Archive for 2012

 

A new twist in the river’s tale

Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012

The sediment is settling in my river and, as I sit here considering the distance it has travelled, the rapids it has traversed and the magnificent flight it has taken over waterfalls, I acknowledge every grain of sand and love them. And in the loving of my sediment, I am acutely aware that it isn’t here to stay. The rain will come and go, my banks will burst and recede and the sediment will move to new places where it will settle, disperse and move once again when circumstances – and the weather – dictate.

This place on my river is the place where I turn the page of this book I write on my soul … it’s where I begin a brand new chapter. Just like I am every grain of sand in my river, so am I every letter, word and emotion in my book. I am a protagonist caught in a journey along a path the author can only sense with each keystroke. And it’s overwhelmingly exciting. In fact I was offered a project today and when asked how I felt about it, I had to breathe deep to prevent my heart outpacing me. “I am totally overwhelmed by the work which needs to be done,” I said, “which means, of course, that I’m in.” I beamed as I sensed my river was about to fill and shift once again.

I’m still writing the same book but the plot is a mystery. The protagonist has been liberated from a stagnant pool and she is flowing freely once again. While I feel the sediment settling and enjoy these moments of calm reflection, I notice how fertile the soil on the banks has become. I am going to do some gardening now and just see what will grow. And when my river starts to flow once again, the plants will remind me of where I’ve been.

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Resetting the parenting coordinates

Sunday, April 1st, 2012

“I wish my parents had arrangements like that when I was small,” he said, looking off toward the ocean. “Every time my parents saw each other, they would fight.” He looked up and moved his head from side to side as he spoke indicating the memory of watching the words move rapidly between them. “I was little so I didn’t know what they were saying … but I knew it was bad. And I think I always thought it was my fault.”

Those pangs of parenting guilt began to knock around inside of me but we just sat for a while, comfortable in the silences and resting, despite the bracing South Easter that occasionally forced me to reach for my companion when it threatened to blow me over.

“You know, when I went to school, we were taught that a mother does a certain thing and a father does a certain thing. But then when you living with your parents and they’re divorced and they’re each doing both the jobs of the mother and the father, you feel like you can’t bother them with your problems because they’ve got enough going on. So you just get on with stuff. And it’s hard … you know … feeling like you haven’t got anyone to turn to.”

And there it was … my light bulb moment – a flash of clarity to highlight where the readjustments need to take place. And still we sat, chatting from time to time, feeling somehow connected through what we had just been through together: a 72-hour Route March and the culmination of the 3-month program at the Chrysalis Academy. We had journeyed there together – in extremely different ways – and although I didn’t have the 4am wake-up calls or get my arse whipped into shape on a daily basis, my learning and transformation quite possibly equalled that of the 170 students.

We often learn our lessons in the most unexpected ways and, as I so often learn, they usually don’t come without a fair amount of pain. I had marched for a total of 25 hours in three days – across mountains, roads and beaches from Tokai Forest to Cape Point – to be in a position to find this particular lesson. My feet were bleeding, my knees were grazed, I had pulled everything out the bag (and then some) and my body was depleted and in pain. But my soul? … it was free and open. And this young man was there at my most receptive, just as I had been there for him right at the beginning of the course.

We always find the messengers, you know … those people our souls guide us to seek out for the lessons we are meant to learn. But we have to be open to the experiences that present themselves to us and sometimes we have to – quite literally – climb mountains to collect them.

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Sailing away…

Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

“Relationship demands not that we surrender to another person, but that we acknowledge a soul in which the parties are mingled and respect its unpredictable demands. All these paradoxes keep the mind spinning and the heart superficially insecure yet deeply trusting. Our intimacies reach out and preserve the world around us so that our interpersonal movements toward union, grounded as they are in deep threads of soul that reach far beyond human persons, keep the world itself from falling apart.”

Thus reads a favourite passage of mine from a book I picked up out of complete boredom while my son was perusing the library’s selection of Asterix comics. Not one to believe in coincidence, I have only now really looked at the cover; a watercolor of a couple steering a sailboat out at sea (the anchor, no doubt, safely stowed and their feet, hopefully, in just enough water to keep them alert to where they are). The book is Soul Mates by Thomas Moore and, on what would be the morning of my 15th wedding anniversary, I have to share a passage that sounds uncannily as though the couple he is referring to is me and my ex.

“I am reminded of a couple who came to me to discuss their marriage and who demonstrated the two poles of psychological consciousness and its avoidance. They were suffering from a rather common malady. The wife was going through a remarkable period of renewal. She was waking up to possibilities for herself that she had never considered before. Her husband, however, was still asleep, going through the rote motions of a career and marriage. It was his habit to blame the external world for everything negative that was happening to him. His wife, her mother, his boss, the town in which they lived – all these things were at fault. He never said anything of substance about his own thoughts, feelings or experiences. From the outside, at least, it appeared that he had no relationship to his soul.
One sign of soul is reflection. The soul doesn’t have to know what is going on in life. It doesn’t need interpretations, explanations or conclusions, but it does require musing, reverie, consideration, exploration and wonder. This man’s wife couldn’t say exactly what was happening in her life at the moment, and she didn’t know when or why it began in the first place, yet she wondered what it all meant and where it was headed. Her husband wanted to ignore the upheaval she was experiencing, and his own reactions to it as well.
Maybe the husband was protecting himself from opening up issues he knew would be painful and would reveal the bad conditions of his marriage, certainly threatening the status quo or maybe even signalling separation and divorce. But he also seemed to suffer the common malady of indifference to the life of the soul. Many people imagine relationship fundamentally as a simple structure of being together. They may have never considered that a whole world of thoughts, images and memories lies just beneath the surface, often giving a powerful emotional charge to the simplest interactions.
In this case, the wife decided to go her own way. She felt her husband would never be a real partner, that he would never be able to appreciate the intense experiences she was having or to be there himself as a person, alive with fresh thoughts and reflections.”

No, no such thing as coincidence!

As relieved as I am that my marriage is over, I need to acknowledge that it wasn’t All Bad. It just wasn’t meant to last so damn Long! If I was born for “till death do us part” then it was the one from many decades ago … when an interpretation of wedding vows meant you would nurse your spouse through sickness and disease until the plague or small pox finally got him (or you) at the age of 35, by which time you couldn’t possibly have grown out of love. So, although my husband is one of my soul mates, we were done with our work together many years ago – our souls knew it but our vows made us believe we were physically bound together for life … somewhere between “I do” and Now, I learnt that Forever is an awfully long time.

My soul has found mates in a variety of people from a homeless guy, to people who have woven their way through my 40-year-old tapestry, to a lover who has shifted me in ways I cannot express. People drift in and out of my life and even when I invest everything I have in a relationship, I accept that nothing lasts forever and my soul will keep going where it needs to be, the trauma of separation as important in the process as the union itself. Forever is a long time and death is not a goalpost to be trifled with.

Someone sent me an old 70s poster quote recently … the one that’s something about letting go of the one you love and them being yours if they return to you. Being a believer in love, I have quoted this in the past more often that I care to admit. But then it took me two years to let go of my husband, and in that final untethering I learnt that reaching the point of letting go is also reaching the point of no return.

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Loving being single … (?)

Tuesday, March 6th, 2012

Connecting with a friend, she spoke about her current partner as though she had read, and was simply replaying, the email I penned last week to mine. She says she goes out not because she is going out with this guy, but because he’s not around. And from experience I know there is one thing worse than having a partner who doesn’t care what you have to share about your day or your life … it’s not having a partner with whom to share your day or your life. She sends him messages and pictures to make it feel like he’s there but, ultimately, it’s as though she is in love with an illusion … like she has an imaginary boyfriend. And as if that isn’t enough evidence that we’re dwelling in each other’s parallel universes, she spoke about the boats and harbours that I mentioned in my previous post. I sense she is emotionally adrift and when she pulls on the anchor, she finds the rope comes lose and the anchor remains at the bottom of the ocean.

Contained in a harbour for so long, I kept lusting after the wild open sea, until I realized it wasn’t so much the freedom I needed so much as the need to test the quality of the tethering. It’s like a mating dance – testing the rope for the perfect give and take and finding out who’s attached to the other end of the rope when you finally pull into harbour. That’s the One with whom you’re going to be carving out the perfect vessel … the kind of boat that does equally well in the harbour as it fares on the open ocean.

Ja, saccharine theory. If only it wasn’t a fact that it’s only the combination of both our lovers that a perfect man is made – hers is physically here and mine, emotionally. And part time boat builders and flawed tools do not a perfect vessel make. But when the materials could not be finer and when you’re working with such damn good wood, perhaps a fair amount of time should be spent back in woodwork class … practicing, practicing, practicing. Maybe only then are you able to even consider together carving something perfect … or rather perfectly flawed – something that will leak just enough to remind you that you still have to work hard at keeping dry. It is, after all, the work that makes it all worthwhile.

So what has that got to do with my emotionally adrift friend, and me you wonder? Well, until the time that the work is done and the boat is well on its way to being built, we will just have to be each other’s anchors when the seas get too rough and we need someone to secure the rope so we can rest a while. And we’ll make each other practice. Hard!

“I’m watching you closely!” she says. And I believe her. She’s my stand-in witness for now, reflecting the work that’s being done. And I have no doubt, if the boat isn’t sea-worthy, she’ll sink it in harbour before she lets me sail away with him.

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Blame it on the moon … or the weed … or whatever …

Sunday, February 26th, 2012

I took my child to an Afrika Burns promotional concert yesterday. A friend of mine took her Inner Child. She’s trying to develop a better relationship with her so she carries her around in the form of a chunk of Rose Quartz and engages with her on matters that are emotional and personal. With the new moon in Pisces all my girlfriends are going a little loopy … especially in love.

She wrapped her fingers around that rock and expressed how she and her Inner Child were discovering past patterns of hurt and fear that are causing her to experience such hardship in love. Together with her shrink’s snippet of insight about turning Intent into Behavior, it got me thinking. I expressed my suspicion that until she brought her Inner Child into the light of day, she had been saying everything to her boyfriend that she should really have been discussing in private with this chunk of rock. And I know this how? Because I’ve been doing the same thing.

A day after using boats, harbors and anchors as an analogy for my need for space, another mutual friend coyly shared an email she had sent to her lover, using techie talk to express the need for hers. And now this! Ja, it’s the Pisces vibe … I swear.

I thought I had packed my petulant child away. But she still emerges when I can’t get my own way in matters of the heart. Is it time for tough love? … time for a no-nonsense talk with a chunk of rock? I think of the conversations I have with my child when trying to adjust his behavior to something more fitting the profile of a six-year-old and less fitting the profile of an angry ex whose allegiance my child feels he can strengthen through emulating his manner towards me. I have to psychologically separate them and muster compassion for both. I’m no saint. It’s a big task! But when it comes to love, I stomp my feet and make demands, and want either Everything or Nothing, insisting that I am incapable of tolerating anything in-between. I can’t help but wonder if, when we emotionally vomit on the ones we love, we really just need a conversation with the Inner Child – the one who can truly help us discover the truth – rather than chase after the recognition and approval of the men we love. I need to treat mine with the same compassion as I do my own child, and get her on my side. Perhaps only then will she stop sabotaging my attempts to pack up the petulance and allow me to enter into a relationship as an Adult.

And turning Intent into Behavior? … What does it mean? you ask. No idea really but I can interpret it as grabbing any glimmer of awareness by the balls and not letting go until it’s seeped so deep into the psyche that it has erased all past reactions and re-calibrated the brain to drive actions through awareness of intention to change something. Ja, what-eva!

My friend – knuckles white now from clutching her rock – asked me what I am prepared to do to change my behavior in order to find a place of comfort in my current situation. “Well,” I said, “I can say if that’s all you can offer, that’s fine, I’ll take it, but then I’m only prepared to give you this, this and this in return.” She wanted to know what that meant exactly. “Hmmm, ok, ok, I have to accept that there’s a grey area,” I said. “But I also have to be able to live in that grey area.” And then I laughed. Why? Because I don’t know how to. I’d end up giving 100% anyway and then emotionally vomit on all the wrong people because I’d forget to talk to the chunk of rock.

But then I’m still hanging onto my awareness by the balls and I ain’t letting go anytime soon!

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I AM!

Friday, January 27th, 2012

“Am I doing the right thing?” I implored from behind sympathetic sunglasses, as tears streaked my already salt-stained cheeks.

She leant across the table. Her eyes turned to slits. ”What do you mean, Penny?” she asked – very slowly – certain she knew precisely what I meant, but not wanting to be presumptuous.

“Should I be getting divorced?” My lower lip quivered and I convulsed a little, deep within the lower parts of my soul.

She was bolt upright in a flash. “Are you fucken crazy!” That clearly was not! a question.

There are certain friends who should bill me for their time! And some who I’m sure would just like to medicate. Because, yes, I was emotional roadkill once again …

I have been working at the Chrysalis Academy (I need a whole blog post to expound on the magical synchronicity of that!) and taking hundreds of photographs to document the program. Well, one thing led to another and when downloading, I came across photographs of my (not-soon-enough) soon-to-be-ex-husband and myself. Already slightly emotionally unhinged – my usual state – I couldn’t help but slowly unravel, and when the above-mentioned friend called me for a drizz about her own emotional love affairs and despairs, all my seams popped open and I had to rush over to her place to merge with her river of tears.

The story goes on (and on) but I’ll take you on a short-cut to a long body-surf followed by the above-mentioned conversation – which clearly confirmed my momentary insanity – and a crack which needed mending … but not until I had found the cause.

And as the processing began and I started to run too much, work too hard, forget to eat … and then deal with a stuffed Achilles tendon and a fever blister that usually signals my body’s plea for help, a fragile Penny limped through the week, unable to fathom what exactly had mowed me down.

And then BAM! One more prescriptive look through the photos and I realized I wasn’t so much looking at Him … or even Us … so much as Me. And it wasn’t really Me at all. And that was it! That was the BAM! moment. I had been grappling with the notion that perhaps … despite the wailing and crumbling and running and borderline anorexia … I hadn’t yet mourned the loss of my marriage. But Oh, So Far! from it. I was totally and completely over my marriage, over my husband, over the branding and everything that came with the package. What I was really mourning was the Me that I couldn’t find in the majority of those photos. What I was really mourning was the fact that I had tucked so much of myself away for so long that I didn’t recognize Myself as Me.

And then I was back. The Me I had rescued had taken off another cloak. Where before, the moments of sanity were short and sweet, the lapses now form the blips on the evening news. I came back and I came back stronger. And stronger is good when you still have an albatross to rip off your neck. I am finally done with allowing myself to be punished for not being the Me that fitted His profile of the ideal Us. I am done allowing myself to be punished for not wanting to be married to Him anymore. I am done with the guilt.

I may still have the training wheels on, but I am Me. And that’s soon going to just have to be enough.

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Love. 2012. Love. Life.

Sunday, January 1st, 2012

A close friend of mine recently told me that I would end up a lonely old cow if I continued to dabble with love in forbidden places. She cursed me and told me no good would come of what I was doing. “What does she know anyway”, I asked myself, before dismissing her wrath in the knowledge that I was in a different space; balanced again and sure of what I want. But she is a friend whose judgement I shouldn’t question. Another friend had something quite different to say about love and breakups. “You wake up one day and it’s over and every morning you wake up with that pain and that longing”, she lamented, “… until one morning you wake up and there’s someone else in your bed.” And apparently, according to her, you’re over the heartbreak hurdle … just like that! Someone else hinted at the metaphorical pissing on trees that guys tend to do. And then there’s the friend who won’t rest until she’s found me a sponsor with Love Addicts Anonymous. Anonymous? yeah, right.

Everyone has an opinion and I’ve listened to them all … ‘yawn’ … but lately I have been very selective about who I go to for advice because what I am told hasn’t suited the idealist in me even though I can’t deny the validity in what they have to say.

‘So what is it they have to say?’ you want to know. They tell me that the clandestine nature of a relationship deprives me of my ability to live life with the full breadth of who I am. They say that I am incapable of being in love with one man while playing the field with others. They tell me they still see my vulnerability despite my protestations that I’m fine. But mainly they assert that I don’t know how to do these things in half-measures. My friends know that I can’t open my heart just a crack without leaking my love all over the pavement, but they also know that I want to believe in love above all things and that I would sacrifice my soul for the chance of just a taste of its sweet nectar.

‘So where does that leave me now?’ you ask. Well, going nowhere … and slowly. But in a good way.

I sit here with the foetal scan of a new year, on the cusp of my practical and my most idealistic selves, breathing possibility into the promise of new life. I used to feel ashamed of the idealist side of my nature until I realized we all have a bit of the optimist and the romantic in us; we all strive for a future that is an improvement of our past and whenever we do that, we gloss over the practicalities that threaten to get in the way. Memories become a gossamer haze and we tend to move forward with a view of a future that often contains a fantasy that has wiped clean the slate of past experience. Why else would people give birth again, why else would children climb trees after falling out and adults get back on the motorbike once the metal plates have been removed? Pain fades. And that’s the truth.

2011 saw love rip holes in my chest and my old adage, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you want to die’ seemed always more appropriate than the one ending in ‘stronger’ … although they do say a break heals stronger than the bone. This is encouraging. But I’m prepared to get back on the horse in 2012. I’m willing to take my RDA of pessimism and settle for something a little more normal for now. We live in an era of questioning the institution of marriage, monogamy and heterosexual couplings and a time when polyamory and commitment phobe feature in regular conversation. But I’m going to stop thinking so much this year. Instead I am just going to feel. I’m going to give up the battle of head vs heart and focus on my body. It’s doable, right?

Trust was my word for last year – it still is – but for 2012 I have chosen the symbol of the snake, Ouroboros, for its representation of the perpetual cyclic renewal of life. I’m going to leave things be for a while and let life take care of itself. I’m tired of metaphorical challenges and I’m done climbing mountains unless they’re made of solid rock. I say it every year and I’ll say it again … hell, why not … ‘This year’s going to be different.’

Own it. Love it. Live it. Here’s to 2012.

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