Author: bjukuri

If Spence had written this himself, he would have written “Gone on another trip. See you later.”

It brought a smile to my face, and wistfullness inside.  I knew the man whose obituary I was reading.

That one line said it all.

I met him in 2000 doing the Census.  He brought such an energy with him when he entered the room.  You would wait to hear what his latest discovery was, what thought he just discovered, what class he took, what trip he had planned, what humorous tale he had to tell!

He carried a notebook and was forever jotting stuff down. 

Life was there to be lived, to explore and ask questions a stranger he never met, he would begin talking and a new friend was born.

I didn’t see him much after our work ended.  But our brief time together is one that I will always remember with a smile, he shared his whole spirit and by example alone we knew life was here for the taking!

He took classes, at least one a year to maintain his ‘student’ status to gain access to college priviledges, but mostly to remain young and open to new ideas! 

He was a Teacher, but was already retired when I met him, but he taught, he just didn’t get paid.  And maybe he did, by all the smiles and laughter that bounced back to him!

A student at heart and willing to learn and share, eager and looking forward to the next idea, the next trip, the next sight to see. 

The one personal line in his obituary left me thinking that how nice it would be if we all could write our own obituaries.

What would I say?

If there was a final report to be written at the end of my life, would I make different choices, would I see things differently?

Who would I speak to and what message would I have?  What parts would I focus on in the re-telling? 

Maybe it should be like an acceptance speech and we can thank all who contributed in making us who we are today.

To live like you were dying, maybe instead Live like you have to write about it!

Do you want to write a boring paper or one filled with delightful ideas and discoveries, one that is humorous and entertaining?

We are living out a Non-Fictional book, you are the main character, you speak your lines, move as you move, you are a living and breathing work of art, a novel in the making!

The exciting part is we don’t know the ending, who will appear in the next chapter, what our lines will be, what the scene will be, what types of emotions will be required, will our hearts expand or shrink, will we grow or get stuck, will new ideas spread our understanding open or will we turn back to our old tried and true ways?

Each day we are writing sentences, book, chapter and verse in the book titled “Life” written daily, moment by moment and each now moment is recorded in another book called time.

We are here for a set amount of time, no one knows the ending, where we will be, what project will be incomplete, what lesson we almost got, all we can do is be engaged until our last breath.

It pays not to worry about when it ends, we just have to keep writing our book until the end, don’t leave things unwritten, dreams untried, things unlearned.

Time doesn’t run out until it does!

The clock is ticking.

We know not the hour,

Hurry and write, adding as much as you can.

What will I add today?

What imprint will I leave behind?

What fragrance of spirit will linger long past my last breath?

Who am I and how long do I have?

Like a the greastest books ever written, the ending is a surprise!

In a novel I am reading, one of the characters sighs and said, “ I guess it is my lot in this life to be the one to say the difficult things.”

 

As I pondered that sentence, which struck a cord within me, I wondered ‘what are the difficult things?’

 

What do we classify as ‘difficult’ and what in our world is difficult to speak of?  Is it difficult to say or do we fear the response in the speaking of it? 

 

Difficult to me is stating the obvious when the obvious isn’t obvious to others.  It is to stand opposite against the other person, to be coming from it from a completely different view.

 

The strength of the mind to hold on to its ideas and its arrogance that it trumps reality is way beyond my comprehension.

 

When you are unable to assimilate a new incoming change, when your mind refuses to accept what Is, Life doesn’t listen to your mind, changes are not slowed down and deviated from, instead life continues on.

 

Life simply changes without your permission, it keeps moving on, and you are lost back in time, unable to keep step with the reality around you.

 

You become lost in a mind of wishful thinking, of pretending of a reality that isn’t there, in a believe-a-head world.

 

Each new piece of evidence that comes in that doesn’t match with your ‘mind’ you fling it back into reality.  You now become lost in your story of reality, but not in reality.

 

Does dis-ease come from being out of sync with reality and when you are not walking hand and hand with reality are you then making choices based on ideas in your head, rather then what is in front of you, even heart choices instead of reality choices.

 

Somehow reality has gotten a bum rap, it has become the bad person, the odd man out, the difficult child in the room.

Why is the mind kind and reality bad?

 

In my case, as a child my Reality was bad.

 

But somehow we weren’t to speak of it, keep this a secret, or were threatened, or we ourselves were ashamed and blamed ourselves, but whatever, this difficult thing we were not allowed to talk about it.

 

Difficult Things were to be kept quiet, to not look at them and for God’s Sake, please don’t speak of it!

 

That is weird as I just reread that.  God would want us to lie about reality?  The all knowing and all seeing God wants us to tell a story that is different than His…..really, I know that is way not right!

 

My memories of my childhood are few and far between and different.

 

I have one where I am little, and lying on my bed showing my mother my bottom, and there are other little kids standing around the bed, their heads barely clearing the bed to see what I was showing.  I have no words to go with the memory, but I can recall physical pain, burning to my vagina.

 

I have No recollection how my bottom got hurt, or what she did to fix it.

 

I am Blessed to have this memory, for it holds part of the puzzle of me. 

 

Did I as a little girl speak of difficult things?  Did she tell me not to?  I don’t recall…..

 

One of our last conversations ended when we could not agree, our perceptions of my father were an ocean apart. 

 

I now saw him being a pedophile, and her heart and mind wouldn’t allow her to go there.

 

In Forty years she hasn’t moved from her spot.

 

Forty years later, my voice came back. 

 

It is loud, clear and unrelenting and it cannot be swayed.

I am not leaving reality.

 

I see no difficulties in reality.

 

I was the oldest of 6 girls and living in a neighborhood of girls, and had three girls myself and had many nieces. 

 

My reality today is that my silence came at a cost. 

 

It may be difficult to speak up, but is it much worse to be silent, for the problem doesn’t get smaller and disappear. 

 

There is a place in me, a dark spot, a sacred corner where it holds all the tears and regrets, the sadness and suffering that my silence caused.  A file I don’t open too often.

 

“Forgiveness is accepting that the past cannot change.”

                                                                                   Martha Beck.

 

I have forgiven myself for my silence.

In my heart of hearts I know I was but a little girl.

 

“There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

                                                                          Soren Kierkegaad.

 

It is my greatest desire to never be fooled again, to step out of reality just because it is the path of least resistance!

 

 

“You will not remember the words of your enemies, but the silence of your friends.”  Martin Luther King Jr.

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Have you ever signed up for a class and when you entered you knew immediately it wasn’t going to be like you thought.

That right away, just on seeing who else was in the classroom, you knew this was so not something you signed up for, but regardless you were going along for the ride.

 

I was going to learn, I just had no idea what. I came wanting to learn more about her.

 

So I watched her intently, but you could say I had my eye on the wrong ball! 

 

As the class proceeded and information was given, I soon learned that this was an impossible task that she was asking us all to do, she wanted us to believe her words, to listen and follow along.

 

She lost me at hello, or perhaps she never even seen me.

 

She knew what she needed to teach, but it seems that she couldn’t see the students, where they were and what they needed.

 

I now believe that experience is the only teacher we have.

 

Can I teach a person to feel abandonment?  Can you teach a person about love?  Can fear be untaught?  Is peace, love and joy a course to take?  Are there teachers who are skillful enough to erase or delete the affects of abuse, to make us unwounded, to go inside and make a correction?

 

The other night when I walked into a classroom, the first person my eyes connected with was my sister’s childhood friend. She was molested by my father, but was also a perpetrator herself in acts with my sisters. (Yes, I know our neighborhood was run amuck with dark sexual energies.)

 

When I seen her there I could not believe that this was for me! It seems like I am forever responsible for my father’s or my family’s collateral damage!

 

How am I going to participate in this room with her right in front of me, her back close enough to tap her shoulder?

 

I now have half my mind on her and the other half on the class, I watch her participate and wonder what is going on inside?

 

I wonder how this class is helping her or is it?

I wonder about her.

I wonder about her wondering about me.

 

Distracted and disjointed and off balance I know am in the middle of some great Lesson! What am I supposed to get here, what is the message?

 

I try blogging this out, I have written over 20 pages and I don’t get it! 

 

Until it comes to me that the Teacher Girl is annoying me, she is overbright.  I know, that isn’t a word, but she is overbright. Her smile is wide, it stays only on her face or her lips and teeth and the rest of her body doesn’t agree.  Her voice is a pretend sunshine voice it is coming from her neck.  She is trying really hard to convince us, to make us feel something, to bring us to a place, like a pretend island for us to sit on for a while, a strange and deserted island.

 

What is making me so mad about this overbright girl who is just taking us to a pretend place to sit awhile?  How is that so upsetting?

 

Guess what, she is my past mind!  Yes, that is where I lived when the darkness came in when things were happening that I could not compute.  She is showing me my voice in my head!  Oh MY God!

 

She is avoiding the darkness and re-directing us, using mantras, overtalking (I know, not a word again) to take our minds off of our suffering, to ‘think’ positive, to do motions to remove the negative energies.  It seemed like a pretend game to me.  

 

She is a representation of the voice in the head, she is there to show me how denial works, how the left- brain can deal with trauma, how it can just re-classify our experiences, like overwriting our reality. Skipping over darkness in a happy delightful way, “let’s rephrase that….”

 

When the class was over, I asked a few pointed questions.

“I am trying to figure out where it is you are coming from, how are you approaching this?”  No answer.

“I just can’t seem to understand what it is you are doing here.”  No answer.

 

Reality is asking her and she has no answer.

 

Since she couldn’t tell me herself, I will go ahead and surmise from my experience of her class.   

 

Now I am not a scientist, nor do I have a degree in anything, but my life experience has taught me, that there was no one coming, that I had to do this myself, I had to dredge up old files and see their contents, to feel what I never allowed my self to feel, I had to go backwards inch by inch and really see reality.  No one could do this for me. 

 

There wasn’t enough sunshine in the world to change what was!  We need the sunshine to shine in the darkness and see.

 

What I needed the most was for someone to see

 

Molestation is an area that is still in the dark, whispered about, in the arena of shame, blame and guilt!  We have no relay for life or pink ribbons…..

 

Imperfect Ladies, us girls who were wounded, who set forth in this life a little off kilter, scrambling to just remain upright, little did we know that our files were on backwards, our emotions a mess, parts left out and behind, we were left alone in our minds to sort this all out. 

 

Doesn’t it seem insane, that when a little girl (or boy) gets abused, they are left alone to lick their wounds?

 

Hard to visualize a raped small child making sense of this land, this world, society and adults, what a cruel place this must seem. 

 

Darkness and whispers are the perfect place for molestation.

We need light to shine in the darkness not over the top.

We need voices to speak out loud the names of those who hurt us. 

We need to walk tall, in courage and strength and what we need the most, is when we do, for you to be ok.

 

Will you be ok to hear what it is we have to say, or will you try and take us to a pretend island, trying to re-phrase our experience, changing our perceptions?

 

A father raping his child cannot be overtalked and overbrightened, it is not pretty, it never will be, but when you can’t go there, the child is left alone.

 

Left alone in a hellhole of monumental proportions, it raises itself.

 

In the class I learned we have two choices to speak in reality or in pretend.

 

The voice I have is a voice in reality. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“What is your silver lining” was asked on the Dr. Robin show today.  What wonderful gift have you found in the midst of great sorrow or trial?  What did you find out about yourself, or what surprised you as you wadded through a mess?

 

While seeing What Is, it is also good to keep an eye on the silver linings, to watch for the gifts that seem to be born in darkness and pain.

 

Looking backwards 4 years, the gifts are so plentiful that I would have much trouble sharing them all with you.

 

The greatest gift of all is me, just to be able to be with myself, as myself and not be wishing, seeking dreaming, desiring to be anyone but me.  I love that the most. I am an original work of God.

 

I love that I am me and that I am exactly as I was meant to be, and simply the perfect rendition of me, and that no one can do a better job at being me than Me!

 

I am a work in progress, I am not the complete Me yet, and will not be until I die.  Then you can say the project Beth has been completed.

 

The second is being able to be here now, to be in this moment exactly as it is, and not forever taking a ride in my mind to a better place or for something to be better, etc, but to arrive as me in this moment, priceless!

 

Another is to see all humans as Spiritual beings on a souls journey, to see all doing the best that they can for the level of understanding and clarity they have, and the phrase I love to use, is “forgive them for they know not what they do.”

 

And another huge thing is to no longer be in charge of the Universe!  Yes at one time I was in control and every thing had to follow my orders and desires or I was unhappy!

 

I love that I am not in control of others lives, their happiness, their pain, their pleasure, I love love love that I have my world and they have theirs.  I love being free to be in my business and I love that all are drivers in their own boats!  I am way not the river master, just another lady floating along in life, wondering what is around the next bend!

 

Nature is another great place for me to rest.  When my whole world seemed to be a place of trick mirrors, I clung to nature to find my present and it’s truth showed me the way.

 

The simple things bring tears to my eyes, and fill up my chest with breathless wonder.  To see birds even just hopping along, or beavers floating on their backs oblivious to the next bend, to mama turtles lumbering slowly on dry land to lay their eggs, to even the sight of our yard freshly mowed, cloud formations, a patch of “forget-me-nots.”  The list is endless….

 

Silver linings or God’s gifts, if you start to pay attention you will find them everywhere, angels in so many that you meet arriving with just the right information, the right book, the right thought, exactly at the perfect moment.  All choreographed by the Universe for Me.

 

There are moments that I am breathless at the synchronicity of it all.  How perfectly it is all laid out, how people are moved and orchestrated to be in the same place at the same time!

 

I am daily reminded, or minute by minute of just how not alone I am, how I am surrounded by examples of God taking care of me!

 

Like Einstein said “we can look at life as though nothing is a miracle or that everything is!”

 

Maybe when things are the darkest, the gifts shine the brightest!  If we were told to look at the two sides, to see and accept the dark, but to also have one eye peeled to be the seeker of the gifts, maybe then in moments of great despair we could remain balanced.

 

I can recall days of huge amounts of truths that seemed to bend me over, they were so huge and the emotions so large that I would have to walk outside. 

 

And outside there seemed to be so much peace, so many beautiful sounds, a million wonderful displays of God.

 

It seemed that I was in the land between both worlds, one of nature at it’s brightest and one of nature at it’s worst.

 

It seemed my spirit or my soul longed for the peace, love and joy, a foreign place for me, yet it seemed like a homecoming.

 

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound……”

 

 

 

“Life can turn on a dime, and the direction you head in when it does makes all the difference.”  Barbara Delinsky, wrote in her novel While My Sister Sleeps.

 

It isn’t about what happens, but how you respond when it does, and it amazes me that we all have different responses and head in different directions.

 

I am not sure there is a right and perfect way, but that there is a right and perfect way for you.

 

Oprah always talks about life giving you little nudges, but if you don’t heed them, they get louder and sometimes it takes a brick wall falling on you to wake you up!

 

So, it may not be the first instant that makes you change, but it could the tenth time and you can no longer pretend to pretend that it is once again ok with you.

 

We have to look at these nudges as Life or the Universe or God trying to wake you up to be present in your life, to make you aware of who you are and what it is you are doing and for who!

 

My oldest daughter is in the land of “Don’t Know” and I am in the land of “Must Know”.

 

When I venture into the Land of Don’t Know, and ask pointed questions trying to get a read on which direction she is headed, I come out empty.

 

She is sitting in complete comfort and peace until I wander in and begin nudging her and trying to turn her out of her land.

 

It seems impossible to me, to not know, to not have a rough or general direction, even a wimpy kinda sorta maybe direction.

 

Her life didn’t turn on a dime, but yet in her world perhaps it did.  I think it came as a surprise that she would be out of college, that it ended, that the goal had always been to graduate, and she forgot to focus on life after.

 

We are near two months in the After, and she is still unsure of which direction to head.

 

Pondering, contemplating, not really willing to pick one, she is adrift in the sea of Don’t Know.  Pick one, set an intention and head out.

 

The Universe and all it’s angels have to be sitting back resting near the Start Line, waiting for her gun to go off, and she keeps fiddling with the trigger, but way not ready to pull it.

 

Patience is not one of my virtues, and seeing the undecided is right up near the top.

 

Fear has me forever behind her, nudging her or is that the Universe using me to push her along.

 

If I am an angel of the universe to move her along, I could do it in a softer voice, less demanding, more understanding.

 

We both have been in tears over this, her not knowing and me not being able to let her be.  She doesn’t know where she is going and I can’t let her rest until she does.

 

Even writing that sounds mental, but as a mother it is my job to keep my children on task and that if I allow her to not be in her life she will lose herself and I simply can’t sit down and let that happen.

 

I can’t let fear and uncertainty decide for her. I can’t let the shyness and tentativeness dictate, I have to be stronger than all of them to save her life and sense of self.

 

This isn’t just about leaving the home, freeing up space and time for me, it is about her self- esteem, her self worth, her sense of self, period.  She is at the cusp of becoming all who she is meant to be, and her gifts are inside to be handed out, and I for one cannot let it die because of fear.

 

She is a beautiful girl, with lots of great qualities, quiet by nature, with the gift to laugh at herself, slow to jump in but once there fully engaged, kindness and gentle, cautious and responsible, delightful a pleasure to have around. 

 

That is what I have to kick out of my house! 

 

This task is not for the faint of heart, nor one her father is able to do. 

 

It is up to me to be the one to shove kindness out of the door!  To wake her up and ask and urge and shove and pull, and make shyness take a second seat, it is left up to me.

 

With love in my heart and knowing in my soul, I know it is for her greatest good that I kick her out of my world and into her own!

 

The strings are being cut, the ties are being severed, and on her own she feels.  Floating free at last, isn’t this what all kids crave, to be free at last from their parents rule, from school, college, out on your own?

 

On your own, separate and alone for some reason gets a bad rap, freedom can be as scary as prison.

 

What are we afraid of, Ourselves, of not doing ourselves correctly?  How is it possible to screw yourself up? 

 

We are learning about her as she is learning about herself.

I am unwilling to direct her direction, but standing and pushing her to decide. 

 

Life is not a dress rehearsal we are doing ourselves now, we are doing our lives whether it is on the couch we are laying or upright doing something. This is us and this is now, this is us doing ourselves!

 

How kind of God to give us each our own bodies and our own lives, we all get one to play with, do one.

 

All I am asking her is to do her self now.  What do you want to do?  What do you want to be, where do you want to live, what kind of life is your dream, what are your dreams, where do you want to start, the canvas is empty and you are the painter, the fabric uncut, begin!

 

Create you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“He will die a very lonely man.”  This is what I had told my husband when we found out my father was a pedophile.

 

With Father’s Day fast approaching, what do I write about him? 

 

I have put him aside like a toy that is broken, no longer able to work like it should, discarded on a shelf in a box and out of sight.

 

Do I have to bring him back out, to look at him and to see just what our final relationship will be, will forgiveness make him right, will enough love on my side correct that which is broken inside, uncross the wires so damaged that he can hurt little girls and call it love?

 

A broken father, are there father’s day cards for men like him, for girls like us? 

 

Memories of him are now tainted they too are damaged and broken beyond repair.  What parts can I take forward and hold dear?

 

My earliest memories are spotty and limited, of games of shame and fear.  I recall a game we (little girls of the neighborhood) played.  Our home was large and had a kitchen that had 5 doors.  We could run through our house and out the back door outside and back around.  We did this chatting or singing our songs. We are very little younger than 6, I believe.

 

It is a summer evening, and around and around we run, until one little girl points out to me, my father’s penis is exposed, he is sitting in a chair by the door and we all are running by!  His legs are crossed he is in his underwear it is hanging down below. 

 

Shame and embarrassment flood my little being and I remember trying to stop the game, to direct them to play something else.   Yet they giggled for a sight like that they had never seen!  He sits.

 

What do you do with memories like that?  Especially now when you know as a big adult girl that that is exactly the behavior of a pedophile, it matches like a perfect set!

 

Sunday dinners were his forte, he loved to put a roast going and have all his children come home.  How special we all felt.  Until, we find out that was the lure to bring in the little granddaughters.  What do we do with those ones now?

 

I truly didn’t want to write about his deeds, and there are more, but that is who he is.  If I don’t, I am like the rest, just pulling up files of him being a workingman working hard in the woods, and not speaking of his brokenness.

 

He too was a victim of abuse, he molested when very young, yet he was not able to find a spot where he could heal himself. He was left in the prison of abuse where he then became the predator.

 

A legacy that is spread far and wide!  His wife my mother is also a victim of abuse, her brothers. 

 

Abused victims they themselves are now the predators and ones to keep it silent, allowing the poison to flow.

 

What can I do now?  He is on the sexual predator list, he has been brought before the court of land, he was given a light sentence and sent to the home of his daughters, the same ones he abused when they were young.  They loved him so, and could not see the monster inside.

 

Madness for sure, insanity at best, ugliness and messes beyond what a person can hold. 

 

The broken father I left on the shelf was put there, for I had to protect myself from the broken father. 

 

A little girl with a broken father and she doesn’t know that it isn’t her fault, she did not break him, wreck him, destroy him, he came to her that way.  She was hurt because he was broken, and no one told her not to play with him.

 

Still today, this many years later, I wish I had a fixed father, one who I could lean on, look up to, admire, hold in my heart, instead I have a broken father who no longer fits into my world.

 

My scars are many from playing with him, my battle wounds are huge and far reaching, my mind has been twisted and bent in directions no little girls should be. 

 

But all little girls want the love of a dad, all little girls want to be loved and desired and admired.

 

I just didn’t know the cost.  The cost to both of us!

 

Perhaps it was my inner desire for love that kept me going back perhaps I too couldn’t stop myself from being with my dad, wanting his attention, to be special!

 

Did I withstand the abuse for a morsel of attention?  What did I experience?  My memories are gone nothing lay there, no pictures, nothing.  I have been spared.

 

Will I remember someday, do I want to know?  What will they do to me when and if they flood in?

 

So on this Father’s Day weekend, sits a little girl in a big lady body, feeling a spot of emptiness, of wistfulness, of being in grief, she sits with a broken father in her heart.

 

Broken and unable to fix him, does she love him still?

Does she have any feelings left?

 

All that is there is broken, there was nothing to pick up and to hold, a body remains, but the relationship never had a chance to begin, for he was never able to be a dad.

 

If he can’t be a dad, then I can’t be his daughter. 

We are just two abused kids.

One who is lost in the legacy and one who escaped!

 

An orphan I feel like and perhaps I am.

A child without a mom or a dad, one who had to leave them behind on the shelf of my childhood life!

 

On the shelf lay a broken man.

No father lay there, no hero or idol, nothing to love or hold dear. No relationship is there, nothing to talk to….

 

Empty but for a broken man, I close the door softly and turn away.

 

“There but for the Grace of God, go I.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the past few days I have had the opportunity to bump into many of my past girlfriends, some as far back as 40 years ago, and some as recent as only one year.

To be part of the sisterhood of ladies from my way distant past, to old church members, to schoolmates, to ladies who share the same spiritual ideals, to those playing in Art with me, connects me. 

 

All these ladies come with a story, with a walk in life, a journey filled with choices and ideals, dreams broken and shattered, to ones not yet dreamt. 

 

I recall the youth of many, the lightness of heart and spirit and to see today the cost it has taken to stroll along in their worlds.

 

Life is hard on some or some are hard on Life, not sure which way that goes.

It seemed that so much of my past was in my present and in my present I was seeing how I changed.

 

My journey has led me down some darkened corridors, with pit falls of huge proportions, into bends of sheer madness, over hills of anxious moments that take your breath away, and then into places of pure delight, giggles and play, inspiration and wisdom of knowing.

 

I am so blessed that I was kept moving along, it would have been hell to get stuck along the way, in say misery and anger, rage and resentment, denial and hiding, to have sat down in the midst of any stage of grief would have stopped me living.

 

So many of the ladies I have known, the past and the present carry the torch of courage, of walking forward no matter what, to being strong, stronger than even they know, not letting life’s bumps define who they are.  Not allowing another’s bad behavior be the cloak they wear.

 

I am in the sisterhood of women who are walking strong and carrying with them their inner resolve to be themselves in the midst of troubles and turmoil, to see the other as the other, and not themselves.

 

How awesome for me to be surrounded with ladies who can triumph over life’s rolling waves of disappointment, the crusher of dreams, and destroyer of little girl ideals!  And to have the stamina to dream yet again!

 

The character of ladies that I know, have the fortitude to keep seeking to learn, in daring to try new things, and the guts it takes to just be in their lives, amazes me.

What has happened to me is that the more I share my story, the more they share theirs, and in doing so neither of us are alone.

 

It is the nature of the sisterhood to be connected just for being born female.  We connect in our pain and our celebrations or the moments that we are victorious over life’s challenges, to the times we learn huge lessons about ourselves.

 

The shoes I walked in are many, from poverty abuse and neglect, locked in a religious cult, to the unraveling of much of my life, to now being in a state of rebirth, growth and learning, to simply being a woman, all have added to the nature of me.

 

I am who I am, not because of my choices, but because of life’s choices for me.  It seems I am being carved out and whittled down and smoothed out, and formed into this lady, an artful display called me.

 

Each of us seems to get a pair of shoes, a road to walk, the inner fortitude to traverse the terrain ahead, we each are on our own separate journeys called life, and are blessed with those who dare to walk with us!

 

All of my past brought me here today, to be this person, to be me, to know what I know, do what I do, and live like I live. It is truly amazing to look at life’s journey, midway up the hill!

 

What lies ahead or behind is not what matters, but what lies within.  I have found peace with me all of me along with acceptance and the knowing nothing will come my way that isn’t in the designing of who I need to be.

 

I give thanks for the sisters of my past, the fallen and the triumphant.  I am grateful for the ones who I have recently found, to the ones I am yet to meet!  They all shared a part of my walk with me.

 

It is in the greatest of grief that I see my own sisters, my little friends who suffered like I, it is with understanding I see those left behind, compassion fills me as I pass sisters along life’s way.

 

Walk on knowing that the shoes you wear to day or the road you walk will change, for nothing stays the same and it is all part of being you.

 

Now I know for sure we are not our shoes!

We are the ones who walks with an attitude while wearing them!

 

What’s your attitude?

 

I finally took control over it, I finally had enough, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I Unplugged it, tore out the cord from the wall and rendered it useless! 

 

It’s power was a magnet, its pull hard for them to say no to, it had them tangled and mangled in prone forms, it was forever blaring loudly, shouting and swearing, angry and indignant, to displaying images of bodies in struggle and strife! 

 

There were times that it had nice things to share, but rare was that, only limited glimpses of lightheartedness!

 

Sure they could plug it back in, but dare they? 

 

What will they do now?  They seem like balloons without a string, just bouncing around with no direction.

 

It is amazing the power and lure that box in the corner holds, the way it renders them useless, mindless and engaged with IT.

 

Imagine being engaged with a box in the corner?

 

How long will this last they say?  I say, perhaps forever….

Until you find a hobby, begin being more productive and even start interacting with each other.  It is not a punishment, but rather a gift, a gift of freedom from the chains of a TV!

 

I am free, empowered and I know that soon they too will feel that. 

 

A summer thing, a lifetime thing, I am not sure, but the energy in our home already has changed, it is like I kicked out a bad influence or bad habit out the door!  Maybe they will have to get their fix somewhere else. 

 

What will they do, where will they go, how will they get along without that box, imagine the endless possibilities!

 

Life is happening while they were plugged in to a fantasy, engaged in someone else’s life.

 

Sure they will defend and say that they had lives, some worked, some read, but at the end of the day, many many hours were spent plugged in and zoned out!

 

I had many anxious moments getting them unplugged, away from, disconnected and doing something of value, now I too am free as well.  Even sleeping is better in my books!

 

Who controlled this house, it seemed the TV had the upper hand for a long time.  In the end it has always been up to me, to walk over and shut it down!

 

It was my lesson of who is ultimately in control of our home, surely the box didn’t come alive on its own, it didn’t select the movies to watch, it didn’t holler to them, it simply sits dark, silent, waiting to be plugged in.

 

They in the end have the power to turn it on and off, or if they seemed unable to, someone had to be stronger, and it seems that someone is me!

 

We are in a spot that gets only 3 channels, and now with the new analog, only 3 Public TV channels, so all they could really watch were movies, and they didn’t mind repeating and repeating and then repeating them! 

 

And I was repeating and repeating and repeating yet again,

I never heard myself as I shouted “Turn It OFF!”

 

All along I thought I was hollering to the children, I was hollering to me!  Thankfully they won’t have to hear the “…forever blaring loudly, shouting and swearing, angry and indignant, to displaying images of bodies in struggle and strife!”

 

They won’t have to witness me fighting with myself to regain control over this living space.  I imagine it was a sight worse then what was ultimately on TV!

 

The struggles are over I won again after much public display of being out of control, of being weak and powerless going against popular opinion, to stand alone and against habits that were years in the making.

 

My habit of hollering and me not listening, not hearing a word I am saying for I am hollering so loud!

 

Silence is here, not because of the box, but because of me…I am silent, I heard me finally!