1 year in exile

Coming up on one year of the global pandemic has made me, like many people, reflective of what's happened in the past year, at the significance, what it's meant to me.  I very often, only half facetiously, commented that when we went into lockdown I was sent into exile as well as isolation.  But I have to say that my reflection has for the most part started in gratitude, recognizing that although it has been a challenging year for me as well everyone, there's been a lot of blessing within the fact of having to live through the challenge.  As well as just Blessing.  Number one is considering that exile yes, I'm not in my own home and I've become a full time caregiver.  And for sure that's been hard.  But I also think about what would it have been like to have been in that peak early days of pandemic cooped up — yes cooped up because we were trying to not even go out of the house really — in a high rise apartment with my beloved although extrovert child.


I was fortunate, blessed, privileged really, to have a different alternative, even though we had no idea at the time that it would be a year and we would still be in it and still be, Well that we would ever get to a point of talking about one year ago when we're still in the midst of.  Coming to south Surrey brought me to a place of beauty.  Now with Peace Arch Park there it can be pretty busy down here, not necessarily calm.  When I first arrived it was absolutely peaceful.  The parks were open.  It's beautiful walking down here whether you go in the parks or not.  And I could walk on the beach.  Just the neighborhood here has many beautiful walks.  It brought to my attention the microcosm of seasons in a way that I never paid attention to because of the aforementioned high rise apartment.  Being in a more rural area and walking in places where there is wilder growth.  And just a different way of paying attention.  I noticed the different seasons of blossoms.  I noticed the coming and the going of the dandelions and then the coming of the buttercups in the park.  Wild roses making way to blackberries.  One rogue cherry tree on the beach and apples, inexplicably, growing up on the shoreline back behind the tide line.


The neighbours planted a garden here.  I was the one who tended it.  I spent hours puttering around in that garden.  I pulled weeds, and researched what to do when the zucchini got leafy milk mold, or whatever they called that, and figured out a way to treat it, to support the zucchini.  Later I even figured out a way to fertilize the zucchini so that the beautiful blossoms turned into fruit .... ....
Much like the Israelites when they were sent into exile, and then later the People of the Temple being sent into exile, I was given an opportunity within the hardship of that to discover God in new places, in new ways .... 

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I was thrown into myself.  Hours of my own company,
walking with the camera.  Sitting in silent meditation with
myself and, not simply The Divine but the Divine Realm .... ....
And discovering .... A way of holding my gift in the world
that I had hardly dreamed of. 
And what a blessing that has been.  ​

And in some ways I was thrown into myself. Hours of my own company, for sure, walking with the camera.  Sitting in silent meditation with myself and, not simply The Divine, but the Divine Realm .... .... And discovering .... A way of holding my gift in the world that I had hardly dreamed of.  And what a blessing that has been.  Hardship again as I broke my foot, for sure, and learning the lesson, again, one of those lessons I learn over and over, of community, of reaching out, of saying yes when people say “can I help you?” Even if that is simply to say “I'm gonna come down and bring you a coffee.  And we can sit in this physically distant way but together and visit.  Would you like that?” Yes.  Thank you.  Thank you. 


So I start off this reflection with many blessings.  A .... well not even a renewed relationship with my father-in-law because really I never had one before.  And although it's not what it might have been 30 years or 20 years or even 10 years ago, it is a relationship.  It has given me an opportunity to heal wounds in the family and I believe that all healed wounds reverberate back through the family line and forward through the family line and out in to the world.  And that may just be the biggest blessing .... ​

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Centred on evocative and deeply healing guided meditations, Kimiko holds Virtual Healing Circles Monday mornings at 9 a.m. and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. pst.  Please join us. Learn more at the Good Vibrations: the Energy of Resilience facebook page, check out the Healing link on this site or drop her a note by e-mail.