STRETCH YOURSELF THROUGH FEELING
I’m excited about my new Reiki scheduler that makes it SO easy to book your Reiki appointment. Some of the feedback I’m getting is that this is the best Reiki in Salt Lake City. You’ll have to come and try for yourself to weigh in on this. Either way click the button to book your Reiki appointment.
Today, instead of talking about how yoga poses invite you to stretch, I want to talk about stretching yourself through feeling.
“We’ll always be with you. No one’s ever really gone. A thousand generations live in you now.”
I’m writing from Southern California right now. I’m spending the weekend with family and friends while celebrating the memory of my sister’s long-time friend Karla Purucker Riser.
Ironically, I’m staying with my brother David (AKA: world’s biggest Star Wars fan) and today just happens to be May the 4th (you know, “May the Fourth Be With You”). I’m literally sharing a room that has a life-size Stormtrooper I’ve lovingly named “George.”
Meet George
Meet Karla and my sister, Alisa
“Much to learn, you still have.”
“I had a wonderful childhood,” my sister begins her reading. “I rode bikes everywhere and everything was an adventure; mostly because of Karla - most of the time, I was just along for the ride.”
My siblings and I grew up in a neighborhood celebrating 4th of July block parties, haunted houses over Halloween, slumber and pool parties. We rode bikes everywhere and earned money working for the local YMCA summer and after school camp programs and babysitting everyone’s child. Skateboard challenges down steep curved streets were revisited until the challenge was met and vacant lots were havens for homemade forts and tree house adventures.
My sister did have a wonderful childhood - and so did her siblings.
“Truly wonderful, the mind of a child is.”
My sister’s heart tore a little bit when she received the news that Karla was dying. With tender emotions and a logical mind, she calculated how she could get to her friend; but the news she received was that of a private passing - Karla desired to be with just her family. A mother of four children all raised in the same house and neighborhood as Karla herself, she managed to create a wonderful childhood similar (but different) as the one she had helped create for my sister. She took her last breath on Valentine’s Day.
“On many long journeys have I gone. And waited, too, for others to return from journeys of their own. Some return; some are broken; some come back so different only their names remain.”
Karla’s ability to create adventures often took the shape of ridiculousness.
She traveled GPS-less and only knew an adventure awaited. There were things to see and people to meet and NO ADVENTURE WOULD BE WASTED.
One time her lack of clarity about her next adventure drove her husband a little crazy. Rightfully so, he had work responsibilities and needed to inform a series of folks. But Karla didn’t have all the information ready to tell him, but knew she would when she had completed placing all her ducks in a row. Well, her husband frustratingly put his foot down with a force and simply stated, “If you can’t tell me, then I’m not going!”
The next day, he came home from work to an empty house. Karla had packed up the kids and suitcases and proceeded onto their adventures. They sent photos and videos complete with text messages of their journeys. He was kept abreast of their wanderlust.
He instantly regretted his decision and later told us that the silence of his home was deafening. He had shot himself in the foot and promised to never do this to himself again. You see, it was THIS moment that he realised that HE TOO loved Karla’s adventures.
It was then and there that he made up his mind to surrender to the need for details and just simply go along for the ride.
“You must unlearn what you have learned.”
The feelings we are asked to stretch ourselves with do not always come with ease. The shift from being to entering a transition is fraught with anxiety and discontent, but in the end, we meet all of it with reluctant acceptance. Reluctant at first, but a surrender-type feeling emerges, and in the end, we arrive changed.
Karla’s stories are never-ending and shared among all of my sister’s friends. Weekly dance groups, girlfriend groups, mothering groups, friend groups. Her message was very consistent.
Live for the Moment.
Be in the NOW.
Karla’s friendship extended beyond my sister, but my sister was one of the keepers of the Karla Key. She kept and carried that key for her entire life, and will continue to do so for the rest of her life. She’ll lend out the key (most likely to Karla's four children) but she’ll ask for it back eventually. She’ll polish the key and keep it clean and safe.
