Reflections on Receiving, or, How My Kitten Just Used Up One Of His 9 Lives

Yesterday was a hard day.

The previous night, a month after losing Meadow, my remaining nearly-year-old kitten came home at 2:30 in the morning in shambles. He was missing his collar, front of his face bloody and battered, covered in some kind of smelly soot, and wheezing. I tried to clean him up a little and held him while he passed out and proceeded to moan-wheeze while he slept.

So in the morning I carried him around the block to the vet, they cleaned him up and discovered a big ole gash in the roof of his mouth. She thought maybe he got hit by a car. A friend thought maybe he got too close to something mechanical and it turned on. She said that we would have to get a specialty surgeon to sew it up before he’d be able to eat again.

The vet showed a colleague the photo she snapped on her phone. “Hey check out this soft palate injury.” And the other vet recognized it. She had worked in NYC, where apparently it’s not uncommon for cats to fall from high buildings. The impact somehow causes this injury. They usually treated it by installing a feeding tube for six weeks and letting it heal on its own.

So Indi got a feeding tube inserted through his neck, and I get to use a giant syringe to force liquified cat food down there three times a day for the next six weeks. Good thing the New Yorker was in the office that morning! It seems miraculous enough for me to claim it as divine assistance from my cosmic team.

While I waited for the procedure to be finished, I walked around the bottom of the building that my RV is parked on top of, about three stories up. (It’s an old warehouse and the parking lot up top has been retrofitted for a handful of nomadic residents.) Sure enough, there’s his collar laying on the pavement near the wall we’re parked up against. He fell three stories and landed right here.

But then, I can’t get my head around how he must have fallen three stories, broke the fall (at least in part) with his face, and then in shock and lots of pain, found his way all the way around the giant building, back up the ramp and home again to the door of the Glitterbago. That is stunningly badass. Apparently I did choose well to name him after Indiana Jones.

So I’m insanely impressed, and in awe, but also heartbroken again at all of this that he’s having to endure. I’m worried that he’ll be traumatized from it, and won’t be insanely bold and carefree any more. (He’s seriously the boldest and most carefree cat I think I’ve met. As an 8-week-old kitten he hitched a ride under a neighbor’s truck down the highway at 70 miles an hour. Thunderstorms? No big deal. His favorite playgrounds are 60-foot tall Live Oak trees. He’s basically Feline Chuck Norris.)

Since we got home yesterday afternoon, he’s been laying in the bed, wheezing and moaning and uncomfortable. I’ve been laying with him a lot. It seems to make a big difference in his comfort level. I’ve successfully fed him twice through his tube. And I’ve gotten very little work done.

I’m freshly aware, again, that I’m allowed to feel my feelings AND still show up. I got on a coaching call this morning with one of my clients and when he asked how I was I didn’t lie. I shared briefly what had happened and admitted that I was feeling sad, AND that I was ready to be a powerful coach for the next hour. That’s part of what I keep learning through experience. Feelings are part of being human. They are a wonderful gift of humanity. And they tend to crack us open to be even more lovable relatable powerful intimately-connecting beings, the more we allow ourselves to feel them and show up DURING our emotional experiences, rather than after we’ve tucked them away somewhere.

I’ve come a long way in the last few years, and I know that I still have a ways to go. There’s no rush. We get better at things by practicing them. So bring it on, life. I’m here to LIVE. Even if that means emotions. Hahaha what a sentence to type. Perhaps, *especially* if it means emotions? After all, joy is an emotion, too. And the depth at which we can be with sorrow is directly correlated to the degree to which we get to be with joy. They’re linked like that.

Even more, and this feels the scariest to type, a dear friend sponsored the vet visit. She probably saved Indi’s life. Every time I think of the magnitude of that gift, it makes me want to sob. It’s hard to be with - to stay present with that kind of love and generosity. It’s intense and I’m still learning. It’s part of why I haven’t yet gone back and written thank you notes to the beautiful souls who donated to Meadow’s cremation a month ago. It’s so. much. to. be. with. And I’m getting there. Slowly but surely. And life keeps setting up more learning opportunities for me. More opportunities for expansion, and working on all these metaphorical muscles. And getting to experience something I don’t have a better phrase for than Sacred Humility. And having a really strong desire lit in my belly that says “My God, I can’t wait to make this sort of a difference for other people the way it has been done for me.”

Receiving is one of the lessons that I know I’m here to work on in this life. (Along with Trust.) I still get triggered around these, although a lot less than even just a few years ago. And just like anything, we get to keep peeling back layers and stepping farther and farther towards the thing that scares us. Last year I started small and worked up slowly, practicing receiving and trust. It helped a lot to realize that the mere act of graciously and gratefully receiving can itself be such a GIFT to the giver.

It feels scary to talk about publicly. I have stories in my brain that like to remind me that I’m most loved when I’m most independent. When I don’t take up any space at all in anyone’s lives.

Through doing this inner work with coaches and spiritual mentors, I’ve learned to see that this isn’t actually the Truth. Even though it often feels like it. I’ve learned that when my impulse is to hide, to contract, to make myself smaller, to leave, to just shut my mouth to keep the peace, to deflect when people try to thank or acknowledge me, or go along with others - that it’s an old habitual impulse, one that comes from that old ingrained story. And that there are so many opportunities now for me to choose differently, to choose through the fears. The fears are just smoke and mirrors, designed to keep me small. But I didn’t come here to be small. I get to remind myself that it’s ok to take up space in other people’s lives. That for the most part, that’s actually what people want. That it’s a freaking KEY ingredient in healthy relationships between humans. And that taking up space can look a lot of different ways - with words, with emotions, with time, with money, with my physical body.

The beautiful thing is that it’s all ok. We’ve all got our own particular flavours of this work that we are here to do. And we’re all doing our best, side by side. Sometimes it’s messy. Most of the time it’s beautiful. And it’s actually part of what we are here for.