Saturday, January 31, 2009

Down the rabbit hole

I have been doing a great deal of thinking about the rabbit hole . First what is a rabbit hole according ? I feel like it is the dark place that we go into when we hear any challenging and hard to hear news about ourselves, our family and loved ones, our planet etc... . This week, I learned that my second dog Roxie has a very small mast cell tumor on her left side . As you can imagine, this news sent me down the rabbit hole for so many different reasons. Pixie, our fairy dog, was diagnosed with this condition about two years ago and this turned our lives upside down. We changed so many things about our lifestyle, and theirs as a result. I thought, here we go again, what are we going to go through now. What did we do wrong that Roxie has it now. Don't get me wrong, I know , that all of the changes that we made , were important and necessary and have kept Pixie alive and well for over two years. However, it is not easy to go through these changes and now again. Perhaps another time, I will write about the dogs and mast cell tumors, Today, I just want to talk about how to work with the rabbit hole . I feel like we can use it to our advantage. Take the energy of everything that could go wrong and focus on what could go differently.
As a planet, we have entered the rabbit holes of scarcity, poverty, ill health, revenge and isolation. I believe that the past presidential elections allowed us to escape our individual holes and focus on a hopeful turn around. We were diverted in a glorous way by the grace and beauty of the Obama family. However they have alot of work to do and they cannot save all of us. We must individually be responsible for getting out of our own ways. We are all facing our own versions of "Roxie's health" . What if these versions are simply challenges to get us out of our ruts and really look at what's next. The universe has an amazing way of guiding us.
Perhaps, if you are faced with losing a job. there were things about that employment that you never liked and now you have a chance to find what you really love.
What if you are ill and already knew that your lifestyle was unhealthy and know you can make the changes to live better. What if the rabbit hole is simply one version of the future and we can change that version. What if none of this is really bad or good and simply information that we can choose to use and not.

For us with roxie, we now get to choose about very practical things like surgery or not, rabies vaccinations, changing our vet to one that matches our desires more clearly or even on a bigger scale. What if part of my work, is to begin doing pet bereavement and loss counseling. Perhaps, this is work that I would never have gotten to without this nudge from the universe. I adore my dogs and perhaps they are quiding this gently and lovingly for me. I feel like the rabbit hole mirror has many dimensions and we get to choose our focus. So what will yours be. Staying in the darkness or noticing that there the shades of light?