I have a famous bed. It\u2019s a healing\u00a0bed. All of my friends know about it. From successful motivational speakers to\u00a0my best friends for decades, they come to me when they\u2019re having a meltdown. I \u00a0put them in my bed, I pull up the covers and I stroke their heads until they\u00a0drop off to sleep. I don\u2019t know exactly why they feel better when they wake up.\u00a0It\u2019s partially due to my soothing them but it also has to do with the fact that\u00a0I treat my bed as a sacred space. When I need healing, the bed wraps its covers\u00a0around me and gives me comfort in a world gone mad.<\/p>\n
I wouldn\u2019t call it my happy place. \u201cHappy\u201d\u00a0is a sketchy word. There are no guarantees that we can get happy and stay that\u00a0way. The word is mercurial as we shift from mood to mood. Rather I call my bed my\u00a0peaceful place. Whether I\u2019m happy or sad, at ease or angry, I want to be able\u00a0to bring all of that to my bed where I can be honest about how I\u2019m feeling and\u00a0find some peace in truth.<\/p>\n
No one stays happy all the time. If\u00a0someone claims they do, the following true story defines what it means to be\u00a0human and have a large range of emotions. It takes place in a spiritual\u00a0retreat, supposedly a sacred space. A friend of mine, I\u2019ll call him Edward,
went on the retreat that was run by a man called the Joy Guru. He only allowed\u00a0joyful people in his retreats. If someone became upset or frightened or angry,\u00a0he sent them packing.<\/p>\n
There was a communal kitchen and\u00a0Edward was on his way there to get something to eat when he arrived at the door\u00a0and stopped. The guru was in the kitchen, making himself a sandwich. There was\u00a0a dog in the kitchen and when the guru went to the refrigerator to get a bottle\u00a0of water, the dog jumped up on his hind legs and ate the sandwich right off the\u00a0counter. When the guru saw what had happened, he looked to his right, he looked\u00a0to his left and when he was sure no one was watching, he kicked the dog.<\/p>\n
Practicing honesty and seeing the\u00a0truth as sacred would have allowed him to find room for all of his feelings. I try\u00a0to search for a way to be honest and help myself calm down no matter what I\u2019m
feeling. It\u2019s about creating a space that invites and accepts all of our human\u00a0emotions. That\u2019s where my famous bed comes in. I lie back against a mountain of\u00a0pillows and look around the room at my crystals, my wooden Buddhas and Quan Yin\u00a0statuettes. They all make me feels safe.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t need a large house or a\u00a0large bed or a large anything. A simple altar with a favorite crystal in a\u00a0small nook of your house will do the trick. It doesn\u2019t need to be showy. It\u00a0just needs to feel sacred.<\/p>\n
I have a childhood memory about a\u00a0boarding house in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, where we owned a summer boarding\u00a0house. There were ten rooms, two cottages, a dining hall where the guests ate
and an annex with four more rooms. It had a white washed fence and a long front\u00a0porch with side by side rocking chairs. It was called the Tide Rock House and\u00a0it had a soul as ancient as the icy sea water. Houses with names often do.<\/p>\n
We were just up from the beach and\u00a0it felt like I was in a holy place when I climbed the rocks and poked my small\u00a0fingers into the sudsy tide pools. I upset small fish, miniature crabs with\u00a0transparent legs, shell chips and seaweed strands, colorful pieces of broken\u00a0plastic and the occasional used condom that I mistook for jellyfish parts<\/p>\n
One late afternoon when the sun was\u00a0setting, I took home one of the shell specimens and put it on top of my wooden\u00a0dresser. A tiny crab crawled out of the shell and scrambled the length of the\u00a0creaky old dresser, scaled down the side and imbedded itself in a crack between\u00a0two stuck drawers. My mother called me for dinner and when we were through, I\u00a0went back to the dresser and the crab was gone. I figured it must have crawled\u00a0away but I like to think that the Tide Rock House protected it until no one was\u00a0around and somehow helped it get away.<\/p>\n
That house was full of unusual\u00a0things like a black pot belly stove and the ice man who delivered two huge\u00a0blocks of ice with tongs and deposited them in the freezer on the back porch.When I was eleven, I had a crush on the teenager in the house next door and he\u00a0once took me to a drive in movie. He cuddled up to me that night and I was thrilled\u00a0and paralyzed.<\/p>\n
I waited impatiently for memorial\u00a0day when we opened the house for the summer. It was my placed of wonder. A\u00a0place that welcomed me and seemed to wrap itself around me. It lives on in myv\u00a0memory to this day as a sacred place and it brings me comfort to think about\u00a0it. It lifts my heart and softens my mind so I can breathe deeply and see my\u00a0blessings.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve found a lot of places in my\u00a0life that feel blessed. A mountain in the Philippines that my friends and I\u00a0climbed at night to watch stars shooting through the atmosphere. Dancing\u00a0to\u00a0 beautiful music on stage in a tutu and pick pointe shoes. Teaching a writing class and watching my students improve their writing and become more honest and authentic on the page.<\/p>\n
When I look at the most sacred\u00a0place in my world, it happens to be my famous bed. It reminds me to not dwell\u00a0in the past, not to dream of the future but rather to concentrate my mind in\u00a0the present moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a famous bed. It\u2019s a healing\u00a0bed. All of my friends know about it. From successful motivational speakers to\u00a0my best friends for decades, they come to me when they\u2019re having a meltdown. I \u00a0put them in my bed, I pull up the covers and I stroke their heads until they\u00a0drop off to sleep. I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2678,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions\/2678"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}