The Armadillo

 Inspiration and Intent
During my journey following the death of my daughter Jeannine in 2003, I have tried to embrace many sources of inspiration to help me find meaning and in the process redefine who I am. I have also learned that when we state our intent to become inspired, we eventually inspire others by exposing them to the lessons that we have learned.
Animal Medicine
I have discovered the benefit of Native American Animal Medicine during the last 19 months of my journey. I have alluded to the lessons that I have learned from the animals who have crossed my path in previous blogs and articles that I have published. One of the tools that I have consistently used is a book called Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams, a revered Native American teacher. The book comes with a set of Animal Medicine cards. The teachings inherent to each animal is outlined in a corresponding chapter of the book. I don't have a set schedule for working with these cards, I simply let intuition rather than the passage of time be my guide.
Feeling Untethered
In early grief ,it is not uncommon for many to feel disassociated from their selves, surroundings and others around them . I believe that the profound alteration of our worldview due to a catastrophic loss
accounts for much or all of those feelings of dissociation. Another way to look at this is feeling untethered; similar to walking in a dreamlike state detached from everything around us that once had meaning in our lives.
Since I filed retirement paperwork in April of this year with the state of New York,  I have been experiencing the same sense of unthetheredness that I had in early grief, following Jeannine's death. Though I have long become disillusioned with a system that makes no sense to me anymore, I will still miss many of the colleagues whose company I have enjoyed and the patients who have touched my life. Though I believe that my life after retirement will be fulfilling and meaningful, it has been more stressful that I anticipated saying goodbye to a routine that has been part of my identity for over 27 years.

My Protective Armor/Walking the Ethereal
During the middle of last week, I got the urge to work with Jamie Sams' Medicine Cards.  I picked just one card: The Armadillo. In  several previous sessions , I never picked the Armadillo. However, as with every animal medicine card that I have chosen, the lesson was appropriate to my present reality.

According to Jamie Sams, the Armadillo "wears its armor on its back,its medicine a part of its body. Its boundaries of safety are a part of its total being." Sams goes on to write: "What a gift it is to set your boundaries so that harmful words or intentions just roll off. Your lesson is in setting up what you are willing to experience."(Sams,p. 149)

I recently had a conversation about transitioning out of my current job and the significance of the Armadillo with a close friend of mine who has witnessed my spiritual evolution in the last 19  months  and has been a wise mentor,in the process . I told her about my  feelings of disconnectedness from my work environment . I also told her that I seemed to be operating strictly from intuition. I have for a good deal of time now allowed my intuition or spirit to guide me, but  have always being able to make connections between my spiritual experience and experience in the physical world.  Due to what has been going on with me at work ,I have struggled to maintain that very important connection in my life.

My friend told me that   "walking the ethereal" without any  current sense of connection to the workplace was not necessarily a bad thing. She viewed my experience as a way to deal with leaving my job. In the context of Armadillo medicine, I  discovered that intuition has served to be the protective armor which has helped me focus on the practical matters( i.e packing my belongings, shredding materials that no longer applied to me) of leaving my job, while insulating me somewhat from the emotions tied to leaving those people who provided me with joy and validation during my career.  I have also concluded that intuition in later grief can, in certain situations, serve to be as much of a coping mechanism as shock and numbness were in early grief to allow me to deal with  practical matters such as Jeannine's funeral arrangements.

Redefining My Experience

Jamie  Sams makes a very simple but powerful suggestion as to how we can best use Armadillo medicine in our daily lives.  She suggests making a circle on a sheet of paper and to "see it as a medicine shield. Within the body of the shield, write down all the things that you are desiring to have, do or experience,including those things that give you joy. She further discloses that this sets up boundaries that allow those chosen experiences to be a part of your life(Sams,P.149). I did this exercise as it applied to my retirement from my job  but took it a step further. Outside the circle, I wrote down those things that I was not willing to experience or let penetrate my medicine shield . Doing this was empowering and has helped me to feel less untethered.

We can define what it is that we truly want to experience in all transitions in our life..... including our journeys after the death of our loved ones. Armadillo medicine can help us to represent our life experiences in ways that are true to who we are.  In the journey after loss, what we are willing to experience or not experience may change depending on where we are emotionally, spiritually and psychologically. The road to enlightenment was not meant to be a static process. Enlightenment is about finding our truth while representing our experiences as authentically and genuinely as humanly possible.

Express your lives as a demonstration of your highest beliefs, rather than a denial of them.
Neale Donald Walsch