I had shared on Facebook that a landlslide occurred on the property we were living at and that it prompted a sudden move. Now that the bulk of that is behind us, and we are settling in in our new rental, I can share a more thorough account of what happened that day as well as my personal experience within it.
The morning of the event, I was quite preoccupied and intently looking at the dream I’d had the night before and what it was showing me about myself. This dream would turn out to be more unsettling than I realized at the time. In this dream my sister and her family lived down the road from us, but on the other side of the road, and very close to the river. I was with Lj and Syntia in our house. It was raining heavily and we saw the level of the river rising. I kept keeping an eye on that river, on the rain and was constantly worrying about my sister and her family, because the rain kept coming, the river was rising and the water was getting wilder. I made several trips down to their house to see where things were at and if we needed to help them evacuate. All my focus was on that river and my family down the road. I was back in our rental and right as I realized the rain was not stopping and this river must be at the point of flooding (and so damaging their house), I heard a sound. I looked back and saw a massive amount of mud rushing down the hill behind us, to the back window of our house and straight through it. That's when I woke up.
I was quite rattled by this dream because of its intensity, it’s the kind of dream where you feel funny when waking up and feel like you really need to pay attention. But I otherwise didn’t ‘think anything of it’. We had received warning of heavy rains and possible floods, so I figured my mind had weaved it into my dream. I treated the dream like any other dreams by identifying fears and looking at the symbolism, who I was within it, what this dream was representing and showing me about myself. This time, just more intently. I’d pulled some cool lessons from it, that I shared with Lj during the morning as well and that I’ll share in this post too.
As the day progressed and the rains were not letting up, we could see the river speeding up, growing and rising. We periodically crossed the road to keep tabs on the changes and assess if things were starting to turn dangerous. At some point I told Lj jokingly that this was starting to feel a lot like my dream, us being preoccupied with that river in front of the house the whole time. I said ‘maybe the real danger will be coming from behind the house with a landslide down the hill – maybe that dream was supposed to be taken literally, haha’. (It was funny at the time.)
About half an hour later, we hear people running and screeching outside our house. Our neighbors (who live behind us, a bit higher up the hill of the same property) had been away for several months and they had just gotten home a day or two before. We hadn’t seen them since they’d left, so when I recognized their voices I thought they were here to come say hi after settling in. The screeching… well, it sounded similar to the giddy squeals you make when you’re running through heavy rain without a jacket or umbrella. I opened the door excited to greet them and I immediately told them to come on in out of the rain.
It took me a moment to realize that this was not what was happening. They were on socks or barefoot in the sopping rain, screaming, crying, yelling, ‘it’s all gone, we have to go, it’s not safe, landslide, our house is destroyed, we got to go’. I couldn’t make out what they were saying at first – without thinking I walked up to the mom to give her a hug. She grabbed on and held me tight, then started shaking heavily and let out a scream that seemed to come from the depths of her, a sound that is hard to describe. Within and amongst everything that happened that day, this was probably the most intense/shocking moment for me – feeling the amount of energy that was being released in that singular moment, I felt like a rod being hit by lightning, and I’m still not sure where all that energy went...
Immediately after the scream, she let go of the hug and apologized for panicking (she’s Canadian…), repeated what had happened (in a way I could understand) and then turned her attention to her kids. A landslide had come down the hill behind their house, through the back window all the way across the house to the front porch. I let her know to just go, that we’d go too. Lj had picked up Syntia as soon as he saw ‘something wasn’t right’ and taken a few steps back. So, when the neighbors left, I turned around and told Lj ‘landslide, we got to go’ – it was all he needed. I took Syntia from him, took the keys of the car, and headed out, while Lj raced through the house gathering anything that would be hard to replace. Once in the car I sent a message to my sister that we were on our way to her.
When we left, most of the property was still intact. Later that day more landslides happened on and around the property. A dam higher up the road also broke, unleashing the river. It took out the walking bridge that used to be across it, and much of its riverbanks. It had started to erode the earth under the road and taken down electricity poles. The next time we visited the property it looked entirely different. There were even 2 waterfalls that weren’t there before.
After we’d left the house that day I remained surprisingly calm. The memory of hugging the mother kept coming up within me, which I would work with in the moment, clearing it out till I could let it go. The question that mainly kept bugging me was: Did I do enough? Did I support enough? Did I say enough to help this family get through this as effectively as possible? In the face of the shock, hysteria and panic that was before me, of not a single person but a family of 5 – was one hug enough? Was to say ‘Let’s slow down’ enough? And when the gardener and their family came to us as we were getting in the car and their faces had nothing but fear and dismay written all over them – just staring at me pleading for an answer, a direction. When I told them to keep going, to take their kids and get off this mountain – was that enough? I have no idea.
These sudden events are things we can’t really prepare for, and yet it feels like everything we do, all our life’s lessons and personal change, are put to the test in these sudden and unexpected moments of challenge. Those moments where there is no time to look things over, to talk about it first, to make a plan and process things a bit – but where you need to act NOW. At least, what I can say is I did act without thinking LOL – sounds like an odd thing to say as an ‘accomplishment’ – but in this context, it means I remained here, I breathed, I didn’t allow myself to get swept up in the fear, the panic, but physically directed and supported with what came up in a moment to the best of my ability.
I entertained the thought for a moment that I should’ve taken that dream more seriously, that it was a warning and that I should’ve acted sooner. Realistically though, I had no way of knowing. And then I got pissed for a bit, because then, what’s the point of a dream like that?! If you can’t tell if it’s just fears coming through or somehow an awareness of what might be about to happen? You can’t go taking all your nightmares literally and go telling people to evacuate cause you dreamt about some natural disaster taking place... After my little inner tantrum I slowed down and, instead of angrily/blamingly throwing this question around, I asked it calmly, to be able to see the answer: what was the point of this dream? Looking back, I could see that this dream had played its part, it had supported even without me ‘taking it seriously’. I didn’t stand around dazed and confused when our neighbors said there’d been a landslide. In a strange way, because I’d had that dream – when they said ‘a landslide went through our house’ I knew it was so, it was real, it had happened, and we needed to MOVE. Even if I hadn’t consciously been preparing myself for a landslide, I had been more aware of the fact that while the river is the thing I can see progressing and becoming more dangerous, it’s possible that there will be a sudden change that we didn’t foresee, but is equally dangerous. The dream primed me for the events of that day.
Overall, what I took with me from this day can be summed up in 3 lessons. The first two are the lessons taken from the dream before anything had even happened, the third one added on afterwards.
Lesson 1: When you’re too preoccupied worrying about others, you distract yourself from the precarious position you are in yourself.
This one is a pattern I’m sure many parents are all too familiar with – how easy it is for instance to get caught up worrying about the kids, even years after they’ve moved out of the house – and you forget to ask yourself if you’re happy with your own life. When you create worry as a habit it can really extend to anyone – you can hear a story about a friend whose chid is going through a challenging time and for the rest of the day, you are beside yourself ‘feeling bad for them’ and wondering how they will get through such trials. It’s the perfect distraction – because we also tend to feel like we’re ‘a good person’ when we worry about another. “Look how much I care for someone else that I would feel so bad for so long!” Like the example of hearing about a friend’s child going through a rough time – the extent of your inner turmoil really has no impact on how this child, or their family ends up in fact moving through their trials, it makes 0 real difference. All that’s happened is that a day was spent thinking and worrying about other people and their lives, that you are not directly part of or can’t directly make a substantial difference in. Meanwhile – how present were you in your own life? How many of the things that actually required or have been requiring your attention were put on hold, because you were now just too overcome with someone else’s issues?
It’s easy to write this out, making it plainly (and perhaps painfully?) clear how such worry is like the perfect distraction-cover-story – yet, when you’re in the throes of it, definitely a different matter. Because it feels like it matters, it feels like it matters to keep thinking about it, to try to look for solutions for what you think their problems are, and it feels like it’s part of your matter, your who I am, something you ‘can’t change’, like it’s just so sticky. For me it’s been a process of practicing discipline, to catch myself in moments being preoccupied about someone else/their life/their troubles – and bring myself back here, to the present moment, allowing myself to fully focus on what is in front of me, and everything else… let go, let go, let go.
Additionally, I’ve found it supportive to make time to ask myself the question:
What in my life/in myself am I not satisfied with, do I feel stuck with or hopeless/powerless towards – but instead of addressing it, I’ve been preoccupying myself with other people/their lives/their problems?
Asking such a direct question tends to bring up the points I’ve been resisting and avoiding, allowing me to redirect myself and my focus to my personal sphere of influence and responsibility.
The tricky question is of course: but what if they need help?
That is the one that gets us – because when we refocus our attention to ourselves/our own lives, it can feel like we’re putting on blinders, ignoring others, hardening our heart and saying ‘it’s not my problem’ and rather choosing a form of ‘ignorance is bliss’. Gosh, and no one wants to be ‘that person’.
Well, that, I will get to in Lesson nr 3 😉.
Lesson 2: Don’t compare challenges
The first lesson is one I had been aware of and actively working with already for some time before the dream. Lesson nr 2 on the other hand was a new perspective that I sorely needed to become aware of. In the dream my house was seemingly fine most of the time and the house of my sister’s was facing a prolonged ‘threat’/’danger’/’challenge’ – where you could visibly see things accumulating/growing/worsening over an extended period of time. But in the end, the landslide that came through my house (in the dream) was ‘just as big a challenge’, it just came out of the blue/suddenly/unexpectedly/all at once. Similarly, in our lives and personal processes, some people will go through extended periods of a particular challenge, while others will be more stable overall, but then be met with intense/shocking trials or a sudden series of challenges, and then others will experience a mix of both. Point being… there’s no ‘right or wrong way to be challenged’ – it is rather specific to each one and the points that require to be walked/changed and transcended.
In my life this past year I experienced more of an overall stability, returning to a flow and coming into myself more, whereas a lot of others in my life were facing very challenging times. And I’d even start worrying like ‘am I doing something wrong that I’m not feeling challenged in the same way? Am I suppressing something? Am I not doing this process properly?’ Because I simply couldn’t relate to others’ experiences. BUT the year was not out… and we were faced with a landslide, and shortly after that a series of unexpected trials followed that challenged me to the core and pushed me to change/adapt/expand instantly – there was no time to write about it first, I needed to decide, direct, move, forgive, change NOW.
Another perspective here is that if we simply compare ‘what I am facing now’ to ‘what another is facing now’ – and the extent of difficulty each is facing – it can be disturbing that one is having such a hard time and the other is instead more stable or even thriving. But, if we look at it from a bird’s eye view and see our lives as an interconnected whole – then it does make sense. While some are facing some kind of hell, others are more stable, able to support or be that presence as a reminder that: there is more to you, there is more to life, don’t give up.
Lesson 3: Check if there’s any validity to your fear
Aha, now this one!! Here it gets tricky, so let’s tread slowly, specifically and with care to not misinterpret.
A large part of my process has been all about FEARS, facing them, debunking them, proving to myself that THEY DON'T KNOW ANYTHING! That I shouldn’t listen to them or just trust them, it’s JUST Fear!!! And yes, I still agree that fear is a poor advisor and to rather clear yourself, be stable, clear than to act within or from a starting point of fear. What I have found, however, and this has opened up more so in the past few years, is that at times, we become aware of something, but because we don’t recognize it as a point of awareness, we interpret it as a fear or as a worry and in doing so, we experience it as such. As a result, we dismiss the point of awareness that came through, because it got wrapped up in fear.
Let’s take the dream as an example – when I woke up I experienced the dream as a nightmare, a fear, something that is not real, but that I am scared can/might happen. As events unfolded, however, it showed me that, hey, perhaps, there was a part of me actually picking up on/aware that something was about to happen, but because I did not understand/recognize it as a point of awareness, I interpreted it as and experienced it purely as a fear/a nightmare.
This obviously opens up a new dimension to fear and worry. I’ve noticed for myself that at times I would have a particular person come up within me, out of the blue, and then I’d start wondering, hmm how is that person? I haven’t heard from them in a while, I actually don’t know if they’re okay, what if they’re not? And then I would get/become worried. And then due to the worry, I would ‘dismiss it’ and let go, only to find out later that just as they had come up within me, something significant had happened to them in their lives.
Obviously – this makes things a bit more tricky, especially considering Lesson nr 1 where worry/fear about others can so easily be (and most of the time is!!) a pattern of self-sabotage and distraction. How I’ve worked with this is by firstly being very clear with myself about ‘how a worry came to be’.
For instance – if someone pops up within me out of the blue, where I hadn’t been thinking about them, hadn’t been worried about them before, but suddenly comes up within me, I will see it more as a possible point of awareness. I’ll then reach out/check in with them to see how they’re doing, and often, it is indeed specific. When I can’t get in touch with them, I’ll unconditionally hold them within myself, stand equal and one and embrace them/hug them as a point of support. What I don’t allow myself to do, is to go into worry, and if I saw that I did already go into worry, I first apply Self-Forgiveness on that worry, letting go of the fears, so that I can support unconditionally, instead of reaching out to appease myself and my own fears.
On the other hand, if I am actively worrying about someone, where I am the one who actively ‘starts thinking about them/worrying about how they are doing’ or if I start worrying because I hear something someone else says about them, and it triggers worry within me, and I feel ‘compelled’ to now worry and ‘shoot into action to help them’ – then – that is more my own fears/worry system taking me on a ride away from myself. In those cases, I apply what I shared with Lesson 1 above, to bring the point back to myself and seeing what it is in my own life/living that actually needs my attention, support and direction.
What is key is my ability to let go. If I can’t let go – then I am not clear within myself, and I am in no position to support. And that is tough, very tough. I’ve been aware of people going through a very difficult time and I’ve had to deliberately NOT talk to them, because I wasn’t able to let go of my own fears and worry, where, if I HAD reached out, I would’ve placed them in a position of needing to ‘take care of me and my fears’, which is really not what support is about. It’s hard, in those cases, to continue to focus on letting go, letting go, letting go, and trusting that they have the ability to assess who would best support them and that they will reach out to those people when they need support, that it is simply not up to me/my point to support right now, no matter how much I would want to.
And with this, perhaps a good reminder for everyone – no matter what kind of challenge you are facing, how intense, how prolonged, how sudden or how seemingly insignificant – to ask yourself if you need support. And if you do need support, ask yourself who would best support you, and reach out to them. “Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it.” A nice quote from the Harry Potter series, I find it applies to life as well. We’re all going to go through trials at one time or another, but we rarely all go through the same level of difficulty at the same time. It’s not a point of shame, it’s a point of grace, that there will in fact always be people who are able to support when you need them. The only thing is…. you’ve got to ask for it.
I hope you found something of value in this post so that my trials and lessons can reach further than just me and my life.
Thank you for reading and let's keep walking.
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