Reclaiming Self
Far from home,
tired and spent,
feeling abandoned,
disconnected –
I am cut off.
Lacking independence,
damaged by betrayal,
I try not to need
and get tangled up-
cut off again.
The past haunts me:
a legacy of dead-ends;
abuse, addictions,
and mental illness-
cut me off.
Seek a higher road!
Spirit calls to me.
No! Stubbornness responds
I can do this myself –
But, I can’t.
Confronting shadow,
the nightmare is revealed.
Following Spirit
is the way –
I re-engage.
Disturbances alarm me
an intentional bystander
burying my head,
avoiding conflict.
Strife spills over
butting up against
personal limitations
forgetting myself
I engage
finding unforeseen strength,
defying odds
then remembering
letting go,
deflated.
I feel targeted
displaced rage
threatens me, stalks
and I am helpless
vulnerable.
My pleas for help
unheard, unanswered.
My life is at stake here people!
Pay attention!
Expectations are high
uplifted by progress;
promising road ahead-
I am out of sync
missing opportunities,
losing my place
forgotten
disability
limits me
I have no strength
but I have needs
Life taunts me
within arms reach
yet inaccessible –
rights diminished.
I crave life,
sustenance,
connection,
in isolation.
Brightly clad and bristling,
Ego scrambles to organize,
persuade, and manipulate
while Greatness watches calmly,
a knowing smile on her face.
Knowledge trembles with anticipation,
eager, yet hesitant,
confident in her training,
doubting her ability to perform.
Greatness nods encouragingly.
Judgment resists Ego’s wants,
sets up roadblocks, spews criticism.
Ego reeling at the blows,
views herself anew with disgust.
Greatness is nowhere in sight.
Plans thwarted, Ego recoils
back to the source of her dreams.
Greatness waits at the center
Graciously open to listening.
Embarrassed and disheveled, Ego sits.
“I’ve been a fool!” she blurts,
“I wanted so much, thought I could do it all,
but I was wrong. So wrong!”
Greatness does not comply with this ranting,
Offering only silent reassurance.
Ego calms herself, considering her companion.
“You must have struggled in your time,” she observes.
“Known heartache and disapproval.”
“Oh yes!” Greatness nods,
a humourous twinkle in her eye.
“But you never gave up?”
“No. I did not,” comes the kind reply.
“I do look a bit foolish,” Ego persists
“Just overzealous, perhaps.”
Ego pauses to reflect.
“Knowledge stumbled with self-doubt,
yet you knew that she’d succeed,
is that why you supported her?”
Greatness smiles generously,
her nod implying more.
So focused on perfection,
Ego now sees the fault.
Potential, she realizes
doesn’t not come ready-polished
but with willingness to try.
“I need to make some changes,”
she confesses to Greatness and herself.
“To tone down my outer professes,
and tune up my inner strengths.”
“Believe in yourself,” comes the response.
The rains finally arrived,
accompanied by tremors,
in the autumn of my thirty-second year.
Torrential floods
of pent up fear and emotion,
unleashed for weeks on end.
In my state of brokenness,
I felt the sorrow of
thousands of women –
oppression, rage, disappointment, hell.
It’s been years now,
yet pools of tears still lie,
stagnant, breeding insects,
mutant bugs with segmented bodies,
struggling to stay alive.
I crush them – try to stamp them out,
but they reappear,
unexpectedly, driven
to what purpose I do not know.
I have conformed, cleansed, repented, prayed.
Yet the sorrow comes
in waves of terror,
reminders of the past.
Worry not for me,
but for the children,
whose innocence is tainted
by horrors unknown,
who pay the price
of my victimhood.
Confused, removed, they suffer unwittingly.
Pray for release, for salvation,
pray for understanding and redemption,
pray that we may all, once again,
breathe.
The rage within my father was tangible and made him larger than life, the potential for violence ever-present.
My mother’s attempts at peace-making were fueled by trepidation – always on the lookout, hoping against hope to maintain calm.
Both adopted the facade that ‘all was well’ and deeply denied the reality.
The result – an unnameable terror that gripped us children. No logic explained the tension that surrounded us, however; we understood without doubt that a threat hovered over us in every living moment.
Mother’s attempts at peace were merely misguided acts of enablement; empowering, not disarming my Father.
Uncontested he reigned tyrannically; yet, what he really longed for was peace.
Peace, not peace-making.
Father longed for a sense of acceptance and acknowledgement that was beyond his grasp. He was society’s outcast: unwittingly born into an era where gender definitions were polarized – male or female. He did not know – we did not know – about genetics and the sliding scale that defines gender identification and sexual orientation. He was forced to conform and, therefore; denied basic human rights.
My mother, whose understanding of all things sexual came from watching the animals rut on the farm where she grew up, and pushing away unwanted advances from her father and siblings, was not equipped to understand the enigma presented to her by her husband. She only knew that this tortured soul of a man was the provider for herself and her role was to be submissive and nurturing. She found herself trapped between his ‘awful’ secret and trying to maintain an outer appearance of normalcy.
It was dysfunction at its finest. Unable to resolve their own issues they looked outward, finding causes within their children’s lives to replace their compulsive need to fix. There was never any shortage of broken, needy, helpless occurrences to satisfy their lust.
The answer to violence, and the threat of violence, at least in our home, was not peace-making. In hindsight, it was a need for individualized peace – an understanding of differences, motivations, desires, and a stated acceptance that allowed us to come together in respect and honour for our diversity.
An atmosphere of open-mindedness would have allowed father to reveal his truth.
Assertiveness, on the part of my mother, would have allowed her to set healthy boundaries and limits defining her participation (or not) in my father’s reveal.
Trust in the basic nature of our love for one another might have prevented the constant need for self-preservation, which only turned us away, one from the other.
Inner peace offers a strength that fortifies against fear and outrageousness. It believes in a wisdom that transcends time and space; offering the possibility of order and compassion in the midst of chaos.
The concept of peace – real peace- was not part of my growing up.
Without peace, violence – physical, mental, psychological, emotional or spiritual – reigns.
At thirty-one, I had to learn to change my approach to life, because the old way wasn’t working.
The old way put me at the center of the family (even though I was fifth born), listening to and attempting to resolve every family issue:  Do you think your younger sister is okay living out there in isolation? Your older sisters are not talking to each other. I can’t talk to Mom, will you? Why do men always leave me? Your brother thinks I abandoned him as a child. I can’t talk to Dad; he’ll listen to you. Your brother is coming to stay, and well, you know about his wife.  I can’t live with your Father. And on and on.
The old way was me constantly trying to run from my problems, striving to be better, to do better, and to get ahead. I was invested in the belief that if I could just do the right thing, my life would be perfect. I beat myself up trying to reach some magical destination where peace would prevail, and all would be well with the world.
Attachments, chaos, interference, and desires were destroying me. I lived in a perpetual state of strife and discontentment.
And then the blessing came:Â my mind snapped.
As I picked up the pieces of my life, I had to learn to simplify.
I was gifted with new objectivity. I realized that even though my own life had come to a screaming stop, everyone else’s went on without me. The chaos and drama of my family continued, and for the first time in my life, I recognized that I had no ability to control it. Never had. My need to feel important and responsible in the midst of that whirlwind was my own sick way of coping. Nothing I said, did, or sweat over was going to change the outcomes. I learned to detach and stop interfering.
Mom and Dad are trying to run my life.
“You are strong and have supports. I trust that you can deal with this.”
Find out what’s wrong with your sister.
“I have my own relationship with my sister, and would prefer that you do the same. Let’s not get them confused.”
It was the first step to learning to breathe again.
Losing my mind also put a stop to all that rushing around. I was forced to stand still, which meant everything I had been running from caught up to me. Egads! I went into therapy.
My family, I came to understand, dealt with dilemma’s by creating more distractions: new problems. Our momentum came from the next crisis and there was never any shortage of those. The problem with this way of living is that the underlying message is that there is something so wrong, so unmentionable, that it is not safe to relax, and so we hang on until the next cliff hanger. The only control I had in all of this was to no longer choose to be part of it. Peace, I discovered, was an inner journey and not an outer destination. Boy, had I been on the wrong track!
“What is it that you really desire?” the therapist asked me one day.
“I don’t know,” came the response, and it was true. I had been driving myself so hard, I had forgotten what it was that I was aiming for in the first place.
Life, I concluded, is not a game in which the person with the best ideas, and the most responsibility wins. It is a journey of moments, and discoveries, and connections, which if we’re not careful, we will miss. Simplicity, my heart’s actual desire, is being able to minimize the attachments, resist the need to interfere, and be the calm at the center of the storm.
I’m still working on it, but at least now, I am more aware.
Today is where your book begins; the rest is still unwritten. These song lyrics have run through my mind all night, keeping me from sleeping. A perfect lead in to today’s topic.
I am old enough to know that setbacks are not the end of life; they are usually just a transition point. If you have been reading along, you know that it is the stuff of my writing.
When I experienced what we used to call a mental breakdown, at the age of thirty-one, I recognized that it was a wake up call to make some changes in my life. Obviously, the way I had been living was not working for me, so I needed to learn a new way.
Losing my mind was like falling into a black hole. I felt as if I was at the bottom of a deep abyss, with no visible means of escape. Four things saved me: my faith, my children, my writing, and my friends.
I knew that if I was to survive the experience, I would have to build my own stairway out. I began with my beliefs.
Step one. I believed that God never gave us anything we couldn’t handle, so therefore, I had it within me to heal.
Step two. I believed that what happened, happened for a reason, so that there was a purpose for my suffering.
Step three. I believed that God gives us what we need, so that help would be there for me.
Don’t get me wrong, losing one’s mind is a horrible thing. In the beginning, I shook uncontrollably for most of the days, lying in a fetal position on my bed. But I knew if I was ever to get better, I had learn to “walk” again.
I set baby step goals for myself. As my children were still considerably young, I made them a priority. The first goal was to spend fifteen minutes a day of quality time with my children, without the trembling and tears. I found I was able to control the anxiety for short periods of time, when I focused on them, instead of me.
The second goal was to get out of the house everyday, even if I was only able to walk to the end of the street (driving was out of the question). This was difficult, but I knew it was important not to give into the fear and become housebound.
In between times, I wrote and wrote, processing every thought, fear, and emotion, until I reached some aha moments. I used my dreams as a guide.
When I grew a little bit stronger, I called upon trusted friends, who put together a healing circle that met once a week in support of my healing.
I learned many things from that time of darkness. Mostly, I learned that if something is not life or death, then it is not worth worrying about. I let go of my need for perfection. I learned that nothing is as precious as the relationships that sustain us. And I realized the depth of my own inner strength.
None of us would ever choose setbacks, but in retrospect, would we ever grow without them?
One Woman's Quest 