The Little Red Fox: 2015

The Little Red Fox: 2015.

As many of you already know, I lost my Mom in May. And, I have been told that the first year is the hardest of milestones. It is seven months later, and I still feel caught between worlds. It is as if a heavy snowstorm has cut my visibility down to zero. And by visibility, I mean, I have felt completely lost… looking for a trail marker, or a sign to help me find my way out of these painful feelings. I just don’t think any amount of foresight could have prepared me for what this kind of grief really looks and feels like or what it would mean to carry it with me forward into: Mother’s Day, my birthday, the trip we plan to go to see her grandson for the first time, Thanksgiving, and this winter season. It has been very lonely. I have tried to busy myself with my work, my two Shih Tzu puppies (Jacomo and Roux), and integrating Mom’s things into my home; but, the grief visits.

This pain sits on my chest until I can’t breathe then pushes thru the swollen, waterlogged tear ducts of my eyes and my body buckles with the heaviness of this sadness at times despairing. I’m SO lost-rudderless. Still for whatever reason I pressed into it, I invite the experience of my grief into those little moments surfacing at random unannounced times throughout the days and nights knowing these moments are just for me to be with the sadness (and love). A precious reminder of the everlasting impact my Mom’s life will have on me…and right now that seems intense and unbearable at times.

One day, I braved the crowds for some holiday shopping. No sooner than I arrived at the first store, a wave of emotion hit me… And I thought: I won’t be buying Mom gifts this year. I lost it. It was a big cry – uncontrollable–taking hold of me, and I couldn’t shake it. It was like a heavy, icy fog, rolled into my heart and sunk me into its depths. I found myself consumed at a crossroads between aisle 9 at the World Market off Highway 183 and the emotional white out blinding me from any refuge. It is a mysterious and haunting place – this terrain between worlds known only to the grief stricken.

And as I broke through the veil of my overwhelmed state, I saw him staring back at me. A dark cloudy shape in the middle of the storm I was in. And then, the image became clear as my eyes pressed into focus—on a little red fox on the cover of a holiday greeting card box.

I entered a peculiar state. It was as if the barometric pressure in the store plummeted suddenly and everything around me fell silent. All I could hear was the sound of my breath. All I could see was the image staring back at me. His weathered, snow tufted fur seemed the only thing shielding him from the blizzard he was in. He was alone…perhaps scared. He was motionless as if everything blowing around him prevented him from moving. He seemed stuck. And, I felt him completely…as if he was bearing witness to the deep pain I was experiencing too. There was something about feeling seen here that’s hard to convey—especially from an image but I had a sense that I wasn’t alone with my grief anymore…as if the image may have been God-sent.

I had only seen two red foxes in my life—both on the Alaska—Canadian Highway when I was relocating back South to Austin, Texas in 2008. And, both times, these foxes seemed to just suddenly appear out of nowhere, staring at me in the snow-covered landscape, as if their appearance then was guiding me through the haze in my life; so, I find myself asking why this little “holiday card fox” was showing up now and asking me to see him and take pause. It was as if he had been waiting for me to see him and that he had a message for me in some way.

Maybe you have had the opportunity, when presented, to animate the animals that show themselves to you. I believe in the synchronicities that are found amidst the animals, and in nature, when I am paying attention to the world around me. And, I want to know their message, their intention (if any) to communicate with me something I need to know about my life.

So, here are some things I have considered and researched about a fox showing up: feminine magic of camouflage, shape-shifting, invisibility, and adaptability. Fox is most visible in the “between times“ of dawn and dusk, when the magical world and the world we live in intersect… In the borderlands.(Whoa! Totally feeling this!)

Red fox, in particular, is associated with freeing the creative life force, among other things, and learning to control the aura, the energy field, around the body (which I definitely related to in that moment). I needed to listen and hear, look and see, sense and feel trusting my senses to guide me through my grief. I needed to Feel It All in order to heal, recover and integrate this part of my life to move forward with my grief not stuck in it.

According to Ted Andrews in Animal Speak several Native American tribes have tales of hunters discovering their wives were foxes – a symbolic idea of magic being born a female energy (Mom). In other indigenous records, Cherokees invoke fox medicine to prevent frostbite, Hopi shamans used fox in healing rights, Choctaw saw Fox as a protector of the family, and Apaches said fox stole fire for humans by sticking its tail in the flame. In Persia, it was sacred, for it helped the deceased get to Heaven (now this caught my attention). I felt confronted with the Persian association of the need to shift my hold on my grief and honor my Mom’s journey…here and the hereafter…

Further search revealed that few animals of similar size can outrun a fox trotting. The fox can trot indefinitely without exhaustion, or appearing as if. This reminds me to set a pace for my overall process towards healing and integrating my grief, focus on health. Fox has the ability to run up trees, if necessary, reflecting an ability to move into new dimensions. Fox’s hearing is very acute, opening the channels to communication that might otherwise be unheard or unsaid… Also tied to the ability to hear spirit (a clue to what I experienced in the store that caused me to penetrate the silence maybe).

Although fox cubs are born blind and deaf, Andrew states, those with Fox medicine may have their greatest tests in childhood (of course), but also their greatest instinctual education in the art of survival, developing acute sight, and hearing, as they get older. Fox sense of smell is also fascinating, adding its ability to sniff out each situation or person as a strong form of communication. Needless to say the more I took in the potent spiritual symbolism and meaning of Fox showing up, I felt the perfection of the exchange at that point in time with my experience of loss and I felt comforted and more peaceful in this liminal space of grief work.

So, another remarkable thing happened to me over this holiday just a few days after my encounter I’d like to share with you.

I was wrapping presents in the garage – totally immersed in my task with boxes to be mailed when an overwhelming smell of perfume came over me. I did what many of you do – checked to see if it was coming from me—hair, clothes, and arms. Nothing. Sniffed around for anything in my musty garage that might have spilled or ripped apart by the dogs. Nothing. A few moments more and the scent returns stronger… With a memory…of Mom. She was filling the space around me with her scent – a perfume I had been giving her for years, and had not smelled since May. Then without hesitation, but with invitation, a sensation of warmth touched my left cheek, causing me to cradle my face with my own hand. I burst into tears feeling such overwhelming love…our love.

I tell you this experience, because I know that the realm between worlds exists, and it is open to me, and it is open to you…

And it is peaceful and beautiful.

It is a gentle and a tender time—full of the remembrances in life of the familiarity of a scent or warm touch… And it’s not such a horrible thing to be in the dawn or dusk of those memories…

And…To be met by a fox.

Wishing you love and peaceful synchronicities for your own soul’s journey