The Rose

Don’t be afraid to bloom

What you are today is the price you paid
for what you used to want.
– Mignon McLaughlin

You have a choice to make,
you can look back on your life with regrets
for what it was and what it was not.
Or, you can look at who you are today
and be thankful for that which made you,
for those people and things that allowed you to grow.

If you find yourself filled with regrets
ask yourself what you would choose
to be different in your life.
Focus on those things
and develop goals that will help you
to achieve your hearts desire.
Remember that you cannot control
anyone else’s actions only your own,
and strive to achieve your goals.

Your goals don’t have to be big
to be important, they can be very simple.
What really matters is your happiness,
and satisfaction with your life.
Sometimes it’s easiest to start small
to develop the practice to strive towards
bigger and better things.

Perhaps thinking back to daydreams long gone
will help you to plan something new
for today and beyond.
One thing is fairly certain,
unless you try nothing will change.

No one should choose to settle for regrets.

Follow your bliss

“When you follow your bliss…doors will open where
you would not have thought there would be doors;
and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.”
– Joseph Campbell

When I see my future I see an older wood frame home bordered by gardens and lovely outdoor spaces. There is dark old wood floors and light fills every room. Within there is a household that is filled with people who cherish the important values of life. People who encourage one another to learn and grow. People who hope for the best in others.

When I look towards my future occupation I see myself developing one or more of my entrepreneurial dreams. I don’t see myself working in a large company for many more years, I need to feel closer to the work I do and to the benefit it brings to other people. I hope to work educating people on ways to follow their dreams. To help people understand the importance of aromatherapy, color therapy, homeopathy and other alternative (ancient) ideas. I’d like to teach art to those who feel they are not good enough to create, to teach dance to women who are afraid to go to a “real” studio. I want people to feel free to follow their bliss without judgment from others.

I’d like to show people by living my life that there is more out there. That stress doesn’t need to be a daily issue. I’d like to write a book, I believe that the writing that I do each day and the work I’ve done here are the beginnings of a publishable manuscript. I want my life to be filled with goodness and joy, a life that will inspire others to “follow their bliss”.

Beyond, or rather before, those goals are two very simple ones. The first is to be the best mother I can be, to raise my children with the values and self worth to fulfill their destiny, to be who they were born to be. My last and most selfish goal is to find someone to share life’s journey with.

I am not looking for the “perfect” man, I am looking for someone with the potential to lead an interesting life, filled with laughter, passion, intellectual conversations and good will towards others. Someone who along with me seeks to grow beyond today into the future, someone who I can imagine living in that home with me, someone who also seeks to heal others. Not someone with all the answers who would leave nothing do discover, but someone who is interested in exploring different possibilities, things outside the norm, travel to other places, and who is flexible enough to try new things along the way. Someone who will be my best friend.

I’ll Show You Why

“Who’s there that makes you so afraid
you’re shaken to the bone?
You know I don’t understand
you deserve so much better.
So don’t tell me WHY
he’s never been good to you,
don’t tell me WHY
he’s never been there for you
and I’ll tell you WHY
has never been good enough…
I’ll show you why
you’re so much better than good enough.”

– S. McLachlan

I remember at one point last winter, sitting silently, feeling like I had betrayed myself. Feeling that I’d traded away my dignity simply because a man had been kind to me. I felt pathetic that I’d been so willing to offer him everything I could because he’d sent me flowers at work and he called me every day. No man had ever paid so much attention to me before and I went to him openly like a child. I felt betrayed by the lack of tenderness in my past, was I really so starved for affection. I didn’t believe that I was so willing to trade away so much for so little.

In the wee hours of New Years I wrote “I hate that he keeps stripping away my defenses making me naked, vulnerable to the world, to him, yet he won’t trust me, he won’t offer me the same thing. I want to let out my frustrations but I can’t do that and risk hurting him.”

He was trying to deal with loss and grief; I was one of the distractions. His financee died in a car accident less than six months before. “The dead girl”, that’s what I called her, was always there between us; she came to bed with us, she was on our dates, hovering over our every conversation.

“There is a panic in my chest and the rest of me is numb nothing will move, my heart just hammers away. The more time I spend with him the more shut out I feel. The less connected, the less welcomed. And I can’t do anything, because anything would be too much…It’s just so incredibly hard to be held so close and yet so firmly far away…there are so many questions I want to ask and won’t find answers for. I don’t know how I could’ve chosen a more complicated situation or a more impossible one.”

Shortly thereafter we quit seeing one another. I quietly packed everything away, all these feelings of guilt that I’d let him down and shame that I’d offered up my self and my body to be used for a cheap return. I still can’t figure out which I felt more. I told myself that I couldn’t expect to heal the world, I wish I’d tried to heal myself. It wasn’t wrong for me to try to love away his grief, it isn’t the end of the world that I didn’t succeed. The problem was that I shut all the feelings up and refused to talk about any of it, I wouldn’t even say his name. I’ve just been quietly terrified that someone else would come along and I’d be hurt yet again.

It was difficult for me to understand that he didn’t send flowers to me or call me because he thought I was special. He did it because he wanted to do it for someone and that someone was dead, so he did it for me. There’s that vow that says love, honor and cherish. I’ve never felt like someone cherished me. Understanding the real meaning of that word takes a great deal of effort. I believe there’s an honorable man out there somewhere who does understand it and is looking for someone to cherish. I want to be the apple of that man’s eye.

Written New Years & Spring 1999

And, in the end…

the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Thank you for taking the time to visit. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed your stay, because I’m working on updating the site there will be more pages added very soon.

When I began this work in October of 1997 I did it for several very personal reasons — to deal with my anger constructively, to have a outlet to set my feelings free, to explore new ways to grow, to heal. I’m very glad to say that I’ve changed a great deal in that period of time and some of that change is related to my work on this site. What I never expected, when I created this not so private space for myself was that it would be viewed by and would move so many people.

I’ve been overwhelmed by the responses I’ve received from those who’ve taken the time to write to me. It’s been a wonderful experience and I would like to thank all of you who’ve reached out to me, sometimes when I least expected comfort, and when I needed it most, there you were and I’m grateful. I’m glad that I have been able to offer deep thought, hope, inspiration, joy and encouragement to others.

Work on this site stalled partly because of the lessons I was learning, and partly because I had forgotten that good advice my friend gave me about doing this just for myself. I bowed to pressure from “other people” and changed the form of my art so that people didn’t have to walk through one corridor (which made for a very long read I agree). Unfortunately in doing so I took away the thing that I felt was most important about this space, I took away the journey. I took away the continuity of the lessons, the poetry, the quotes, etc… I invalidated my vision and it broke my heart to look at it. I always intended this to be a gallery there are still five halls of art to choose from but now they also flow straight and seamlessly as I always intended them to.

This site is about growth, and I’ve chosen the words and images for their meaning to my own life lessons. I don’t expect everyone to understand everything they’ve seen here. If you listen to what your heart tells you you’ll be able to understand much of what I felt when I wrote each of the passages. I will continue adding words, images and pages as the spirit moves me to do so.

Originally published February 7, 1999