Lifeletter #177: The Queen of F-ing Everything

A very beautiful woman, a precious member of the Nelson community named Fiona Mooney, passed away while I was visiting the Kootenays last week. Her beloved partner mentioned in an email after she died that she had a favourite mug on which was written ‘Queen of Fucking Everything.’ I felt  a visceral connection with Fiona’s spirit when I heard that. I also felt, and so did some of my friends, that I wanted a mug just like that.

I got very curious about this. What is it that is nudging us, when we open to the possibility of being the Queen of Fucking Everything? Or the King? I’ve been immersed in this question for days now.  Here is what is emerging:

Of course I’d like to be that Queen. I could rule the kingdom of my life and have everything I want. But is that truly what my heart is calling for? Or my soul? Exactly what kind of Queen do I want to be, really?

Do I want to be like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, who screamed “Off with his head!” when anyone dared to cross her royal will? Do I want to be a Queen like Beyonce, who rules the world in another way? I don’t think so. I know that’s not the kind of Queen that Fiona was becoming, as she surrendered, with great courage and immense grace, into dying from cancer.

There is another kind of Queen or King who is truly sovereign, and full of power. When I am inhabiting my life as that Queen, I know I am not in control of anything. Except my own choices, my own intent. I am strong enough, free enough to ask for what I want. To choose, to say, boldly, without any apology, “This is what I want. And this is what I do not want.” And then I bow down and acknowledge that I am not in control of the universe.

 

We don’t often imagine royalty taking off their crowns and bowing down to a greater power. In fact, their realm is really quite small—they are not the King or Queen of Fucking Everything. To be that kind of Queen takes a lot of bowing down, a lot of surrender, a lot of humility, a lot of broken heartedness. The real Queen is not just the queen of joy and light and hahaha. She is the queen of sorrow, the queen of darkness, the queen of everything that’s been despised and forgotten. Everything means everything! That’s who Fiona was, that’s what life invited her to live and die into. I imagine her sitting there in the morning, drinking her tea from that mug, and facing the fact that her life and all the people she loved were slipping away from her. The dignity and radiance with which she lived this feels like something alive, burning inside my heart.

A real Queen feels whatever she feels, and does not apologize. A real Queen tends to her realm and the beings who live in her realm with exquisite attunement and love. She does not disconnect from them, just because she is having a bad day. She is a lot stronger than that.  And she also knows how to care for herself. A real Queen can be fierce, when she needs to be, she can raise her sceptre and call down a thunderbolt of wrath, if that is appropriate. And she can be as tender as a violet. Because she knows that she is Queen of this moment only, and everything else is radically unpredictable. So she is fully here, fully alive, as she is:

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
 
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
 
Until now.

-David Whyte

These are windy, turbulent times we live in. Things are falling apart, in many dimensions, in all sorts of ways. Real Kings and Queens are sorely needed. May we learn to support each other into opening into our true sovereignty, our real power, and our deepest surrender.

with deep love and gratitude to Fiona and Mike,
for what you lived together
and for what continues to live,
after Fiona has gone.