remover_of_sorrows unhinged white_tara number five the buddha (female) the dharma (mahamudra) the sangha (all humanity) until all beings are free so do i remain to be the boat the bridge the vessel 200909 ... unhinged my heart was heavy after calling my mother. her ongoing illness has made her bitter and hopeless. when i was young i only saw her laughter (which when it was directed at me stung and rankled but i realized later in life was never ill_intentioned. just not all that skillful for highly sensitive child with depressive tendencies) and her brave face and her pantry magic that made my mouth water. and the constant encouragement of anything creative especially in the face of pain and struggle. (calligraphy nibs when i brought a calligraphy book home from my grade school library. countless empty journals to encourage my writing before the internet, getting her violin out of the attic when i came home from school raving about the girl i saw playing one at the orchestra recruitment assembly). me and my brother stretched her patience thin in our adolescences but i never caught even a whiff of bitterness or hopelessness. we gave her reason upon reason upon reason to be frustrated with us but it was always rooted in love. her health has taken all kind of precipitous detours in the last decade. the chronic headaches with no real solutions from her doctors (the lingering shadow of privatized healthcare creating perverse incentives that led her mother to an early and painful death echoing in both our ears) added the bitter hopelessness. my warrior mother who made magic with canned goods and whatever was in the discount bin at the craft store was depleted to....defeated by.... i try to be the good daughter but my last visit was fraught. she asked me if i was coming for christmas this year. covid19 makes the idea of airports and airplanes too much to bear; they already give me panic attacks. the way she said 'i totally understand' was so...loving...mothering...understanding...i feel like a horrible daughter for not being brave enough to get on an airplane. i pull this white_tara from my tarot but i find any excuse not to sit the momentum of my daily practice finally nudges me past the excuses from the very beginning from the refuge vows i am crying but by the time i get to white_tara (19) remover of sorrows i am crying so hard i can barely utter the mantra the dramatic_irony of that was not lost on me but only after she uttered to my soul 'the sun always comes back' and the next tara took her place transformer_of_poisons the tarot always gives me the right taras in the right order the surrender of prayer is the only thing making my life bearable right now ah_so 201106 what's it to you? who go blather from