Out On A Limb Part Two

Just how much self disclosure do you want from a potential therapist? Not quite so much, might well be an answer. My blog entitled Out On a Limb was pretty risky. What I want you to know is that Clo and I have talked about it, we talked about it before I published it. She does not fully agree with me, especially the part about if I had been a better twin for her, maybe she wouldn't be so sick. She says I don't have that much power and she doesn't believe it is that simple and straight forward.

Clo has her story and I have mine. You have your story and your partner has theirs. Both are true. The trick is to share enough with your partner that they can understand your point of view. Not necessarily agree, but understand. I understand that Clo does not agree that I entered her dream and left mine behind. She never asked me to do that and had no idea that is what I was doing until I told her. She is angry that I did that and has reason to be.

Don't you get it? ALL relationships have huge challenges and those challenges/issues will demand to be looked at somewhere in your journey together. Sometimes it takes a major brick wall to force us to face where our next growth stretch is going to be. IT WILL HAPPEN! It will happen to you and your partner or primary person at some time if it hasn't already. This is NOT failure. It is growth, learning, stretching, healing, loving, changing, helping, seeing, understanding, many many thing, but NOT failure. What I want to share is that Clo has given me a powerful gift of love in forcing me to see how my accommodating self has colluded with her to change my dreams.

Here I am, going out on a limb again!  So there I go....if you have judgements or criticisms just don't read this stuff. My honesty is strengthening me on this shared and loving road I have with Clo and cancer. My hope is I have some words that might move something in you so you can have an awakening experience or learn something new about yourself and your partner. My need to be so visible is two fold: for me to share this burden, and to hope it has meaning for someone else. I owe it to myself to share what I am learning.

Feed back is always welcome. Hugs, Nancy

Face the Waves, Trust Your Power

Individuation is all well and good. However, Clo and I are in this together. And I can feel the awe and respect that it takes to appreciate she has chosen me to share this journey with her.

We have had a wonderfully peaceful and quiet Sunday today. We sit together in the kitchen and share eggs and mango, we sit in the living room with Aimee beside us and listen to beautiful music, we sit on the front porch and watch the traffic go by. When she leaves the room I feel her absence. When she is in the room I find peace.

I think I have stopped struggling against her and her diagnosis and am at last becoming in the now with it and with her. Guests, family, friends have helped every step of the way. And as my daughter Lisa said a few days ago, "I can imagine the two of you need time together, Mom." She is right. I have found peace today and yesterday as well. I cherish the quiet time.

It makes sense to me that I went through such angst and have come to the other side feeling cleansed and newly able to be present and with an open heart. I am relieved to like myself again and settle into peace with this next part of our journey, her journey and my journey.

I think my words of wisdom that I want to share re; this current process of being in relationship with a partner who has cancer, is that it works to face whatever is presented and trust in yourself and the power and potential you and the universe can co-create. Face the good and the hard, together and as you must on your own. Trust there is love and wisdom surrounding you and guiding you. A huge lesson. I embrace hope, love, trust. I pass on my words and my process to share with you and appreciate your wonderful responses.

Hugs for now, Nancy

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

Delegating, Receiving, and Blessings

I just returned from a restorative 5 days at Houghton Lake in Michigan with my oldest son and his wife, my oldest daughter and her husband, two grandsons and a myriad and assorted group of marvelous other teenage men and woman! My!! A change of pace for me....and most welcomed.

I return rested, renewed, refreshed and re-grounded. Time away from whatever might be going on in ones life gives a marvelous new prospective. I can see and hear and feel clearly again. What comes in is no longer weighted. What goes out feels easier and lighter. I asked for help. And it came easily and readily. I offered options and they were appreciated and lovingly received. I feel blessed. Happy. Hopeful. And in a new place of peace.

Life is good when one feels loved and feels loving. It takes a village......not just to raise a child, but to keep each of us on a steady, safe, and joyful path. Please remember these very wise words, please remember my heartfelt experiences these last months. We really can do anything, when we feel safe and loved. It behooves each of us to be intentional about keeping connections clear, simple and open. You need your partner! Your partner needs you! You need your family and friends. They need you.

I know all too well the option of withdrawing and withholding. Shutting down and being quiet can feel safe, comfortable, and familiar. In the time of significant crisis, being quiet is only familiar. It isn't safe or actually even comfortable to cut oneself off from those who want to care and want to connect. I am so struck by how important it is to risk reaching out and opening my heart. When you let someone else take care of you, you are giving them the gift of feeling good about themselves and the gift of love and connection; also called intimacy. In to me see. Intimacy. Beautiful!! Soft and sweet.

My partner with cancer is holding her own right now. Blessings. We are going to plan time away for the 2 of us. I had time away for me. The relationship needs time away as well. It will be so very lovely for just the two of us to share decisions, share the excitement and challenge of traveling someplace all be it close, still new to us. Just looking to each other for moment to moment contact, caring, and intimacy. For so long now we have shared our lives with MANY others. The two of us will be a gift to each other, and will nourish our relationship.

You need that as well....time for just you and your beloved. Time to focus on each precious moment and not at all consider the future. Time to breath.

Come see me and we can talk if you would like more words of wisdom about embracing life in a joyous, breathtaking way even in the midst of chaos. It can be done: carefully and consciously. Being intentional about sharing your love for each other and your delight in learning and seeing new things/vistas/opportunities together.

I send love and blessings to all. Hugs, Nancy  I look forward to seeing you and your partner, or just you or just your partner. All is good.  N