Funny. (Ha. Ha.) I thought I'd arrived on the summit of wisdom when I turned half a century two years ago. I wrote a post about being dubbed a "baby crone" by an older friend. Little did I know I was about to make a less than optimal choice that would serve as the greatest wake up call of my life. I went through with said choice. I got married for a second time. And a year later, I ended that relationship that had begun four years earlier. It took my father's death to strip away my own blinders and see that although I am a warrior in so many ways in my life, up until now, I was a wuss when it came to men.
I have spent nearly a year now working intensely with a spiritual teacher who has taken me to depths that never before did a therapist go. Not in my 20 years spent on numerous couches. I have learned that it's not about knowledge. Not about all the seminars I attended seeking the answers to a pain that I didn't even really know that I had. In survival mode, I had covered it up. In those four years, I covered my my body and my emotions with about 15 extra pounds of fat. I've nearly stripped it off in the last year. (Yes!)
My second marriage was a necessary and very painful part of my spiritual evolution. I crashed and burned in order to rise like a phoenix. I had begun to realize that there was an invisible wall barring me from growing into my greatest good. I am bursting through that wall now and it is so freeing. The wall was the choices I'd made in men that loved my ambition and yet feared it. And in their fear combated with sabotage–albeit sometimes unknowingly to the both of us. But, three fingers point back to me and ultimately all five do as well because these were choices I made. And getting down to the cellar of my pain, I now know that I was driven by patterns of love that I learned from the man who loved me first. His death liberated me.
Happy Birthday, to me. To Leisa. You are two years older. Two years wiser. Two years freer. The best is here and yet to come.
Photo: Lisa Linn Manley
Addendum: On aging, saw a good movie yesterday ~ The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Happy Birthday, Leisa!!
You sound good, very. I’m so thankful for you being on “this” side of all that, realizing fully that growing up is not a one-day revelation but an ongoing type of learning…for life, about life.
Wishing you the best year of them all as you continue to grow wiser :).
I wouldn’t trade this part of my journey for all the tea in China, even knowing it took going through the pain to break through.
Live it!!! Happy Happy to you.
The planning lies with man, the outcome with Heaven. Man proposes, God disposes.
a modest spur to induce others to come forward with valuable contributions; throw a sprat to catch a whale
a modest spur to induce others to come forward with valuable contributions; throw a sprat to catch a whale
Thanks for reporting these iesuss:1. First, make sure the volume lock is off or there will be no sound. Next Go into iPad’s setting page. Tap General , then Sounds . Minimize the volume slider and then maximize it. This will refresh the system’s sound engine, which was crashed by a bad app. I’ve tested it on my iPad 2 with iOS 5.0 and there is sound.2. For now, you can turn off multi-touch gestures in the iPad’s Setting page under the General section. I will be submitting an update to Apple soon to fix this problem. Instead of 4-finger swipes, it will be 3-finger swipes.
iPlay CG uses the device’s sound eninge so sometimes it may lock up for unknown reasons. Go into sound settings, slide the volume to maximum and flip all the switches off and back on. This will refresh the sound eninge immediately.
Hi Barbara, good to see you. You prompted a great civnersatoon about the challenges of blogging yesterday thanks. I also loved the way you replied to all the comments. I know it takes a ton of work to do that, but picking up and reflecting on the reflections that have come back to you is a way to make each reader feel extremely valued.I love the plug in it gives me a good overview of what’s going on. I think there are other features you can use with it but watching it for comments whenever they come in is the main one I use it for.Joanna