Warning: Contains information of an emotional nature.
It’s been a long time, as I have said on a few occasions before. For nearly two years my website has been down - just a little landing page that has varied between – “I am taking time out and don’t know when I will be back” to “I am back, but not at full capacity, yet, please be patient.”
Some of you reading this will know the reasons for my absence and tenderness. For many first timers and other visitors, you may have no idea what led me to shut up shop and go into limp home mode for a little while - 2 years at the time of writing.
Now I am beginning to emerge from limp home I feel I can be more open with what’s been unfolding for me over the last 24 months. Also, as I am starting to do more workshops, without this kind of transparency, it is like a secret being held in the room when I am working, that some know and some don’t. That kind of energy is not always useful in the room with Constellation energy, as the field knows EVERYTHING!
Not that everyone I work with has to be aware of my story, but I have been conscious of my personal protectiveness around this disclosure, as it is so large to digest and I don’t want to make it all about ME.
As I work with a business rebrand, an offering update and the practice of more visibility in my work, it is the right time to share the changes that the last two years has brought into my world. Especially as I recently witnessed the potential this reticence had to cloud the field for a participant’s piece of work that related, in part, to my recent history.
In this case, sharing the ‘unspoken, but known in the room to some’ was fundamental. It completely shifted the dynamic of the piece of work back to the participant and away from a field of people who were holding the information that was not theirs to carry. The one’s to whom it did not belong no longer had to carry it on my, or anyone else’s behalf, and the relief was palpable.
So, for those of you who don’t know, the sudden and unexpected event that took me to my knees and invited me to re-evaluate everything I had ever known, was the loss of Richard, my husband of 3 and a half years, to suicide in the of June 2022.
As one can imagine, my world tipped upside down in an instant. It had been slowly unravelling before, as I had watched him struggle with deep dark depression for months before that. My heart ached for him as I watched him live a shadowy half-life, finding no joy in anything. It was like a cancer had got into his brain and was slowly taking him away, and then it did take him. The love of my life, we had waited 25 years to be together, now gone forever…
I will not go into details, as they are unnecessary in this narrative, suffice it to say I was spared finding him, so that part is not something I have had to process like some do. I wish, with every fibre of my being the outcome could have been different, but I know that I would never want anyone to live the, not even half-life that his life had become.
That is not to condone what happened, but to explain that for me there is something about quality of life over quantity - who am I to judge in these circumstances what calls one into life, or otherwise? The road to where Richard got to only he will know, and is full of more twists and turns that I will ever know in this lifetime. Yes he was getting help, yes we did have interventions, but something so much bigger than him or me had him and I completely honour his path and fate in this lifetime.
For another blog post I may recount some of this journey, as it relates fundamentally to the systemic constellation process, and demonstrates the power of this work. But, for now, I am not ready to comment further, suicide, as a subject in and of itself is an emotive one and not for this blog. Let’s just say that in the aftermath of such a loss in the system it’s a rollercoaster ride like no other and has ripple effects on family and friends far and wide.
As the days and weeks unfolded without the support of family and friends I would never have got through. Today, 2 years after the event at the time of writing, I feel so eternally grateful for their love, generosity of spirit and the understanding that continues to surround and hold me. Thank you to all of you, there in person, and in spirit, from the bottom of my heart.
My personal journey through this has been deep and profound and is only just at the beginning. I am under no illusions that this process has an end, just a change in the quality of my relationship with it. I have been called to dive deeply into the core of my understandings. Without the knowledge already gained from the path I have walked thus far, I would certainly be in a very different place than I am today – it was like life had me in training for that moment and beyond.
It is ironic that someone’s call to death, for me, heralded a call to my life. What this will look like long term remains to be seen – I am still in very early days and in unchartered territory. Without doubt this event has shaped who I have become today, who I am becoming and it will continue to echo and impact the nature of my work to levels I am only just beginning to discover.
I am aware that life does not give you this kind of wake up call for no reason (although, at times, I’d quite like it to be different). I face my ever-present humanness and limitations and emotions every single day, with humility and as much grace as I can muster.
Sometimes that grace involves the screaming hab jabs, throwing things and cursing the world with some very colourful language, sometimes it involves not being able to move from my couch or my bed, sometimes it involves great pieces of work and inspiration. I never know what the Goddess will call forth from me, although couch and bed days are less common than they were.
Always I am mindful that my process is a mirror of a world going through it’s own re- birthing of some kind - a microcosm of the macrocosm. I know that when I alchemise through some particularly scratchy, stretchy uncomfortable piece, then it seeds the homeopathic possibility of that movement into the field of consciousness of healing for others on a similar trajectory. When I can celebrate a breakthrough, it offers the resonance of that to a the field of possibility, so that it is not all trouble and strife. We live in a polarised world, the nature of the manifest is polarity, it is not that there will never be contrast, it is how we relate to, and navigate the contrast that counts.
In the deep, radical letting go that the new paradigm thrust upon me, my life has fundamentally changed. In a strange, peculiar kind of way, my life has got better, different better I could call it, but better. It may seem very strange to say this; it’s not that I do not miss Richard every day, that the seemingly senseless nature of what happened doesn’t frustrate the living hell out of me, it’s because I think, if not better, then what? My heart stays open, my commitment to love, true, even in the face of all of it. There is so much more to this world than we are aware of, and who am I to judge?
In April 2023 I sold my wonderful apartment in Whilton Lodge and said goodbye to the dreams of a regenerative market garden and wellbeing business that had been the inception of Richard and I. I have been renting the most amazing farmhouse in 1.25 acres in the Bedfordshire countryside and this space has been a refuge of healing for myself and my cats - yes I am now a mad cat lady, a story for a different blog I am sure! I have the gift of being here for another year, crafting the new iteration of erhconstellations and Elaine R Harris, the new dreams of what I want to birth into being and drinking in the sunsets and sunrises that grace the sky.
I hope that this blog has given those of you who have been curious, and those of you who knew nothing, some context of what wants to happen here.
In love, light and truth
Namaste
Elaine
Sending love and hope for the re-birthing. Big hug from Singapore x