Six years ago, I began a tradition to write an essay on my birthday about the past year.  I deliver the “State of the Self” the evening of my birthday.  Sometimes in front of a party crowd of thirty, sometimes just to Nick.  This year, just to my lovely hubby, and two good friends over a bottle of wine and some good cheese.

2012 State of the Self

Happy Ecdysis.

Ecdysis is about letting go.  The scientists explain that it’s a biological term to describe the molting process of certain species.  Biologists use ecdysis to describe the snake shedding its skin, its outer lay, before it reveals brighter a new outer layer.

Happy Ecdysis to me.

Birthdays are personal invitations to examine our personal ecdysis, our ability to let go of the previous year of life.  All of who I was, all that I struggled with, did, accomplished is released today.  And I begin another year.  Those things aren’t gone, per se, but they are offered to the winds of change.  What purpose does the dead skin of the snake serve to the snake?  None, except giving evidence of growth and that one is still alive.

Research has found that the arthropod (the invertebrate animal that goes through the shedding process) goes through a period of inactivity before ecdysis. Before the molting process begins, there is preparation, a resting period.  This time of inactivity preps the anthropod so the soon-to-be-shed layer loosens from the body as glands release fluid to assist the separation from under the cuticle.

During its ecdysis, the snake will seek out uneven terrain to help its process of shedding.  Just as I am.  I am moving forward, relentless in my search for more.  I am still yearning, still slathering forward, purposefully seeking out trees of struggle to help me scratch off old habits.  I stutter my body along cement surfaces of challenge.  32 was one long skin shed and I began to feel like I couldn’t find any more new surfaces to help me shed my exoskeleton and in the desperate search for new crawling paths, I feared that the old skin that needed replacement – uncertainty, anxiety, complacency, doubt, sadness – would regrow and re-strengthen itself.  Resurrect with emotional fervor. I feared nothing more than that.  I wanted new, brighter skin.  So much so, at times, I felt I took my own paring knife to personally skin myself so to let the new layer of strength, resolve, maternal understanding, spiritual fluidity, and confidence breathe.

I went through that long skin shed with the painful unconscious knowledge that, as Richard Rohr would say, everything belongs.  Even the suffering.  The nights of laying in bed wondering if the anthology will ever come to a binding sense of reason.  The faith crisis of having one foot out the catholic door before realizing the other is inexplicably nailed to the cross.  The crying spells over isolation, mental loneliness, being misread, labeled, racialized, downsized, minimized, sexualized, falsely idolized.   It all belongs.

It all belongs.

There’s a beautiful liberation waiting for those who want to choose not to die.  I think people assume that as long as our lungs, brains, and mouths are physically working, then we must be alive.  But I haven’t found that to be the case.   Our bodies can work perfectly while we are still sleeping and dreaming.  But I don’t think that’s the same thing as living.

Waking up to our own ecdysis is a bone-chilling alternative to unconscious dreaming.  We must choose to wake ourselves and similar to our dreams where we recognize our desire to wake up, we must do something active to break ourselves out of sleep.  In my dreams, after I realize I’m dreaming and need to wake up, I slap myself.  Hard.  And it’s always in muted slow motion so I can’t feel the pain.  I try again.  It’s even more arduous than the first time and then I try to scream.  It’s muffled and I tell myself Wake Up, Wake Up, Wake Up. It doesn’t help.

In my dream, I always panic, afraid that I’ll never be able to wake up and I look for higher ground and I always find myself at a cliff.  Without an inch of grace, without anything but the sweat of panic and desperation to feel alive, I’ll throw myself off a cliff and tumble while screaming to myself, Now it’s time to wake up. Now is the time to wake up.

Sometimes hitting the bottom wakes me up.  Sometimes not.  I don’t always remember what finally broke the dream spell, but I always wake up the same: my heart pounding and body pulsing with hot blood.  The relief feels like lava, slowly engulfing my muscles.  It is only when I know for certain that I am awake, I begin to relaxed.

32 was like a series of deep sleep and re-awakenings.  And each time I woke myself up, I searched for even higher ground to climb.  More authentic struggles, deeper, complex lines of life seemingly which have no easy answers seem to beckon.  I love that about my life.  I love that higher ground calls me and that I finally know that I exist for the climb.  What I love even more is that I am loved by those who know that I must climb alone.  The journey of writing, the lens of cameras, the stroke of paintbrushes, the lyric of a poem, the channel of spirit, the voice of G*d – all of these things I love best, I best feel alone.  While I am a firm believer in accountability and necessary of and to community,  I no longer feel ashamed to ask for that time to Be alone.  I no longer feel pressure to pretend I am someone I am not, no matter how small the situation.  I am emboldened by the love of Nick, Isaiah, and my family, community, and ancestors who love who I am, who I truly am.  A woman.  Driven.  Determined.  My life is my story of lost and found, and each “found” is a vindication of my right to exist, my right to call out my own name in the desert.

Just this morning of my birthday, when I decided to write my State of the Self about the theme of ecdysis, I received a message on my blog from a new reader who loved the concept.  He wrote:

Your web site is wonderful. I would like to create my own ecdysis. I do not want to step on your toes. My themes are darker and may be more inflammatory.
I am a spirtualist, but am dying slowly from leukemia. I would like to create an open forum for people to write their own obituary. Not the phony ones published by family after they are gone. Since you are the only ecdysis, please permit me to use the word. Thank you.

I thought a long time about that last sentence, “Since you are the only ecdysis…”

Of course I knew what he meant literally, but on a spiritual level, it was one of the most disturbing ideas: what if no one embraced their own ecdysis.  What if people did everything in the power to keep their lives as even and smooth as possible?  What if no one sought out scaly tree bark, or grass divots to assist their shedding process?

The new epidermis is soft, still tender after the old exoskeleton has fallen off, but it eventually hardens in time so it withstands the reality of the anthropod’s world.  So it is with our deepest, most authentic evolving selves.  Without fear or hesitation, I am beyond living for change.  I crave it.  I crave the intellectual incineration that preceeds rebirth.   It is the only way forward for me.  My survival is directly related to my ability to find safehouses of regeneration.  A place for me to safely sleep and then come back to the world in whatever state I am: wild, calm, thoughtful, or lost.  I must Be in a place, I must Be in a community that not only allows but expects transfiguration.  Because each morning I find a new Self.  And the evidence is next to my pillow.  There is a flaky residue that resembles something like fear, uncertainty, and self-consciousness.  The new skin is more sustainable, mesmerizing, and mystical than the last.

I wish nothing but the same awakening for each person I encounter.