Note for clarification: Dubu’s name has been changed to Ford until later entries.
I went on the TAZ since it was my day off. Guess who was on there? Derora and Toria!
They sat in front of me for the first half an hour as we were cruising out to the island.
“How are you?” Derora asked.
I was honest and said, “I’m feeling a bit rough,” then gave her the short summary of last night since there was still some stagnant energy. I felt embarrassed when I started to cry as I remembered I had to try to be professional since she was still a guest at the lodge. She allowed me to just drop that story.
“You never have to apologize for crying,” she said, “the tears are a symbol for cleansing.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It just feels like people don’t like me there. I keep feeling like when I walk into work smiling or when I’m working on my writing, my demeanor somehow aggravates this aggression in them. It’s as if my very presence irritates them.” I didn’t tell her yesterday had anything to do with her order, although she apologized if it did. I added, “I feel like I’m reliving my youth of getting energetically bullied or treated like an outcast.”
What is it all for? To make me grow a thick skin?
It was if I had to be completely out of sight for them not to get triggered. Just like I’m sure they felt they were walking on eggshells around me, I felt the same way with them.
Derora said, “Just the same as it brings you pain to feel their attack, it hurts them just as much to be playing the attacker.”
She offered to give me some strategies for the workplace after the boat ride.
“I would really appreciate that,” I said.
Toria sat down next to her.
“Are you guys best friends?” I asked, “you two seem so close.”
Toria looked over at Derora with sparkling eyes and said, “We’re partners. 34 years now.” I knew partners was code for “gay.”
“Oh, even better!” I said as I tuned out all of the incoming conditioning thoughts I grew up with.
How could they possibly be together?! They’re two women! I thought to myself.
I knew it was only conditioning, so I just kept dropping it whenever the thoughts came up. I reminded myself that I, too, had done all sorts of stuff with women.
Derora brought up Toria’s sister and started speaking about her in the past tense.
“What happened to her?” I asked.
“She had dementia and passed away about a year and a half ago. It broke my heart to witness her slowly disappear.”
“What was it like?”
She took a deep breath. “The way that children and adults gather information as they grow up, it’s just the opposite of what happened with her within a short span of eight months.”
“Did you feel sad?” I asked.
“I wasn’t there for it,” Derora said, “but Toria was. Her sister had a moment of acknowledgement in her eyes. Even she knew she was slowly disappearing.” Derora’s eyes slowly built with tears while Toria rubbed her back, comforting her. There’s something so beautiful to me about women and the way they feel and express their emotions. It’s as if they are resilient through their highly empathetic nature.
So, they both invited me to stay with them in Oregon and even offered to lend me a bunch of biking gear for the Ghana trip! When we made it home, Derora offered to dive deeper into what we had partially discussed on the boat. We walked upstairs to the rec room and sat on the couch.
“Are you familiar with setting boundaries?” she asked.
“Not at all,” I said. I basically said how doing so strikes fear into my body.
“You have to detach your mind from being associated with you as your soul,” she said. “Your mind is only a program. It is not good or bad. It just is.”
I pulled my legs up onto the couch and turned my torso towards her, showing her I was actively listening.
She gave me an example that I could use and apply to the chefs. “When you set a boundary and there’s more aggression being pushed back on you, there needs to be gentleness because you are like a baby learning to walk when it comes to speaking up. You need to parent the child within lovingly when things don’t seem to go smoothly rather than berating it.”
“Yeah, I’m working on how I talk to myself. I’m really hard on myself.”
Then, she quoted, “I didn’t make a mistake. I just did it 20,000 times until I got it right.” It felt like a breath of fresh air to receive those words.
“I knew right away that you were a lightworker, here to be a guiding force,” she said.
“I felt the same about you. Thank you for looking into my eyes and seeing me as a human being. That’s one of the first things I noticed when I met you, that you actually looked at me.”
She talked a lot about moving towards the people that felt safe to me. Lastly, she gave me breathing techniques to work on when a moment of panic like that arose. She offered advice on ways to bring my mind back into the present moment, one of those techniques being to gaze around whatever was in front of me without attaching my eyes to them. Basically, removing the meaning from the objects and letting go of the stories attached to them. ACIM had a very similar practice.
It felt like she was an Angel put on my path to remind me not to give up when I was faced with hardships. Her softness gave me strength to pick myself back up.
Then, Ford came over to spend more time with me. As usual, the first thing he did was steal me a cookie from the lobby.
“Wait! Wait!” I shouted, “Mallory’s coming!” It always felt like I was doing something illegal, but I couldn’t help it. Rosa made delicious lemon cookies.
He showed me his expensive ping pong paddle he had bought.
I went to grab it but he pulled it away and yelled, “Don’t touch it! “
“WOAH,” I said.
“You can’t touch it with your fingers because of the oils our bodies excrete!”
“I’ve never seen you react like that before, Ford,” I teased, laughing.
So, we talked more about Ghana. He already had a cycling name picked out for me—Zuri Roho (Beautiful Spirit). Ford’s cycling name would be Dubu—the Swahili translation for ‘bear’ since they were his favorite animals. I thought it would fit well. “Dubu and Zuri—bikepacking adventures through Africa!”
Ford got a glass of wine, then we walked to the bridge by the creek. He placed his glass down on the wooden railing then I hopped up and sat beside it, causing it to shake and almost fall into the water. He gently picked it up and moved it to the other side while continuing to talk to me.
I interrupted and said, “That right there is what I love so much about you. You didn’t get mad and yell, ‘Goddamnit Freyja!’ Instead, you just picked it up and moved it. Thank you so much for being so kind and gentle with your energy. It feels nourishing to be handled in such a way.”
