If you know the photographer of the beautful picture to the left, please let me know so I can give credit.  I have seen similar but have not found one exactly like this one that has been credited.  This is the Glory Window at Thanks-Giving Square in Dallas, symbolizing the Divine reaching down, or so I’m told.  The stained glass is the creation of artist Gabriel Loire. 

If you’ve missed my previous writings on “metaphysical houses,” I’ll repeat a little bit for you from one of my books about my meditation experiences to give you an idea of what these are.  They are part meditation, part lucid dreaming, always accidental, and always insightful. If I ever wonder about what’s really going on with someone, an invitation into their ”metaphysical house” will show me. 

Background:

Over the past couple of years, I’ve noted that my meditations include “metaphysical houses,” which are representative “structures” of the inner workings of a person, community, partnership, or situation. I didn’t set out to visit such places but rather, I just landed there and explored the territory, often without the owner being present or available at that moment.

I’ve wandered through my ex’s 3-story mansion with the heavy furniture and picture-perfect rooms but with a huge secret house of cubby holes in the back, mostly occupied by his mother but opening out onto a back patio of pleasant snapshot-posters of the girls and me many, many years ago. My ex was never present on those visits but the girls and his mom were.

Once I was invited into a dark, damp, dangerous place filled with basement rooms and spiraling staircases that seemed to devour anyone who stepped inside more than a few feet. I’ve stayed far away from her “house” since then and from the cruel little girl with dead eyes.

I’ve landed a few times at a cozy house on a cul-de-sac with a stream nearby and been told that the place belonged to The Treat. I’ve wandered through and talked with his mom (mothers seem to occupy the back rooms of so many of these metaphysical houses!) and smiled over his eclectic mix of pop culture furniture and ancient artifacts, all in a cozy home that was behind a busy office and reception area in the front of his home. Sometimes he wasn’t home and other times he was in his office and too busy to notice the steady trail of visitors—sometimes by the bus load. But he did reciprocate by visiting my own “house” more than once.

I’ve discovered that my own “metaphysical house” is based on the house I grew up in but it encompasses a huge portion of the family farm. So a “metaphysical house” is more than just a building. So many of my own memories reside there, as well as people I knew from long ago who have passed over.

So that’s the background for these…excursions.  I assume I would be blocked somehow if I were not allowed in as sometimes I’ve found that I could go no farther into a house, even after a direct invitation from someone to try it sometime, or that the rooms were dark or somehow “off-limits.”  I have never once begun a meditation with the intention of exploring a “metaphysical house” of someone or trespassing (another word, I suppose, for psychic spying).  There is almost always some  form of invitation, though with a few, I have gone deeper than the invitation issuer realized I could. Deeper than I realized, too.  There is usually some close bond with the person. These excursions do not happen with people with a lot to hide from me or with strangers or adversaries.    They are a deep form of bonding and understanding, a sort of letting down walls and letting me in.

I have not had one of these odd types of meditations in over 3 years. The last time–before this week–was a former boyfriend.  I experienced his metaphysical house as a tiny cottage of no more than 600 square feet, run-down.  There was no one inside.  A few people wandering around outside.  Some of the shrubbery outside was overgrown, though the grass was trimmed a bit.  It was a startling revelation for me.  The energy of the place was one of impoverishment.  That was probably the best clue to what was going on in his heart when we split up.  He did not have a sense of abundance and resented those who did.   I visited his inner realm several times and it was always the same.  I didn’t want to understand it at the time, but I always felt a sense of sadness as I walked barefoot around the house he called his heart.

After that, I dated another man for a year and never once had a dream about him, let alone any deep meditative experience.  Now I realize that that made sense, as he had much to hide–both illegal and unetchical–and worked damned hard at keeping those shields up around me so that I wouldn’t find out the truth of who he really was.    My experiences with him and my lack of lucid dreaming about him lead me to believe that being allowed into a metaphysical house is certainly the equivalent of being “allowed in” on an emotional and spiritual level.  There was never an emotional bond between us.  I wonder what I would have seen if I had been invited in….

After three years, I thought I’d lost the talent for these things.  Not so.

Last weekend, I had a lucid dream about someone I thought I knew well, and the insights floored me.  In fact, I thought there was very little I did not know, but I was astonished. He was not inside the house itself but in a vast softball field, playing with family members, teens, people in the community.  His metaphysical house reminded me of my own–much larger than a house and including surrounding woods, pastures, ponds, and natural areas.  Lots of green and Nature. 

Inside the house were a few pieces of art I’d seen before.  Or at least, whatever it was they represented, I’d seen before.  They were exquisite, prominently displayed in his house, particularly in the outer rooms and kitchen/living room/social areas.  It’s hard to explain what these pieces of art looked like to me–some were like big carved spirals of colored glass and gemstones, some mixed with wood or metal.  Outside of these dreams, I have never seen anything like this but the photo above reminded me by feeble comparison.

I was struck by how full the house was.  People were ambling around. Some were family members.  Others were colleagues and friends.  I understood.  This is how my own metaphysical house looks–populated by people I care about and by people I have obligations to.  Not necessarily people of my heart or people on my mind but people I have a bond with, like it or not (which explains some relatives who have taken up residence in my inner realms!).   These were all people he takes care of in some way. 

Okay, really, no surprises so far.  Extreme interest, yes, because it was such a perfect reflection of this dear friend. 

Then someone there in the house– an angel or spirit guide or…Jesus?–asked if I’d seen the inner rooms.  A rhetorical question.  He immediately pointed out that I hadn’t and led me into the core of the house.  These rooms were generally not populated at all, even though they had been arranged for many to lounge comfortably and socialize.  The ceilings were plastered domes ending in the stone floor, but they were covered in the most equisite pieces of art. Colored glass, spirals, circles, mosaics, gemstones, different textures and material fuzed together and encrusted in the plast of the walls and ceilings.  They were bright and fantastical, such that no human eye has seen anything so magnificant.  Each of these was a treasure, but hidden away.  Willing to be shared, but the rooms housing these precious galleries were empty of all the people wandering through the rest of the house.  It made me wonder why they didn’t take a few steps out of the way to explore these treasure troves.  It was as if they weren’t interested in what was beyond the kitchen table.

Most of what I saw on this excursion matched what I know of this person.  What surprised me was just how many unknown treasures are deeper inside, untapped, hidden away except for those who would seek them out.  And that…that bears remembering.

So the gift is back.  Whether I like it or not.  This time, I liked it a lot.

Some of my  friends and family are worried about me.  They’re concerned about my relationships, one in particular. 

It’s not a bad relationship.  In fact, I consider it the sweetest, most caring relationship I have ever had with a man.  Yes, any man.  It’s also the deepest, closest relationship I have ever had in this lifetime.  With anyone.   Absolutely no one knows me better or has ever known me better.  But in general, no one in my closest circle approves, and some are very vocal.  They do not understand the nature of the relationship, and it doesn’t look like they think it should, so they fret about it openly or either give me the silent treatment on the rare occasions when I talk about this area of my life or what I want in the future.  And it hurts that they can be supportive of other people’s relationships but not of mine.   I mean, downright gung-ho about other people’s relationships, but with mine, they want to stage interventions without ever having met the person or give me  a choose-him-or-me ultimatum.   Sometimes I feel that they think other people deserve sweet relationships more than I do and that I should just be happy in my role as friend or family member and not want more out of life than I have with them.  They give lip service to being happy if I should ever choose an emotional bond with someone again, but when faced with the prospect, they don’t want me in a relationship of my own choosing.

For the most part, I don’t discuss it with my friends or family.  I learned my lesson on that in the past when a potential relationship, right after my divorce, was starting to brew and my then-friends hounded me constantly until I ended not only any chance of that relationship getting off the ground but also ended the relationships with the friends who were just too much “in my business.”   There’s a certain beauty to keeping moments of caring private, but the downside is that no one else has any idea how much support two people can give each other when times are rough and no one else is there for them…including  the  disapproving friends and family.

Like I said, it’s not a bad relationship.  There is a solid, long-term foundation of friendship and respect.  It’s the most evenly matched friendship I’ve ever had, with more in common than I could ever have believed.  I would not be in my current job position had he not talked me into getting back in the game.  I would not be writing again. I would not have regained my health.  I would be living a less fulfilled life in different circumstances, though I’d probably still be dating underwear models.  Yeah, not bad when you can point to one person as the catalyst for so many pockets of happiness.   It’s not perfect, and there are several jagged issues between us that both keep us apart and cement our deep compassion for each other.  Some of my friends like to tell me that I don’t need this relationship because they’re there for me.  And they are, to a great degree, but the times in the last year or so when I have been most distraught, it was he who was the first there for me, and often the only one there for me.  Even my most devoted (other) friends have their own lives that must be put ahead of me and not a one of them has sat with me for hours while I cried over a deep wound or a fresh anxiety.    He is there for me in the way that I have been there for them, and in a way that no one else is for me.  I have been absolutely blessed to have this particularly relationship in my life.

Now here’s the irony of  it all:  I’ve been in two really bad relationships–romantic relationships or what at least I considered romantic–since I’ve been an adult.  Three if you count one from my teen years.  My friends and family were incredibly supportive of those relationships.   Not all my friends and family, but the majority of them.  The only ones who weren’t supportive were one or two who saw things up close and personal and knew first-hand that I had to get out of those relationshps as fast as I could.  Most of my closest circle, however, were not only not supportive of my leaving truly bad relationships, but they insisted I needed to stay because I might otherwise end up alone…or they really like the guy.  Even when I explained to one that I’d rather slit my own throat than to live in it another minute in misery, I was told it was better to be with him than with no one.

My bad relationships looked the most “normal,” strangely enough.  On the outside, they were everything I was supposed to want and need and carried that social status of legitimacy with them, so they “had” to be good.  It was almost as if discovering that relationships that looked good on the outside sometimes had rotten cores was some kind of dirty secret we weren’t to admit. Just cover it up and keep living the lie, I was told.

I learned when I was 14 that perfect-looking relationships often aren’t.  ( I’m sure there are some that are wonderful, so if yours is, feel blessed to be an exception to my rule.)   As an idealistic teen, it was an awful surprise to me when one of the ideal marriages in my community ended in a very sudden divorce.  Assumptions were made about the man’s fidelity as a way of explaining it away, but I later found out–years later–that the wife had had a long string of affairs and had a history of mental illness.   The husband just kept trying to keep his family together and bore it all silently.  But the public facade was perfect.  By the time they separated legally, they hated each other’s guts but no one else had any idea.  When I divorced, I had colleagues who didn’t speak to me for a year or more because they were angry that I’d spoiled their perception of a good marriage.  They didn’t have problems with my husband so they didn’t understand how I could have problems with him.  The truth was, regardless of whose side anyone took, things happened inside our relationship that no one outside had a clue about, so it seemed perfect based on how well we fit into the mold of partnered-up happiness in a nice home with nice careers and two kids and a dog.

So no one really knows what happens in anyone else’s relationship.  It’s easy to assume based on our own viewpoints and reference points.  We want the security of believing that if a relationship looks a certain way, then their life should be perfect and so should ours.  But all relationships have bumps and joys. 

Some of my friends think I should be alone for the rest of my life because that way,  no man would ever hurt me again. They know I was hurt badly a couple of times and don’t want to see a repeat.   If I allow no one into my heart, then they can live peacefully and joyfully with the idea that I’m not going to be hurt.  But they love me and want the best for me.

Some of my friends think I should be with someone who is whatever their mate or boyfriend or friend is to them.  They want me to have someone close to me but someone they approve of.    Oddly, I know enough about their relationships that I would never want to trade places with them.   But they love me and want the best for me.

Do I have everything I want right now?  No.  I’m not sure I ever will.   But I am closer now to having everything I have ever wanted than I have ever been in the past.  No one seemed worried about me getting hurt when I was in a bad relationship, but they worry when I’m in a good one?    Getting hurt is a risk any time you give your heart, regardless of the type or texture of the relationship.  I’ve been just as hurt in platonic female relationships as in romantic male relationships, and I never saw it coming until the relationship was gone, gone, gone forever.

I can say it doesn’t matter to me what others think, but it does matter to me what people I care about think.  I want to believe they’re behind me, even when they disagree with the choices I make.  I certainly don’t agree with their choices, but I know it doesn’t matter as long as they’re happy, even with occasional relationship turbulence in their lives.  I wish others could rally behind me like I’ve rallied behind them, not judging their choices in life, but short of that, I’m just very glad to have one person who does rally behind me.

At the end of the Mabon Gathering in my home and a night of food, deep conversation, and a round-robin of Tarot reading,  my friend Patrick read my cards last.  It turned out to be extremely comical–and eerily accurate–especially since I never posed a question and Patrick had no idea what had been going on in my life.  One of the things that Patrick pointed out is that I tend to be the “emotional centerpiece” for everyone in my life.  If they have a problem or need emotional support, I tend to be the one they make a beeline for. Family, friends, colleagues, strangers.  Every time.  But that it’s rare that I find that in someone else, and when I do, I feel really blessed to have it. That lack of emotional support is  a long-standing shadow from my past, and there are still scars from it, regardless of how much fun I’m having these days.

In a recent week, I kept hearing Patrick’s phrase, “emotional centerpiece,” bounce around in my head because it seemed everyone–every one–had a deeply traumatizing event or stress knocking them to the ground or their world was falling apart or they just needed someone to vent to or a shoulder to cry on.  At one point during the week, I had had a major argument with my best friend, and it made me so sad to be out of harmony with him over something trivial that we had very different and very passionate responses to. 

And after our argument, those old patterns from the past reared their heads and my heart ached to think that I might have lost my best friend by not giving in to an opinion I fervently disagreed with.  I was so used  to having a different opinion and suffering a withdrawal of affection and attention from the disagreeing party that it felt like the only natural solution. 

 I was used to that pattern with most of the important men in my past, and a few women, too.  You know the pattern:  “You won’t do it my way?  Fine.  I just won’t speak to you/touch you/acknowledge you for weeks at a time until you break down and do it my way.”  Like I said, a long-standing shadow from my past with plenty of scars not visible except to those who know me best and know how much I resent still carrying those scars long after those people are out of my life.

In the midst of my heart-heaviness over my best friend and our disagreement, I listened to friends, family, colleagues go on and on about something mundane  but happy in their lives after their dramas had subsided…and I wished they’d have asked about something in my life they’re all aware of.  And at the same time, I didn’t want to bring it up.  They couldn’t do anything about it, after all.  Neither could I.  A part of me just wanted that kindness of  knowing they were wishing me the best with a difficult situation, and that they’d be there for me if that’s what I needed.   But none of  them noticed.    Why should they?  They are not emotional centerpieces for me and never have been.

But my best friend….  My best friend was still speaking to me.  Still knowing I was alive.  Still friendly and caring.  He apologized  for coming on too strong in our discussion and we agreed to disagree on a particular subject and that that was okay.  I admit that I was deeply relieved as we further talked through our thoughts.  He didn’t turn up his nose and tell me that if I didn’t do things his way, then I was a failure or stupid or ungrateful. Or that if I didn’t follow his lead, then he wouldn’t dance with me. 

Then he did the most surprising thing, the kindest thing I’ve ever heard.  He asked me what he could do for me– what I needed from him–in order to feel emotional support over my course of action even though he disagreed with me.   And I told him. Precisely. And with a lump in my throat.

I do believe I have found an emotional centerpiece in my life.

A happy high heart chakra

 As an empath, I have become acutely aware of the High Heart Chakra , also known as the Thymic Chakra or Thymus Chakra.    I didn’t even know I had one until recently until it was activated by really and truly getting to be myself in a bond with someone else. 

You’d think I might have found it sooner than mid-life, but I can’t complain…it wasn’t consciously activated and only the right situation could allow it to bloom on its own. I am very grateful to have discovered it at all.

I’ve been aware of the fairly well-known set of 7 chakras, or energy centers in the body for at least the last 15 or so years, and the more “traditional” 7 chakras do NOT include a “high heart” chakra or thymic or thymus chakra.  

(To read more on The Seven Chakra Energy Centers, see the article at http://www.thespiritualeclectic.com/2010/01/27/the-seven-chakra-energy-centers/.) 

It’s not that this additional chakra is anything new either.  Some energy practitioners believe there are 10 or even 12 chakras in and above/below the body. Perhaps even more.  And that no two people are alike and may have lesser chakras where others do not.

The first time I heard of the High Heart Chakra was from shaman Kelley Harrell of Soul Intent Arts  (http://www.soulintentarts.com ).  During a chakra clearing she did for me, the “usual” chakras didn’t turn up anything too murky but she mentioned a disturbance in my High Heart Chakra.  She was dead on, but I didn’t really understand it at the time.

You see, as an empath, I “connect” with people I am bonded with, whether they are family or friends, romantic or platonic, male or female.  (For more on energetic connections or empathic connections, see the article at http://www.thespiritualeclectic.com/2008/11/06/%e2%80%9cenergetic-connections%e2%80%9d-the-seventh-sense/.)  The strength of the connection depends usually on the depth of the bond and the location of the other person–the more intense the physical separation, the more intensely I feel the connection).  The physical location–where I FEEL the connection–depends on the individual and the relationship.

There are particular people in my history and in my present whom I will sense in different chakras.  Sometimes, I will feel them in different quadrants of a chakra.  I will know something is seriously amiss by where I feel a sudden pang of anxiety or grief that is not mine.  Yes, I’ll be feeling quite happy and content when an abrupt gnawing dread or “disturbance in the force” becomes suddenly overwhelming to me.  Sometimes, even though many of these connections are felt in my Third Chakra (solar plexus), I will know exactly which loved one is in trouble or hurting.  I’ll call and get instant confirmation.  Other times, they’ll lie to me to ease my mind or because my gift freaks them out, but I’ll find out later that they really were upset at the time.

I dated a man several years ago who was in serious trouble but I didn’t know it.   Felt it, yes, but didn’t have any physical proof.  Even after he left the geographical area, I could feel when he was in trouble…which was later easy to confirm.  I used to get this feeling with my maternal grandfather when he was very ill and needed help, and still get it with my children, mom, and brothers.  Most of my close relationships, I’ve felt in my solar plexus, a few in my heart chakra, one in my throat, and another in my brow (sixth) chakra.  Now, I feel someone in my High Heart Chakra.

I’m generally not aware of my chakras when all is well with me AND all is well with the people with whom I’ve bonded.  I simply feel good and that’s that.  If things are abolutely wonderful, then I feel blissful but still I’m not acutely aware of my chakras.  But if something is wrong,  I feel a terrible ache in one particular location in my body, one particular chakra or quadrant of a chakra or combination of chakras aligned with that relationship.  In the same place I might feel deep overwhelming love, I will feel the emptiness, the anxiety, the grief.  The flip side of the coin, so to speak. 

That’s how I discovered my High Heart Chakra–I’d been blissfully happy when one of my loved ones was deeply emotionally wounded.   I might as well have been shot there with an arrow.  The feeling couldn’t have been less different because I felt it as deep physical pain.

In some of my research, I’ve read that the High Heart Chakra is a lesser or minor chakra–or an in-between chakra–and that it’s located in the upper body as a pair.  They are supposedly on either side of the body, high up in the chest and directly below each collarbone.  I don’t feel them that way.  I feel only one, directly between my heart and throat, and I can pinpoint exactly where it is.  As far as I can tell, I have only one. 

The High Heart Chakra is supposedly an in-between energy center, between the Heart Chakra and the Throat Chakra.  One interpretation of it is that when it’s activated and open, we can speak our emotional truths.  To me, that means being able to be myself completely, to be open emotionally to and with someone, not to have to censor my feelings.  Of all my loved ones, I feel only one there and that is the very nature of the relationship–emotional openness, emotional truth.  I count myself as fortunate to have experienced a bond that facilitated this activation of emotion and empathy within me.

Before I explain why I fired my family doctor right before I lost 20 pounds–and yes, your doctor works for YOU, in case you missed that–I’d like to touch on a couple of other subjects:  1.  Why going it alone in a health regimen may be better than having “help” but isn’t the preferred way and 2.  Whether we should blame our parents for the food choices they made while we were growing up.

I’ve seen it happen to many people, almost exclusively women…the diets and failed diets and the attempts at regular exercise and the failed attempts at regular exercise…the years of struggle with weight, only to get near a goal and be undermined by those closest to them.

About a decade ago, I watched a close friend get within 2 pounds of her goal of a 50-pound loss and nearly have to become a hermit to make it.  She was so hurt!  After 2 years on a nationally recognized weight loss program and one-hour-a-day of hard exercise, all those people who originally urged her to lose weight turned into her worst enemies–or worst tempters, as the case was.  Her family and friends suddenly began trying to tempt her with pizza, alcohol, and lots of junk food.  She learned from her sponsor that this was all perfectly normal–grown children would suddenly see mom as a threat and best friends in need of a little toning would be overcome with jealousy.  Her trusted levels of support would become insecure in their own body images and try to sway her when she was readiest to celebrate her hard work.

Lack of support isn’t just a matter of personal insecurities raising their ugly little heads among your supporters.  There are also the people who seem to think you’re an idiot when you say you can’t or won’t eat certain foods for health reasons you have that they don’t.

I went through this for years with a former in-law who loved to cook–and expected me to eat it.  When I began turning down her goodies, it became a struggle for control. She would lie to me about certain ingredients–my daughters sometimes reported later what they’d seen her put into the food and that she got a kick of my eating her ”health” food and loving it and how it wouldn’t hurt really me.  Except, now that I’ve done this detox diet, I know that some of the ingredients she  pretended weren’t in her treats really were harmful to me.  They gave me headaches, congestion, bloating, asthma, upset stomach, weight gain, and sometimes rashes.  Only I didn’t have any idea and I’d trusted that she hadn’t used certain ingredients, so I didn’t connect the foods with the reactions.  But hey, my ex-in-law got the benefit of an ego trip so who am I to argue?  She will never ever make another “healthy” food for me.

It’s not quite as bad as the birthday girl’s mom who defies the parents of the kid with a peanut or dairy allergy, shrugs it off as over-protectiveness, and then feeds the food-sensitive kid something that will  send him to the ER before the birthday party is over.  Still, I have no use whatsoever for people who intentionally sabotage a restricted diet, whether it’s for “vanity pounds” or a matter of life or death within the hour or something in between.  Lying about what you feed a person is unforgivable–and yes, I’ll talk later in this blog about what the food industry and restaurants cover up.   I have rarely spoken to my former favorite uncle after he years ago tricked me into eating venison and I knew in the first bite that it was not steak.  I am still angry when I think about his guffawing over convincing me to eat it, his sheepish grin to see if I’d know something was amiss with that first bite, and my parents looking guilty for going along with his lies.  Yes, I knew the difference, and no, I did not appreciate it.  I put it right up there with stories of restaurant workers who have spit or pissed in a patron’s food or medieval tales of poison slipped into the banquet fare.

Not that intentional or unintentional sabotage are the only forms of killing a good diet.  The biggest diet-killer for me was always the extra work.  Not really the prep time for my meal’s restrictions.  Some diets do require more prep but for my detox, many of my healthy meals have been ready in 10 minutes or less.  During my 2-decade marriage, my spouse and I took turns cooking (he had 3 dishes and I was more…experimentive).  If I was on a diet, the only way it would work was if I cooked all the meals.  He either didn’t offer or didn’t know how to cook for whatever was on my diet.  The extra work to cook my own dishes and for the entire family eventually became so time-consuming that I gave up my diet, especially if I had achieved my weight loss.  Why stick to a great style of eating for my own needs if I was forever burned out on the extra food duties? 

Part of my success with this detox diet has been that I have gone it alone.  I didn’t want loved ones weighing in to question my intelligence at applying a diet they knew nothing about or one that was different from theirs and would only create extra work for them.  Been there.  Too much energy spent defending my food needs as reasonable.   I either wanted total support or for no one to know.  I told almost no one what I was doing and planned the first two weeks of my detox for a time when  most of  my co-workers were out for the Christmas season.  I mentioned it to my daughters, who were really quite supportive during a time when they were both home and used to holiday excursions to lots of restaurants with Mom.  I felt a little guilty that I couldn’t take my older daughter out to dinner when restaurant food is a big deal for a starving college student.  I did have to mention a couple of times to my younger daughter (in the pic above from several years ago) to clean her own dishes because, regardless of other reasons,  it just wasn’t fair for me to have to scrape cookie dough remnants off a plate before putting it in the dishwasher!  My daughters are old enough now to make their own meals without me having to cook twice as many meals to accomodate them.  The worst of the problems is that every now and then, I have to smell chocoloate chip cookies baking in the kitchen, beckoning to me like a hag with a poison apple….

The other person I mentioned my impending diet to was a “person of interest” in my life, right before he was away for several weeks.  He was super supportive and the very first person I discussed my plans with.  When he returned, I was half-done with my detox and down 13 pounds by that time.  He was super supportive in ways I have never known from a friend or family member:  looking up food info for me, downloading spreadsheets for me, sending me links with info he’d researched on some side-subject I was interested in, propping me up if a favorite food caused me grief, trying my experiments for himself, and just generally cheering me on all around and making me feel like an adored queen for my triumphs.

So to an extent, I “went it alone” on this adventure, but I got some great support, too.  The biggest difference in the support was  that with previous diets…in a time of previous people in my life…I had a guy showing up to eat and talk healthy foods instead of bringing junk food into my house, someone urging me ever onward instead of challenging me to defend why I needed to do my diet instead of his,  someone boosting me up instead of telling me I’d just fail this diet or gain all the weight right back.  I got real support, wonderful support.

That’s the way it should be.  And if you don’t get that level of support, then I think it’s definitely best to “go it alone.”

Continued….  Is your diet your parents’ fault?  Have you screwed up your own kids already?  And why, oh, why did I fire my family doctor?

Revisiting the past– sunset across the fields.   Photo copyright by Aislinn Bailey.

I get more letters from readers of my book, Attract Him Back: Master the Law of Attraction to Bring Back Friends, Lovers, and Relationships from your Past,  than I have time to answer, but occasionally I get one asking about how things are going with a particular man I mentioned that I had attracted back.    I’ve learned something new that I’d like to share with my Attract Him Back readers.
 
During most of my life, I’ve needed a particular kind of partner.  I’ve attracted those types of men into my life, according to my specific needs and energetic vibrations at that time.  A lot of what I’ve attracted to me and later attracted back has had to do with what was going on in my life and what I needed or felt I needed.  I’ve stayed fairly solid and steady in those needs.  That’s why I’ve had such a surprise recently.
 
I’ve gone through different relationship phases and different relationship needs in my life, depending on my career needs, my children’s needs,  my health needs, etc.  I have often adjusted my needs to the needs of those around me, but now that my children are emptying from the nest I’ve built, my needs are becoming more focused on the things I’ve set aside for them and others.  The dreams I built around them are either fulfilled or will never happen now—like the long-held dream of being able to stay home and write full-time while I waited for my little girls to come home from school, get their afternoon snacks before homework help, dinner, and baths and bed.  But, as a friend points out when I fret about the dream that never happened because my relationship at that time did not support it, it’s time to put together new dreams because my life is on the upswing now.
 
Those new dreams aren’t based on children any more.  They’re based on ever improved health, travel, fun, fulfilling activities, dipping my toes back into some intriguing work in my Defense Department career while fascinated by some ideas in my writing career.  My dreams are suddenly about my needs now, and so—to my surprise—the men I’ve attracted back and had been enjoying in my life don’t fit so much into this new vision of my future.  This isn’t an overnight change but a slow transition as they have begun to move out of my life and I am now willing letting them go. 
 
I recently sat and talked for hours to someone I attracted, then lost, then attracted back and was so thrilled to have back in my life.  My relationship with him has been changing over this last year into one where I no longer crave anything romantic or long-term.  We are still incredibly fond of one another but our relationship is developing more into one of platonic friendship, and I am fine with that.  Probably more fine than he is and perhaps we would be together long-term if he’d come back to me sooner, but I am now too far down the road to a new set of needs for him to keep up, I think.  Or at least, for him to be the best source of fulfillment for these new dreams.  He would bring young children into my life at a point where I want to focus more on myself, finally.    He is no longer able to travel…at a point when the world is opening wide for me.  It is not that he no longer cares for me or that life together would not be wonderful, but I’m approaching a new beginning and I know he won’t be coming with me as anything more than a friend I occasionally confide in.  We are drifting apart, and it is because I’m the one who has changed. 
 
I attracted him back, and now I am letting him drift away to something and someone else because my relationship needs have changed.  That’s not a sad thing.  I’m going through an upgrade, and he isn’t at the same place in life that I am now and probably won’t be for many, many years.  
 

That said, I find it rather interesting that I have attracted a new, promising relationship into my life that matches so many of my current needs and the vision I hold for myself, beginning this year.  He has some of the finer qualities of the man I have let drift away as no longer quite right for who I am—the scientific mind, the deep romanticism,  superior intelligence,  a quick wit, a strong respect for me, a quiet but older sexiness.  Things I am often attracted to, yes.  But this one has far more he can offer the new version of me, the one who can travel, explore new health regimens, and pursue new dreams that were put on hold for the sake of my family obligations.
 
Lest you  think I no longer believe in “attracting back” particular men into my life, this man is someone I knew when we were both quite young, just starting out in our careers and families and dreams that didn’t happen the way we wanted.  We never had a romantic relationship and I never expected the possibility of one to come into my life at mid-life with him.  We  have always had an awareness of one another, even though it was never acted upon.  I never set out to attract him or to attract him back to me…my needs changed, and he has appeared.
 
But he’s one of my all-time favorite people from my past, and there’s a reason he’s made it into my future.

***

I’ve always hated Jonathon Livingston Seagull.  Irrational, I know, but the Richard Bach book came out around the time I was in the fourth grade, and I remember my teacher reading it to the class and gently (she thought) drilling into us that “If you love something, set it free:  if it comes back to you, it’s yours…if it doesn’t, it never was.”  I hated that quote.  Hated it.

I grew up on a farm with lots of little birds with broken wings that I nursed back to health, and I knew that as soon as I set them free, they would migrate elsewhere and I’d never see them again.  I might wait Spring after Spring to see if they would return, but few ever did.  There was an exception of a hummingbird and a bluebird I saw for a few seasons after I’d held them in my hands and fed them, but by and large, the birds I set free soared far away from me.  And for as much as I loved that moment when they found their flight again, it always saddened me that they never returned.

I never had any problem setting birds free.  Men either.  I don’t like the idea that a man is with me only because I require him to be or a piece of paper requires it or raising a child requires it.   I have always prided myself on giving both a lot of freedom and a lot of loving support in my relationships.  No, for me, the issue has always been more  to the tune of “If you love someone, set him free and wait for him to return.”  That’s generally a no-no when it comes to the Law of Attraction because there’s no surer way to focus on the lack of someone’s presence than to keep thinking of how you’re waiting on them to come back. 

I’m good at waiting, though.  My mom would probably disagree, but I learned that as a child and have never unlearned it.  I’m actually great at waiting.  Fantastic.  I would have made a fine soldier’s wife in the mid-1800’s or maybe even in Roman times when men went off to battle for years and you never knew when or if or under what conditions they would return home.  I’m sure my faith in a man’s promise to return could have rivaled my ancestor who positioned her cooking table toward the window so she could always look up and see if her husband was returning from the Civil War he’d gone off to years before.  (He did return but died 11 days later, so at least she had that.)   So somehow in my mind, I’ve always felt that if you loved someone, you waited for them.

And heaven knows, there’s plenty to wait for, even under the best of circumstances  that don’t include wars, amputation, or death.  People are always going through transitions and transformations and need time to get a firm footing before they can commit to the next step. Many of those times, you want them to have a firm footing instead of making a rash decision that will fall apart immediately.   I’ve been going through my own transition for the past year, as far as my relationship needs.  I think I realized that when I discovered that the second guy in a row was making wedding plans with someone else…who didn’t know about me.  Until that point, the man I loved would ask me to wait for him and make all sorts of promises, and I would wait–because I don’t bail when I love someone…and I had a long marriage to offer as proof of that.

 But at what point do you no longer wait?  And especially when the other person has been selfless enough to pointedly not ask you to wait for him to work through major decisions in his life? 

It’s funny looking back now because this man, an old friend I’d known for my entire professional life  but not one I knew that well personally, re-emerged in my life about the time I realized that my relationship needs had changed.  I needed someone much deeper on the emotional scale, much–how else can I possibly say it?–more intelligent,  more gentlemanly and caring,  more ethics and integrity, even a little more…old-fashioned and sweet and romantic.  The man I’d been seeing for the previous year had met my relationship needs early on but wasn’t anymore, and that all came to a head when I discovered some illegal and unethical behavior on his part.  I dropped  him and never looked back.  It was remarkably easy, probably because he so obviously no longer met my needs.

But I did continue to talk to my old friend here and there, and think nothing of it.  It was a bit of a thrill to discover how much we didn’t know about each other,  how awfully much we had in common, how we seemed to reflect each other’s deepest dreams.  It was easy to spend five hours a day in deep conversation, and yet it wasn’t nearly enough to satiate either of us.  Trust evolved quickly as we discovered a world beneath the surface of the person we’d always just known and admired but never really got to know.  He was a gift from the Gods, a sudden answer to my list of “here’s exactly what I want in a man, even if he’s not 23 and an underwear model.”   

I admit I stopped blogging as frequently because by the time I sat down to write out my insights and viewpoints, all I could do was sigh–I’d already expressed them all and worked through them all with him.  Instead of writing long essays on my world and publishing them to my journals, I wrote long letters to him, shining bright lights on things I’d kept in the dark and receiving his warm, gentle support as he helped me work through some festering old wounds.   I was able to say goodbye to some things I’d held onto for way too long.   

I have some awe-filled new opportunities happening in my life now, and they are largely because of the emotional support, affection, and unrelenting encouragement he has given me on every front for the last few months that pretty much no one else in my life has known about because they would not approve of our friendship.  I was the first person he told when he received devastating news, and his was the only embrace I could find solace in when my doctor, who was wrong, told me he suspected thyroid cancer.   Our relationship has left me alternating between absolutely soaring and feeling as if I just got struck by lightning, sometimes both at once.

And then suddenly he was no longer just a guy I’d known for forever.  He was a close friend.  And then he was my best friend.  And then I was madly in love with him and never saw it coming.  I can’t even say when the shift happened, except that it was a lot earlier than we’d realized. 

So my feelings for him  are on the table.  They have been for quite some time, though not known  to the general public. It’s surprising to me, but it’s the deepest emotional relationship I’ve ever had, one of complete trust and faith in the other,  and probably the one with more promise and joy-potential than any I have ever come within 10 feet of.  But I’m still going through my latest big transition, and I’m so, so, so close….almost done.  And he’s not.  He still has critical decisions to make about his life  and where he’s going with it.  That’s true of many people, but at least he’s aware of it where others are not.  He is now in territory I’m familiar with, and I didn’t pass through it quickly. 

So why is it for the first time in my life that I love someone and I feel I can no longer wait for the other person to get through their transition?  Why do I feel now, where I never have before, that I just can’t wait any longer for him to be at the same point I am?  Even though I have faith in him that he will transform himself in the wonderful ways he wants to, and very soon because I’m seeing the small changes the precede the big ones? 

Maybe it’s because the other men I waited so long for never made it through their transitions, and my biggest fear is that  this one won’t either.

I learned a long time ago—mainly as a child watching my mother—to be self-sufficient, to need no one.  That lesson was something I relied upon heavily when I started my life over as a single mom.
 
I’m still rabid about being able to take care of myself and terribly awkward about asking for help.  I don’t need it.  I’ll figure out a  way to do it on my own.  I  don’t need your support, thank you.
 
Or do I?
 
Just because I don’t need it to make my way in the world doesn’t mean it isn’t extremely meaningful to me.  It’s one of the few things that will bring immediate tears to my eyes, simply because it has been so rare in my life.  I have so often stepped forward to help and support others, but reciprocal support has been neither expected nor offered in most cases.  Emotional support has mostly been a one-way street for me, going in the opposite direction.
 
So while I don’t “need” it, it sometimes creeps up on me, and I’m always deeply touched.  In this case, it was me responding to a friend that I couldn’t possibly take a particular suggestion because I would have no one to take care of me during a temporary helplessness and vulnerability.  I was floored when I realized my friend was offering to be that help, expecting nothing in return.
 
That made me wonder:   if I don’t “need” emotional support, then why did that offer mean so much?
 
When support is a two-way street, it’s a two-way connection, a full electrical circuit of energy.  While I may operate fully contained and independent, that kind of support plugs me into the rest of humanity, makes me a part when I am feeling most apart.

Back on the 24th of August,  I emulated my dear friend Maggie Shayne and posted a seasonal review of the summer–not any of the hardships or turbulence  but the most satisfying moments of the summer.  Now that Autumn has passed and the frigid Florida weather has arrived (yes, it’s dipped several times into the low 20’s–uncharacteristic for this area), it’s time to look back on the season and think about the best of it.

Whereas the summer was about building and strengthening my foundation, this fall has been about preparing for big changes in my work life, my home life, and my romantic life.  Not that any of those changes have happened, but instead the season was a constant reminder of both the endings and beginnings of my younger daughter leaving home in 2011 and what it means for me personally, emotionally, and financially.   New doors are opening and I have to decide…eventually…which ones to step through.  Switch jobs?  Move to a new home?  Move to a new city?  Give my heart away again?  Travel internationally?  All of the above?

So this season has been about recalibrating and preparing myself emotionally for the possibilities before me–the ones that are in every way both exciting and terrifying.  The best of the season has really been focused on two things:  relationships and spiritual gifts.

On the relationship front, a new friendship has probably had the most impact and given me, in spite of some turbulence, the most satisfying moments of the past four months.  Hands down.  I have laughed, I have been delighted, I have been intrigued, I have been challenged, and I have been touched.  Through extremely intelligent conversation and plumbing some difficult emotional depths that have been off-limits for quite a while, he has helped me to fine-tune what it is I want at this point in my life.  He has become my best friend in a way a man has never been my best friend before, and I’m so grateful to have him in my life.  That’s the outcome, at least, but the journey has had many sweet moments.  It’s immensely satisfying to be able to give someone my trust and know that he knows me better–even if he doesn’t understand me any better–than anyone else in my life…ever.  He is closer to me than any lover has ever been, and this fact amazes me.

The spiritual gifts have been just as satisfying over the autumn months.   There have been beautiful moments of intuition and understanding, and I’ve made some leaps in my application of The Teachings of Abraham.  I’ve had some moments where I was thrown way off course but made it back to my path rather quickly and regained my serenity faster than I ever have in the past.  I came to understand how well I’ve brought certain things into my life and that I can bring them in again, that I’ll be just fine–no matter what. 

So in hindsight, this season has been about feeling adored and appreciated and loved by the Universe while figuring out a last few things for myself, practicing them even badly at times but coming through it better, and allowing others to go through their own painful growth periods to figure out their own happiness.  After all this, I am anticipating an eventful Winter season.

Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder

What they don’t tell you about the Empty Nest Syndrome is that there are generally two ways it plays out.  

Most often, I see the kids trying to leave home and start new lives for themselves while their parents become very controlling.  By the time the kids leave, the kids can’t wait to get away and have a  little freedom.  Mom and Dad want to account for every moment of the last year at home and parent-child relationships become very prickly.  For the parents, it’s an unwelcome change and they are trying to freeze their babies in time rather than recognize them as individuals getting that first shot at inventing who they’ll be as adults, mistakes and all.  I saw this all the time when my older daughter left home a few years ago and I’m seeing it now in my younger daughter’s senior year of high school.  Their friends’ parents drive me crazy, so certainly they drive their kids crazy.

What I’ve seen less often–and mostly in cases of single moms who’ve been the rock of their teens’ existence–is something of the reverse.  The children want to venture out into the world and create themselves as adults with ideas, careers, homes, and mates of their own…but they want that security and stability of their parents, frozen in time as they were.  Just as the parents in the first scenario have trouble seeing their children as men and women, the kids in the second case have trouble seeing their parents as men and women separate from being Dad or Mom. 

This is where I’m feeling caught now with my own Empty Nest Syndrome, even though I had little to no issue at all in August 2008 when Shannon, my eldest, left home.  It’s caught me completely off-guard–for reasons I never expected–and I am having a really difficult time with it.  Not for what the  future holds for my kids or that they’re leaving to go out in the world.  No, that’s something I’ve prepared for and  hope I’ve given them as much support as possible to go forth and prosper.    No, this is more about my own personal struggle and feeling caught between staying the same for them and reinventing myself when Aislinn leaves in about 6 months.  The gates of opportunity are wide open for me suddenly–the first time since I married in 1986–because come next summer, the legalities of my custody agreement relent and I will be free to leave Okaloosa County and go anywhere in the world I want, for any job I want, with any lover I want.  I’ve spent the last 6 years held hostage to my divorce agreements or else lose custody of my children.  I’ve declined interviews for promotions and better jobs in other cities and I’ve watched men I loved move away without me, but I’ve never had to consider longer than 30 seconds that my girls came first and regardless of any personal sacrifice, I was staying for them. 

Now, all that is about to change in a few months, and I’m facing uncertainty I have not faced since I left college to seek my career  and later when I divorced and had to figure out if I could afford to eat. Those were the two major life decisions, really, for me:  that mid-20’s start-a-career-and-marry-and-where-will-I-land decision and that mid-40’s get-divorced-and-can-I-support-myself-and-my-kids-without-failing decision.  Now it’s suddenly all about me and what I want?  Wow.  That’s never really been a choice before.  It’s always been under the influence of others and what was best for others, whether that was my husband or children.

I’ve had a few female friends rejoice in the Empty Nest Syndrome, telling me that it was finally “me-time” for them.  It’s interesting that most of them also tried to maintain a very tight control over the children and, though it was “me-time,” they didn’t actually pursue a new life, new hobbies, anything different.  Those who did reinvent themselves were truly inspiring to me.  I have loved watching old friends take up international travel in their 50’s, hiking the Camino or traipsing through jungles.  I’ve seen others sell everything and move to a new city with a new career, finally going after what they’ve put off for 20-plus years.  They seem to have some of the healthiest mother-child relationships I’ve observed.  That’s not to say that parents who don’t make major lifestyle changes are bad, but I think that the kids going off to college don’t realize that it’s a brave new world not just for them but for the “old folks” left behind.

It must be as hard on the kids to see Mom reinvent herself as it is to see the young ones fledge.  A former boyfriend of mine used to complain that he left home to see the world and when he returned, his parents had moved a couple of states away and his home, his roots, his security was gone.  He spoke of it often, and it was clearly disconcerting to him. 

A friend of mine raised her family through seemingly insurmountable odds, sacrificed all her dreams to keep them safe and happy.  As soon as she got the youngest off to college and was all alone in a big rambling house, she moved to a new home, kicked her career into high gear, and found a brand new love like she’d never had…and her children shunned her for at last going after her dreams.  They wanted to spread their own wings, but wanted her to remain the same.  It was years of estrangement before they accepted their mother as more than just their mom and began to support what she’d put on hold for them. 

That’s not really the case at this point with my own daughters, but I’m feeling it all the same.  International travel is something that I’ve only had a taste of and have longed for, but I had to put it aside to be home and available for my kids.  It’s funny that they both are actively planning overseas trips as soon as possible, and that I’m still planning the possibility of a trip around their schedules.  Can I do the Camino in June?  Will Aislinn be living at home still?  Will Shannon be home for the summer?  Could I afford to take the girls with…drat, no.  I’m still thinking of the family instead of thinking of me and my new life.

I’m caught in the in-between right now.  I feel the resistance, even at a subtle level, when I talk about the opportunities that are now starting to show up for my future. It feels like a time will come when they’re both gone–and they do plan to go far from the home they grew up in and leave me alone here–that I’ll be able to fashion a boldly different life for myself if I choose.  The problem for me is this time of uncertainty, of feeling discouraged from making decisions about big changes that will mean I’m no longer the rock that they can count on to be the same.  I have a bazillion choices right now, and some are looking very tasty but I dare not make those yet and I’m quite sure my kids will disapprove if I make them now.  Everything’s uncertain right now, a mix of excitement for the future and scariness over the future.  It’s far harder to make those big changes the second time in 25 years than the first.  More inertia to hold me in place, and especially how such new changes for me will affect my grown-up kids–a mindset that’s been in place their whole lives and isn’t easy to change overnight.

I think after the nest is empty and there’s no longer a physical place for them to come back to, I’ll be just fine in whatever my new path turns out to be, wherever I go, whoever travels my path with me.  But for now…well, let’s just say that transitions suck.

Granddaddy’s been gone for over 15 years, but if he were alive tonight at 105, I’d want to ask his relationship advice.  Not about a romantic relationship but about how to deal with disapproval of a romantic relationship that has been bringing me a lot of joy amongst the rollercoaster epiphanies.  Of course, I think he’d probably decline to say anything and just nod. That was more his way.

Isn’t it funny how things from the ancient past bubble up when you least expect it?  Like a particular night when I was 8 or 9 years old and Daddy jumped down my throat because I uttered one meek little sentence that let him know I’d been listening in plain sight to the discussion and that I was supposed to not be old enough or bright enough to discern what was being said.  Heaven forbid that I might repeat what everyone else in the extended family was talking about.

My parents had been talking about Granddaddy–again–though really, it was my dad who talked incessantly about the “situation” and what had to be done to stop it.  I’m pretty sure now that my mom didn’t want to hear it, especially not drilled into her several hours a day, the same words, the same ever-expanding assumptions, the same harsh emotions.  I don’t really remember my mom talking about it at all, as she was still so lost in her grief for so long over losing her mother.  There were far more family dynamics at play than I knew at the time, and I’ve come to realize that part of my dad’s plans for an intervention was based on his resentment of his father-in-law and so putting him down wherever possible was a small way of firing back.  Daddy had no qualms about beating his kids with belts and sticks, but  he never, to my knowledge, beat my mom…and I’m now convinced that it was because my granddaddy would have shot him in the head and fed him to the legendary gators in the Collier Pond swampland.

On this particular night in my childhood, Daddy was bludgeoning his father-in-law’s name, and my precocious ears heard it all.  My beloved grandma had died a year or two before–or maybe months…I don’t know…from my child’s perspective, I wasn’t sure how long was culturally acceptable to be without a mate…or just a little companionship of the opposite sex.  Granddaddy had started “courting” again though, and that was the subject of much family debate.

It wasn’t the last time, though.  Thorughout the years of his courting various widows in town, his romantic life was widely discussed among family and friends, always with great disapproval.  He eventually remarried, unfortunately to a woman I greatly disliked, and I wonder if one of his earlier alliances might have been happier for everyone, especially him. 

I do remember, oddly, that there was much talk of him “sneaking around” to see some particular widow in town.  I know, of course, that he was “sneaking around” because various relatives drove past said widow’s house in the dead of evening to report that his car was there and how early and then how late. 

I totally understand now. 

The argument I often heard–and have heard about many other men and women who will forever be viewed as parents or grandparents and not humans in need or want of love and partnership–was that he was just visiting with a woman because he needed companionship and why was that, when there was plenty of companionship to be had with his adult children who had lives of their own or various other family members whom, I’m rather certain, were not there to hug him in the night or chat excitedly about their youth or just hold his hand while watching TV.  Family was supposed to be enough, and  it seemed that any desire for romance was something to be squelched as soon as possible with help from as many people as possible.

I can understand why he might have decided to “sneak around” and not tell anyone whom or if he was dating again.  Everyone close to him disapproved.  It didnt’ matter that they didn’t know the woman. I can still remember the looks they gave him–chin slightly hiked, jaw set and pushed outward a little, a frozen moment in time when only the eyes regarded him, the undisquised disdain.  Yeah, I recognize it myself.

I wonder if he was happy with any of the women he knew after Grandma.  If he was, he was never allowed to show it to the family or the silence that followed spoke for itself.  I wonder if it eased his loneliness to sit  and hold hands with a woman or to have someone to talk to over dinner or to see a woman smile when he showed up on her door step wtih a little bouquet of flowers picked from  the roadside. I wonder if he ever thought that maybe people were right in their assumption that it’s better to be pitied for being alone than to have the enjoyment of someone’s company who did not meet the approval of others.

The thing that still resounds from my childhood was that all these people who weren’t there with him to hold his hand or have dinner with him or relish his romantic sentiments were so busy deciding who was wrong for him–and I never (other than the woman he married) met any of those women. I’m not sure that anyone in the family really knew any of them or what what their wounds and joys were.  There were inventive stories but looking back, I don’t see any substance in the gossip, just lots of adjectives to describe these awful women who’d caught Granddaddy’s attention.  Yes, all that judgment passed on romantic partners some–maybe none–of us had never met personally, women I never saw dote on him or even in his presence.   Just the stony silence of disapproval of various family and friends,  and the preference that he be alone for the rest of his life.

I am really missing Granddaddy tonight.  I wish I could take his gnarled hand again and tell him that now, now I understand.

Hamming it up with my author pals in the mid 90’s.   Local booksigning at  the mall.   Elizabeth Graham, Cindy Holbrook, me (Lorna Tedder), and Vicki Hinze in the picture.  Thanks,  Del Stone, for finding this photo and sharing it with me. Note to readers:  this post is unrelated to the women in the cool photo.

I am conducting experiments with Trust.  Or rather, it is conducting experiments with me.

What I cannot believe is how women who don’t trust their men marry them as quickly as they can, as if that’s some sort of guarantee that behaviors will change after the vows.   Do they really believe that?  I’m guessing not, given the women who constantly seek out written proof of their brand new husbands’ sexual liaisons with other women  (big hint:  check their sexting, darlings, and the number of cock shots they’ve MMS’ed).  I am completely baffled that a woman can find evidence that her fiance’  has been actively lying to her, marry him, and then spend the rest of her life going over the evidence and tightening the leash on him and walking that tightrope between trying to prove he wasn’t lying when, in her heart, she already knows.  The trust, if it was ever there, is gone and isn’t likely to return. 

Once trust is truly broken, it’ s a rare thing to unbreak it. 

Trust is something I’ve struggled with from time to time.  I want to whisper that I’ve found someone I trust, but I’m nervous about saying it out loud as if somehow I’ll jinx myself.  I recognize the sweetness of trust–that it’s not something that tethers but rather, something that frees.  If I can trust someone, then I am not spending my nights in obsessive worrying.  If I can trust someone to do his best to be gentle with my feelings and to be truthful with me, then the doors are wide open for me and I can soar without fear that I’ll return and find him gone without a word or waiting to knock me to my feet.  I’m prized and cared for and while I can feel freedom in that, then he has the same freedom to be independent and seek new experiences without any damage to him or to me or the two of us in alignment.  I am holding my breath and stretching my wings in wonderment at this idea of trust, real trust.

I know that we cannot always live up to our promises to not hurt someone we care for–it’s inevitable that we’ll act in some way unintended or say something that has a different meaning to someone else or discover something startling about ourselves that wounds the other.  (Gods know, I’ve done that and have kicked myself for the hurt it caused.) We can try our best to make sure we’re trusted, though for some–like the men who married the women I mentioned earlier–making sure we’re trusted is not the same as living in a trust-worthy manner.  For some, it’s manipulating, lying, and hiding to make sure a tentative trust is there.  If it’s that tentative, it’s usually not something worth building a long-term relationship on, but it’s not my relationship so it shouldn’t affect me.

I’ve  found myself being able to trust someone, though yes, he’s shaken my trust in him accidently a time or two, mostly because of words or actions that had far different meaning to him than to me.  Those kinds of things took a few days to work through.   If misundertandings have to happen, though, at least it has been a matter of him trying to protect me, of being a good steward of my heart, and of having the highest integrity in his actions with me.  Those kinds of things, I can find my way back from, and the temporary turbulence may even strengthen the foundation of friendship and caring, regardless of where the relationship goes from here.  Firmer ground of trust is so much better is you want the freedom that can be found in that kind of closeness and compassion.

But this I do know: Unlike the aforementioned women I’ve observed marrying to force a tenuous security,  I would never marry a man I cannot trust completely or one I had any doubts about whatsoever.  If you  have doubts on your wedding day, then trust will never be better than that day and you’ll spend the rest of your “til death do us part” waiting not for him to prove you wrong about his untrustworthiness, but to prove you right.

The Dark Night of the Soul is a rather ominous term for something that happens in some lives, but not all.  I  believe that some people actually make it through their entire existence on the planet without encountering anything as dark and devastating as a Dark Night.  Those who do–and survive–are forever changed.

The term is generally regarded in its spiritual or religious aspects–time when a devout person loses faith and meaning.  I can’t say that it’s always about faith but I have seen it mostly among people who are deeply spiritual.  My own Dark Night of the Soul took place several years ago, and though it was the hardest thing in my life, I would never go back to how it was before.

I’ve learned a few things about these Dark Nights, from my own experience and from observing others:

1.  Time must move differently for the soul because the soul’s idea of a night lasts several years.  From what I’ve seen, the darkest part last about 2 years, and then there’s a period of transition where life is still difficult, fully in twilight of that Dark Night, before the sun shines brightly again.

2.  There is a profound sense of loss, if not actual loss.  This is a period of losing dreams, careers, lovers, spouses, family.  It is often a time of scandal or potential scandal, of public judgment, of becoming an outcast.   It’s a time of hanging on to things that are no longer working because you’ve lost so damned much that you can’t imagine losing anything else, even if what’s left is detrimental to you.  Most significantly, it’s a time when all the people you thought were friends disappear, and it’s always a surprise to find out who really wasn’t a friend after all.  In my own Dark Night,  I quickly discovered that of the 50 people I considered my closest friends and had been emotionally supportive of for years suddenly no longer spoke to me on the elevator at work or returned phone calls.  It was a hurtful and angry shock to the system. 

3.  The theme is loss and abandonment, and of deep questioning of your security in your faith and in yourself.  All the things you’ve trusted in and depended on are suddenly gone, perhaps even your faith in Deity or God.  This is the moment when all your self-confidence is stripped away and you feel quite alone in the Universe.

4.  For at least a year or two afterwards, life is  a crab-walk.  The best you can muster is side-ways as you try to find your footing again.  You’re beyond the initial loss of the Dark Night, but it’s still not quite over.  The things you held onto to prevent a complete loss, the remaining things that are not good for your metamorphosis into your true self, begin to fall away.  The few friends who stuck by you slip away or vanish in a burst of attitude when you differ with them.  The family members who stayed with you and have never ceased to remind you that they stuck with you will begin to fade away as well.  I myself lost almost everyone I was close to during my Dark Night, and in the following 18 months, lost the rest.  A few have returned to me but for the most part, I have an entirely new set of people in my life.

5.  The transition stage following the Dark Night is not easy either, but it is a period of planting new seeds and of new hope.  Even several years into the future, when you’ve been living in mostly sunshine again and life it good, remnants of your Dark Night of the Soul  and your journey out of it will resurface when you least expect.  For me, these are often what seems to be a repeat of a pattern.  That pattern may be an old habit I need to address that has not cropped up since the Dark Night  or it may be a new person with the same qualities as one who’s gone before and a second chance at what (not whom) I thought was lost forever.   It’s almost as if, once out in the light of day again, the Universe dips back and repeats something from the past, offers it up to see what you would do with it after all that soul growth that’s taken place.  It’s what I call the Job-Effect, as in the Biblical Job.  You’ve lost it all and now you’re given back not the things or people you lost but experiences of new things and new people that can mean as much or more.  I’m thinking “more” because once you’ve lost something, then you have a better appreciation for it when you get that second chance. 

6.  The Dark Night of the Soul does pass, even though you might be tempted to end your own life.   It takes a while to get back to good place in your life and to replenish your scorched garden with beautiful new blossoming life that you would never have had before, but the sunshine and beauty does come.  It’s not  “nothing but” sunshine and beauty–there are still moments that will startle you or rock you to your core–but the Dark Night and the transformation it demands if you stay in the world are worth the outcome.

My back patio at sunset, on a beautiful October day.

The last six weeks have been full of epiphanies, but I’ve kept them mostly to myself or shared them with a very  limited number of people rather than here.  They’ve been mainly for me, just me–at least while I’ve been sorting through them to find the biggest epiphany of all. 

I’ve also been forced–in a good way, I suppose–to look back at my most significant romantic relationships throughout my life.  What I’ve found has definitely made me squirm.

I’m glad now that I’ve kept a journal through several significant relationships because many of the finer details would have gone forgotten, not because they weren’t important but because I’d thought those things were gone forever from my life and it was just easier to package them up and put them on a shelf in a locked room in the basement of my heart than to look at them every day and intentionally live in the past.  Reading those journals now leave me a bit astonished to see what was important to me in those relationships then.  I have for a long, long time tried to catalog what I like about someone–though I very rarely share it with the guy.  It’s just my way of  showing all the ways I connect with a person that are incredibly meaningful to me, but this is where I’ve been off-track in the past.  I have associated those attributes with the person rather than with myself and what really “does it” for me.

And where those relationships have faded has been often in the fading of those attributes.   It doesn’t matter how exquisite a man’s intelligence is  or his rare ability to dish about Life, Death, and the Universe…if his ability to be honest with me vanishes or is overcome by alcohol abuse or some other 180-degree turn in his nobility, then the relationship fades and even when he returns to my life (they ALWAYS do), I’m not interested anymore because he’s no longer the person he was with me when I fell in love and I don’t want to go back to whom I was in the past that he fell for because it’s a lesser version of me now and he hasn’t been around to grow and change with me.  My failing has been in attaching those beautiful attributes to that person, even when the person has changed.  There is no going back because I don’t want to go back, only forward.

The biggest epiphany of all is that to attract love, prosperity, career, and more to me is to stick with the attributes and not worry about who the person is who presents himself as a bearer of those traits.   The Universe provides many opportunities for someone with those attributes to arrive in my life, present himself to me, bond and grow with me–but the trick is, I have to be open to allowing the Universe to fill that order for me in a more perfect way than I dreamed, more perfect certainly than that man from my past returning to me but with all those embitterments over where we failed in the past.  When spiritual teachers talk of attracting the right person to you, there are many possibilities for a right person, but not if you don’t allow a right person to come to you in favor of holding that space for someone in the past.    These teachers tell you to ask for your “someone,” not for a partiular someone, because you allow for something (or someone) better than you could have imagined.  As long as you are thinking of a particular someone and not ready to move on, someone better isn’t going to show…or if they do, you’ll just miss it.

I’ve chosen this past spring to move forward, not look back, and let the Universe surprise me. I’ve told myself that I won’t judge, that I’ll just allow, that I’ll see how things unfold beautifully and how the future takes care of itself.   Sometimes it takes a while for that kind of thing to line up, and then again, you can look back and see how it’s been lining up for a long time and you didn’t realize it, had no idea, and it seems to be out of the blue.  Lightning can strike the same place twice, definitely, and even more,  and when it does, it really lights up the sky.

“Abraham,” the story goes, “my lover left and now I’m sad.”

I have no idea how many times I’ve heard this Abraham-Hicks example now.  I subscribe to the glutton version of their downloads–the complete unedited versions of workshops as they’re done.  Next best thing to being there!  But if you listen to a lot of their material, particularly back-to-back workshops, you’ll hear some of the same examples used over and over, especially the really good examples.

One that comes up frequently is the story of a woman who was looking for relief through a consultation or workshop with Abraham and explained that she was sad as the result of her lover’s leaving–to which Abraham replied that no, she was not.

The conversation goes back and forth several times with the woman insisting that she’s sad because of the absent lover and Abraham insisting she’s not.    The lesson is that she’s sad because she wants to feel the way she did with the lover, not because he left (I’m paraphrasing and interpretting in my own way here). 

It’s a lesson that I’ve sort of breezed past since the very first exposure to it.  I’ve had at least one lover leave since the first time I heard it.  Maybe two if you count my kicking one to the curb.   Honestly, I’ve been inclined to agree with the woman.  My lover left, and dang it, I was missing him!

I finally got it over a beautiful weekend’s visit to Jasmine Hill Gardens in Wetumpka, Alabama.  I was there to officiate the wedding of one of my favorite people, my “adopted littled sister.”  I had a few hours before the ceremony to walk barefoot through the gardens and ground myself against the chaotic energy of the day.

While there, I was thinking about love and being in love and those feelings.  I’ve been in love enough times in my life to know exactly how it feels.  I think that when we are very young and feel it, we believe that that’s how it will always be.  We don’t understand “new relationship energy” in our first bloom of youth.  When we’re older, we realize that those early feelings of joyous discovery and frantic tenderness ebb and flow through the long unraveling of a  journey together, and if we find them later in life, we know how rare and precious those feelings are. 

I was recently asked how many times I’d been in love.  I grew up thinking that it would happen only once in a lifetime, not half a dozen or a dozen or some magic number.  The fact that we can and do fall in love more than once in our lives is truly a blessing.  If we can remember those feelings and be open to having them again–not with any one person but simply open to the feeling and letting the Universe provide the person who shares them with us–then we can be blessed again. 

When asked why you’re in love with someone, do you usually give a long list of their admirable qualities?  What it really comes down to is more in line with Abraham’s insights.  The answer isn’t about the attributes of the beloved but about the way you feel when you’re with your beloved. 

The woman in Abraham’s story is sad because she’s not feeling that feeling anymore, not because some guy went poof on her.  When she finds–ahem, when she is open to allowing that feeling to reappear in her life, her new lover will come and she’ll maybe think of her absent lover  with a shrug if she thinks of him at all.    As much as we’d like to think it’s about the person we’re with who brings in that wondrous feeling, it’s about the feeling, and then letting the person who embodies that feeling arrive in our lives to take that sweet spot.

It’s been a long time since I’ve met anyone I was romantically interested in who could sustain multiple Life-Death-and-the-Universe discussions but let’s just say that this particular man is like sweet tea made with real sugar on a hot South Georgia dog day:  a little old-fashioned, very sweet, and totally refreshing.  I very much appreciate men who are my intellectual match and are non-judgmental, both for who they are and for the incredible epiphanies they bring to me.

This September has been particularly crazy with the Fiscal Yearend and slashing through as many projects in a single day as I usually do in an entire month…and I’m no slacker over the course of a month, either.  It’s a mental and physical strain and I almost find myself wishing that September were over and done with so I can get some rest.  It’s also been a difficult week for me emotionally–not that I’ve told him this–because I’ve been forced to work through some old issues and he doesn’t let me get away with changing the subject or not answering.  I’ve had to search my feelings on several past issues just to answer in an intelligent way and unwittingly he’s helped me slot some old experiences and why certain relationships failed…and why I’m glad now that they failed. 

In short, Sweet Tea makes me think, and that’s something most men don’t do for me.  Two discusssions brought me to these conclusions:

1.  We spend so much of our lives planning for a distant future.  If we’re not happy where we are now, instead of fixing it, we dream about the day…maybe years from now…when life is finally better.    By wishing to be in the future, we wish our present away.  We wish our lives away.    Yet, wherever we stand, we look back at what we consider wasted time and we regret that we wasted it.  That wasted time in the past–when we could have been having fun or doing more enjoyable work or in a better relationship–is the same as the present we wish away. 

2.  I’m at a place in my life where I don’t wish for some magical, golden future when everything is oh-so-perfect and focus on that future while the present is gods-awful bad.  As I explained to Sweet Tea, it’s like that glowing ball of happiness in the future that other people run to is something that’s inside me right now and as I move forward into the future, I take it there with me.  There’s no big something in the future that will make it all better–just me in the present, at one with my joy, moving gleefully into the future with it rather than chasing it.

Wishing away your life?  Bad!  Men who make me think?  Good!

I confess, I’m still a little shaken.  I haven’t told the person who shook me up or why, mainly because I’d have to explain something I’m still thinking through myself and working out here in this journal.

“Trust me?” my friend asked toward the end of a conversation that had been going for about 4 hours.  It wasn’t an eye-rolling demand for me to trust someone and give up something of myself that I wasn’t ready to give up.  It was a hopeful question, oddly placed in our conversation, after I’d admitted losing the occasional friend for being too “open-minded.”  In other words, my acceptance of things like gay marriage, paganism, D/s, Law of Attraction, political standings, birth control, dating guys half my age, etc, has had a cost, and I was a little nervous that my expansion of friendship with a long-time collaegue I’ve always admired  would cost that friendship, too.  I’m unconventional, and this friend tends to play by the rules a lot more than I do. 

“Trust me?”

I couldn’t respond.  I must’ve sat there for a several minutes while years of thoughts swirled through my head.  I wasn’t being told to trust but asked.  In a light-hearted but still meaningful context. 

My trust has been broken many times over the past decade.  I’ve never wanted to become jaded.  I like that I’m a trusting person.  As Jewel said in her earliest hit, “I’m sensitive, and I’d like to stay that way.”  But I realized very suddenly that I haven’t allowed myself to trust anyone new–male or female–since last spring.  I’ve withheld part of myself, and for good reason.  The last person to demand my trust would have destroyed my life had the Gods not intervened.  I was hours away from allowing him to use my trust to break me, but I didn’t know it then and my Gods are very protective of me. 

You rarely trust someone just so they can break you.  You trust someone because you’re willing to put some part of you in their hands and believe they won’t crush it.   Your heart.  Your reputation.  Your relationship.  Your future. 

I’ve been asked by a female friend (now gone) to trust her, too, and was rather surprised by her sudden departure, but it didn’t have anything to do with me but rather her own heartbreak.   It still hurt that she left.

 And I’ve had another man ask my trust and  before I could give it, allowed himself to be caught in a lie.    I haven’t thought much of trusting anyone in months.  And I didn’t even realize it. 

“Trust me?

It took a few minutes and I was queasy in my stomach when I answered, “Yeah.  Yeah, I do.”  It was a surprise, but we have a long history where he’s acted with integrity again and again.  I don’t have any doubts.  I know there are other people out there whom I also trust because of long, positive associations, but none of them have asked.  Maybe this is the beginning of a new phase for me when I’m surrounded only by people who deserve my trust.

With most strangers,  you can nod and be polite and never have to find out anything more about them, let alone where their insecurities lie.  If you have to work with a stranger for an extended period of time or endure a first date with a stranger, then you’ll walk away with some idea of where what they’re insecure about, no matter how confident and self-assured they appear to be.

We all have something we’re insecure about.   Probably many things.  In the mid-90’s was the first time I realized that many arrogant as well as apparently-but-not-confident people put on a facade of  knowing exactly who they are and what they’re doing.  I had been  introduced to one of  the most outstanding, up-and-coming young editors of a major NYC publisher.  She was never my editor but I got to know her on a personal level.  When her questions ventured more into the personal than the professional, I got to know her better and see the chinks in her armor.  It was an OMG moment for me when I realized how extremely vulnerable this woman was–she always seemed so confident but the confidence had more to do whith the areas of her life where she felt in control, and those were the professional areas, not the personal.

After that, I began to look at other people who seemed to know everything and exude confidence.  I was able to separate the difference in confidence and control, and see where they were so scared and how they hid it.

I’ve seen the same thing through dating, especially first and second dates.  What made me stop and think was that after dating a slew of men under 30, the only ones who made a huge deal out of my age were the ones who were born within a couple of years of me.  It was all they could talk about. Men in their 20’s didn’t care.  Men in their 30’s would perhaps verify that my age wasn’t a typo (I’ve never quite known what to make of that).  Men in their 40’s?  If they didn’t know my exact age and were too polite to ask, they’d come up with “clever” ways of finding out, like needing to know exactly how long I’d been married before or what was my favorite band in high school.  Men under 40 rarely cared on the first couple dates–they might want to know if I’d ever been married or what my current favorite band is, but the focus wasn’t really on the past.   For men over 40, dealing with their mortality, they were insecure about their age and focused heavily on it, channelling their own frustrations into questions that don’t have much of anything to do with how I think, feel, act, or live my life.

The same is true of men who feel insecure about their bodies.  Their questions on a first date are very different from those of men who are very secure in their physicality.   They want me to promise I’m interested in men who aren’t perfect specimens (true) and will phrase questions in a such a way that I cannot answer that yes, I appreciate a fit body without sounding shallow.  It’s a lovely set-up to say that if I’m not physically attracted to them, then I’m a superficial person.  (Although…there are very fit guys I’m also NOT attracted to.)   Fit guys with body confidence don’t fret about whether they meet the world’s standards for physical beauty.  They’re happy with where they are and don’t need to be coddled. 

Less common but just as glaringly obvious is the guy who feels insecure in his education or job.  Like most questions born of insecurity, they often come across as put-downs. I won’t apologize for my degrees or my career or how hard I’ve worked to get there, and I don’t flaunt those things to strangers.  Still, it’s a bit of a shock to share a meal with a nice man who seems confident in his body, his lifestyle, his beliefs…and then focuses mostly on my education or career, with bitterness-tinged side comments on how “lucky” I am to have fallen into my career field or that I had “time” to get a degree.  The first time that happened, I was strongly offended, especially since his questions were geared to insulting me rather than finding out how I paid for college or how long it took me to get my Master’s while working full-time and traveling with my job.  The next time I met a man with little education and lots of biting comments on my education, career, and salary, I understood that they weren’t meant to put me down personally but were from his own pain at what he perceived to be failures.  The sad thing was, I didn’t perceive him to be a failure at anything–he was his own worst enemy.

Understanding the connection between insistent, sometimes obtrusive questions on a first date or a first meeting with a colleauge and the insecurities they mask makes the communications a lot less stressful for me.  More telling than body language, these personal questions I’m to answer tell me quite a lot about what is bothering them about their own lives.

It’s said that there’s a reason that people from your past didn’t make it to the future.  Sometimes, in hindsight, you can see that the reason was a very positive one.

I lounged in a hotel room over an hour from home, waiting to hear back from my daughter and glad that, with the heavy thunderstorms and late hour, we’d decided to stay the night rather than drive back home.  I was waiting for her to call after a project related to her high school graduation project–photographing a wedding with Jessica and David Marshall of Beachbum Photography–and to find out when I needed to pick her up.  If  she loved her new mentors and they loved her, she’d be spending an extra hour picking their brains at Starbucks.  I’m not sure why I had to pick her up–she was so elated that she could have floated back to our hotel. 

It was a life-changing weekend for her, in terms of her career as a professional photographer  and college plans.

But as I was waiting for her call, I couldn’t help but marvel at how so many incredible mentors have come into her life in the past few months.  Besides Jessica and David, she is blessed to have Jan of Jan Bus Designs and Amanda Suanne as mentors, plus a lot of advice from her photography pal, Elysia Griffin of Fenyx Design.  These are all doors that have opened to her in a few short months of losing her first mentor–and when they opened, they opened wide, peeling back like a curtain in front of a stage.

It’s a sort of a Biblical Job effect, I decided, suddenly remembering several mentors from my own past.  Empty gaps were filled in joyous ways I could not have imagined.  Very few of my original mentors are still in my life.  I’d be hard-pressed to name even one right now.  Several have died, and they always will hold a cherished place in my heart.   Others, we went our separate ways over petty or significant disagreements or both.  Some, at the time, felt like tragic losses to me.  I couldn’t understand then how it was that a beloved mentor and I would ever reach a point of no return, though in hindsight, it usually involved a matter of boundaries being respected and the difficult transition from a teacher-student relationship to one of equal partners. 

It’s only through time that I have come to understand that there was no other way for me to grow than to close doors to previous mentors and seek out new ones to guide me on my journey.  They could go with me only so far.  For me to continue to travel with them, I either had to follow their path instead of mine or we both had to stand still.  Had I stayed with those mentors or had they stayed with me, even the ones who left me by dying, I would not have learned and grown and moved forward as I have, and that’s the best reason that many people from my past didn’t make it to my present or future.

Mentors and guides are all part of the journey, but when we get to walk forward along parallel paths and wave to each other as our paths weave in and out, then we are all very blessed.

We happened upon this little reminder at Disneyworld.  Photo by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

The three of us Law-of-Attractioners were talking about how people who aren’t good for us, when we choose not to be with them any longer, just seem to not be around so much.  The transition to the “not-so-much” usually takes more than a few minutes, though.  In some cases, it’s months.  In other cases, even years.

I’ve been accused of cutting people out of my life on a whim.  To me, it isn’t a whim.  It only seems that way to people who haven’t been observant enough to notice my efforts.  By that point, I’ve usually exhausted all measures to get along or either discovered that the person I’m cutting out is so unethical that I cannot abide their presence any longer.  When I’ve had enough, I’ve had enough and it’s over. 

Sometimes, they don’t want to go.  There’s nothing worse than deciding you are done with a relationship and want nothing else to do with it and the other party just won’t let go.  They keep texting, emailing, calling.  In short, they have to be in control and will do whatever it takes to be the one in control, sometimes even so they can get  into control just long enough to be the rejecter rather than the rejected. 

Eventually, the more you focus on new stuff, exciting stuff, any other stuff than that relationship, they fade away.  They leave you alone.   They move away.  They find someone else, at least for a little while.  The wavelengths you haven’t been on in a while further separate, and you begin to bring wondrous new things into your life. 

So how is it bad people (or people who are bad for you) re-appear when you least expect it?  The latest female diversion is out of town or they’d had an argument and wham—right back and expecting everything to be the same as it once was.

I really can’t answer the question of how we attract such past-tense experiences and people back into our lives when we’ve changed our lives so much for the better.  For me, it seems always to be a shock but, at the same time, a beautiful reminder of what’s changed.  Of the lack of negativity that surrounded my life then.  Of the thickets of lies I had to machete my way through.  Of how much better life is without their negativity, manipulations, attitudes. 

It’s a measuring stick, I suppose.  I forget sometimes how good life is…or maybe how bad it once was.  The Law of Polarity, which means you need to know the opposite to understand something truly. When old things I thought I’d drummed out of my life reappear,  once I catch my breath, I usually realize that the contrast is a great way to brighten my present and future.

dd

Because what better karma is there for liars or cheaters (or liars and cheaters) than to attract some other liar or cheater into a potential long-term legal partnership?  They may think  they’ve found their own little slice of nirvana, but from what I’ve seen, it quickly becomes their own private hell, even though they generally won’t admit it for a couple of years.  The behaviors that brought them to this place don’t go away—they just change focus.  Cheaters rarely stop cheating, and liars rarely stop lying—they simply cheat on different people or lie to a new spouse.  They find that out about each other soon enough, and  that’s what comes around again.  I’ve been caught laughing a little too often over the prospect of someone else marrying some past romantic interest because I’ve known enough secrets about at least half of the happy couple to know that marriage between those two people is the greatest punishment  I could wish on anyone.
 
So if your lying, cheating ex is marrying someone else, congratulate him or her…and then smile to yourself.  You don’t have to do anything at all for them to get what’s coming to them.

Ms. Redbird poses while I stalk her through a window, window screen, and patio.  Photo copyright by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

I believe that a person’s word should be good enough.

I  refuse to put my hand on a Bible and swear to tell the truth.  I refuse to swear to tell the truth, period.  I believe that my word is good enough.  In fact, I find the act of having to “swear” I’m telling the truth to be offensive to me and overall meaningless when it applies to other people.  If someone has integrity, they have it without putting a hand on a Bible and if someone is going to lie or mislead, then I believe that person will find a way to do so regardless of which holy book is present or which Deity is called upon.

Bibles and swearing are not some kind of “Simon says, ‘tell the truth’” tools.  In my world, you don’t get to lie indiscriminately and then, when someone sticks a Bible under your nose, you say, “Oops, NOW I have to be honest but as soon as you remove that Bible, I can lie freely again.”

In both personal and professional relationships that have failed or ended quickly, I often find myself shaking my head and frowning while mumbling, “But he SAID—“ or “But she SAID–.”  I’m always confused until I back away for a moment and realize that I’ve based much of the relationship—whether romantic or business—on the other person being truthful.  My reactions to them and the path I take in those relationships is always based on my idealistic understanding that they will live up to what they have said.  In my profession, the majority of my contracts are negotiated under the Truth in Negotiations Act, so I’m hardest hit in my personal negotiations where I often take for granted that the other person is acting with integrity.

I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt and not distrust every stranger I meet.  I prefer living that way to being paranoid and hiding from the world.  Occasionally, I become involved with someone who blithely tells me what he or she thinks I want to hear or what they think it will take to get my agreement.  Then when they fail to follow through, it’s whiplash for me.

One of the sourest business deals I’ve been a party to  was when a potential business partner begged me to work with her.  I pointed out all the reasons I was hesitant, and she countered each one, telling me how she felt about the situation and how each reason wasn’t an issue to her. I plowed substantial  resources into the deal, only to find out too late that all the things she’d been adamant didn’t matter really did and always had.  When I ask why she’d led me to believe otherwise when I’d told her what battles we’d have to overcome, she stated, “If I’d told you the truth, you wouldn’t have proceeded with our deal.”  Well, at least in that, she was right.

I’ve read that instead of listening to someone’s words for the truth, you should watch their actions for the truth.  That may be so, if those actions are visible.    The guy who tells me repeatedly that he’s not seriously involved with a particular woman might be believed if I watch his actions—that I know about—and listen for the consistency in his words.  Unfortunately for him, I do have the insight into his actions that he doesn’t know about and his private actions with his too-talkative girlfriend betray his words.  Then again, I shouldn’t have to rely on watching his actions—I want to take him at his word.

Once, when I argued with a new romantic partner that he was not truthful with me, he tried to tell me that I had the wrong idea about our budding relationship.  I reminded him, word for word, of what he’d said that had lured me in.  He became angry then and told me that if he hadn’t said that, I never would have agreed to a second date and that it had been his best interest to lie to me.

“Jeez,” he said as we parted for the last time, “I guess anything I say can and will be used against me!”

I’d not thought of it that way.  It wasn’t that I was using anything “against” him, but rather, merely expecting him to live up to his word as I had.  If his word had been good, then there would have been no need for anything to be held against him.

But then, I’m an idealist, and I expect people to mean what they say or don’t say it at all.  Without having to swear it on a Bible.

The labyrinth at the Florida Pagan Gathering at dusk–a powerful maze for contemplation. The best thing about labyrinths is that you just let your feet follow the path and your mind flies to more spiritual planes.  Photo Copyright by Lorna Tedder; all rights reserved.

From the upcoming book, 23 Ways I Screwed Up My Life  with the Law of Attraction—and How I Fixed It

My 17-year-old sprawls across the passenger seat, her injured foot on the dashboard, and she cuddles against her pillow.  Her mood is that of a wounded kitten, and she’s withdrawn rather than her usual outgoing and delightful self.

I don’t understand how I could have manifested this,” she whimpers.

She’s not talking about her foot.

Her foot injury is a simple accident that resulted in a lot of pain, soreness, and blood–and hopefully not a broken toe.  That happened as we were leaving four days of camping and festival-making in the Ocala National Forest.  The throbbing foot was the icing on the cake, a culmination of her frustrations.  Easy to see how that one manifested.

Instead, she’s talking about how much she’d looked forward to this festival–for weeks–only to wind up feeling shut-down by people she’d admired because of a new policy put in effect that felt like a gut-punch rejection.  We’d both been so thrilled about this trip that we were thrown off-kilter by a series of events that left her tearful and me pissed off on her behalf.  Of all the camping trips we’ve been a part of since 2006, this was probably the worst for us–and the only one where we considered leaving a day early  and finally left for home feeling low instead of amped.  Considering that we’ve attended past festivals when my dad was dying and also right after two big heartbreaks, that’s saying something.  What saved the trip for us was being involved with particular circles of friends as well as some great workshops and talks.  The downers were all specific to a policy that affected her, one where she’d followed the rules  100% and the rules were changed on her mid-way.  Not her fault and no way to change minds …which was another reason we took it so hard.  We had no control over a hurtful situation.

As she sleeps and I drive for six hours, I start trying to figure it out for myself.  How exactly did this manifest when we’d left for the trip exuberant about the possibilities?  The present situation, simply, boils down to legalities involving a minor child and her professional photography.  It involves being told she’s misunderstood, it involves feeling coerced into agreeing that what she’s told is okay, and it involves her having to be the bearer of disappointing news.  It involves her being pulled into the politics of adults and, to some extent, being pitted against her mother.   Funny, but that’s incredibly familiar, isn’t it?

Different characters, different setting, but the same elements of plot and theme.  It’s a replay of a situation that has not yet fully resolved.  We’re still repeating that pattern, that “vibration” of six weeks ago, and it’s still an active pattern that we haven’t broken, even though we thought we were done with it.

Six weeks ago, Aislinn was pulled into a situation that left me equally as angry at seeing her put in the middle of what should have been between adults.  The past situation, simply, boiled down to the questionable legality–and definitely the ethics–of involving my minor child and her professional photography talents in someone else’s deceptive activities.   She was told she’d misunderstood (about me), felt she had no choice but to agree and keep quiet, and left to be the bearer of disappointing news that should have been delivered by an adult.  She was put in a predicament where she was pitted against her mother, and Mom was very unhappy about that, enough so to involve authorities.

The past situation of six weeks ago isn’t just in Aislinn’s vibration but it’s still in mine.  I recognized that almost immediately–a month ago at least.  My part of the past situation is more personal than professional, and though I can immediately end a relationship with a long-term liar with multiple girlfriends who don’t know about each other, I cannot immediately change my entire vibration so that I don’t repeat it. How did I recognize my vibration?  Easy–all I had to do was look at what was going on around me.

The first two guys to approach me about dinner dates were already encumbered and lying through their teeth about it.   One was married, according to his social networking site, but “getting a divorce,” according to him.  I didn’t just take his word for it.  I quizzed him about whether she knew they were getting a divorce and golly-gee-whiz, but she’s on a business trip and he’s planned to talk to her about it when she gets home.  The other guy, when pressed for details about the girlfriend shown on his social networking site, became quite cagey.  About 3 hours before we were to meet for dinner, he finally told me that he was on his way to see her to break up with her (he hadn’t already as he’d sworn) and he’d see me afterward at dinner.  Wow, thanks, dude!

I decided not to date anyone new for a little while, until this pattern of lying scumbags had passed.  When I ventured out again, I met a seemingly sweet man who said all the right things–and like the last man in my life, went to great lengths (oooh, I mean the last two men in my life) to keep his girlfriend a secret on his social networking sites and somehow failed to mention her except eventually to refer to her as a “friend.”  Sheesh, isn’t it exhausting to walk such tight ropes?  These guys could probably produce enough electricity to fuel North America if they spent their energy on positive works rather than deception.  The highlight of their lies is that almost every time, their other girlfriends turn into crazy stalker chicks who feel the need to blame me for their men not being truthful with them or with me.  In the end, they end up with their liars and not me–and that’s not a bad thing at all.

So in looking around at the men I’m still meeting, that pattern of liars is still there for me.  And my fix for that is to not date, to not get involved, to just keep things easy and single for a while.  Kinda gives new meaning to the term sucka-free, doesn’t it?

But the pattern is still there for Aislinn, too.  How to fix it?  Maybe she’ll break her pattern by not offering or not being talking into offering her photography skills for free, whether they’re paid for later or not.  Or maybe she’ll just make sure her skills are really wanted and appreciated.  I don’t know.  Given the good heart she has, it would be far harder for me to convince her not to volunteer for the next photography project that arises for a good cause than it is for me to decide to forgo men for a while.

When the current pattern has finished playing itself out, then I think we’ll both be free to be appreciated to our full extent.

I’ve been divorced long enough that few people tell me what to do anymore, or how to do it, or –heaven forbid—how to play the game.  Maybe they grew tired of it.  Or maybe it was the less willing ear I give them now, accompanied by plenty of eye-rolling if I’m nice enough to sit through more than 10 seconds of it.

I’m not a game player.  Most men tell me they don’t want a game-player, yet they’re so focused on game-playing and how it’s always been that they don’t know what to make of me.  They keep asking what the catch is.

There isn’t one.  If I like you, you’ll know it.  I don’t hide my feelings, even if that means you’re uncomfortable enough to run away or create a drama you know will cause me to end the relationship in one fell swoop.  I don’t play games, and I won’t put up with a man who does.

When I was first divorced and dating again at mid-life, I made a lot of mistakes in the first few years.  Most of them were because, after a long marriage,  I lacked the confidence to do what was true to me.  I listened to friends’ advice on dating—friends who’d been married for two decades or longer or hadn’t had a  date in a dozen years.  In general, their advice was all about how to play the game so I could pair up again.  Some would encourage me to make a bold move and then suggest I quickly back off.  Others would suggest I be subtle and calculated.  In any case, I was told that I had to wait, then play it cool, pretend not to care, and let the guy make the next move.

“Ball’s in his court,” my friends would warn.

In hindsight, most of those guys never knew there was a ball, much less a court or that the game was on.  I took my friends’ advice and kept my opinions and my feelings to myself so I didn’t scare anyone away.

And I didn’t scare anyone away.

I did, however, become a lot happier after I ditched my friends and their expectations and rules and relationship games.  I also began to enjoy dating a whole lot more and reached a startling perspective—most of those people weren’t very happy in their own relationships but they could certainly dish advice on how to be.

The only way  it’s ever worked for me is to be unabashedly who I am, and not the least bit worried what a man thinks.

The ball’s not in any man’s court.  The balls are all in my court—crystal balls, snow globes, spinning and sparkly things.  They’re mine to command…though I’m willing to share.

Bullies are everywhere at my office right now.  Bullies and manipulators.  Mean people.

I’m not sure what’s caused this.  Maybe it’s the stress of an upcoming inspection.  I hate these IG inspections because they tend to be made into something more important than any war effort.  Instead of focusing on helping employees and organizations improve their processes, it becomes a point of shame and gotchas.  Stress brings out the best and the worst in people, and in the latter case, it costs respect.

As the Bible verse goes, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.”  Stress causes people to make quick and ugly judgments without stopping to think if someone else is hurting or the reason for their actions. Their worst comes out.  They sound and seem mean, unreasonably mean.   Once the judgment is made in a  hurtful way, there’s a flip side.  The judge becomes the judged, and that often changes all future actions.

Here’s what I mean, published originally on 23 October 2007.

—-

A single phrase of judgment can cause destiny to turn on a dime. In less than 10 seconds, a look, a few words, and a tone of voice can be a turning point for both the judge and the judged.

Last week, I saw Shannon sour on one of her favorite college instructors and courses. Though the course hasn’t been easy, she’s been excited about the subject matter and enthusiastic about the instructor–until a moment of being mis-judged. She’s kept a high grade in the class, in spite of back-to-back flu and migraines and taking an exam during a splitting headache, but she was taken aback when the instructor jumped to conclusions and lumped her in with the slackers. Shannon’s enthusiasm for the class and instructor died immediately, and the distaste of being misjudged changed her plans to take more such courses from this instructor.

It’s ironic. The instructor just alienated one of her most enthusiastic students. I wonder how often she’ll lament that her students aren’t as excited about her classes as she is and blame the people around her.

It’s made me think of different times when I changed my course because of a judgment that was passed on me and how I’ve judged that person back as unworthy of my respect or my time or my affection. Probably the one in my career field that made me turn on a dime was back in 1999 when my Colonel sent me to a new job where, he said, I would be a “gift” to The Big Female Boss because I was the out-of-the-box thinker she needed and we’d be able to do great things together. I hit both emotional peaks and valleys there, with the last peak being the first day on the job.

I can still remember the sheer excitement of the first day, which I was to spend settling in. I showed up in a suit with about six boxes of plaques and awards from my previous office and a big smile on my face. My new supervisor, who’d already met me and had seen my previous work space which actually had a door (!), directed me to her old cubicle and told me to make it mine and decorate it any way I wanted. Though I’d left my previous office in spit-shined shape, I spent the first half of my first day on the job on top of the desk and cabinets, in my suit and pantyhose and pumps, scrubbing down half an inch of moldy dust, wiping down sticky concentric circles, and vacuuming up food crumbs and bugs. Gah. Welcome, indeed.

I spent the second half of my first day on the job decorating my office. In previous offices, I’d had lots of plants, bookshelves, lamps, pictures, curtains–a regular home away from home, since I would spend considerably more time in my office than in my own house. I tried to replicate that in my new, freshly-scrubbed office, including tacking my daughter’s artwork to the bulletin board next to my computer and a not-scantily-clad Xena poster my former office had given me that I put up in a location that could be seen only from inside my cubicle, which was off-limits to people outside my office. I double-checked with three much higher-ranking people in my new organization’s chain of command to make sure I could decorate however I wanted and they all thought my office was wonderfully inviting and were happy to have someone “non-stuffy” in their midst, they said.

At the end of the first day, my supervisor came by to ask if I needed anything (now that everything had been scrubbed) and I asked if there was any problem with anything I’d put up in my office. She laughed and assured me that it was all just fine, though a few days later she mentioned that The Big Female Boss, to whom she was “personally very close,” did not permit personal items in the workspace and that my supervisor herself didn’t keep pictures of her kids at her desk. But at the end of my first day on the new job, I left somewhat sweaty from all the housecleaning work and smelling of Lysol, but I was still quite happy.

About Lorna's other job....

On the morning of my second day on the job, I arrived early and eager. As I walked in the door, The Big Female Boss was stepping into the elevator. She held the door for me and I ran for it, very excited to get a few minutes of time with her and tell her, honestly, how much I was looking forward to working with her. Instead, my official welcome was the elevator ride to the sixth floor, during which I was berated for being unprofessional and lectured on what a “serious ship” that The Big Female Boss ran and that I was to take down anything personal in my new office and obviously I didn’t know what I was doing professionally. Yeah, gift indeed. I’m amazed now that I actually got off the elevator and didn’t just slump to a mute puddle in an elevator car going up and down all day.

The rest of the day was spent cowering in my new cubicle with its now-blank walls as various bosses stopped by to apologize and tell me how much they hoped I would still enjoy my job and how much THEY were looking forward to working with me after the great stuff I’d done in my previous office. Those people were the sole enjoyment I had in that job, for the rest of my time there. That second day was actually not the worst of my tenure, given my supervisor’s petty powerplays that eventually did get her removed, but it was the first day of a job that I hated every minute of.

The irony? Most of the people I worked with nodded and smiled to The Big Female Boss, but privately disagreed with her some or all of her vision for the future. More than anyone else I worked with, I completely bought-in to what she was doing and where she was going with it. I was one of the biggest supporters of her ideas, yet in the first ten seconds of our first meeting, she alienated me and I could never give her the personal support she expected. After that elevator ride, it simply wasn’t in me to give it no matter how much I might have wanted to.

Like with Shannon’s instructor, there were many ways she could have responded to me without the disapproval, the jumping to conclusions, the berating. It’s too bad they don’t teach that to those who lead by position. Sometimes I wonder what turns my career would have made there if, on that elevator ride, she’d said in an even or light or casual tone, “Your supervisor may not have told you yet, but I have certain preferences for how I want my managers’ cubicles to look and I’d like for you to remove anything that isn’t specifically job-related.”

They say that life is lived and decided in moments–that in one moment we will choose to do something or not, that we’re born in a moment and die in a moment, that we marry in a moment and sign divorce papers in a moment, that we are conceived in a moment and conceive our children in a moment. It was in that moment in the elevator that I made particular decisions about my future, and all because of a not-so-well-turned phrase.