Gratitude

Wow, I got a surprising e-mail today, from a guy I taught with and performed with at Spotlight before I was diagnosed with cancer. He e-mailed me this morning because he had a dream about me and woke up thinking about me and our friendship. And he felt compelled to write to me, immediately.

His expression of gratitude was heartfelt and sincere: “I want to thank you for all the wonderful things you gave to me both tangible and emotional. What I am most grateful for is the unconditional love you gave me. And I can truly say that I loved you too and still do. You were a real friend and that still resonates with me four years later.” He also listed out many things he respected in me.

While it feels amazing to have someone write something like that to you no matter what, the thing I’ve been noticing the last few years is that people are coming back to me with gratitude on something that was a direct output of conscious changes I was making in my Self. By the time I met this person now showering me with gratitude, I had been working for years to open my heart back up to people. Not for falling in love in the romantic sense. At that point in my life, about six years ago, I realized that I had a great capacity for sharing a bright, energetic, and empowering energy with others. At first, when I tried to share my bright energy to help people, especially when I directed it right at someone to help them through a difficulty, it drained me completely and I had to physically rest and rejuvenate for hours after helping someone though something truly tumultuous to their emotions – usually death and divorce. Eventually I seemed to condition myself a little to give energy and still retain a little for myself, but it wasn’t until I started thinking and visualizing it as emitting unconditional love into the world that I finally understood the essence. When you are putting yourself out there with the simple intent of emitting unconditional love to everything around you, you get unconditional love back, even if it’s only your own love bouncing back to you from nature or something.

So the fact that this friend was writing to tell me how grateful he was for exactly what I was trying to be was more amazing that I can even express. But the really cool thing is that that has been happening more and more over time, which means I’m getting better at it.  How cool is that?!?

Regret

The other part of my friend’s gratitude e-mail was actually seeking forgiveness. He felt he had been immature and selfish during our friendship, especially during a very important dancesport competition we took our students to. And he was filled with regret at not “being a better friend” when I was diagnosed with cancer. Like a lot of people, many of my close friends really, this friend shied away from hearing about the diagnosis. I didn’t feel abandoned by anyone during treatment. Everyone deals with that sort of thing differently, and several of my closest friends, people I knew for years and years before diagnosis and who are still good friends of mine now, were so freaked out at the diagnosis that they simply had no concept of how to react. Hell, even having been through it, I don’t know how to react when someone tells me they have or have had cancer, even though that happens a lot more now than before. It’s just a freaky scary thing. And you know, there actually quite a few people I have experienced a heart connection with, and those people in particular never abandoned me, regardless of whether or not they were nearby providing friendship and support during treatment. Once there’s a real heart connection, that person becomes a part of my heart and is with me always.  The friend sending me this e-mail is a part of my heart because he was my dance partner for the most spiritual group experience I even had prior to CGW, it was Experiential Spirituality to the greatest degree possible, I think.

Forgiveness

How I replied to this e-mail that so openly expressed deep gratitude AND regret was important to me. Besides explaining how I felt the friends near and dear to my heart such as he were always with me providing support even when they weren’t physically there, it was also important to make clear that I had understood where he was in his life when we were teaching and dancing together, and that there was no reason to chastise himself for anything he thought was immature or unsupportive in that friendship. And most importantly, he needed to understand that our bolero was the most profound experience I have ever had on the dance floor and was why he will always be in my heart. I’m not going to copy the entire message here, but a few sentences were really poignant to the nature of our relationship, and I want to include a couple of them here to give an example of just deep an emotional connection to someone can be.

“You were a very good friend and you will always be near and dear to my heart because of our bolero, which was just so important to me personally I will never, never forget it. It’s one of my favorite memories actually, and I think of this every time I see Artie’s family or go to his gravesite . . . I had this unbelievable heart connection with you and with what you were in the dance . . . ach, and then that twisty spiral down to the floor held in your arms and leaning my head on your shoulder to cry, my god that was a completely unforgettable experience, and more intimate than anything I’ve shared with anyone since Artie died. For me, we shared something practically other-worldly together on the dance floor, and you will always, always be with me in my heart because of it. Thank you.”