and her grandkids were squeeling with joy outside, eating flowers and receiving the love of a circle of aunties (and uncles). She came to me three times the night of her passing, and the last time, I woke up with a deep deep sense of peace and release. She is free now and her suffering was short and she left this world knowing how deeply deeply she was loved and how we will all continue the work of love from the seeds she has planted in each of our hearts.
Divine timing…. what a tough lesson for all of us. One of Lillian’s favorite expressions. None of us were ready for this big lesson but here we are.
Please hug any loved ones around you. Take your time to be. And then get to work weaving your own webs of love.
