Flash floods and hugs

Flash Floods and Hugs

A different weekend, altogether. This one involved religion, hot penning and no drink.   The type of thing the counsellor recommended, in fact, when I mentioned to her that I had seen an advertisement in the newspaper for Healing Weekends, so to speak, for the divorced, the separated and the widowed. I rang the organization and it sounded good. So off I went.

Check in time at the Retreat Centre was 5 pm Friday.  Bed at eleven pm, up for 8 am breakfast each day.  I slung my case into my single ensuite bedroom, unpacked the travel kettle, the herbal tea, chocolate and fruit, bottled mineral water. So far so good.

First event; the organizers introduced themselves individually. Then half an hour of “getting to know you” games. We were broken up into small groups of three and assigned a mentor. Given notebooks and pens. In our small group, three of us, all women and a male mentor. We began the first session of discussion, and then it was off to our rooms to write whatever came into our minds.  This was to be the pattern for the weekend.  Talks given to the larger group, then breaking into our foursomes for further talk, then race to the rooms to pour out tears and words. There were group ceremonies, a religious service on Sunday morning. After that, a healing service. So many tears flowed over the weekend, I thought we would all be washed out of the Centre, down the grounds to the river and out to sea...  Over the weekend I wrote and wrote and wrote, cried and cried and cried.  In the small chapel where the closing ceremony was held, the air was so heavy with sorrow and anguish that I felt it lying across my shoulders and bowing down my head  like a blanket. When the hugging took place, I was enfolded in the arms of lovely men and nearly came unhinged altogether.

I don’t feel much different, if at all. I don’t feel any major shift, any major Zen.  I’ve learned that there are many people going through changes they hoped would never happen to them, never envisaged happening to them. But that’s life, isn’t it.   I didn’t experience any eureka moments. I met good people, very good people. I learned a lot. Hell, we even had some fun, what with the jokes and poems and dancing on the last night.

Goodbyes and hugs on Sunday afternoon. Back to reality. I can’t say that much has changed.  Back at home in my own bedroom, I re-read my scribblings. Then shredded the anger, the hurt, and the fear. Hoped that this intense weekend will somehow start something in me that has not yet been apparent; a feeling that I am doing the right thing, and that the future holds the promise of a new beginning.