A Mother's Musings and Mumblings

What an interesting day this is on the relationship front. Fourteen years ago today, WF and I were married in the backyard of the house we lived in. This morning we talked about the wedding, the yard there (under several feet of water currently) and the fact that we’ve known each other for 17 years. My how times change.

Today is also a full moon. This afternoon, to be exact. A good time for a witch to be working magic and weaving her reality. And so I did.

Now I am not in the habit of doing rituals in my backyard in the middle of the day but this one seemed important for me to time with the full moon so I didn’t let a little thing like broad daylight bother me. There was one moment when I realized that I was casting a circle in full view of at least four neighboring houses but mere seconds later I realized that no one was likely to say anything to me while I was holding a knife. And so I continued.

At this point y’all are most likely wondering what in Gaia’s name was so important to drag me out into the heat at mid-day in full view of native Southerners for ritual.

Remember months ago when Mouse helped me untie the knot on my handfasting cords? Well, I still have those cords. Or had, actually. I told myself that when the divorce was final – legally final – I’d dispose of them. I only just found out last Friday that the divorce was final and today was the full moon so this seemed like the perfect time to finalize my business and move on with life at the Solstice.

I’d always known that I wouldn’t just burn the cords. Or bury them or in any other way destroy them intact. The cords represented my marriage and although the marriage was gone, I had brought things into it that were mine to reclaim – bits of myself that I didn’t want to discard just because the relationship was over. To symbolize that, I wanted to unwind the cords and take a bit from each (there were six) to keep for myself.

The cords were not identical nor had I made them so I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Once everything was set, I made myself comfortable and picked up the first cord. I’d already decided which cord was which direction and what I would do with the parts I would keep. Of course, nothing ever works out as planned, does it?

The first cord I chose was purple for center. The knot at the end was dealt with easily enough and I soon discovered that there were four strands knitted together. No matter how I tried, the strands would not come apart easily and my plan had been to keep one complete strand from each cord. It didn’t take me long to go from meditating about center (my home is my center, my safe place, and I lost that when Guido moved in but quickly reclaimed it when Mouse helped me smudge and the witchlets’ energy took over) to meditating about the marriage itself (another situation of my own creation where things weren’t working out the way I’d planned and now I’d had to come to some compromise that wouldn’t live up to my ideal but was at least attainable). Finally, I decided that since I had made the rules, I could change the rules and the new rule was that I would only take part of a strand for myself.

This did not make me happy. I kept working on that cord for some time while berating myself for not having seen this problem coming, for not having prepared for it, for not having designed my ritual differently or starting earlier. It took a while before I came to terms with what I perceived as my own failings. It took time for me to make peace with the fact that the decisions I’d made had led to my not getting what I wanted. Time to forgive myself for messing up. Only then was I able to move on to the second cord.

Red. For South. The knot gone the four strands slipped apart as easily as my passion had fled from the marriage when Guido hit me. *poof* Meditation? That would have required time and this took none.

Hmmmm………Something is going on here.

Blue. For West. I stopped to think about it first before dispatching with the knot. Fluid water allowing me to be flexible and mobile. I’d had that once and yet, with Guido it was gone. In so many ways for so many reasons. But I knew I’d already reclaimed it. *poof* Four strands pull apart in a matter of seconds.

White. For North. Not the color you’d think of but this cord was heavier than the rest, knitted from a thicker yarn. I thought about being grounded, anchored and the ways that it could be both safe and suffocating. I thought about all the ways that being grounded had eluded me in my marriage. I cut the knot and began to work at the cord which resisted every bit as much as the purple cord had.

And then it hit me. I was approaching this problem wrong. With Earth, as with Spirit, I’d meditated on the beginning of the relationship and what I’d brought to the table – and the cord resisted setting me free. With Fire and Water I’d thought instead on what I’d taken away from the relationship and was met with no resistance at all. By approaching the issue from the wrong side, I was making my task more difficult than it needed to be. I slipped the knot on the other side of the white cord as I thought about how grounded I had felt in recent weeks. The whole thing came unraveled in one tug.

Thinking about East happened before even trying to unwind the cord – the inspiration that had escaped me had returned in so many ways. And the cords slipped apart without resistance. Of course, that inspiration led me to another plan. The strands that I kept I had intended to leave on the appropriate alters in my home. As I looked at them, I knew that they were meant to be tied together and knit into something – all together bound up as part of my life. What I’ll use that cord for I have no idea, but I’ll be working on knitting it before the Solstice.

We Merry Meet, and Merry Part, and Merry Meet Again!

E got me thinking about the distinction between “influence” and “suggestion” – thinking long and hard enough that I decided to just create another post on the subject rather than try to ramble off a reply in the comments. Her premise, as I understand it, is that your friends don’t so much influence you as provide suggestions and that you won’t travel down any path that you aren’t ready for.

There’s a lot of wisdom in that but I think it may fall apart in some extreme cases with those of us who have trouble defining reality for ourselves. Allow me to explain by starting with the background.

For many people I know, they have a “primary” relationship with someone. That could be a close friend, a parent, sibling, therapist or a spouse/lover. The Imago Theory of Relationships (one that I subscribe to) holds that you are responsible for being a safe person for your partner and I believe that most of us define our primary relationships that way – we enter into these relationships only with people that we feel to be safe. While the others in our lives may only be able to “suggest” a course of action to us, our partner in our primary relationship holds more influence than that and is often able to convince us of things that we wouldn’t otherwise do. Don’t believe me? Look at any battered woman.

As happens when we grow and change, our relationships change with us. What was a primary relationship becomes history. Being human, this often happens in the heart long before it happens overtly for the rest of the world to see. When the heart moves away from one primary relationship, it seeks to fill that void with another – a friend or sister that you lean on, a new lover, a therapist – anyone to fill that gap and ease your transition.

What transition? The transition to relying on yourself as your own primary relationship.

And there’s the rub.

Some of us have never really learned to do that – or learned it but the lesson came so late in life as to not be a natural thing. And why should we? For some of us, we were taught young to accept other peoples’ reality over our own – a condition that makes it hard to rely on yourself when others, any others, disagree. For some of us, we have never learned how to be our own safe person – depression, substance abuse or just self-loathing instilled as a character trait keeps us from being able to trust ourselves. For some of us we just never had to be our own primary relationship – we moved from parents to spouse with no gap in which to test our wings.

When you can’t believe in yourself, can’t trust yourself to be your own best advocate, you look hard to find someone else to fill that niche. And that someone else gains an immediate, and sometimes undeserved, influence in your life. Their words take on not the note of suggestion but a more imperative need to comply. Comply or lose yet another relationship.

Of course, it’s your power to give and anyone who really cares about you wouldn’t write off a relationship because you didn’t follow their “suggestion” or “influence”. And in the example I’m using the only way that the power was given was because you were already in a position, emotionally, to lose your primary relationship in favor of something safer. So again, IF you had a healthy primary relationship all the influence in the world wouldn’t shake you.

But let’s say there were cracks there. Cracks big enough and deep enough that you no longer felt safe. Cracks created by hurts that your partner had inflicted with seeming intention to the point where you no longer felt as though you could afford the benefit of the doubt. And even though you knew all of this, you couldn’t do anything about it because you yourself weren’t any safer than your partner – you lacked the trust in your own strength to believe that you could take care of yourself alone. And you lacked the trust in your partner to believe that the two of you could work this out.

Into this situation comes someone who is happy enough to tell listen to all you have to say about why you don’t feel safe. They mirror it back to you, make suggestions about what you should do and offer their support. Of course you would take them up on it – you have no other safe person – and faster than you can say “Hester” this new friend has become your primary relationship. The old relationship is now dead. All that is left for it is writing the obituary and carving a headstone. Your strength remains untested and your partner is left wondering why they didn’t get a chance to work on things.

This would appear to work at the other end of a relationship, too. If you are alone but are not your own primary relationship then any new relationship is at the mercy of your partner. If that partner is an overprotective parent or a jealous sibling or friend then any new romantic relationship may well be poisoned before it even begins. At the mercy of someone else’s “influence” it would take a strong will for a new flame to ever ignite.

At this point nothing I’m saying applies to Guido. I’m drawing on much more than that for these examples and omitting the names to protect the guilty as well as the innocent.

Can I relate this back to Guido? There are bits of it that perhaps have bearing but overall I think I was out of that relationship and relying on myself before I started leaning on anyone else. I know that I held back in even asking for help – something that I’m chronically guilty of – and that once the “suggestions” arrived they really served to confirm what I knew but was too stubborn to act on.

I think more than Guido, I can relate this back to my experiences since he moved out. Being my own safe person and trusting my own reality is not in my zone of comfort and, therefore, not something that I have a lot of experience with. I managed to do that for a while but I do think that I was a bit too quick to want to fill that void with someone else – someone that I saw as being stronger and more capable of being my partner than myself. From that position, a position of discomfort and mistrust, I couldn’t make the best decision about whom to trust and whom to allow to take over the role of primary relationship. I made mistakes and the consequences of those hurt me as much as losing Guido.

This week marks another transition in the lives of the witchlets. And, by extension, me.

Yesterday I drove nearly 3 hours down to a nice, rustic little girls camp with Thing 1. This isn’t her first sleep-away camp. Last year she did four days/nights at a place about 45 minutes from here with the University soccer coaches. As in: adults. This year she’s at camp for SEVEN days/nights with a bunch of college girls. The one in her cabin has never done this before and is still learning the ropes. That was reassuring. I got her all tucked in – her bunk made, towels folded, duffel tucked under the bunk and then my little girl looked at me.

In that moment I could see so much: I could see the little girl just as she looked in the delivery room – her eyes looking through me knowingly. I could see her hair falling around her shoulders and got a glimpse of what my baby would look like in another 15 years. And I could see a very annoyed pre-teen who wanted, more than anything, to know why the Hel her mom was still there and when she could expect to quit being embarrassed by my presence.

I asked for a hug and a kiss and counted myself lucky to get the hug and an eye roll. Walking away, I just kept muttering “Don’t look back, don’t look back” like Lot’s wife.

Thing 2 was waiting for me when I got home. Well. Not really waiting. She was at a friend’s house and wasn’t keen on coming home but she did. And we had dinner together and got her ready for camp today. It’s a new camp for her – she’s never been there before and on Thursday will get to sleep over there. This will be her first sleep-away camp and I wasn’t sure she’d agree to it.

No such luck. She talked about the overnight and when we got there she complained, loudly, about having to say good-bye to me before running off to play with her new friends. I finished her paperwork after she’d left my side and left the camp without being able to get her attention again to say good-bye.

WF reminded me that the reason these girls are so willing and able to part with us is because they know we’ll return. In other words, we’ve done something right parenting and this is just evidence of it. I’ll hang onto that thought as I drown my sorrows in a Peppermint Latte but I’m not sure how much it will help. No matter how much I tell myself that good parenting means making yourself obsolete, I’m just not ready to be put out to pasture yet.

Welcome to another episode of “Shake my head and see what falls out.” There’s something rattling around in there – something that has been building momentum and growing like a snowball rolling downhill for sometime now and it’s time to try to coax it out. This isn’t going to be pretty so grab your hip waders and let’s get started, shall we?

I have a close circle of great friends. We look out for each other and I wouldn’t trade them for anything in this world. I also have a sister who loves me dearly and wants me to be happy AND understands personally all the reasons why that is so unlikely to happen. I’m not sure what I’d do without her and have no desire to think about that for very long. There are also several other individuals who are outside of this circle of friends who are sisters of my heart (and brothers, but you know I’ll choose the feminine form of the language when given a choice). These sisters all are my confidants. Yes, I post here but let’s face it – most of those who read here fall into one of those categories and those sisters know more than what is posted here.

So why is this a problem?

It may not be. But the thought that is rolling around in my brain has to do with the influence that I allow others to exert in my life. The disclaimer here is that I’m not outsourcing any responsibility here. What I share or not is my choice and my decision. What I do with the advice of others is my choice and my responsibility. Anything that my sisters tell me is solicited advice that I have asked for and that they hold no responsibility for.

And because it is often easier to solve someone else’s problem than it is to solve your own, let me talk about this issue in terms of a hypothetical sister with a relationship problem. She and her partner are having trouble. She shares that trouble with us, in part to release some of the pressure that has built up but in part to look for a sounding board for advice on what to do. She has no preconceived notions of the solution – she’d like her relationship to survive but doesn’t know how to make it strong and healthy again and is willing to entertain nearly any option.

As a community of sisters, we take the information that we are given – information that has an admitted bias to the negative – and we draw conclusions. For the most part, we are pessimistic. This relationship, we conclude, is not healthy and our sister is being hurt more than her partner by staying in it. What is in the best interests of our sister is to get her house in order to be prepared for a split. We are not shy about sharing our opinions, either, and tell her this as many voices speaking for one message.

But one cannot simultaneously prepare for divorce and fix a marriage. In a case like this, what is a sister to do? The circle has spoken but the answer is contrary to her heart.

I’m taking liberties with the story of another and simultaneously altering things to make a point. I suppose this is the point in my drivel where I transition to talking about my own life.

Guido and I never really got off the ground. We started marriage counseling very shortly after getting married and continued with the same counselor for most of our marriage. There were breaks in there but our therapist always knew what was going on, what the issues were and where we’d been. Over three years into our marriage I remember him commenting that for a couple who had been married so long we were both still so tentative about the relationship. That struck me. Guido was the one who pushed so hard to get married so quickly while I held onto my reservations. It shouldn’t have been a surprise then that I was holding back a bit for sometime, not quite ready to totally commit. But for both of us to be in that position – like a standoff – both of us waiting for the other to jump in before we took off our shoes to follow.

This was before I began to turn to my sisters for help, before I even involved them in the drama of my failing marriage we were already on unstable ground. But when I did involve them, the details that I gave them about our relationship were overwhelmingly negative. I do remember “bragging” on Guido once in a while – telling them of his good qualities. But certainly more often than not my words were cloaked in bitterness or pain. And they responded appropriately. They took the information that they were given and they drew conclusions. They concluded that this was not a healthy relationship and that I was being hurt by staying in it. They concluded that it was in my best interests to prepare for a split.

And I listened. Therein lies the issue.

Why did I listen? Did I listen because I was afraid not to – afraid of losing the love and support of my sisters? Did I listen because they were telling me what I wanted to hear – that my worst fears were true? Did I listen because they told me what my heart could already see but my brain would not admit? Or was it the other way around? Did I listen because what they were telling me to do was a path I knew I could survive and not the path I’d never taken?

And what role did I play in their conclusions? They based their conclusions on the information that I gave them. Did I filter that information – intentionally or not – in order to influence their conclusions?

Isn’t it possible that I spun a story for them such that they drew conclusions for me that I wanted to hear at the time only to find that I couldn’t move out of that position? That even if I had wanted to change, I couldn’t do so easily because those who cared about me already “knew” things to be true without seeing the whole picture?

This circle of sisters wouldn’t do that to me. I have watched them before as they loved and supported sisters through several changes of heart. I know they would have supported me. But still these questions roll in my head.

Would Guido and I have had a chance if I hadn’t been so involved with my friends?

Part of the reason for keeping a journal or a blog is to be able to voice these concerns without either paying a therapist or tying up a friend’s phone line. In this case, all it took was putting those words down in black and white to settle this issue once and for all:

Hel No.

Perhaps we would have stayed together longer. Perhaps after some time it would have been harder for me to leave and I would have stayed even longer sorting out how to make a break. But I think it is safe to say that we never really had a chance. Everything – from his reluctance to commit to the marriage on up to his temper – speaks against it.

IF we had a strong relationship and I had merely been complaining to my circle of sisters about trivial matters things would have been different. Even if that were the case and I blew the problems up to the point where my sisters told me that he wasn’t worth the pain and I should leave, I still think we wouldn’t have ended up in the same place. To begin with, my heart would know that the conclusion wasn’t fair. And to follow up, HE would know it. If I began to pull away from a decent guy who truly loved me and cared for my happiness, there would be some conversation or some attempt at fixing the problem. With Guido, the conversation didn’t happen and the attempt at fixing the problem was to grow more sullen and angry. As I pulled away, so did he. And that alone would have signaled the end of the relationship even without a circle of sisters behind me to support me and love me.

I really do get by with a little help from my friends.

As soon as I lose one member of this household for good, another comes into my life. Well, our lives, really for the witchlets are as much impacted by this as am I. There must be some force in the vast multiverse that keeps the number of living creatures I am responsible for at some constant.

In this case the addition comes not by romance but rather by adoption. Yup. You heard me. We’ve been adopted.

When the selection process first began, nearly two weeks ago, I didn’t think much of it. The cat sat on our front sidewalk looking over the yard. The next visit included an inspection of the porch. Nearly a week of daily visits later and first physical contact was achieved. From there, it was only a few days before the interior of my home was inspected and then the selection was made.

Yesterday when I sat down in my favorite chair on the front porch, my new feline owner pranced right up and sat on my lap. I knew then that I had been claimed.

I don’t want a cat. I don’t need a cat. Hel, I can’t have a cat! Cats are good but experience has shown that breathing is better. But I seem to not have a say in this process. The cat has selected us, not the other way around.

At this point my plan is to keep using a different name every day and hope that the cat gets confused or jealous and leaves. At the very least, this should keep me from getting imprinted for a bit longer. Right? RIGHT??

Our new owner must have been someone’s pet. She’s simply too well fed. And her front claws are missing. But she’s not groomed at all, has no collar or tags and seems to spend all her time on my front porch and in my yard. Much to the dismay of Thing 1′s puppy.

Ultimately, the outcome of the drama is the puppy’s fault. In the end, I had no choice but to start feeding the cat just to keep her from visiting the back yard so often and getting the puppy all worked up. If the puppy would just bite the cat instead of yapping at it then I wouldn’t have to feed it. Or the dog – at least for that day! But nooooo. The puppy yaps and I feed the cat.

Coming, mistress!

Let me tell you a story. Tis a sad tale but one with a happy ending. And it begins like all good stories:

Es war einmal……..

In a little town in a quiet part of the countryside, where the mountains meet the valley below there was living a woman with her two children. They were happy. Certainly happier now than they had been in some time, for you see, the woman’s husband had left them in peace some time before.  When he’d first left, she feared for the happiness of her children. They were young, and had loved the man. Or so she’d thought. But over time it became clear that he had cast her in a role from another fairy tale – one she did not wish to serve in. And when she resisted, he became angry, sullen and, eventually, abusive.

The woman worked hard to make sure that her children were protected from all of this. They were kept safe and her troubles were held distant from their young lives. But in time she began to fear for their safety. Not that she thought her husband would hurt them. Although he might, she figured that to be the lesser of the evils she was perpetrating on her children. No, the greater evil was the role model that she had become. For the children weren’t just any children. They were two young girls who looked up to their mother as being a strong woman that they wished to emulate. But she was not strong in her marriage and this could only hurt her children.

For a time she stood paralyzed at the crossroads. Was it better to hurt her children by sending her husband away or by leading them by example to a life of submission to the anger of others?

The decision was made the day that he struck her. On that day, a clarity washed over the home in this little town and the veil was lifted from her eyes.

She feared for the happiness of her children but her fears fell on rocky soil and could find no purchase. They fell away as quickly as the sun rose on a new day, blown away on the breath of two small children who did not mourn a loss but sighed deeply in relief for the pain that had been taken from their mother. Two small children who, wise beyond their years, wished only for happiness for all who lived within their home and knew that such happiness would elude them all so long as the man dwelt within.

As is the case in all such small towns regardless of if they are near the mountains or the sea, this small town had in it a Government. And while the decision of who to love was the the woman’s alone and the decision of who to live with belonged only to her and her children, the Government held firmly to the right to determine who would be called “Family”. Years before, when they had first met, the man and the woman had asked the Government to call them Family and so it had been. And although the woman no longer held him in her heart, she must now plead her case with the Government to remove him from her family.

Even in these provincial regions, this sort of pleading was not unheard of and so the woman enlisted the help of one who was seasoned in the ways of Government and the nature of these pleadings. Soon, all was done and it was out of the woman’s hands. All that was left to do was wait.

And wait.

And wait she did. The seasons changed and still she waited. The children knew nothing of this but slowly the townspeople began to hear the news. The news was quiet, only that the man was gone, and nothing else. Nothing of the reasons were spoken of. Nothing of the waiting reached the ears of anyone. The woman held this waiting in her heart until she could bear it no longer.

Finally, as the seasons changed again and the heat of summer began to build, the woman could take it no longer. She began to ask the Government please to allow her to be free of the man. The answer was a stoic: “These things take time” – the kind of answer that Governments and others whose wisdom is self-proclaimed seem to know instinctively. But the heat of summer fueled her on: “How much time?” she asked; “It has already been so long!” she pleaded. Every day she called on the Government to inquire about the status of her “Family” while every night she went home to the family of her heart.

And so it was that a kindly clerk within the Government took pity on her and began to ask questions of her own. The woman’s freedom rode on the ink of a single sheet of paper. It was that paper that would allow her to remove the man from her Family. It was that ink that she had been waiting for all this time. The ink that would flow from the pen of a single, very busy, magistrate if and when he found the time and will to sign it.

The clerk meant to find the paper and take it personally to the magistrate to plead the woman’s case. But the paper was no where to be found. Still the woman begged and still the clerk searched until one day while clearing a chair off so that someone might sit there the clerk found a stack of forgotten papers. Signed by the magistrate and placed there, only to be forgotten and left behind.

When the woman heard that the man no longer “Family” she was also told that he hadn’t been in nearly a month! Laughter, loud and strong, rang out across the valley and up into the mountains. And for the first time in many, many months, the woman felt like she could breathe freely – her own air, in her own home, with her own Family.

Ende.

Guido
11/2/2003-5/19/2008
RIP