Shedding

Releasing to allow a new season to unfold. Lessons on a season at sea 🌊

George’s Island, East Coast of Canada

No stone, no bone has been left unturned. Arriving and now leaving Halifax over this six month period was the culmination of years strung together to create this amphitheatre of action by closing out cycles. Basically life is about lessons to better your soul by allowing it to experience an array of interactions and experiences. Here all my attributes - good, the bad and the ugly - were exposed and laid bare to the altar of life to be spliced, salvaged and thrown away.

All that no longer served me gone.

Every scenario, every scene, every single thing I’ve done wrong or felt wrong about or were slighted against is now fading. I don’t feel the sting anymore. I can stop ruminating over decades’ old trauma. I’ve reflected within the pool of my own waters to see the unbiased truth of it all. Every little interaction has been dug up, examined and cleaned off or discarded. I feel lighter yet wiser as I step into this next part of my path.

There has been much reflection over this transition from Halifax to Home. I ponder what I truly learned about myself and what I stand for and how I show up to the world and as the days get closer to my departure it’s been an equally jarring juxtaposition of happiness and anxiety as I embark on a journey not to anywhere uncharted in this lifetime but to the old. It’s almost more challenging to go back to where you’ve always been but to see it in a new light. I feel reborn under this Neptune entering Aries transit and the solar eclipse that took place recently. I think my strategy this time around is to actively participate in life. I’ve created a list a mile long of people I wish to reconnect with, events I wish to attend, summer moments to capture, archiving family history, find a new job, tackle adult tasks - all of which make my days filled with purpose which eases the older wounds that sometimes get picked at when being in an environment I once was hurt by. This is a passion of rewriting old stories with new ones. By being active in the now.

Like Snake Spirit that has surrounded my being for some time, I too am shedding layers of outdating thinking holding myself back by believing I am utterly unworthy. I also shed old friendships and relationships. I also feel the call to empty out my storage unit yet again including any clothes or once-sacred treasures from the past which harbour old identities. This is a total gut job. I’m ready. The massive list of things feels massive but also for the first time ever is something I actually look forward to accomplishing. It’s a reconnection to community, an unearthing and honouring of ancestry and a shedding of the old to make way for the new.

I found myself recently seeing an analogy that holds up - a sea related one: I see myself as this ship at the dock on the Atlantic but as the waves rock me back and forth with these connections seen in the form of ropes becoming strained to the point you hear the moaning and quick snapping as they give up. Some hold their stance while others release almost immediately when the going gets tough. Such is life. I actually want more ropes to be let go of for these people to move on while others to stay. There are some golden ropes already I must cherish and engage with more. True friends. It always ties back to how people come into your life for a day, a season or a life time. The quality of rope determines the abundance of this connection - some are worn, rotted and slick while others maintain their shape, grip and colour. Cut the old off, retie and trust the new. Release to the sea and let be. This includes your emotions and thought-patterns.

I even am letting go of the infamous ‘divorce duffle’ I’ve held for 19 years. This is a monumental moment personally. This is the bag that I got at the start of my parent’s divorce. I remember the moment Mom couldn’t afford a bag for us to tote for our every-other-weekend trips to Dad’s while Dad had just won this silver one that was chucked into storage. I slowly chose it from the room. He came in demanding what I was doing but I explained I was in need of a bag if my brother and I are to come over. We needed something to get us to and from. So after some huffing and puffing he allowed it saying it was temporary.

This bag has since been through every other weekend visit, every get-away, every move, every damn transition in my life including coming to Halifax where I thought I’d use it again. Funny how I brought it with me with full intentions of a return but in actuality it was a trap I subconsciously laid myself to ensure I finally let it go for good as the first domino to fall before I let go of so much more. Yes, I place a lot of significance in this bag. There’s a hell of a lot of attachment and memories fond and sad wrapped in its sturdy silver structure but it is time. I’ve already gotten its replacement for my trip home - a 40L black and grey backpack with interior linings and pockets to aid in a swifter transition. But I can’t help but feel gutted about leaving this beat-up relic behind to the point I actually have felt real separation anxiety around it. But again, I know now that this bag doesn’t define my experiences on how my upbringing was. It’s a bag. And this is the detaching process of growing up and away from something that once served its purpose. It’s time for something new – New experiences that don’t weigh me down with remembrance but something good, something vibrant and exciting!

And when I meditate on home I have envisioned lush greenery - a wet year we’ve desperately needed after 5-6 of dust bowls and wildfires. I see golden light and soft sounds rather than crashing construction as a city shapes itself anew around me. There are projects that connect me to the earth and others. There’s a swirl of newness emerging I haven’t dared dream of in years finally meeting me in the place it all began. There’s this energy of ‘There’s no going back’ yet it isn’t a feeling of doomsday, end-of-the-world level angst and sadness around it like I’ve always felt about the future. Seeing how things are coming to an end much like Tyra the World’s Largest Dinosaur in my hometown is closing to the ECA Review, the regional newspaper I worked at for 4 years is shutting its doors to old ways of being and connections fading… it’s all coming to a completion. There’s no going back and that’s a good thing! It’s instead this energetic change I just spoke of. It’s healing, its light – it feels very close to source as if you are enveloped in an emanating warm hug from the sun. It’s just pure comfort and bliss and contentedness. I haven’t felt that way in eons.

The prairies beckon me home. The final straw to making this decision to leave Halifax came when I read a random book in the central library. I was on the 5th floor as I often visit to write and absorb the city scenes before me but this time I was considering where to go to. I wanted to leave this job but the question of what location next struck me for a little bit. I was anxious for an answer as time was ticking. The thought of returning home was on the radar but not my main intention. But I had to meet myself where I was... And so I was scanning the fiction novels beside the upper cafe and this one titled ‘Three Hills Home’ in slightly battered green covering caught my attention. “What?” I spoke under my breath as I plucked it off the shelf. Three Hills is my original hometown where generations of settlers came from as have I. I’ve come to the resolute decision I have multiple but this town has so much ancestry on the paternal side since we settled in this area over 120 years ago. I open it to a page near the front where these two young sisters were trying to find their way back home so the eldest created a sing-song to help her remember the path starting with ‘Three Hills home, Three Hills home’. As if there were a clearer message than this I don’t know what! So within a week it was finalized with a ticket back to the plains where my family now eagerly awaits my return.

John + Irene Wood

This isn’t to say I won’t come back to the East Coast. It’s not a love-hate relationship but one I thank with gratitude learning what I needed to in this timespan. I thought it would be longer but I was not able to get as far ahead as I had wanted. It instead was about closing out these cycles that needed to be cleared in order for this next chapter to begin.

Coming to Halifax also held some heritage significance I hadn’t previously known about. My Great-Grandparent’s on my mother’s side, John and Irene Wood were in Halifax as Great-Grandpa John served in the Navy during World War II and thankfully returned. Here is their retelling of VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) May 6, 1945 which caused a riot in the streets of Downtown Halifax and Dartmouth with a section on how they lived while here. My cousins found this journal page amongst their archiving of family history as we have quite a bit on the Wood side to digitally archive and preserve properly as the bunkhouse which has served us well can’t be the only safe space for such treasured moments.

“My husband John was ashore early May due to surgery on his spine from an injury received at sea on the HMCS Vegreville. After returning from overseas and the D-Day invasion action, he was now in charge of Naval armament depot “Boiler Rooms” in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Soon after the riot he was drafted aboard HMCS Swansea designated for Japan.

We spent a most enjoyable evening VE Day on Citadel Hill watching the fire boats with all the lovely colours playing on the water. We remarked as we walked back down the hill to Water Street to get the Dartmouth Ferry to go home now eerily quiet. This was 10 p.m. or so.

Next day we went over to Halifax side for a walkabout. Saw civilians carrying their babies and a buggy full of bottles of liquor. [On] Hollis Street, one couple pushed us out of the way with the remark ‘If you’re not going in the window or out the door, get out of the road!’ (Nice people). The shore patrol wisely took off their armbands, stood back as this was an ugly scene. We soon moved away from there.”

(Keep in mind I was on the Hollis and Barrington Street block! I’ve walked that street several times to get to the waterfront and businesses around.)

“Up on Barrington Street, our first view of the action was a sailor, his girlfriend ‘asleep’ on a bedroom display in a department store window. I stepped over a beautiful mink coat lying in the gutter in mud from the fire hoses being used to put out small fires. These hoses were soon locked apart by the overly excited mob. We moved into Zellers’ Corner where I worked any time I was back in Halifax. What a sight! It took us five full days and long hours to get it even partially presentable to open again. […]

John tells of a load of coal being delivered later that week to A. Depot and sailors running and yelling to stop so they could retrieve this cash of liquor in the coal bin. Funny at the time! We lived on the first lake and even had our rooms searched for contraband and wisely none of us ‘seven wives of armed forces personnel' had any on hand. Dartmouth Side boarded up their windows on Dundas Street (Up from the Ferry Dock) but to no avail as angry crowds moved over from Halifax and tore everything apart.

We walked back home as by now the ferries were in the middle of the harbour to sit it out. Feeling disgusted but also with a touch of sorrow for so many with no place to go to celebrate - what? Many were returned to barracks by truck, ambulance or jeeps to be sewn up without anesthetic (Didn’t need it). Sitting anywhere there was a spot available in the sick bay. My brother and brother-in-law were on this assignment.

Haligonians did not take too kindly to the Navy (it was the same feeling in Calgary where we were from only the airforce) but we really believed that had the Navy not been there in large numbers Halifax may have been invaded by submarines which were outside the gates. My husband’s first ship HMCS Clayoquot was sunk Christmas Eve with acoustic torpedoes' as she entered the gates for Christmas leave. We lost many officers and some of our friends aboard were hurt.

I really enjoyed Dartmouth and walked each way each day for an 18 minute ride on the ferry twice a day. My sea time. I liked the tram rides, the visits to the commons to just sit and watch the harbour. Found the winters very damp with a penetrating cold.”

Why I find this passage so significant to read is that the streets stayed the same and some of the buildings did too! So to explore and know what they were talking about, living where they had once lived was incredible to experience. I felt more connected to them than ever before. I felt Irene with me as I breathed in the salty air of the ferry from Dartmouth back to Halifax as I gazed at the distant Georges Island shrouded partially in gray fog and dark skies of incoming rain. I never once went below deck, always opting for the upper to soak in the views without barrier. The ocean is a beautiful sight at any time of day or night. Her deep inky depths beckon you in whether you like to or not. Especially at night I found this unexplainable draw to be cleansed by icy water. Or to see the gray dull days never felt so as the ocean pulses with life no matter what.

Cafe du Port

Just last week I went to newly opened Cafe du Port which is the sight of the former Zellers in the 1940s. This one was particularly cool given my Great-Grandmother used to work in this exact location. The food and drink here is excellent and the space is large for several tables and open windows. I particularly loved the fact there are paintings and art on every wall combined with the checkerboard flooring. It’s a great downtown location to visit. But to also reflect and think on how the place was turned upside down during VE Day (Here’s a picture of it from a historical archive) and to hear it took 5 days to get it back in a somewhat presentable state was crazy!

So anyhow, what have I learned from living in Halifax? It all happens for a reason. Shedding is healing. You’ve done the inner work and now it is time to thrive in the now with good memories and even better friends.

Cheers,

T