Seattle Girl on Cape Cod: Writing Through The Pain

 Hello fellow Earthlings,

I tend to hang out in the positive polarity of life, but no one is immune to PAIN. It's an EARTHLING condition. And there is physical, mental and spiritual pain and sometimes they are all tied together, even if we think they are separate.

A few weeks ago, I opened Pandora's box and unearthed my journals from when my marriage ended. If anything will jolt you back into a timeframe you just as soon have forgotten, reading past journals of that time will.

I am writing a new book called Venus on Fire about my transformation after my marriage ended. In December, I rented a private office up the street from me in Yarmouth, Cape Cod and set it all up with a sofa and chairs, a desk, a lamp, plants, books, and journals. I made it comfortable and inspirational and I thought I had set myself up for a smooth ride.

Nope.

Reading through those old journals did something to me. My body is confused. Am I living in this timeline or that timeline. Maybe I have a leg in both of them. And then, of course, I started to beat myself up that I didn't have a handle on things or that things weren't moving along faster in the book writing world. 

As I dug further into my past,  my body started to give out. My eyes got infected (both of them) and I couldn't wear my contacts. I felt a pain in my chest that I couldn't shake. I felt a lot of anger that may not have been expressed from my marriage and the ending of said marriage. I accidentally  sat on my only ancient pair of glasses and broke them in two. My fiancé Scott glued them together with super glue, using tissue paper to hold the glue. So now I was going even further back to when I was a kid and got teased all the time for wearing glasses. More Pain. He tried to make it better my removing the tissue and coloring in the glob of glue with a pen (bless his heart, his intentions were pure). I put them on and felt like the biggest nerd known to mankind

Me with my nerdy glasses at Ritual on Cape Cod where I taught a Vision Board/Intuitive Writing Workshop

. 

I also felt lost and depressed. I didn't have a clear vision of my future or what I am trying to accomplish. I have so many things I want to do, but feel like I'm sinking in thick mud and to lift one boot up and put the other one down into this dense, thick stuff is easier said than done.

So I'm wading through the shit. We all have to do it at some point. Many people just as soon keep Pandora's box shut tight and buried....forever...

The thing is, this book is NOT a book about divorce. It's a book about what came out of a divorce. It's a book about empowerment, transformation and overcoming obstacles. It's book about seeing the truth of who I was, who I am and who I am becoming. We are always becoming. Each one of us is not the same person we were two seconds ago. 

I realize that to talk about this transformation, I have to understand where I was and put myself back there. I now get that I also need to keep myself insulated a bit when I do that. It would behoove me to have some self-care in place. If I'm journeying back in time, it would be nice to have a heated seat, a good drink, driving gloves, a nice pair of shades, an air bag and my seat belt fastened. 

So today I really fell apart, but my airbag protected me. I went to a yoga class in the morning, I reached out on Facebook for love and support (I know that's a weird place to do it, but it's where all my peeps are in one place), I had my home professionally cleaned (That's part of self care for me).

As I walked the steps up to my office to attend a college meeting, I began to feel my hands get clammy and my heart race. I called the eye doc and asked if I was having a reaction to the antibiotic drops I need to put in my eyes 4 times a day for the eye infection. She said that a racing heart was uncommon, but I should go to ER or Urgent Care. 

I talked myself down from the cliff a bit. I decided things weren't so urgent. I slowed my breathing down and meditated. I asked myself what I needed. 

The answer was REST.

So I cancelled all my classes and laid down on my 'therapy' sofa in my office with a scarf over my eyes and listened to 15 minutes of guided meditation. I really let myself release whatever wanted to be released.

Interestingly, I am surrounded by therapists. My office building is a therapy office with one real estate broker and one recluse author (me). Even though most of the therapists use sound machines to block the noise of their conversations, every once in a while I get bits and pieces. When I first moved in, I overheard, "Your relationship is RUPTURED. You have to accept the fact that it is RUPTURED." For some reason, the word ruptured rang in my head all day that day. So while white noise machines where whirling outside office doors today, my own therapist in Seattle had an opening in her schedule. What a relief. 

She said, "Maybe you should write about how it feels to write this book. Maybe you should say what you are going through."

So here I am, on my blog, letting you know that it aint no picnic.

But I'm going to keep on keeping on despite all the pain. 

And maybe I'll even get some cute glasses...

Divine Earthly Experience 6: Forgiveness is a Strength, Not a Weakness

“When you hold resentment toward another, you are bound to that person or condition by an emotional link that is stronger than steel. Forgiveness is the only way to dissolve that link and get free.” Katherine Ponder

Good evening fellow Earthlings,

Wow, this Earth Game is not easy sometimes, right? So much going on in our lives and in the world. All of us carrying around one wound or another. It's as if we are not meeting, but our wounds are meeting each other. When our wounds meet each other, they don't usually shake hands or kiss or hug. When our wounds meet, they lash out! It's like a lion in its den licking it's paw—a bloody, mangled paw. Another lion or animal comes near and it reaches out with its healthy paw and STRIKES! Now two animals have bloody paws. Two animals are walking around wounded. Why did the lion in the den strike? Because it wanted to protect itself.

We are all doing this, to some degree. Some of us have become comfortable in hiding our wounds. We smile when we greet people. We even extend a hand. We say, "How are you?" And when we answer that question, we may say, "Oh, I'm great, couldn't be better!"

Is it true? You couldn't be better?

If so, I commend you! Your life is going GREAT and this is not the time to hear about wounds. In fact, you'd rather not talk about THAT because who knows what might come up that's just under the surface.

Have you looked to see what's just under the surface?

My life, not too long ago, was going along swimmingly, so I thought. Everything I had dreamed about came true: I was happily married, I had traveled all over the world, I had become an internationally published author. I felt on top of the world. I was at my peak and there could be no valley.

But then, suddenly, I found myself in that valley. Everything that was important to me had been stripped away. Can you imagine this? Can you imagine all that you love right now suddenly not being there?

No, I know, you don't want to think about it. Life is going GREAT and this is not the time. I thought that too. In fact, I avoided all things that had the tone of sadness, defeat or depression. I defended strength and inspiration with everything I had in me. Anything with a whiff of negativity was quickly whisked away or shown the door. I couldn't relate to people who were down in the dumps because I was at the top of my game. I didn't have time for it.

Until IT became my reality.

Now I understand.

No one is immune to it, unfortunately.

When it happened to me, I was ANGRY. Yes, I'm not afraid to say that my go to emotion, when things don't go as planned, is anger.

"How could you do this?" I said, through clenched teeth in a tone that did, in fact, sound like a wounded or dying animal.

I had just found out that my husband had had an affair. That he'd been secretly dating someone else for several months.

Oh, the humiliation! After all, I'd written a book about our marriage. It had been published in other languages even. Now what?

And the pain. I used my anger to cover my pain. The pain was unbearable. To know that my partner of twenty years was now dating a younger woman, that all his love that was once for me was now going to her.....well, shit, that just plain hurt. And the way that he tossed it all away as if it were nothing....ouch!

Four months after my husband moved out for good, I attended a 10-day silent meditation course. Usually I come out of those courses feeling blissful, peaceful, new and refreshed. For years, I've gone to these retreats and found them beneficial and still do. During the course, you have to face your REAL self. Stuff comes up to be released and some of it is not pretty, to say the least. For the first time ever, I came out of the course ANGRY. I wanted REVENGE and the ways I came up with to get revenge, were, well, a little scary. I even scared myself by thinking them. I'll spare you the details, but I'm sure you get the picture.

I rolled in anger for months. It was not pretty. Luckily, I also threw myself into every healing modality out there: massages, spas, therapists, acupuncture, hypnosis, meditation, synagogues, temples, churches, prayer, meditation. I am currently a regular student at Psychic Awakenings in Queen Anne, Seattle. I'm now in an 11-month Clairvoyant Awareness Program learning amazing tools for healing and reading myself and doing the same for others. I think my classes there have had the most impact on my healing and where I am now, but all of it certainly helped. I was committed to healing myself. It was the only thing I knew for sure that I wanted to do.

And while I know, a year and a half later, there's still more healing to do, I can say that it's all paid off.

Last Friday, I met my ex-husband in a coffee shop. I'd met him on very few occasions over the course of a year and a half because I wanted to wash that man right out of my hair and send him on his way, as the song goes.

But this time was different. I wasn't angry. I kept waiting for my pulse to start rising. I kept waiting for the lashing out to start happening. I was waiting for my friend anger to show up, but she missed our coffee date completely. And what a relief that was. I can't tell you how good it felt to let anger go.

As I sat there, drinking coffee and eating a breakfast sandwich with my ex-husband, I instead saw him for who he was. I saw that he was a human, like me, currently going through a lot of suffering. I felt compassion. It surprised me. Compassion wiggled it's way up on the chair next to me and sat there attentively listening. I remembered the good times we shared over the twenty years we were together and even though it doesn't make what he did right, I forgave him. Right then and there, I forgave him. It wasn't just a word I said, it was a feeling of forgiveness. I really felt it. I wanted the best for him. I wanted him to be okay. I wanted him to find his spark again and I really felt it. It was a long road to feel like this. It could have been even longer had I not really wanted to heal or do the work to get there.

And what does forgiveness feel like?  To me, it feels light and loving. It feels like a big relief. It feels like dropping the protection and being vulnerable and real. It feels like coming out of my lion's den, even though I was wounded. It feels like freedom and permission to walk in the light again. It feels like connection and the understanding that we are all human and we all make mistakes. I forgive myself and I forgive you. I wish the best for myself and I wish the best for you.

I don't think I could have gotten there without forgiving myself first. I had to forgive myself for my anger. I had to forgive myself for being afraid of my wounds. I had to forgive myself for not being perfect or having a perfect life. After all, who the hell has a perfect life anyway? None of us would be playing the Earth Game if we were all perfect. We are all here to learn, not let everyone know that we are "perfectly fine".

If I hear anyone say, "I'm perfectly fine," I might be inclined to say, "Dig a little deeper." It won't be sarcastic; it will be an invitation. For whom are you living this life? For others? You have an opportunity to let go of a lot here. Evolution can happen, but not if you cling to old ways of being. Not if you hide your wounds deep down inside. Your evolution is the world's evolution. I believe this.

Go to the depth of your anger, sadness, ill-will, pain, un-perfect-ness....get down to the messy and uncomfortable stuff. Go in there. Don't be afraid. I promise you, on the other side of it all, there's love....a deep, deep wellspring of love. Love for yourself and for others. I know it's hard to believe and it doesn't come easy. I've still got a lot of work to do, but it's the greatest work I've ever done.

Have you ever forgiven someone? How did it feel?

Divine Earthly Experience 3: Connection and Solitude

"Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone. Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music."—Khalil Gibran

Good Evening Fellow Earthlings,

Here's something to think about:

You can't be together until you can be alone.

Yes, I believe that.

When my ex-husband walked out and left our marriage a year and a half ago, I had gotten used to him sleeping in the bed. I had gotten used to our rituals. For over 12 years of marriage, we had slept side by side and from my perspective, we were happy. We laughed, read to each other in bed, snuggled, talked about our dreams and ideas. There was a comfort in having him there. I felt like he was my rock, that we had each other's back, that no matter what happened in our marriage, we'd figure it out. From that foundation, I felt comfortable to be alone. I would go on silent meditation courses and go out to my family's lake house to write for a week by myself. I was comfortable alone because I knew I wasn't completely ALONE. My husband was there, even if we were doing our own things and pursuing our own goals.

But the day he walked out and ripped the carpet out from under our marriage, I thought I was going to die. One day we were picking blackberries down the street and making muffins and singing and enjoying the sun and the next day he was gone. Just GONE. He had an affair and left. That was it. He never returned to our house and bed again.

In the days that followed him leaving, I never felt so alone. I would reach out for my partner in bed at night, half asleep, and realize that there was no partner. My heart would race. I could almost feel it pounding in my throat. I had heard that it was possible to die of a broken heart and I was pretty sure this is what it felt like.

As much as the pain and loneliness was very real, I refused to sleep at family or friends' houses. I wanted to feel myself completely. I didn't want to take prescription medication, drown my sorrows in alcohol, or move to a commune. I wanted to FEEL everything, even if those feelings were unpleasant. Many people reached out to help me at this time, but oddly I wanted to be alone. Writing has ALWAYS been my way of working things out and seeing the bigger picture and I filled many journals during this time. I was 46 when my husband left. I thought I'm getting older. Is this my destiny? To be alone? 

I had gotten used to doing so many things together, but now I was trying to pick up the pieces and do many things by myself. Two months after my husband left, we were scheduled to lead a yoga and writing retreat in Sedona, Arizona. I had thought about canceling it, but friends encouraged me to do it anyway. Two good friends stepped up, came all the way to Arizona and helped me do the retreat. I had never done a retreat without my husband, but it was all women and it ended up being one of the most empowering retreats I have ever been a part of. One woman on the retreat said, "Look at it this way. Now that your husband is gone, you can do and be whoever you want. You are free!" I had never thought about it that way. I was free to define myself anyway I chose to. I was no longer in a partnership. I used the opportunity to develop my healing and intuition at Psychic Awakenings in Seattle and I took a burlesque class that changed my life. It was so incredibly empowering to be with a group of women and create a new identity on stage. All that pent up sexual energy came flying out of me when I danced and so it's not surprising that I got asked out pretty quickly.

I was hesitant to go out with my current boyfriend. I thought I needed more time alone. I believed that I needed to spend a good deal of time with myself first before getting in a partnership again. At the same time, I had felt deprived of affection in my marriage and here was a man that was funny, joyful and ready to shower me with affection—a kind of affection I had never known before. I'm sorry, but I wasn't going to turn THAT down, it's what I wanted more than anything. Some friends cautioned me about going out with another man too soon. I could see their point. After all, it had only been six months and my divorce hadn't yet gone through when I went on that first date. But everything in my body was telling me yes, yes and YES! So I went with it, and it was beautiful and it still  is beautiful almost a year later.

I read somewhere that you can be in a partnership with someone for 20, 30 or 40 years and not have too much growth within the relationship. Couples get comfortable and patterns set in and before you know it, you are moving through the motions with one another. That spark that once ignited the fire between you has sort of dimmed and you have no idea when that happened, but you are comfortable. You know what to expect and there is comfort in THAT. In a way, I believe that is sort of what has happened in America. We were comfortable and perhaps we needed a WAKE UP CALL! We needed an overhaul. We needed to GROW! Trust me, there will be an overhaul and there will be GROWTH.

Being in this new relationship has absolutely accelerated my growth! I feel like I'm on the AUTOBAHN of healing. It helps that I'm with a man who meditates, is an EXCELLENT communicator, is in touch with his feelings and has done plenty of his own healing. I feel like I've jumped through a thousand hoops with this person. We don't let anything fester. Things get resolved quickly and then new things appear to be resolved. So it is with and through this intimate connection that I am healing so many parts of myself. How can we grow if nothing is reflected back to us? How can we grow if there is never any conflict, upheaval or chaos? How can we grow if we never step outside our comfort zone? It is through connection that we can see how much alike we all really are. We ALL have parts of ourselves that need to be healed. Not one of us here is perfect or we wouldn't be on the planet. We are here to connect, love and LEARN. I believe that it is through connection, a deep soul connection, with others who are also willing to grow and learn, that we can evolve. That CONNECTION with others is KEY.

But so is solitude. The two go hand in hand I believe.

But before I talk about that, here's something to ponder: If you decide you don't need a partner, that you prefer to be ALONE or that you are not interested in a relationship because they are too complicated or you can't find the right person or this or that, you may have gotten too comfortable being alone. When you are alone, you get to call all the shots. No one is there to ruffle your feathers or trigger you. You don't need to worry about anything being reflected back to you because you are the only one THERE. It's easy to HIDE OUT in solitude. It's easy to become DISCONNECTED. You may have even convinced yourself that it is safer this way. Being alone is another kind of comfort zone.

I believe there needs to be a balance of coming together on an intimate level and being ALONE. I have made good friends with myself. I enjoy my own company. When I'm alone, all my ideas, thoughts, observations come flooding out. I have time to process what it is like to be in connection with people and particularly with an intimate partner. When I'm in solitude, I can step back and assess  the progress I have made. I can see if I like where I'm standing.

I feel fortunate that I have a good balance between being alone and being with my boyfriend, but I have no idea what the future holds. Do any of us? Do we really know? Even from the deck of our comfort zone, with a glass of wine in hand, enjoying the view, have we really figured it all out? What if you were to lose all of that tomorrow? Would you live any differently now? What would you say to the people in your life? Would you change anything?

I am not claiming to have all the answers. More than ever before, I'm feeling around in the dark and every now and then the light comes through. I'm not sure of anything, but I'm sure of this: a plant can't grow in a box. It needs sunlight, water, good soil and LOVE. It is dependent on the other to LIVE. We are the same. We need each other. We need interactions with each other. Through our deep connections and interactions we realize we are all in this together. If we can just realize this we will realize we are never alone. And once we realize we are never alone, we will be perfectly content to be just that.

Divine Earthly Experience 1: Endings

Good Morning Fellow Earthlings,

I write you from my boyfriend's LOVE SHACK. Today is the second to last day of 2016 and a New Year is ahead of us. I'm letting go of A LOT. How about you? For the past year and a half I haven't written much. To be honest, I spent a fair amount of the last year and a half hunkered down in my Seattle home feeling a bit lost. My ex-husband, the subject of my former book and blog, Lessons from the Monk I Married, had an affair and left our 20-year partnership and 12-year marriage. It was the hardest thing, other than my birth I suppose, that I had to go through. My identity and life as I knew it had been stripped from me. I didn't know who I was or how I fit into the world I had created.

 I felt adrift, clinging to the few solid things in my life (my home, my friends, my job) like pieces of recognizable debris floating past me in a gigantic sea of unknowingness. Even those things that felt solid started to blur as I traversed new territories.

I oscillated between feeling ready to burst forth with a new identity and new life to feeling like hiding under the blankets of my cozy bed, afraid to meet friends and family who were ready with their condolences and offers to help. I was embarrassed that I had wrapped my own identity up so tightly with that of my ex-husband's that I could not even imagine what we could or would be when things fell apart.

But somehow, out of the ashes of a once vibrant, happy, adventurous partnership, with the same ups and downs as any relationship, I arose with a new sense of myself as an individual. I realized I was stronger than I thought I was. Grief took me on a trip through denial to acceptance of my situation.

But I'm not perfect, by any means. I still fall into anger and sorrow over what happened, but with each day that passes, I feel more and more that this was a gift. Indeed, new beginnings are often disguised as painful endings and I was long due for a new beginning, so much so that it took a seismic shift, an earthquake, an eruption, a storm to descend upon my marriage. It had been written well before it had happened. I saw the ending in my dreams.

All the passion that had been pent up in me. All the love that I extended to my partner that was continuously pushed away came pouring out of me wanting to be fully expressed. I took a burlesque class where I became VENUS ON FIRE.

Venus on Fire, Oddfellows Hall, Capital Hill, February 20, 2016

I created on stage everything I felt inside that had somehow been denied. It was strange, but I felt I needed witnesses. I needed to be SEEN for who I was. I was passionate, fiery, angry, sexy, strong, lovable and beautiful. On stage, I emerged out of a shell like the Bottecelli painting The Birth of Venus; I was a docile, pure-white vision of beauty who became a fiery, red Venus, like Pele, Goddess of Volcanoes. I owned my life, direction and sexuality. I could be whoever I wanted to be.

I started to feel so much confidence in myself. I knew what I wanted in life and I believe that's how I attracted my current boyfriend, a very loving, mature, affectionate, passionate man who shined a light on all my broken pieces and reflected so much beauty and love back to me. I also received incredible healings and insights from Psychic Awakenings, a place where I learned to ground and own my space; A place where I learned to trust my intuition and abilities to not only heal myself and gain insight into the person I was becoming, but also where I learned to be an intuit and healer for others. I'm currently in an 11-month Clairvoyant Awareness Program there.

I learned to trust my intuition above all else. When I learned to let go of things not needed in my life, a new life, full of travel, love, happiness and joy entered in. But it didn't just show up until I showed up to do the work. I had to face my pain, sorrow, anger, fear and loss.

So goodbye 2016! It was a year of healing. I will say that as much as I cowered under the blankets of my bed, I also faced life full-on. I moved through grief. I still fall into it from time to time, but I'm ready to come outside. I'm ready to show up in the world and live OUT LOUD. Look out 2017!

How was the ending to your year? Is there anything you are letting go of?