THE RAIN IS LEAVING

The moon is shining brightly, its light reflecting off the edges of the retreating rainclouds even though I can still hear the grumble of thunder to the north and west. It’s hard to believe that just a couple of hours ago I turned off the TV rather than persist in trying to watch the news between the emergency flash flood warnings that interrupted the programming. Only a few miles to the east a couple of thunderstorms raged and rested instead of moving on, pouring down more water in a matter of hours than sometimes comes in months here in the arid west. My friend posted on her Facebook page a picture of her patio covered in hail with the admonition that she was afraid the skylights would break from the pounding. Not so at my house.

This week I’ve cleaned the last remnants of my daughter’s stuff out of the basement bedroom and put the room back the way it was before she came to live with me. I scrubbed and cleaned the bathroom, too. Washing the floor thoroughly changed it back to a color I had forgotten. I also painted the walls and ceiling, transforming the bath into the room I had imagined but hadn’t gotten around to creating before my daughter came home from Australia. Now I find myself inspired to paint the whole family room, too. That will be some project.

It is as if, with her moving on, I have been released from some mental holding pattern I wasn’t even aware I was in. I put in process the first legal steps to finish my divorce process and sell my marital house after letting it hang for four years. I am inspired to clean and organize and paint my own house. I told myself I need to prepare to put it on the market, too. Even if I don’t sell it, the house needs some cosmetic attention. It is my psychological mirror and could use some sprucing up. I have made a commitment to be more devoted to going to the gym, especially to the part I hate, doing the cardio exercise. This is called, in the vernacular of a group to which I belong, “cleaning my side of the street.” There is something refreshing and exciting about this.

Somewhere along the way I realized I am also getting ready to “clean my side of the street” as it relates to my health and my weight. I went to the doctor not too long ago because I hurt my shoulder. He told me I have high blood pressure. He wanted to monitor it for a few weeks to see if it really is high. I recently went to another doctor to have a minor surgical procedure. He told me I had high blood pressure, too. I don’t want to take meds. Last year at this time I weighed a lot less. I had low normal blood pressure. What does that say but my ridiculous habits of eating to mask emotional turmoil is not a smart choice. I dreaded my daughter leaving. I thought I’d feel the same pain I felt when my marriage ended and my children flew the nest.

Instead this time is beginning to feel liberating. It is as if the walls of a cage have suddenly collapsed around me and there is nothing to do but flap my wings in hopes of taking off. Yesterday I finally made some phone calls and handled a financial problem that had been hanging over my head for quite some time. It had seemed as if I would never be able to fix it. It just took some perseverance, and things will move. More slowly than I might like, but move it will.

“I need to get my house ready to put on the market,” I’ve been saying to myself. Get it neat, clean, and in show condition is what I have been thinking. Do that for the sake of order itself, it seemed.

What I’ve realized is maybe, just maybe, I’m also preparing to put myself on the market. I might be interested in testing the waters of relationship again. I might be more serious about marketing what I write. I’m starting to feel more confident about the ideas of what to paint in terms of actual paintings, not just freshening up my actual house. Maybe I’ll hold a little drumming circle for my friends and refresh the energy of the house. It feels as if everything wants to change at once.

Unlike the last time that all-encompassing change happened to me, though, this time feels fresh, encouraging. This time I welcome what is coming, even if it is unknown.

CHANGING TIMES

A magenta-orange fireball of sun rises to the east of my kitchen window, transforming the overcast sky to gray, then smoky blue, then a pale pink. Branches of trees cut across the sun’s surface, momentarily making the fire seem tangible; a living, burning entity reaching up into the atmosphere. In just the time it’s taken me to write these lines, the star has clawed his way up the sky, becoming a more usual yellowy-orange, too bright to stare at in wonder any longer. I suddenly remember it is not overcast the sun is rising through but the seemingly eternal pall of smoke from wildfires in states to the north and west of us, all the way to Oregon. The smoke won’t clear until the middle of next week when the weather pattern shifts, the weatherman said on the news last night.

My morning slog through my email shows no response from my insurance agent about the questions I asked him by phone and email yesterday. My lawyer asked me to find out if there is anything in writing in the homeowner’s policy that mentions the circumstances under which liability can be cancelled. I tried to make another appointment to see the lawyer later today but he won’t be in his office again until Monday, and it’s Friday today.

The lawyer  sent me out to do the homework of talking to a couple of real estate brokers about the possibility of listing my marital house, making sure to find two who would be willing and able to handle a contentious sale, up to and including an appearance in court. With some luck and a willingness to cooperate this sale won’t be any more difficult than the usual transaction, but then nothing about my divorce or the time since it became law four years ago has resembled “normal.” My ex-husband would rather see me boiled in oil than pocketing any of what might be left of the equity of something we both worked so hard to create.

I am impatient to get moving. All this detail drives me crazy. It feels so unnecessary, so boring, so much covering of my every move and breath just to protect myself from the manipulations of someone I called “husband” for thirty years. I can become so focused on my anxiety around this situation that I forget to live my life today, in the present as much as possible, instead rehashing again and again what might have been but wasn’t in the past.

It is a whole day later as I finish this writing than it was when I began. In the meantime I received a volunteer request from the Hospice for which I volunteer, for the 11th Hour Program. That means as a volunteer you sit with someone for a block of time in the last few hours of their life as they prepare to transition. Volunteers are requested so the person is not alone, even though they may be in a nursing facility or assisted living. Staff or family cannot always be with the person. I chose a block of time in the wee hours of the night.

There is nothing more humbling than sitting with someone in those hours where they hover between life and death. All that you ever knew or thought or experienced around death can arise and pass through your mind. The thing that I find amazing is that there is something very sacred about this time. Each time I have sat with someone I have become convinced that though I might see one thing, like how thin the person might have become, or the fact that they really have very little mind left, or they might appear to be agitated for a time, there is so much more going on that I don’t see.

Last night I wanted to tell the person that there were only a few hours left, that soon all his troubles would be over. I had such a sense of peace in that quiet darkened room even though his roommate snored loudly and I could hear the staff talking now and then in the hall, and the patient himself was agitated. As I rested my hand on his oh-so-thin shoulder I could feel his life coming to a close. I could also sense that at the end of the bed, by his feet, a few people waited. I could not see anything per se, but I knew someone waited.

I thought of my father’s death, where all that last day he stared up into a corner by the ceiling and sometimes talked to his deceased family members. It is as if a doorway opens for a time between here and wherever it is we go. If you doubt there is something more than meets the eye about this existence and you want to experience more, try sitting with someone who is passing.

This morning the air is clear and cool, the sunlight sparkling on everything it touches. My little dog sleeps on his chair on my patio, “cooking in the sun” as I call it, living very much in the moment. My heart and mind are calm, filled with the blessing of being with that man only a few hours ago now. Worries about lawyers and house sales and ex-husbands seem so trivial, so fleeting. I am so grateful for the change in perspective. It opens a whole new world of possibility.

LETTING GO

I have an appointment later today with a real estate agent to discuss the sale of my marital house. It’s only been sitting there four years since my divorce decree became final in 2008. There are many reasons for this; my ex-husband put it on the market at too high a price and then the housing market crashed, my son was still living there so I didn’t push the sale too hard, even though I had moved out I really wasn’t sure I wanted to see the house go…eventually I let it be taken off the market to wait for better times.

Four years later the market is better but the house might never regain the value it lost. I have to take legal action to get it put back on the market because my ex-husband and I don’t talk. I realize now that a big chunk of the reason I’ve just let the house sit there was because it represented, on some level, my family. Even though I was replaced by another woman before I was even out the door, I look back now and realize that as long as that house was still half mine, I was still connected to both my ex-husband and my children. I had the right to know something about what was going on there, and if the house was being maintained…or so I thought. In reality the only reason I knew anything was my son would tell me what was happening once in a while.

The house itself became a symbol that even though the parents divorced, the family was still intact. I might have been the one who filed for release from an untenable situation; I might have bought a house of my own and moved into town two miles away; I might have been willing to accept the label fostered on me of “home-wrecker;” but in the end everything would be okay because I was still there…I’d just moved to a new location in physical space. I could not have been more naïve.

The reality as I see it now is that it has hurt me, and perhaps my kids, much more than moving on might have. I didn’t want to lose that last tie with someone I had been married to for thirty years and had known for another ten before that. Just because he wouldn’t speak to me, or lied to me when he did, I still knew where he was. He tried in every way to disconnect me not only from him, but from my children, too. And for at least the time being, he’s almost succeeded. I believe he did irreparable damage to what was. Still, that house somehow represented a physical place I could still go on the planet and see what had been the center of my being for so long.

Now, seemingly overnight, a huge shift has occurred in me. My daughter moved out of my house and in with her boyfriend a few weeks ago. It was as if the time she lived here while she finished college was a reprieve for me, time to evolve internally while seeming to do nothing externally. Now I am anxious to shed everything. I went to the lawyer to initiate the sale of our marital house, the way it was originally set up in the divorce decree. I am looking around my own house and putting it in order, too. I may want to sell it now that neither of my children call it home. I am seriously thinking about where else I might want to live. Maybe I’ve owned my last house.

The ties that bind me to that marital house, that man, that imaginary family, have become suffocating. If my children someday want to talk to me about my side of what happened, so be it. If they don’t, I can’t change that. The best I can do is stop holding on so tightly. I know I will bring yet another wave of wrath and blame down upon myself by forcing the sale of the house…or buying me out, whichever comes first. It really doesn’t matter to me anymore.

It is time to become all I have been incubating for four years of sitting around and waiting for…what? The pain to go away? The picture to miraculously rearrange itself so that I am not the bad guy? My children to “get it” and forgive me for choosing life instead of staying with their father?

How about that the day has finally dawned that I no longer hold the psychic space for what was, and instead choose to move on to what might be? I’m not sure I know what that is, and I know that definitely there are a few more cliffs to climb to get there, but now I am ready. I am excited. It feels good. I can at last take action for me.

INDULGENCE

I sit with a bag of frozen peas over my left shoulder and held in place as I write by a pillow against the back of my chair. To my right on the table sits a small bowl of Ben and Jerry’s Pistachio ice cream. The frozen peas are there because my dermatologist removed a small benign cyst an hour or so ago from my neck and the doctor wants to reduce possible swelling and pain. The ice cream is because I actually went to the lawyer and discussed how to get my marital house back on the market after four years of letting my ex-husband continue to live in it while basically running it into the ground. Seeing a doctor and a lawyer both in one day is pretty stressful. Good thing in a couple of hours I get to meet some friends for dinner to celebrate a birthday.

Today would have been my 35th wedding anniversary. Instead, shortly after my 30th wedding anniversary, I got brave enough to take myself to a lawyer, plunk down a few thousand dollar retainer, and initiate a “dissolution of marriage.” Otherwise known as divorce. If I’d had the faintest idea how many of my own inner demons I’d have to excise in the divorce process, I probably would have waited another few years. But by then I could have been dead.

Going back to a lawyer today was almost as difficult as that initial experience. I could feel myself flush from my hair root tips down to my chest. I hoped my makeup could disguise the color purple. I was sure the lawyer could see my mustache break out into a sweat. I felt like crying at one point just talking to the lawyer about what I wanted to do. In actuality there was nothing difficult about it at all. The problem was all in my head. The fear, that is. That’s the problem. I realized that on some level I am every bit as afraid of my ex-husband now as I was as a relatively new wife when he slammed his fist down on my ironing board and bent the leg of it to the floor because he didn’t like something I’d said.

Just as was the case with my actual divorce attorney, this lawyer and I went through the steps to calm that panicked inner child part of myself. “I’m here to help you,” he said. “The divorce decree says that the house is to be sold. I can take steps today to begin to make that happen.” I didn’t have to be manipulated or bullied into doing something I didn’t want to do. It would certainly be much less expensive if my ex-husband and I could actually discuss some of the details of this process ourselves, I was told, but I didn’t have to deal with him at all if it was too difficult.

Just hearing that calmed me a bit. The lawyer proposed a hypothetical situation. “Do you think you are physically in danger, now?” he asked.  That was not my immediate concern. I was worried about how my ex might react once he receives the letter from the lawyer.

“If your ex-husband came to the door and he was really angry, would you let him in?” the lawyer asked.

“Absolutely not,” I said.

“If he continued to harass you, would you call the police?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“Well it says right here in your divorce decree that each party will be civil in their dealings with the other,” he pointed out. “If he calls on the phone and is rude, hang up. If he calls back, hang up. If he calls again, call the police. That’s phone harassment.”

Oh. Once again I had to realize that legally this is all pretty cut and dried. I am not that little girl in my family of origin, the smallest and youngest having to deal with the crazy things my mother did to create chaos. I am not the wife who felt trapped and petrified of the much bigger and stronger bully disguised as a husband. I don’t even have to berate myself for staying so long in an impossible situation. I can just pay the lawyer to do his job and get the business taken care of.

Tonight I went out with my friends and had a great dinner to celebrate a couple of birthdays. We laughed and ate and drank and exchanged presents and caught up on each others’ lives. At the end I got to take home a huge, still warm, just cooked apple pie my friend made with apples from her own trees. She made the crust and the topping, too. I just ate a piece. It was magnificent. My actual life is so much better than it used to be. It makes me realize just how true that statement is for me right now; “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.”

Oh yes. Nothing like a warm, heavenly scented apple pie to bring that thought home. Especially when it’s baked with love.

CELEBRATE RAIN

The temperature is twenty degrees cooler than it was yesterday and rain, rain, rain is falling, hopefully for the rest of the day. In a summer of ferocious wildfires and a hauntingly eerie number of record-breaking days above ninety degrees, this is a phenomenon worth noting. I saw on the news that there are flash floods in Las Vegas that have left cars stranded and streets flooded in a desert climate, but here in Northern Colorado the rain is soft and steady and cleansing to the soul. The grass, even the grass that has been watered, greens up nicely and the color intensifies as the day goes on. I am sure that for my yard at least, the grass is so much happier to have natural water in the form of rain than the chemically treated water that comes through my pipes from the town.

According to the calendar, in a week or two it will be time for people to blow out their sprinkler systems and shut them down for the winter as we pass the fall equinox. September is a month of significant dates for me. My father’s birthday was September 6th, and our family always celebrated it by spending Labor Day weekend on Pea Island in Long Island Sound, the last vestige of summer before school began again. Besides the global pall of 9/11 to the American psyche, September 11th is the day my divorce became final four years ago. Next Monday, September 17, would have been my 35th wedding anniversary. Then there is the fall equinox on the 21st, and a couple of dear friends celebrate their birthdays this month.

Next Monday, the date of my erstwhile wedding anniversary, I will be going back to a lawyer once again to take action on something left over from my divorce. My ex-husband’s way of dealing with large emotional problems is to cut them off and pretend they don’t exist. Amputation is the way lots of people seem to deal with problematic relationships, but I truly never expected it to happen to me. We have known each other most of our lives. I am one of the last people left on the planet who knows or has lived through the majority of the history of his life with him.

Still, we can discuss nothing and rarely speak at all, despite having two children together. When I filed for divorce, apparently I also filed for amputation. “I never have to speak to you or care what you think again,” he said to me. And so, pretty much, that’s the way it’s been.

I’m going to talk to the lawyer about our marital house. I still own half of it. I was awarded that half in the divorce, four years ago. The house was on the market at the time, and our son still lived in it. The housing market crashed and I agreed to let it stay off the market for a while. Four years is long enough. I don’t receive any rent or payoff in any form, though he does pay the mortgage.

Now he is boarding horses again, something that could cause the homeowner’s insurance to be cancelled immediately. Who’s going to know? No one until, God forbid, a claim might be filed. Our son has a good job and can support himself. The second live-in girlfriend has dibs on becoming a common law wife. He couldn’t afford the deductible on the insurance so a repair was not made. My son told me he thought the house needed to be sold.

Who else in their right mind would have let this go on this long? No one, I suppose. But on some level you have to realize I have not been in my “right mind.” I allowed myself to be bullied and dominated and sometimes actually physically threatened for years. It took everything I had to finally file for divorce. Even then I obeyed the dictum that I not discuss anything about the divorce with the kids. Doing that hurt everyone, especially my children. To this day they have only the picture their father painted for them of what happened. But now the day has come when I need the money.

Sadly, that is what has given me the courage to go to court again. It might have been better if I could have discussed it with my ex-husband first. That can only happen in an ideal world at this point. When push comes to shove I often surprise myself with the strength I do find. Most other people won’t get it, but some do. I know I invite a hell of a fight down upon myself. It’s ok. The law already awarded it to me. Now it’s time to take it.

COOL BREEZES BLOWING

I love these August mornings when the breeze washes across the landscape after a nighttime temperature drop of 30 or 40 degrees. The rising sun warms the air and in the yellow light the tiny leaves of the locust tree outside my living room window are singularly defined as the branches toss and wave. I am lightly brushed as I sit and write by the air moving from the kitchen through the house. It is a balm that creates a peaceful heart.

I watched a very good movie yesterday, one that hasn’t had much push in the ads one sees and hears for every new blockbuster here in Heartland America. It was visually beautiful as well as emotionally touching. “The Intouchables,” based on a true story, was about the evolution of a remarkable relationship between a fabulously rich and privileged Parisian quadriplegic man, and an exceptional Somalian caretaker who comes into his life. Their wildly divergent worlds mix in remarkably transformative ways.

I bring up the breezes and the movie because, to me, these are evidence of The Divine in my life. The last couple of days have been full of some stress and worry on my part, yet I am working on my spirituality and my faith, trying to find that inner stillness from which I find the strength and inner peace to take life as it comes. I am being shown that even though things might appear one way on the outside, very often deep and subtle healings are possible on the inside.

I had lunch with a friend I haven’t seen in a while a few days ago. She might appear unremarkable if you pick apart her world by the superficial standards of employment or education, yet to me she offers a profound insight into the deepest of experiences that most of us ever have to face.

She is a cancer survivor, never allowing who she was to be defined by the disease or its treatment. She has had to bury not just one, but two sons. A third hovers on the edge of life and death today. Though her energy was heavy on the day I sat with her, we still found things to laugh about, a lightness came from just spending a couple of hours together outside our usual routines. She finds God on the golf course, she tells me with a smile. “Maybe when golf season winds down you’ll see more of me around town,” she quips. The time together seems to have helped both of us. She keeps me in the moment, remembering the manageability of what is, today. A simple shift in perception can change my world.

I have been feeling resentful that now that I finally feel as if I can manage my life and my feelings and the work I want to do, it may be time to sell my house. It is an expensive luxury that I have hidden myself away in, first with my son, then with my daughter, as the time ticked by in my recovery from my divorce. Now  both kids are gone, and I live here with only my little dog.

Truth be told, I have tired of the simple tasks of home-ownership. I bought this house because the upkeep would be minimal, but now I am tired of even this. The hot, dry, summer made the weeds grow much more insistently up between the rocks in the gravel beds and in lieu of poisoning everything, I spent hours on my hands and knees pulling those suckers out. Twelve gallons of deck stain later, I’ve primed my wooden fence for another year in the interest of keeping my dogs at home and not wandering the neighborhood. My garage and basement loom now, full of unnecessary stuff I have accumulated in the four years I have lived here.

My neighbor reaches over the fence with his good arm and hands me an insert for a broken sprinkler head I am trying to fix. He watches me for a minute and then tells me I ought to try that with one arm. He has lost his right arm. His wife died unexpectedly not that long ago, he told me when he first moved in. He was homeless for a year. Now he and his son live in a nice house. Though often I find his attention wearing, I try to be patient. I think I have much to learn if I will only listen.

Just dragging the garbage bin to the curb on trash day can be a production when you only have one arm. Life seems to be full of many lessons these days. All of them are about how to get by, dealing with whatever you have to deal with. I am trying to be open-minded and find that actually, the best way to be is open-hearted. Life is so much more engaging that way.

ANGER IS…

This morning as I drove up the highway to a friend’s house for our mentorship group, it was as if I had never been there before. I couldn’t remember the exit number. I couldn’t remember the name of the exit, even. Traffic was fairly heavy and I was worried I would be late. I am compulsively on time. I hate being late. I pulled off several exits early and drove around until I could figure out how to get back on the highway in the right direction. When I finally did get to the right exit, I almost didn’t take it. All the way to my friend’s house, I doubted myself. It was as if I were dreaming. Not as if I was losing my mind, more like trying to find this reality from The Twilight Zone.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot more writing after a few years of barely writing at all. I’ve unearthed paintings and drawings and art supplies I haven’t touched in a long time. I’ve framed some of my stuff and actually hung it on the wall where I see it all the time instead of hiding it in my basement in a bag in the “unfinished” storage-space-only part. I look at this artwork and I see the parts of myself I’ve buried and tried never to let come to the surface again. Letting the creativity come forward also brings all the feelings I don’t want to deal with. Like frustration and fear, and even loneliness. The worst one is anger. I feel like a chick that’s just hatched from its egg. “What happened to my nice, warm, safe and predictable environment?” I peep. “When did the world get so big with possibility?”

I’ve manifested a chronic pain in my left shoulder and the top part of my left arm. Sometimes the pain shoots up into my neck. “What in my life feels like a pain in the neck?” I ask myself in an effort to decipher what is happening physically. It’s a pain not easily banished with over the counter medicine. It’s making it hard to stand or sit and paint. It’s making it hard to sit at my computer and write. I think I’m beginning to get it. The pain sometimes is intense enough to cause me to breathe differently. It makes me angry. Today it’s bothering me a lot.

A week or two ago I caught the tail end of the Dr. Oz show as I was waiting for the evening news to come on. I guess it had been a show about eating and obesity. Dr. Oz was looking imploringly into the camera. “There’s one thing I make every patient I help with weight loss ask herself before we begin,” he said as he backed off so the camera could see his face and his hands.  He pointed with what I think of as a scolding stance. The wagging forefinger followed by a tight fist. “Who made you feel you were worthless?’ he said. “Think about that.” And that was the end of the show.

I could name a couple of people right off the bat. My mother. My ex-husband. A couple of teachers. But that’s not the point. At least not for me, this morning. I made myself feel worthless. I bought into other people’s opinions of me, of my writing, of my paintings. It never occurred to me to think that they may have had opinions, but that they might not be true. I thought in every case that was the price of relationship…to put up with being put down. I agreed with that opinion expressed by someone else, that I didn’t deserve more. So I stifled myself. I hid my gifts in a garbage bag in the basement. I haven’t bothered to try to share my writing. I have many intuitive gifts and have had much training in energy work and shamanic healing. I don’t often do sessions for anyone other than the people I know well.

That’s all beginning to shift and change. I am taking lots of little steps to throw myself out into the world. Little steps that add up to big changes, not the least of which is this mentorship group. I’ve gotten to watch some amazing people grow and evolve in exciting ways over the past year. They tell me that I’ve changed, too. Today I’m feeling so very, very angry that I allowed myself to think so little of myself that I dissed all my own gifts. That pain might be clenching down on the muscles in my neck and shoulder, but the anger is definitely a lit match. I feel like I’m reaching back to light the rocket attached to my ship. The afterburners are coming on. The only one I have to please is me. I’m finally beginning to see who I am. I so look forward to the ride.

ACCEPTANCE

I’ve been working on cleaning up my past on many levels recently, especially spiritually. One of the ways of doing this is to make amends to people we may have hurt across our life. In the spiritual program of which I am a part, we sometimes divide the list of people we need to make amends with into three columns entitled “definitely,” “maybe,” and “when hell freezes over.” That last column title is of my own making. As in “I’ll make amends to you, pal, when hell freezes over.” But you get the idea.

It is the last column that needs the most work. I can’t move forward until I let go of my resentments and my anger. Until I accept that over which I have no control. It doesn’t mean that I like something, just that I accept reality as it is. “When hell freezes over” is one of those expressions that alerts me that I better look harder at what’s going on for me.

This morning I was giving a little talk on the subject of acceptance. I had read a line recently in a book that absolutely stuck in my craw. It was a perfect focus for my inner work. It made me realize that the majority of my life had been spent laser-focused on a fact of life I wanted to pretend wasn’t true. “There was a piece of reality I never wanted to see:” the line said, “I loved someone who couldn’t be trusted.” It really isn’t so important why the people in this column of my list weren’t trustworthy, as what I did with that fact. I had been beating myself up with my own stupidity and inability to understand how this could be so. I had been justifying my resentment and even hatred toward these persons like one savors a sickly sweet sauce so delicious it hides the poison contained within. Most of my own suffering came from my inability to accept these people exactly the way they are.

One of the definitions of acceptance is “coming to terms with something.” I not only have to come to terms with the fact that I loved and trusted people repeatedly who, for reasons of their own, could not live up to that position of trust, but I have to learn to accept myself. Life is too precious, each day too short, for me to waste time being angry about things I can’t change.

In letting go of my harsh feelings toward another I not only free them from the poison of my resentment, I free myself. I free myself from my own judgments about giving away my power to people I loved. I did what I did to meet my own needs. The people I turned to were not bad people, they had their own challenges that ultimately had little to do with me.

 All of a sudden doors open and freedom moves within me that had not been there before. I find myself so much more peaceful, and so much more open to the beauty of life that is all around me if I will only see. Letting go of the past opens the door to a new and different future. I don’t have to seal myself off from the rest of humanity, or even continue to live life as if finding a truly loving relationship is impossible. As I learn to be more open and honest with myself, and accept my responsibility for my own feelings and my own life, I somehow give that gift to others, too.

I have a friend who told me that my only job was to “clean out the pipe” between myself and the God of my understanding. I love this analogy, for it lets me visualize some of my behaviors and thoughts as a literal “block in the pipe” that I can then clean out with ease. As I loosen up, I open to marvelous things.

The sunlight is so much more beautiful as it plays across the leaves of an Aspen waving in the summer day. My heart, open to my friend, is so much more deeply stirred by her sharing about her struggles with her feelings after her ex-husband is badly hurt in a motorcycle accident. My judgment of another friend and her seeming “failings” suddenly becomes eclipsed by the light and strength of her willingness to admit she is only human, and her wish that she might do better in the future. My heart fills with understanding and acceptance. 

In short, I realize I am no longer alone. When I hold on to things I can not change, I shut the world out. When I “come to terms” with my past, I see a whole new Universe open before me.

THERE ARE NO SMALL MIRACLES

I was given a great gift this morning, though I am only just beginning to realize how great. I finished the letter just as the sky began to brighten with the first rays of the rising sun. I changed the track on the CD I was listening to, shut the notebook in which I had been writing, and closed my eyes. I wanted to spend some time in meditation and prayer. I found myself with little to say to God, other than the words with which I always begin. I listened with more attention and awareness, more peace. I didn’t catch myself dozing off despite the early hour and how tired I was.

Yesterday I was determined to write a new post for my blog, just to have something to do. It was that or go to my easel and work on a painting I started a couple of days ago. I will do most anything to avoid painting. It is unbelievably boring to write about painting, even to me, but I did. It would never do as a post.

Then I had an idea. I whipped out a great post that ultimately was all about a very ugly time in my marriage and why I would never forgive my ex-husband for what happened. Every word of it was justified, and every word of it was true. It was superbly written, a good read in a voyeuristic slice of life kind of way. It needed only the most minor of editing.

Here is the divine intervention, the miracle. I decided not to post it right away. I decided to wait until the next day, today, to edit it one more time. I wanted to make sure I didn’t use the same word too many times, and check that I had explained things clearly enough to follow my reasoning without a glitch. Then I would post it.

 For the past several weeks I have been working, as part of a spiritual program of which I am a part, on making amends to those I have harmed. My ex-husband is on that list, albeit in the “this might never happen” column. I have been thinking about writing him a letter, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to even start. 

Last night I woke in the middle of the night, and read from one of the many spiritually oriented books I keep on my bedside table. Suddenly I was thrust into the realization that the writing I had finished but not posted was vicious. It was petty; it maligned the character of someone not present to defend himself. At the very least it sliced him up like hard salami buzzing through a deli meat slicer, and left me smelling like a rose. Maybe not everyone reading it would realize that, but I would. I was struck by just how close I had come to pushing that button to publicize that writing. Like the unforgivable words we sometimes say to others in the heat of anger, once out those utterances can never be taken back.

I got up and went into my meditation room and got out my notebook. I wrote a long letter, full of gratitude for all the things I could bring to mind that were blessings across our thirty year marriage. There were many. I said I was sorry for all the venomous thoughts and wishes I have sent his way since we divorced. I thanked him for all the things, both good and bad, that helped me grow as a person. I promised to try to be a better person in the future.

I don’t know if he will ever see the letter, but the peace that came over me as I closed my notebook was nothing short of a gift. The gift of Grace. I laid down a great burden for myself letting go of resentment I wasn’t even aware I still carried. As I meditated this morning I was filled with quiet, and with peace. I saw as I opened my eyes again, that the sky had turned a brilliant orange. The sun broke over the horizon and streamed into my room. I went back to bed and slept a couple of hours. I awoke still filled with that same peace. For me, it really is a new day.

ON BEING A LITTLE SISTER

My brother was almost eight years older than I was. I was a besotted younger sister who thought he could do no wrong. It didn’t matter that his later success as a psychologist had its roots in his manipulation of me; I thought pretty much everything he ever did was wonderful. Even the scary things were okay. They strengthened my character and gave me courage. Or so I like to think.

When I was a kid, we lived in a large house built in the 1920’s for some family that must have had a fetish about being clean. Every bedroom had its own bathroom, and there were two powder rooms besides. My bedroom door was right across the hall from the door to the attic, or rather, a complete third floor. It was built to be a self-contained living space for servants.

I had a room up there I played in during the day, but by night I hated the dark and the seeming vastness of the space. By the time I was six or so, we no longer had live-in help, so the third floor was totally empty. I had a thing about monsters. I was certain they were lurking everywhere, not only behind my closet door, but up in the dark attic, for sure.

My brother was quick to point out that the first place the monsters would go when they came out of the attic, would be straight across the narrow hallway and through my bedroom door, into my room. As a result, part of my nightly ritual was to make sure that door to the third floor was tightly closed.

My brother and I played a game in my room sometimes. We would sit on my bed and pretend to be paddling a boat on a dangerous river. We had to avoid rapids and waterfalls, and yes, crocodiles. It seemed we would play this game for hours. I always had a wonderful time. Perhaps my brother was tiring of the game and sought some way to get me to stop. Perhaps he was just trying to scare me. “Do you know where the crocodiles go at night?” he asked me one day. It had never before occurred to me to think about that.

“No.” I said.

“They are hiding under your bed,” he informed me. I could feel my stomach contract. I hadn’t been afraid of crocodiles before that minute. “When you get up at night to go to the bathroom, you better watch out. They’ll come out and get you before you can get to the bathroom door, or back to your bed. As a matter of fact, they’ll grab your feet the second they touch the ground beside your bed.”

It really didn’t scare me that much, but after that as I switched on my bedside light at night, I fully expected to see crocodile snouts peeking out from under the edge of my bed, or at least two or three crawling around on the floor. I was always a little disappointed that they weren’t. I even hung my head down over the side of the bed to check once in a while. Nothing.

He did scare me terribly one time. He was babysitting for me with one of his friends one night. He let me watch a movie my parents never would have let me see. It was on far past my bedtime. It was called “The Crawling Eye.” It didn’t matter that many years later I watched that movie again and “The Crawling Eye” was an obviously fake, rubbery, octopus-shaped one-eyed toy that moved around a foggy aquarium looking in doll-house windows to find its victims; that thing was 100% real to me at the time. I was petrified. It always got its victims when they were alone.

“You have to go upstairs now and take your bath,” my brother informed me. “Be careful when you do so that one of those legs doesn’t come up the drain and get you,” he said, a particularly evil grin on his face. He and his friend cracked up, snorting and snickering to each other. I went up to my bathroom and put about an inch of water in the tub. I took the shortest bath ever. The drain had a cover, but I knew it wouldn’t hold back one of The Eye’s legs. I was afraid it would see me through the little bathroom window. I ran back downstairs. My brother brought me upstairs to put me to bed.

“Make sure you keep your venetian blinds shut tight,” he said. “You don’t want it to find you after I’m gone.” I got up to double check that the blinds were not only shut tight, but hung down below the window sill, just in case. It was months before I was comfortable leaving my windows open again. I still prefer to sleep on the side of the bed away from windows, or most importantly, closet doors. At some level, monsters still lurk in my nighttime mind.

Decades later my brother and I talked about this. I told him my fear of that movie practically stopped my heart, and for a long time afterwards, too. “Oohhh, Chris,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” We could have a good laugh about these things, then.

My brother passed away ten years ago this coming Christmas. I still miss him.