Category: Examples of an Imperfect woman

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

`

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!

 

Imagine that your life is a bowl of soup, that what we put in each day is what our soup will taste like.  We can only expect our soup to taste like what it is we add, nothing more and nothing less! 

 

“What we put in comes out.”  That was the topic on the Dr. Robin Smith program yesterday.

 

During the show a woman calls in and states that she is unable to receive, that for so many years she has been the giver.  We learn that she and her four sisters were children of an alcoholic mom, and they had to take care of themselves, so we learn she was not taught to receive, for no one gave to her.

 

I was amazed that even such a simple thing as receiving is a taught behavior. 

 

If a mother is unable to give, the children are unable to receive, that is simply amazing to me! 

 

In order for a child to relax and be, they have to know that they will be taken care of, they have to have trust.  If not, they take care of themselves and it becomes a life long pattern.

 

I did not know that receiving and trust walked hand and hand. 

 

I did not know that when I was taking care of others, it was all I had to offer….I was taken care of soup!  If you needed things taken care of, call the taken care of soup girl, she will ladle out a bowl of it.

 

What else came up in the program was how if we are not treated as the gifts we are, we don’t know how to be a gift.  If we never received treatment of being a precious person, we are unable to see ourselves as that. 

 

We lose our giftedness.

 

Our soup has no gift inside, like a box of cracker jacks without the prize!

 

As I look back at my old soup recipe I see the ingredients to be lacking me, me, myself and I.

 

I was nowhere in that bowl of soup, yet I was forever giving of myself, perhaps I gave me all away!

 

We all have a soup starter, we all began somewhere, but it is now up to us to add or take it from here.

 

It is time to add the new ingredients that will make you you! It is time to add a dash of this and pinch of that, and little by little you will change the flavor of you. 

 

With understanding your starter kit, you can then make adjustments to balance out the flavors one item at a time.

 

We can only give out what we put in.

 

Put in lots of fun things, exciting things, new things, old things, passionate things, colorful, meaningful, artful, graceful, etc…..make your life a great big exciting bowl of you!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am going away today to give my kids a break.  Okay and me too.

 

My husband and I are taking our El Camino, a Tent and bodies weary of being sooooo responsible.  We get to be just two people, enjoying the sights, connected without interruptions, with no schedules to keep, just kids again.  He asked when I would like to come home, I said, “the Fall”…but really just a few days will be enough to balance us all out.

 

We don’t know who is more excited about the separation the kids or us!

 

The weather is bright, the temps a bit cool, but our enthusiasm will cover the rest. 

 

What will we see, hear and taste, where will we go, what will we do?

 

There is a quilt show there, and I will wander around gathering new inspiration and ideas, my Artist self is sooo excited.

 

The rest is open for possibilities we have a general direction but no set plans in all the wide-open spaces on either side of the show.

 

Feeling the excitement, the unknown, dreaming and wondering of what will be there, who knows what opportunities will arise.  We head out and say yes to whatever grabs our attentions and off we go!

 

We are like horses ready to break out of the gate, restrained for just a wee bit too long!  Our inner children are ready to go!

 

A sign to be hung on this site, “Off Exploring!”

 

Time, I am chasing time, time is all that matters, time for this and no time for that, and we have only a little time to finish, time for the next task, time to be done, time to go, time to do this and time to do that.

 

Who is in charge of this? Time?  What is time and who decides the amount of time and when time is running out?

Time seems to overshadow or overrule or eclipse the life in front of it.

 

Time is fleeting, time is racing, time is dragging, time is gone, time. There seems to be a well of time which is either overflowing or empty and it is endless and ever changing illusive a thief a magician, into thin air.

 

If not time, it is the task.  The task it seems takes over for time.

 

It is now time to do the wood, so we race to complete the task in record time.  No breaks, no play and there is not time for nonsensical laughter!  No time for the task is at hand.

 

Tasks and time are the rulers of the earth, and people are running fast behind or speeding ahead endlessly racing to catch up, to finally complete, to gain the edge on time and task!

 

We have lots of construction in our little town, and they have us going backwards where we used to go forwards, down one- way streets going in the wrong direction. Like counter clock wise! 

 

We are being shown a new side of our same little town, the other side of buildings that for years we neglected to see.  We are seeing roads we never traveled on, because they were just a little off the beaten trail.

 

It had me pondering just how much in life is the same?  Where are we just mindlessly following and doing repeatedly without seeing another side?

 

Do we need detours of death and sickness to get us to travel in a new direction, to see things differently, does life give us detours to slow us down, to toss out time and task and see relationships along the way?

 

I can relate to road construction, to ‘slow’ signs, to feeling inept in familiar places, to see things that seem backwards, even if the territory is familiar.

 

Tragedies in life are like construction zones, we have to learn how to navigate heading in a new direction.

 

Construction zones are for improvements and perhaps so are tragedies, they are there to remind us where we are focusing our attentions.

 

I have learned that time and project can’t be as important as individual.  That time will pass without me paying attention to it, it doesn’t need my assistance, it comes and it goes without my direction. 

 

During my inner construction I was given the opportunity to see other sides of many things and that has made improvements in my world. 

 

When you take away time and task what is left in the space?

Who is standing there and what is your relationship?  Drop the titles and see beneath.

 

Who is standing there in time, who are we missing as we focus on time, who is running after time, who is forever ahead of time, who slips away as we chase another task?

 

Is it time we are chasing and losing or is it ourselves?

Did we lose ourselves in time?

Or did we find ourselves just in time.

 

Time fades away in the moment of now, it stops.

 

I am here now one point in time.

Me.

 

Yesterday I learned that a friend of mine died, she had been suffering for many years, gripped in a mad dance of addictions, her abused mind wouldn’t allow a space of peace.

 

When speaking to her in the past many years, she would go backwards to a place in time.  She was the girl that would dare to do things just for shock value, and giggle at your expense, with a twinkle in her eye and a mind that was never still, she was bright beyond, athletic and in love with hockey, so social with a friend on every corner, boys and girls both clamored to be in her presence, for where she went excitement followed.

 

What happens then to a girl with so much, what makes it all turn and take a severe left, what puts out the twinkle in her eye, and little by little she became homeless, the lady on the streets who slept under overpasses, what goes so wrong? 

 

How is it possible to live so many contrasts, it seemed like she experienced all walks of life in this one lifetime. 

 

She went from the most popular the most likely to succeed, to working in neonatal nursery's with the teeniest of babies, a nurse that lovingly cared for others, she excelled at hockey at time when women were first making inroads there.  She was the first to give you what you needed, always.  She was generous even when she had nothing left to give, but to share past memories.

 

What happens that dashes all of her dreams, crashes all of the hopes, and leaves you literally homeless?

 

We talked once about her life in a moment of clarity, and she herself said that pain and pain alone has been her greatest enemy.  Pain or perhaps it was the fear of feeling and getting lost in the pain, so instead she became lost in the haze that covered the pain. 

 

I knew she was a walking talking suffering wound in search of and forever plotting out the next fix to cover it up, like band-aid or pill that magically doused the fire within.

 

Self -inflicted is what I have heard of her illness, that she inflicted this damage on her body and life, that she is the one who controlled that. 

 

Surely that is wrong, for who in their right mind would choose something so hurtful to herself?  Why would you want to lose so much?

 

Was it her intentions to live this life?  Was it a conscious effort to do so?  Are addicts grown out of simple desire for the item they are addicted to?  Like if you eat too much apples you become addicted?

 

What I am more and more convinced of is that the mind is the one addicted, not the body.  The body just happens to be along for the ride.

 

What happens to the soul, when the mind seems to take over the drivers seat? Where is it then?  Does it sit back behind the drunken haze, under the seeping wound, just waiting? 

 

Waiting until the body and mind fall and are rendered useless.

 

Was her life all for naught?  Or was it a life that her soul got to experiences a volume of human existence?  As you look upon her life it was filled to the brim with both the darkness and the light, the brightest and the darkest, beauty and the beast, loving and hating both inside and out.

 

It was truly an amazing life, one that only a few would have the courage to live.  Her stories were enough to scare me like watching and knowing a walking story of intrigue.  What will happen next?

 

If this is the earth school and when you die it is graduation, and when you get to the other side and have a review of how it all went, her review will be a grand event, her learning was far and wide, her review test will be in volumes not in pages.

 

I hope her souls journey was exactly as it was designed, that she met and did all that she was set up to do, and that she passed with flying colors.

 

I will remember her always as one who lived, lived in a large way whether it was surfing in Hawaii to flying around Alaska, to hanging our dirty tights on limb after unsuccessfully navigating a stream in our church clothes, even being homeless in Alaska.

 

To me she is a little girl who lived a life that few could live, a brave girl.