This is a violet amethyst. Jalna gave it to me, and she says it is a powerful healer and protector. It's said to enhance psychic abilities and spiritual awareness as well as clear your aura and calm your mind. Most amethysts come from geodes and are found primarily in Brazil .

"Aren't you over him yet, Sadie?"
Healing the Heart on the Slow Track

By Sensuous Sadie
SensuousSadie@aol.com 
www.sensuoussadie.com 

This is one of several postscripts to my column series called "My Travels with Griffin." It's the story of my relationship with Griffin, with a focus on our mutual exploration of BDSM and spirituality. You don't have to read them in order, but it might make more sense to do so. I stopped sending these to Griffin for approval as of this column because he hadn't responded specifically to any of them since he left me. However, he did say that I should look inside myself and speak my truth, which I have done.

"Aren't you over him yet, Sadie?" This from my friend Cameron as we wandered through the parking lot to my car. I hate questions like these, especially when they come out of left field. "No Cameron, I'm not over it yet," I replied, "I can't stop loving Griffin just because he left me or did things I don't like." Maybe Cameron can do that, but I can't, I won't. Griffin was my Dominant and my best friend. Denying my feelings would mean denying him.

I understand Cameron's concern. He wants me to be "all better." No more grief, no more sadness. Seeing me this down is hard for him to be present with; he wants to get away from it as fast as possible. I want to get away from it as fast as possible too. I have searched everywhere I know for a solution. I unburdened my heart to a counselor. I kept at my work with a grim determination. I started a new hobby and even indulged in a hot tub mini scene with a friend. Maybe all these things are helping; maybe they are just diversions. I'm a heck of a lot better than three months ago, but no, I'm not "all better"

My friend Jalna helped with the "heal up Sadie" effort by giving me a big chunky crystal. It looks like rock candy dipped in Welch's grape juice. The lines running through it tell me that it would shatter easily, and that's how I know this little rock is a physical manifestation of what beats inside my chest. Oh how I wish my heart was the living warmth it was a year ago. The last time my heart was broken it took years to fully recover. Perhaps this time will take years too. My friends have little patience left, but can you make healing happen faster? I don't think so. Surely there can be no tears left in me; heck I couldn't have imagined there were so many in me to begin with. Still they come.

The reason I'm not "over it" is because even though Griffin left me in February, we continued to wrangle for months. He loved and missed me he said − even though it was he who left me − and I took that as hope for reconciliation. I was wrong. But it's more than just my grieving heart. This experience has changed something inside me, or at least taken me too near a precipice of irrevocable damage. I think of myself in the story of Fiddler on the Roof. It is the story of Tevye, the father of three daughters in the Russian village of Anatevka. His first daughter, instead of waiting for him to choose a husband for her, asks for his blessing for the man of her choice. Tevye struggles with this, but gives his blessing, after all he wants her to be happy. His second daughter falls in love with a teacher, who while he is a political rabble rouser, is fortunately at least Jewish. Tevye reluctantly gives his blessing, but it is a great and painful stretch to his traditional values. Finally his youngest daughter falls in love with a young Russian, something which in the time of violent pogroms Tevye simply cannot abide. He knows if he bends this far, he will break. So he refuses his blessing to his youngest daughter's union, even though it also breaks his own heart to do so.

I too have also reached my near to breaking point. I will survive this loss of faith, but I simply cannot go through this again. If I do, I know that I, like Tevye, will break. I won't die or anything that dramatic, but I would lose the joy and spirit that makes me who I am. The thought, the fear of this brings me to tears again and again. The fear grips me so because I quite simply do not have the skills it takes to choose a healthier relationship; at least not now. That realization is sobering, and so very sad. My friend and fellow writer Rich Umbaugh said about his divorce that, "I was convinced I was going to turn into one of those hermit types who fights their pain with isolation and distrust. Even so, I took care of myself, didn't ask too much of the world and did the things I had to do − got up, went to work, held onto my ties with the fetish community − and in the end the naturally gregarious part of me reawakened." I hold on tightly to Rick's words, because I want nothing more than to be rekindled as he was.

Another friend and author, Justin Tanis, told me that the one thing that helped his ailing heart was to make sure that he continued to do things that he felt passionate about, which in his case was travel and his passion for art. On the advice of a friend of his on this same issue, he visited an art museum and spent a long time contemplating a beautiful painting. He said that it reminded him that heartbreak and living through it have always been a part of the lives of human beings, and that it took him out of his enclosed world an into the larger world that is full of so many beautiful and magical things. This, even in the midst of pain.

So then when will I get over it? Maybe when I'm ready to I guess, when God has lifted this burden from me. I sometimes wish I didn't feel things so very deeply, but Rick reminded me, "Don't be afraid to feel the pain, that's part of life. Don't be afraid to cry, the tears wash away the pain. Your grief is immense because it is in proportion to the love you had for him."

I know of no easy fix to move the process one iota faster. Cameron thinks relationships end just like a movie, over and done with clean precision. I think they're more like a tipping over a refrigerator. It takes a few good pushes before the darn thing goes over. Despite my best efforts I've not been able to get Griffin to tell me why he left with just an e-mail left behind. In vain hopes I sent him an amends for not having been able to wait for more than three months, but he rejected that too, saying it was "not up to his standards." I finally gave up and stopped reaching out. Surely nothing I have done could have been so sinful as to deserve this.

Instead I am practicing the Taoist analogy of water, which flows and goes its way, not pushing or trying to make things happen, but moving around and through things, until in the end the greatest boulder is eroded away, or in this case my heart of petrified wood will grow a flower, and then maybe a flower garden. I will always love Griffin, and I will plant a bulb there in his memory, but the other blossoms will be of my own making, in this next life that God, willing, will bring me.

In my last column Hell Hath no Fury like a Submissive Scorned, I wrote about how I took a hammer to the beaded collar that Griffin gave me. A year later I put the beads in this bottle as a way of healing that rage and moving on. The bottle is sitting on a handmade birch labyrinth.

~~~

I'm less likely to judge another person when I remember that I'm always working with insufficient information. Just as every tree has roots that are out of site, underground, so does every person have roots the eye can't see. It's important for me to remember, when the hanging judge enters the courtroom, that this is equally true about me. 
~ Sy Safransky, Editor, the Sun

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Read the SCENEprofiles Interview with author Rick Umbaugh at:
http://sensuoussadie.com/interviews/rickumbaughinterview.htm

Rick's Articles:

The Nature of Dominance...
http://www.orlandomunch.com/PowerLines/Issue_34/page2.html 

The Art of S/M
http://www.domsubfriends.com/library/artofsm.shtml 

~~

Read the SCENEprofiles Interview with Justin Tanis, Author of Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith 
http://sensuoussadie.com/interviews/justintanisinterview.htm


Read Justin's article Freedom, Glorious Freedom:
http://sensuoussadie.com/articles/justintanisfreedom.htm



Sensuous Sadie is the author of It's Not About the Whip: Love, Sex, and Spirituality in the BDSM Scene. Read an excerpt at http://www.trafford.com/robots/03-0551.html . She is the founder and leader (1999 - 2001) of Rose & Thorn, Vermont's first BDSM group. Comments, compliments and complaints, as well as requests for reprinting can be addressed to her at SensuousSadie@aol.com  or visit her website at www.sensuoussadie.com . Sadie believes the universe is abundant, and that sharing information freely is part of this abundance, so she allows reprints of her writing in most venues.

Copyright July, 2004 Sadie Sez Publications