Step Nine : Part 1

The funny thing about lessons taught by the powers that be is that, for me at least, they seem to come in waves. Like a tide rolling in, one after another and not really spaced far enough apart for me to find my footing. Until comprehension dawns and I acquiesce and sit down long enough to study the revelation spread out before me. Only then do the waves soften their drum beat against my mind and allow me to stand. So that I can trace my steps back to the bridges I should never have burned.

I often struggle with being an over-thinker, which can be detrimental or an added bonus when serious contemplation is due. For this lesson, it was. Preaching is the easy part. I can write 100,000 words that can tell you how to heal and process trauma full of stories that will bring tears as quick as laughter. I know I can preach. I am not very good at practicing though. Putting in the work to practice what I want to preach is turning out to be a whole other ball game. Coming to this realization made me sit myself down to take a hard look at the lessons that I have been ignoring- things I need to fix and some that I need to apologize for.

In my search for self, I looked for ways to put up boundaries. I was like Oprah in my boundary setting: “EVERYONE GETS A BOUNDARY!”. Having not learned how to create them before my 40th birthday (more or less), I got a little trigger happy and in some instances I went too far. The first one I set was with my mom. Anyone who knows her will tell you that she is an incredible woman, and I do not disagree. The need that I felt to tell her the ways that I was putting space between us was all powerful. It blinded me. Standing on my own hypocritical soapbox, I said things to her that, had she been any less of the incredible woman that she is, would have built a very impassable wall between us. Delivered in a very emphatic and strongly worded letter to her, some of what I wrote was right on the mark and some was only what I saw from my singular perspective- and none of it was gentle or kind.

What I saw as boundary setting was, in this situation, more like I was building myself an island, sticking my flag of self righteousness in the sandy soil and proclaiming my truth as their ignorance. What I have learned recently is that I was only supposed to put up a fence. So that we were still on the same land, but with a healthier separation that should have been created out of love instead of anger.

I wrote my words down because I do not know if I am strong enough to speak them yet. Tears come so easily these days, I worry that they would get lost in translation as I choked them out through a filter of regret. Writing is the easiest format when I need to articulate my emotions. One day I will be able to say these hard things to the faces of those I love. But I am not there yet, I have work to do on myself so that can arrive at that eventual destination.

I am sorry. That I covered myself in my anger. That I used my own desperate seeking to fill the space between us. My hasty and selfish desire to ‘fix myself’ lit small fires on the bridges between us. I was so focused on my own cracked and wounded parts that I created a habit of looking outside for ways to mend them when the only place I should have looked was deep within. I acted out just like an overtired child and wounded those I love most in the world. I believe to the very marrow of my bones that in this life there are no accidents. Whether good or bad, there are plans made for our lives that are far beyond our human understanding. Every choice we make brings the possibility to change our path from there on. And so, I understand now, that this too, was necessary to bring my own path back to a more settled place. Nearer to the hearth that warms the hearts of those I once held close. I am also now a little bit closer to home, every step bringing me closer. I am sorry for the ways that I added to the divide between us. I have loved you always, but I have not loved me. Learning to love myself is creating a metamorphosis that at times seems to pulse outward, like shockwaves that knock items off of walls. Loosening layers of emotional sediment with a flash flood of tears in a backyard twinkling with lightening bugs behind a house filled with laughter.

I am sorry for the ways that I was wrong, unkind and harsh. I hope that you can forgive me.

I have always been an all or nothing girl. But I have judged harshly those who view the world as black and white, not realizing that I do, too. Where I saw yellow and blue, to someone who is colorblind, those hues look very similar to black and white… I saw the world the same way as the ones I was setting myself apart from. My vision simply started from a different base color- a different perspective but still polarized. Still harsh. Still divisive.

Sometimes in our search for healing and growth, when we are deep in the middle of our inner work, we think everyone around us, those we love, should also do the work we are doing. We insist they should want to be healthy or healing, too! We shove or push our own path onto them for myriad reasons and in my case I truly believed that I was the one to lead the way to healing for them. The better way would have been to just choose to be present. No pushing or turning away, but offering a steady and sure presence. Not a weighted blanket of suffocating expectations but a comforting quilt offering warmth, made with love and completely acceptable for them to throw it off. Stick a foot out if it got too warm.

I have taught my own children that the three of them are the only ones they get. They are on each others team whether they agree or not. Silence can sometimes be the most gentle type of compassion. Choosing to love each other may not always be easy but it is always right. The love may look differently than you want it to or than it did when it started out, but love comes in rainbows and every shade in between. Romance may come to an end like a caliche driveway behind your grandfathers house, but friendship may be in the alley-way beyond. Be willing to get out of the car, change your perspective, change your shoes (or take them off) and do a little walking.

The hard things that at times need to be said can always be spoken in a gentle voice, delivered to the one who needs to hear them like a feather that lands softly on a sidewalk instead of a poisonous dart thrown with the intention to inoculate but leaves a wound. I have preached these things to my children, but I have not practiced them. I am an archer, a specialist in the study of carefully crafted arrows of words and I do not miss. I am tired of watching my arrows of poison set fires, and while I have not yet set down my quiver, I am learning how to be silent. I am still learning. There is time enough to correct these choices and I will choose to use them as a teaching moment for my children, for me. Turning my arrows into birdhouses. The love that I want to practice, even more than I preach, is patient and kind, sometimes it is silent and steady, sometimes it is loud and silly. It forgives. It seeks to understand, and it accepts the times that don’t make a lick of sense. Sometimes it holds your hand and helps you through it and other times it watches from an unseen place. Barefooted or in worn out Doc Marten’s, it shows up. I want to practice the love that shows up. No matter what.

During a few recent and purposefully meandering road trips various songs have come on that have been, to me, a nod from above that I am headed in the right direction. The first song was “Brothers” by Brad Armstrong and it told me that I need to right my wrongs with my family. The second divine head nod came by way of Willie Nelson and Ray Charles’ “Seven Spanish Angels”, literally seconds after sending a text to the woman who was my best friend for almost 15 years. A true soul sister and whose friendship was a casualty of my belligerent boundary setting when I was first learning how to set them. We have not spoken since. And while I still stand by my original boundary, I would be wrong if I told you that I set it right. Hers was another bridge burned that should have been just a fence.

In both instances, those songs brought me to tears. Tears of regret for the ways that my words and my stumbling compulsion to “fix myself” caused harm to others. Tears of understanding and thankfulness that I am now being taught this lesson. Tears of thankfulness that I am not as stubborn as I once was. Tears of humility in remembering the ways that I have taught my children and the knowledge that I still have work to do. So that I may find the grey in between my versions of black and white, the grey is where grace lives. Lord knows I need so much grace for myself and to hand out to others. There are so many spots left in my heart that need smoothing out, digging up, spackle spread over holes left by others so that I, too, will have a hearth in my heart for those I love to come home to. A heart where grace sits.