Grace in transition requires mental hygiene, letting go, and endless patience.

Despite the uncomfortable feelings that flood my emotional body at times, I do my best to silence the unfriendly voices inside my head and move forward, counting my blessings. At the top of the list of course, is that my cancer is in remission. I have love in my life. I’m not in pain, can give love and share joy.

Structuring each day is key, setting small goals that lead me to exercise, write, meditate, tend the garden, hold my lover close, breathe in the warm fur of my cat. Always the question: am I living my best life?

I’m afraid that in recent years I whine when confronted with change, sometimes loudly. I leap before I look, a method that has worked well for much of my life. At my age though, this approach has reached its limit. It seems that when I want something desperately, and right away, it may not immediately be good for me!

Today, back home, I find myself battling my pain-body, scrubbing negative thoughts from my head and refraining from sharing those ideas with others. Or, if I do, I gently, circumspectly, relate my process in the spirit of inquiry. What do you think about my current circumstances? I ask, instead of, please, help me understand, think for me, comfort me.

Though I do ask for prayers for a sense of peace and gratitude.

Give myself grace. If I stumbled slightly in this last chapter, so what? I need to practice letting go and moving on, like the week-long course I took at Esalen Institute in Big Sur 35 years ago. Now that was taking a leap, too. Especially since I left my job and moved there to be part of the work scholar program shortly afterwards.

We did Kundalini meditations, danced energetically and sobbed extravagantly. We asked and answered intimate questions in small groups, and more. In the afternoon sunshine, we called out our names from the meeting room doorway and windows overlooking the sea: “Lindaaaaaa, time to come home.”

Ah, if only. But, in a sense, I did come home, as I ended up living in Big Sur for the next 30 years. A beautiful transition out of Esalen and into the local community, falling in love and marrying, then caretaking a 25-acre property. Sharing it with countless friends, neighbors and their children, at Easter egg hunts and gatherings of all kinds. Many joyous weddings and poignant memorials happened on that land, too.

Now that was a graceful transition into the unknown, my third big one, actually. Before was leaving California while at UC Berkeley to study in Madrid, Spain. Later, after my house burned down in an urban disaster, I left the Bay Area to live and work at Esalen, followed by living in Big Sur. All pretty smooth transitions, reflecting the joy and energy of youth, with all that endless optimism and trust.

Then, divorce and a small-town romance that led to my next marriage. Messier, for sure. Ten years later the owner sold the priceless property where we lived, and my second husband and I moved to a small town in the Midwest, the center for the Transcendental Meditation movement. A unique community in an agricultural state. What a ride that was! Another relatively graceful transition, with lots of work and pain. Now it feels like a dream.

As a homeowner, I experienced the seasons for the first time, and made lifelong friends, experiencing the sparkling, warm heart of a beautiful community. I planted trees and flowering plants, redbuds, a crabapple, peonies, lilacs, tulips, alliums. Removing the odd midwestern chain-link fencing that had been there for 50 years, we installed wooden privacy fencing. We expanded the deck, placing my birdbath, a buddha sculpture, and river stones in the garden beneath towering silver maple trees. We spent summer evenings watching fireflies and winter afternoons watching the snow fall.

Yet, in this last transition back to the Coast, I’ve had a taste of the final transition. Torrey showed me the way, gracefully letting go of his life, as he realized, as he said, that his body was broken, and knowing that his mind was in pretty bad shape too. What did he do that was so surprisingly wise and good in this time?

He was unafraid. He expressed few regrets, only that he’d wished that he’d “had his awakening” and longed to be in California when he gazed wistfully at the abalone shells beside the fireplace. When we watched the film Manhattan over those last Christmas holidays, he was sad that the glorious chapter of his life as young man in the Big Apple had ended as well.

He reviewed his time here even as his body and mind crashed. “Crashing’s part of racing,” he liked to say. In meditation for hours every day, he felt the vastness of his being and I saw that this gave him great peace. He broke free, and that was a joyous moment. I wanted to go with him, because whatever he saw and felt as he was leaving his body looked really, really good.

How to save oneself? How to heal and find freedom? Take a break from the relentless perspective of ego. The spiritual books in my downsized library all say, look within, but I know that community helps us grow, too. The only thing that has given me relief from my assorted griefs recently is to serve, to give and share: to make sure my lover takes his blood pressure meds, send gifts to my friends facing medical challenges, plant seeds, water plants, load and unload the dishwasher, make sure my dog eats well.

To offer a kind or wise word at the right moment means so much. I have been the beneficiary of loving, patient and thoughtful care, from people who owed me nothing. I want to be that person, the person who gets out of her own way, and gives to others freely, from her heart.