Tag Archives: Memoir

Have You Ever Wanted To Leave Your Family?

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I left my family.

How many of us women, wives, mothers have left? How many want to? Need to?

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It was only for a couple of days. I went to my mother. The irony. Our past relationship is one of the reasons I have walked through the world protecting myself from the need to need anybody. But, I’m growing up. I went to my mom—anyway— and she was there.

She opened her door—could hardly believe her eyes I was standing in front of her. It felt good to be there. By day two, crawled up in a blanket she put on me, I began to feel a twinge of guilt. I was away from my own family and the guilt was probably a sign I was doing something I had not done in a while—take care of my self.

I don’t know all of the reasons I left, but my guess is any woman, mother, wife reading may know a reason or two. What I did discover: the pain that caused me to pack a bag and look into my husband’s eyes and say, “I’m leaving” was no longer seeing my reflection, the essence of who I am in my family—the one container I have put everything in to.

To put it another way— I lost myself in my family and not received a dividend for my investment except depletion and resentment. I desired them to fill me up as my cup ran dry, believing this reasonable, and I resented they couldn’t or wouldn’t. And when the water in our new home stopped working due to a frozen pipe, I had to leave.

For years I endured far worse than a frozen pipe. But, somehow this broke me.

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It was this pipe that brought me back home. I had to let the service technician in. The water is flowing again. As for me, I am restored enough to see with new eyes, remembering my gaze is needed here in this home because a mother and a wife is what I am. It’s what I have chosen to do. But—my gaze is also needed to stay within my very own soul, a place I must return again and again for restoration, peace, clarity and wisdom.

The Soul Reporter

Another Layer of Living Spherically.

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I had my final writing class last night- Intermediate Memoir: Forming (or  maybe it is Shaping) the Longer Work. We ended with appetizers, snacks, wine and 10-minute readings from our manuscripts.

A couple of weeks ago, I put together 64 pages of a manuscript. This class helped me to finally, after 10 years of gathering material for my memoir, see a form that resembles a book. But, before I could keep adding to those 64 pages, I decided to take advice from a classmate and sign up for another writing class this past weekend.

By the middle of the first class, everything I thought I knew and was ready to implement into my book was breaking down and shelving my book, yet again, seemed like a good idea. But, I stuck with it. The instructor ensured us the first day was about demolition and the following day would be about building.

Demolition-the breaking down of ideas and beliefs is not easy. If we allow for it, we will move out of a space we are familiar and comfortable with and enter a new space. However, often before a new space appears, we sit in the rubble of what we thought we knew or was enough.

Joseph Campbell said, “The agony of breaking through personal limitations is the agony of spiritual growth. Art, literature, myth and cult, philosophy, and ascetic disciplines are instruments to help the individual past his limiting horizons into spheres of ever-expanding realization. As he crosses threshold after threshold, conquering dragon after dragon, the stature of the divinity that he summons to his highest wish increases, until it subsumes the cosmos. Finally, the mind breaks the bounding sphere of the cosmos to a realization transcending all experiences of form- all symbolizations, all divinities; a realization of the ineluctable void.”

I’m not quite ready for that void, but remain committed to the ever-expanding realization. I thought my writing, those 64 pages were good, that I was off to a good start. I was. I am- it’s further than I have been. But, before I could  fully relish in this and get too comfortable, I took myself to a class, allowing for new knowledge. It causes me to question what I thought I was just coming to understand.

Even now, I see this post as being all inner monologue (a term I learned this weekend, which I do a lot of). The instructor says it’s not that interesting. I remember when writer Melody Beattie told me I can’t use my journals as my books. I was devastated. It was all I had. Hearing inner monologue isn’t interesting devastated me again.

So before I bore you any longer with my inner process, my take away (another term I learned) I want to give you, which is not something I am supposed to tell, but show- is we must live spherically, or go crazy, we shall.

I heard this in Under the Tuscan Sun, and it sticks. I don’t know what they meant by it, but I  know what I take from it. We must keep expanding and opening to new thought inside and outside of ourselves. We do this for growth, to align with evolution.  We do this so we don’t become crazy loopers w hen we are old.

What the hell are crazy loopers? Its something I am observing in some people lately-mostly people in their 50’s, 60’s and 7o’s.  It would seem they have attached themselves to a certain story or aspect for themselves, and they loop within it over and over again. Read this piece from Elephant Journal I wrote where I go into this further.

For now, I think the link above (that is, if you click and read) will give you the rest of the message I want to share.

Here’s to living spherically,

Nikki

The End is Near.

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There is still snow on the ground and it’s the end of March. The sun is out more often and I just learned a new fact, which explains why it doesn’t feel warmer.  When there is snow on the ground, its energy is used not to warm, but to melt the snow.  Add to this fact, the layers of ice and snow on the ground making it feel cold.

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I sit on a bench near a pond watching a pair of geese resting upon the still frozen pond. Aren’t they cold? Are they awaiting like me for the ice to melt? 

This winter seems to reflect my life. Long, cold, dark and difficult. The transition from winter to spring this year reflects my life also—leaving me with the fear that these dark and difficult days have no end.

We had a few warm days late winter. Then we were pulled back into winter’s harsh conditions. Here we experienced unseasonably cold days even while the Solstice arrived upon the calendar—staying cold for a week or two after its arrival.

This week we have experienced warmer days while also being warned by meteorologists that another cold blast is on its way. If I were to take reality for what I see and experience right now, which I have grown accustomed to doing during these dark days, allowing myself to accept what is and finding reality more substantial than fantasy, then I would  wonder will spring ever spring or will it be winter forever?

I moved back home to Minnesota in December after spending two-and-a-half years in California. If I were not from Minnesota I would aasume winter is all it has to offer.

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But I know spring arrives and she does so when she’s ready. On her own time. Not to scorn us, which is what we might believe the way some of us complain about the weather. She does so by her wisdom. Her way. Her truth. The only way she knows.

But even while I say this, some days the best I can do is muster up the strength to only consider that somehow someway new life is inching its way toward me. Some days it is so hard to believe that underneath the ice and snow is a powerful force rumbling. The geese know it as they sit in the slightly frozen pond. The chickadees know it along with all the other birds whose songs spring forth during this time. And in some moments I can take this knowing and apply it me like a salve, reminding me I too am of nature and I follow its rhythms.

Although its been dark and cold and this is all I have felt, and could see there is a power rumbling in me. A power that will melt the ice and the snow. She’s spring birthing new life—and she is in me and in you.

The Soul Reporter

 

 

 

 

Stiff Like Winter.

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A Short Spiritual Memoir: Gradual Growth & Awakening ~

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I feel stiff like winter.

I long to thaw like spring—and

See what transpired in darkness and struggle.

 

My life has felt harsh and ugly for so long, like those last days of winter when the snow is gray and the sky matches, and you have had enough of those bitter winds biting your bones. I don’t want this anymore. I want kind and beautiful. I find it again on a short walk. The day is as my daughter describes it: she will not sweat and and she will not freeze. It is a day of transition from winter to spring—a glimpse of what is to come.

As I walk I ask for more of myself to be revealed. I stop and look through the bare tree to the sun peeking through the gray. The song of birds remind me I am back. I needed to come back—home to Minnesota where I experience these transitions from winter to spring and later, summer to fall.

I know I have been through something awesome and difficult, and feel like everything will be alright now—at least for awhile. The end of an era, and it makes me cry. The tears thaw my stiffness and shed my heaviness, and prepare me for the warmth which is to come.

Thank God for this transition of tears. Sudden joy and elation might startle me otherwise. It is these days of transition: 32 degrees. Sun shining hazily through the gray, which make life of deeper meaning and connection possible and compatible with our ever-evolving soul.

As I end my walk, a woman approaches me and asks, “How’s the path?”

“It’s fine,” I tell her.

 

The Soul Reporter

 

 

A Practice with the Unseen.

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Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart. ~Rumi

Let us not be fooled that our experiences are merely events happening to us—but, in fact, events happening for us.

I have taken up drawing again. My first drawing was one I copied of a tree. Then, I looked up at the trees outside my window and saw the moon peaking from behind the bare branches. I added the moon to my drawing just as I had seen it outside, and then an owl. I then saw an image in my mind—an old man with a craggily finger pointing toward a long road.

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I drew the old man and his wrinkly finger. The wise old man was saying to me: Go, for the road is long. Not only is the road long, but it is unknown. Who knows what we will find there, what twists and turns, treasures and obstacles we will find on our road.

Little did I know that on my road in the past ten years I was shedding tears of suffering, loss and disappointment at each turn in the road not realizing that this turn wasn’t as bad as it can get. It can get worse, and it did. When I first began the journey, ten years ago, when I left my home in the cul-de-sac to live my dreams, I did not know these twists and turns were coming. I thought, arrogantly, hopefully and ignorantly so, I was going to a better life. I didn’t realize the life I was leading was the better life.

Now, I sit in the basement of my father’s home ten years later having given up everything for a dream. This latest turn has brought me to a place inside of myself where I have given up all hope. A place where I no longer think everything is going to get better, even though that is what everyone keeps telling me. A place where I am afraid to keep walking on the road, even though the wise old man tells me to go. Yet, even in this place, I have miraculously pressed on.

I see I have an opportunity here. It occurred to me in the kitchen of my father’s house this morning—I can begin a practice with the unseen—again. I once lived in the unseen, a time before I allowed the stuff of life to take me down into the mud of doubt and shame. The place of the unseen is of Spirit, where a spiritual wisdom lies. It lifts us from the mud, if only for a moment, so that perhaps as Rumi states, our hearts become clear.

This latest turn has been so muddy and murky, it seems I forgot I am of Spirit- that this space exists. Or maybe more true—not forgotten. In fact, I remember Spirit, but felt it had left too, like so many other things, which has caused even more suffering. Here I have been, a person who has devoted my life to my spirituality, and yet, I wasn’t even feeling held by it anymore. I thought it had let me go.

But, every once and awhile, in quiet moments I am lifted above the mud. I see that this experience, this latest turn is happening for me. This is the perspective of Spirit. It asks—what if this crisis is spiritual? What if this experience isn’t happening to me as some cruel twist of fate that is trying to destroy me? What if it is actually happening for me so I again return to Spirit, to apply all that I have learned and practice my faith in the unseen.

The Soul Reporter