Anybody who knows me personally know what a HUGE Wilco can I am. I mean, I have seen them more times than I can count and have flown as far as Denver, New York, Vermont and Vancouver to see them play. There is just something about Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics (FYI he is the lead singer/founder) that just kills me.My favorite song is one called One Wing. He is singing to his soon to be ex-lover about how their love affair has last one of its wings and can no longer fly. He is singing about how none of us can fly with just one wing. We have to be whole in order to soar. “One wing can never ever fly, dear. Neither yours nor mine.”This idea of being broken and of having only one wing has been a large part of my own personal mythology for decades. I saw it as a huge part of who I was…of what I came to experience on earth this time around. But that time is now over.Yesterday morning, I woke up fretting. Yes, I am in my personal version of heaven on earth right now. I am spending this week at Maya Tulum Resort in Tulum, Mexico. I am here for a yoga retreat with my favorite, beloved teacher. I prayed for God to send me a miracle (in the form of $50K) so that I could come this year and he did.And yet, I woke up yesterday fretting because my Facebook ads weren’t doing as well as I’d hoped. Seriously? I am in paradise and worried about my Facebook ads? But the Facebook ads are one of the keys to my business and so I do take them seriously.I come down the stairs from my ocean front room and what do I see lying at the bottom of the stairs but a struggling, baby bird. With one broken wing.I have been trained to pay attention to signs from nature and so my initial response was pretty much terror and, “WTF does that mean? I am struggling baby bird? Have I flown from the nest too soon?” Of course, I also felt terrible for the poor baby who was struggling in the sand.I looked around and found one of the groundskeeper (who spoke only Spanish) and I signaled him and tried to explain in my very broke Spanish there was a baby bird. “Un bebecito. Avion.” And I flapped my arms helplessly.He begrudgingly came with me and raked the sand around the bird. And then raked the baby bird gently. Then he looked at me and said, “Espero.” It flies. “Chico.” Baby. I nodded, “Yes, I know.”He then picked up the bird by the very tip of one wing and walked away. I followed sort of terrified of what he was going to do with the bird. Much to my relief (I think), he gently put the baby bird on the sand, off the path and under some ground cover.I’m not sure what else to do so I head off to yoga class. And I’m starting to break down into tears. What did that mean? Have I flown too soon? Should I have stayed in my corporate job longer? WTF?!Then I heard someone whistling at me. I turn around and it’s my yoga teacher, Angie Knight. I share with her the story of the baby bird and then how it was triggering all my fears about the future and what was I doing with my life?She just hugged me and smiled and held my hand as we walked down the path to the yoga hall.I kept an eye on the bird all day. I continued to feel just a little anxious all day. My heart beating a little too fast.At one point I walked by the baby bird and stopped to talk to it. As I did this, I heard a loud squawking above and looked up and it was its mama yelling at me! Telling me to leave her baby alone!I was so happy! I felt like I could finally relax – knowing that the baby bird was being watched over.I went on about my day. Chatted with some of the wonderful women at my retreat. Drank coconuts and sparkling water to prep for the sweat ceremony I was going to be in that night. But at some point in the later afternoon, on my way to my massage, I passed by the baby bird and it had passed.It’s hard to describe how it made me feel. I wasn’t terribly upset or surprised. And that may seem hard core or insensitive by that’s also life. It’s nature. Life is hard and paid is inevitable but the suffering because of it…that is our choice. In that moment, I chose to accept the baby bird’s passing as just part of the natural order of things.But my mind still fumbled around with the idea – trying to assign some deliberate, inspiring meaning to the whole event. What was the message of the story?Lying there on the massage table, as this beautiful Mayan woman named Elodia loving massage my belly and my power center back into it’s proper place, it finally came to me.The time of identifying myself as the broken bird was over. The age of seeing myself as the recovering addict and victim of family of origin were done. I am no longer broken.Just the previous day I had described myself to a woman as a “fledgling life coach.” Yeah, the time had come to stop doing that as well. I am no longer a fledgling but already in full, glorious flight. And the view from up here…let me tell, it is so freaking awesome. Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen Before.So, I ask you, what part of your story is ready to die? What parts of your past are you clinging to to tightly that you can’t see the real you that you’ve become? Notice today when you identify at the victim. As broken. And ask Spirit to lift you out of that story – so that you can soar to new heights and finally began to see.xoxo, Jenni BUPDATE: Right after I published this post on the world wide web, I ran over to the gift shop to buy some bug spray for my jungle/ruins/lagoon/canal float excursion that I was taking that day. As I was paying, I looked down at the jewelry case below and saw this necklace (note that it I am now wearing it 🙂
OH, and I went back and had a little ceremony and buried the sweet, baby bird.
xoxo, Jenni B