Auntie Jade…

I am Auntie Jade. I am the unmarried spinster who sits in the corner and watches the couples dance. I am the one who sees the dalliances and the drama and the turmoil. I am not seen, because I do not exist as part of a couple. I am also the one the young turn to when they want the truth and the old turn away from when they want to avoid it. I seem harsh to some, but it is only a shield for the Warrior I have had to be to survive: independent, opinionated, fierce and brash. I am empathic, and when the morphing to be accepted finally ceased to work because my Soul cried to know its own Truth I became a pariah, an outlier, fitting in nowhere.

So I made my own place. Owned my own heart, loved my own Soul, learned to Dance alone, for there was not another who could, or would, because I would no longer become what they wanted or needed at the cost of my own Being.

You think I am bereft of passion and romance but oh! If you only knew how deeply I love, you would run from the power of that too. Do not mistake a desire to be loved wholly and completely and purely for being the passionate, feral, outrageous Being that I am for one who cannot, will not, does not love. I love with a fierceness and a fire that has rarely been matched. If you love me, you risk burning too.

I fear sometimes I have lost my compassion in my quest for truth, in my search for all that is Real. In my need to be whole, to be Seen, to be loved I have looked in the mirror, and in looking in it can no longer look away from the pain, the heartache, the selfish motivations brought on by deep, hidden needs that we all experience. Having done at least part of this inner reflecting though, has caused me to become impatient with those who refuse to look – at themselves, at their lives, at their choices. It is deeply ironic that at the times I am most angry with my loved ones for their choices it is also the time when the tears fall unbidden because I cannot help them. Becoming whole is a singular path; we cannot be helped along it. It can only be witnessed, and honored as the Sacred act that it is. I pray for patience because their pain breaks my heart.

I am Auntie Jade. I am one of many invisible Aunties and Uncles. Look for us in the corners and along the sides of the walls and in the kitchens making tea. Look behind the stern countenances and the strange exuberances and the oft-times eccentricities that we enact to allow our Souls the freedom they require. Please. Look beyond these things and love us, because our hearts are huge and they break, daily, hourly, for all the grief in the world. See us. We are ever so willing to See you, in all your beautiful Sacred woundedness.