I took off my earth suit and carefully draped it over the back of the chair. Such an encumbrance. Whew. It had been a long incarnation and it still wasn’t over. I wanted to have a few Hershey Kisses but realized that my mouth came off with the suit. Chocolate would have to wait. Now I wanted to reflect on something deeply.

What was I missing? Where had I taken such a wrong turn? Did answers exist when the questions themselves were so nebulous? I looked carefully at the suit. It looked like me; whether it sounded like me I would never know. Without me in it, it was soundless. The eyes were expressionless. I feared touching it. The very idea made my skin crawl, but I was skinless at the moment.

Also, and this may strike you as odd, the feelings I had about the suit weren’t coming out in words because the brain remained inside. Now I was hypersentient and reality clearly had nothing to do with the brain. The good thing was I didn’t need to go to the bathroom; I had plenty of time to experience life outside the suit.

I looked at the suit, neatly inanimate, waiting for….what? The suit was dressed in a pair of black slacks and a rose colored shirt. Around its neck was a medallion made of carved stone. The hair was mostly silver; obviously it had been dark brown at some point in its travails on earth. No, I didn’t say travels, but travails. For my sensate Self knew this woman more intimately now that it was no longer wearing “her.”

It knew her sorrows and her shortcomings, her persistence, her agonies in the Garden, the brief respites from the burdens she had chosen to carry. It wanted her to know that no matter what she did or didn’t do, she was loved.

I now stepped back from the earth suit and begin seeing images of myself wearing it.  I saw myself standing before an open grave as my daughter’s small casket was lowered into the ground. Brave I was and barely able to tolerate breathing. It happens again. I stand during an ice storm as my husband’s coffin is lowered into the same space from her, just inches away. Now they are together. My son and I are strong. What choice do we have but to breathe?

I see her writing a book, night after night spent at the keyboard, healing herself by her own hand. Carefully recording what will be her rebirth. The earth suit will remain the same although it will continue to age. I think there must be a number on it somewhere because I get the sense she has been running a race. I slowly approach the suit, turning it over to see what number she was, but there is no number. Puzzled, I stepped back into the position of witness. Oh, how I longed to communicate to her that winning or surviving was not why she wore the suit. She could drop every idea she had ever had about proving that she was strong enough to endure unto the end. There was no trophy; there was no victory. There was only dropping the suit.

I knew I had to put it back on, just as I knew that one day I would be finished with it. Before I did, though, I sent strong messages to her. “The only thing you need to do is love yourself while wearing this earth suit. Nothing else matters. You are entirely safe. If you can remember, try and let others know the greatest secret on earth. The only reason to wear the suit is to learn to love yourself. Everything else falls into place.

I stepped gently back into the suit. I was quickly forgetting all about this suspension of disbelief; that is how it goes. All I ever had to do was love myself.