The Unloved Life: The Hidden Gold We All Have, But Can't See

At this point in my life there are a good number of poets, living and dead, whose work has set my heart on fire. 

But, there are a handful poems I’ve encountered along the way that have actually saved my life. 

They carried a message that significantly shifted the way I related to myself or the world around me, and have stuck with me, whispering to me when I feel lost, and never letting me forget what matters most to my soul.

I will share a few more of them with you at the end of this letter, but I want to open with one in particular.

It is “The Unlived Life” by Dawna Markova. In it, she writes:

I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

Arriving on my deathbed with grief for my own “unlived life” has always been my greatest fear. 

That fear has been a bane of suffering in some ways, because of course, there are infinite lovers to pursue in this wild game we get to play in our unique configurations of soul and skin and circumstance that we are born into for an unknown duration of time. I don’t (only) mean people when I say ‘lovers’. I mean lovers as The Beloved in so many forms: as every path of potential experience and study that I find myself attracted to.

In my personal skin-soul configuration, I am drawn to pursue a love affair with the dharma of dancing on a stage in outrageous regalia and screaming my passion for self-expression into a microphone in front of a live audience of hundreds of people to help them feel empowered to dance freely, too. 
Simultaneously, I long to throw my cell phone off of a cliffside, forget the world of algorithms and schedules, and sit in silence and solitude to read great books and finger paint naked with only the sunlight streaming in the windows to witness me.

I want to marry my fiance this year, get pregnant, and nurse my infant daughter on my breast, scars and all, unconditionally loved and safe, and throw myself into the splendor of motherhood and marriage. And, simultaneously, I fantasize about surrendering every plan and possession I have, and venturing off into the wild blue yonder (the Pyrenees mountains in South France, for example) on a lifelong quest for the mysteries of the Holy Grail. There I am in that dream, smoking a pipe with sandpaper knuckles and leaving only traces of herbal smoke over the trodden soil as my legacy.

You can see how a fear of ‘The Unlived Life’ could work against my favor. 
(If you feel me on this, read the Sylvia Plath quote at the bottom of this email, which tempers this dilemma with a powerful sobriety) 

But, its great gift is that the poem is a tuning fork.
It reminds me, with tremendous gravity, to constantly check in with my day-to-day choices: 
- What IS the “unlived life” that I cannot bear to take to the grave? 
- What truly, in my heart of hearts, do I know I must choose for myself here and now to honor the prayer God placed in me to live? 

I thought about this poem today in the shower, because I read a heartbreaking journal entry last night by my father, Brian. It was written on his 60th birthday. He wrote of the future disappearing for him, and how he missed the sense of it.

He died suddenly, 4 years later, of brain cancer during the pandemic, with many lifelong projects unfinished. He was a brilliant mathematician and poet. His mind was a magical vault of distinctive genius that I will never find anywhere on this planet again, in any book or any other person. I will miss him forever. 

But, what aches most in reading his sentiments about his own unlived life, is how hard he was on himself for what he had not done “right”. And, how much that self-judgment and pain clouded his ability to love and enjoy himself with the time he had.

My singular wish for my father (save the option to bend fate and grant him 30 more years of life), was that he could have ENJOYED HIMSELF. So much more than he did.

As I towel dried and contemplated this sorrow, ‘The Unlived Life’ came back to mind, continuing to teach me after all of these years, as great poems will do.

And a greater tragedy dawned on my mind: 

This, I now recognize, is the tragedy I feel for my father and risk daily for myself as I continually strive to be better and do more in order to seize the audacious and elusive dreams of my life’s dharma. 
At night, when I lay my head down for bed:
Am I celebrating the good that I have done? 
Am I thanking life for the abundance that is here, now? 
Am I being kind to myself by actively treasuring my body and heart in their current shape and process?
Am I giving thanks to the current challenges that are shaping my development? Or simply curse them and wish them away?

The truth is that, when I am unconscious (which is, like most people, more often than I think) I fall into frequent patterns of self-judgment as I assess my daily achievements. More nights than I am proud to admit, I go to bed lamenting what I could have done better, or scolding myself for forgetting to do things l think I should have done by now. I even chastise myself for not doing more “self care”! 

And yet, even the shadow-shamed bedtime part of me that laments her perceived failures and shortcomings is a part of my Unloved Life that not only deserves my gratitude and acceptance, but needs it, most of all. 

The Unloved Life is a sneaky maze of unconscious and unfortunate suffering. 

And, at the heart of its labyrinth, is the real gold: the sweet nectar of life that only our loving presence can find. 

The Unloved Life contains all of the abundance we overlook in our hunger for more wealth and prosperity. It is the life lived by the parts of the self that we aren’t proud to show other people, or share. It is the life lived by the areas of the body that we scrutinize in the mirror. It is the life of our exiled self, cast into the shadow by the idea of who we want to become, or who we would rather be.

It is our greatest error as human beings that becomes our greatest regret. And some of our greatest gifts sit in it, never to be received and put to good use, because of our own self rejection.

I know this personally, not only because I watched my father struggle so much to love himself before he died too soon, but because, like the majority of us lucky ones who live to see gray hair, my 40 years of life contain many lifetimes marked by small, evolutionary deaths.

When I look back on the odyssey of my soul, I can see now that I have many lives I got to live, with many lovers (people, pursuits, and places) that have made me into a well-lived woman. 
But, did I enjoy the woman I was in each chapter? 
Did I celebrate her often?
Did I take good care of her? Was I proud to claim all of her? 
The answer is no, not enough.
_

I had my breast implants removed last week, and the process has yielded many valuable little tales, which I will begin posting in the days to come on Substack. 

In the weeks before they were removed, a surprising grieving process began. As I prepared to carve new scars into my chest, and once again choose to violate my flesh to change the form that had grown to feel natural to me for 17.5 years, I felt the lucidity that death provides begin to clarify my sight. 

Suddenly, I could see how unkind I had been to my sacred body over the past two decades. As beautiful as I always was, I often couldn’t see it. Most days, I scrutinized my perceived insufficiencies and privately compared myself to anyone who was different… More fit, more natural, younger, prettier, etc. etc. etc. 

With humility, I began to atone to the goddess who always breathed through my bones. I grieved the lost time I could have spent cherishing and enjoying the woman I had been as I was living in her many forms: 

The fertile maiden, the embodied sculpture of Venus, the hungry one, the doll, the addict, the poet, the wild woman, the lost girl, and most of all.. the 23 year old who was so unhappy with herself she underwent surgery to be more socially and sexually accepted.

And I vowed through this process to make it my devotion to love this body, as it is, as this person, that I currently am, in THIS life, that I live now. 

It is a relatively new sadhana of catching and illuminating the deeply grooved mechanisms that shape the Unloved Life. 
It requires that I hone my awareness, and that I intercept judgment and redirect the energy of that impulse into blessings upon every part of who I am, and gratitude for every aspect of what currently is. 
It requires that I look into the shadows where I have cast out parts of me that feel too big, too painful, or too broken, and I bless them home with the light of my own curious, unconditional love. 

It is a work in progress, and will be for some time. 

But it is the great, subtle work of the gentlest and most accessible kind of transformation: not to change who I am and what my circumstances are, but to transform the way I experience my own life and the vast idiosyncrasies that comprise the full spectrum of me. 

No one on their deathbed wishes they lived an entirely different life. 

They may wish they lived more of the life they truly desired.. 

But the most common regret people express is the wish that they enjoyed themselves, and the life they already lived MORE.

Today, I invite you to look into the self-made shadow, and ask:

* What is hiding from me in here? 
* What in my life have I cast out of the light of my love with my own judgment or rejection?
* What is the Unloved Life that waits for me to recognize it, appreciate it, and live it fully now? 
* Where do my thoughts fixate on what I wish was different or better, and how can I replace them with presence to all of the goodness that is already here? 

Look into the shadow like you’re approaching a cave with buried treasure. 
And then maybe, write a poem about what you find there ;) 

*But! before you go spelunking into the shadow world to retrieve your Unloved Life, check out the announcements below (they’re worth it, I promise), and then enjoy some more poetry shares, as promised--

____

Speaking of poetry-writing, shadow-work, and hidden gold.. 

I am offering my first ever public poetry class next Wednesday evening for FREE! 

I have led a few of these in Fit For Service and other event spaces I have hosted, and they always produce so much magic. One of my intentions for 2024 is to create more accessible experiences for people to work with me. Last month I offered an ecstatic dance at Kuya (the live recording is coming soon for download!) and this month is for the dragon poets out there. 

And, for those of you who might not believe you qualify as a 'dragon poet', here is a plot twist: YOU DO. If you are alive, and you can put words together, you have one sleeping inside of you.

Everybody has a personal "dragon", and no two of them are the same. This primordial energy contains the greatest source of your power, and life fore energy.

And I want to help you connect with it and give it a voice that will help you enjoy the gold that is hidden in your shadow a lot more. 

In honor of the Chinese New Year next week that ushers in The Year of the Dragon, join me in preparing a proper invocation for a new cycle of life, 
join me next Weds. Feb 7th at 6:30pm CST for this 

FREE Poetry Workshop: ‘The Dragon Speaks.’ 

REGISTER HERE: https://lu.ma/dragonpoets

 

My Big Gift for 2024

This March, in Fit For Service, I have the great privilege of designing and hosting a 13-week program on ‘Emotional Fitness’, which will culminate in a transformative live retreat with our signature FFS Summit in Montana. 

I will be sharing more about what is on the inside of this program in other channels soon, but if you like the idea of reclaiming your unloved life, or giving a voice to your inner dragon, you’re going to love what I put together for this curriculum. I have never offered something as deep and involved as this journey will be. If you have ever wanted to work with me for guidance, coaching, or experiences in any form, this will be the best I have to give.

Check it out here: www.fitforservice.com 

More Writing That Literally Saved my Life: 

Sylvia Plath’s Fig Tree excerpt (an antidote to any bitterness in the medicine of The Unlived Life by Dawna Markova):

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful futre beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
 
Alan Watts, on writing: 

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

Tom Hirons’ poem, ‘The Shape of Things’: 
This is a new one, not yet viewable online so I recommend to purchase the ebook of his collection At The Orphan’s Door, and read it immediately 
https://feralangels.com/e-books/at-the-orphans-door-e-book

And, my eternal favorite: 
Mary Oliver’s ‘Wild Geese’ 


To those of you who made it this far..
Thank you for listening to my voice. 
This weekend, remember to love it all. 

With Great Heart,
Caitlyn