OUT ON A LIMB
I am beginning to make sense out of the past several years
of my life. My frame- work is Imago and Abraham. They are compatible and
resonate with me. I am finding vibrational harmony, as Abraham would say.
Moving from Michigan 22 years ago was huge and challenged me
personally and professionally. I was vulnerable and still recovering, 12 to 15
years later, from a screwed up marriage. My kids were grown and had gone on
with their own lives. The hospital (my job) was crumbling; I didn’t know how to
make a living when that ended. I was ready for an adventure, a change, and a
new life.
So. I moved country: From a town of 80,000 to one of 3
million, from a job with safety nets to private practice, from a lousy
relationship to a new one. I moved from the house I raised my four children in,
to an apartment. I left family and friends. I re-invented myself, with joy,
pleasure, excitement, wisdom, energy, and help. AND it took me a far longer
time then I realized to find my newly created self. To find balance and feel
empowered again. To be able to call my new country, home. To make new friends,
find the gas station, pharmacy and grocery stores, discover the best ice cream
and restaurants; trust someone to cut my hair, connect with a dentist and
health care physician, and to search out the library and closest bookstores.
I committed happily and joyfully to a relationship with a
strong woman who was/is extremely gifted, talented, smart, wise and loving. She
was vulnerable as well. Her vulnerability manifested itself into chronic
fatigue and fibermyolgia and a myriad of other ailments throughout the years.
Her strength and creativity went into redesigning our almost 100 year old home.
She created a lovely, peaceful, welcoming space for us to live in, our relationship
to safely grow in, our families to visit and feel loved in, eat great food that
she prepared and drink good wine. As she created our home, I created a private
practice where clients are willing to risk opening up and give me the honour of
guiding and facilitating their healing and deepening their intimacy.
I became a career accommodator. My partner is from Quebec
and she was raised with several siblings and an angry father with very low
self- esteem and an overwhelmed mother who was under challenged. She is
multi-gifted as an artist: a cabinet- maker, soap maker, weaver, gardener,
cook, knitter and home designer and excellent homemaker. I let her take over. I
learned as a child to be invisible and not make waves. I played with the elves
and fairies and got lost in my books. My ideas were not all that great anyway,
probably, so why fuss?
Mostly that worked. We didn’t fight and we lived in a very
lovely and loving home. However, after some years it began to feel like I was
living in someone else’s dream. It took me a very long time to find the words
to put to the feelings. I had given away my own dreams and entered a world I
called mine, until it no longer felt like mine. I went way inside, hid me away,
and became sad and resentful. I thought
my heart was broken, and I feared for my life.
I fought intentionally and successfully to live. I love
life. I have found my dreamer self again. I dream my own dreams with love,
gentleness and respect. As my dreams become more clear and vivid, I find I have
more energy and joy. I am quite capable of making my dreams come true. I know
how to do that. I have done it frequently in the past. I can feel myself smack
in the middle of doing it again and I find that very exciting.
I know I am talking about individuation. My partner and I
became very symbiotic. I was her twin who died when they were four and she was
my mother who emotionally and spiritually left me when I was three. It worked.
We loved each other into adulthood. We took care of each other. She took care of
the house while I largely took care of the finances.
I don’t remember when that became not enough for me. I
wanted to co-create our home and I wanted us to equally share the financial
responsibility. It should have worked the way we were doing it for all those
years. We were each doing what we loved
and what the other needed. But it stopped working for me. I became very sick
and I was totally physically dependent upon her while aware that we continued
to be financially dependant upon me.
While I was sick the cancer began to grow inside her. But we
didn’t know that.
Did we?
Why didn’t we know that? Why didn’t we know cancer was
eating her alive?? Why couldn’t I see it or she feel it? Why didn’t we know? We
are both smart, aware, loving women. We understood healthy living and healthy
life style. We thought that was how we were living.
I should have known and maybe I did. She often was sick and
usually with something greater than the last time. She shared that she didn’t
feel seen. She wondered if she had cancer if anyone would notice. I chose to
believe her when she assured me that she would not be getting cancer. I chose
to turn a blind eye. She had terrible headaches and awful stomach aches. She
often had something aching. I heard but I didn’t DO anything. I take pride in
being a be-er and not a do-er. Pride comes before a fall, I was taught. Maybe
so.
Cancer has helped her feel seen and loved. Dear god! Did it take all of this for us to
find ourselves and for us to cut the symbiotic knot and individuate? I wish we had known a different way.
We all create our own pain. We create our own lives. My
partner and I co-created our life as it is now. I see that. I suspect it is
more complex than I can understand yet, but I believe I am the author of my own
story. And I am currently writing the last quarter of the story. I find that
exciting and fascinating. I feel empowered that I get to decide. I am deciding
it will be wonderful. Filled with joy, hope, love, music, art, beauty, family,
friends, travel, home, pleasure, health, passion, laughter, reality. My deepest
hope of all is that it will be filled with my partner Clo. Not just her memory,
her real physical presence.
I share my thinking in the hope it will touch someone else.
Imago teaches we MUST talk/communicate, even the hard stuff, with our beloved.
It is my belief that my story illustrates the wisdom and power of that truth. I
know how to help guide and facilitate you talking with your beloved. I am
learning how important the truly deep and intimate stuff is. If I had
accommodated less and we had deeply shared our hurt, pain and truth, more, I
wonder if we would be in a differently healthy place right now.
It is not just about
navigating daily rocky waters. It is about going way back and healing the early
wounds. The importance of risking all that cannot be underestimated. It may
very well be the difference between life and death.
This is enough for now. Please do write to me or talk with
me. I want to hear from you, support you, help our world heal from: cancer,
dis-ease, violence….
Hugs, Nancy
