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A Heart Clutch

Writer's picture: spacetofeelingsspacetofeelings


“Heart Clutch.” One of my dear sisters of the heart wrote this in a text as we were trading thoughts to one another on the day of her late son’s birth, forty years ago. Holding onto Easter memories too, and she replied, “Thankful for all the memories. It’s a heart clutch. Easter eggs and bacon for my Johnny.”


I could feel a visceral response within as I read her words and this was a moment shared between us. I began pondering all the ways the word, clutch, is used and one that has been remaining with me is the clutch in an automobile.


Learning how to drive one, an inherent feel of listening and sensing when the clutch needed to be used so that the next gear in line could take over. Such funny memories of this I have with my son, as I was making him crazy that I could not explain it. I was asking him to feel into it when he was learning how to drive using a manual transmission. Finally, we decided our mother/son relationship was inherently at risk, lol, so he found other teachers and held it over me that I was unable to teach him. Actually, I believe it went both ways, yet I always turned it into something we could laugh about. Douglas never did heed my advice about not resting his foot on the clutch when not in use, thus wearing one out far too soon.


A heart clutch; it is teeming with oxygenated blood, pulsing, at times too hot to touch, other times ice cold, only desiring to be kept warmed after being fully acknowledged and deeply felt. The clutch of it is in a lower gear of shared memories that travel within the heart to the next gear. Yet, nothing new of these most wonderful humans in their physical presence can be created now. Memories are infused throughout the totality of the heart sprinkled like fairy dust and catching haltingly with a sensation that still cause me to gasp for air.


Much like a car, when the engine becomes noisy and begins to drag, you shift up, trying to remain in that sweet spot of where the engine runs smoothly and delivers enough torque. This is how a heart clutch feels for me. I am residing in my heart, embodying it, and ready or not, something within is transforming and mysteriously moving me forward. Beckoning me to enter into a new chamber of the vast unknown that is equipped to contain all the pieces of me. Even ones that have not been called home, yet are on their way much like a homing pigeon, with its innate honing ability.


“By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can also unchoose later, for its own mysterious reason.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert


“One must always be prepared for riotous and endless waves of transformation”. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert



Listening to this song is expanding my heart in unimaginable ways. Inhabiting my heart clutches and creating added squishy cushioning and padding to minimize those halting, grinding gear moments which will always BE mine as long as I inhabit an earth suit.

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