Abandonment.

When Emma came through during my first plant medicine journey the first words she said were ‘I’m glad you didn’t get another dog. You’re not very good with dogs’. She would know. A few days ago I wrote about my extreme selfishness the night she died and every time I go back there, it breaks me. My soul is ripped open again and my eyes water and a good sob is on the other side of the well of regret and sorrow rising in my throat – because I can never make it right with her. That’s what kills me. She is gone. And even though I’m connected to her spirit, I can never get that physical moment back. Because this isn’t just about making it right with her. It’s also about making it right with me. The better person I want to be. I hate that person — that sliver of a person I was in that purely selfish instance, and I don’t know how to get past this or if I ever will. Maybe I’m not meant to. At least not yet. In fact, I have the unmistakable sense that my time with Emma was about so much more than the arc of my relationship with her. I am beginning to understand that my relationship with Emma was the outward manifestation of what was happening in my relationship with me, and that’s what she is here to teach me. Because when I abandoned Emma in her weakest, most vulnerable moment, I was also abandoning me.