authentic self

 the authentic self is really our only path we have to find salvation... so many of us are desperately trying to find ourselves... without being whole we can never be a part of a half...

each time i hear this song it brings me another "gift".  thoughts of how singular our lives are.  how connected we all can be.   how important that odd connection is.   

 singular, we want to be complete. we want to be good company to ourselves.  we want to amuse ourselves in our own heads and experiences.  we want memories to be like a warm dip into the hot springs.   acceptance and happiness instead of regrets or loneliness for what is gone or greediness because it didn't last as long as we wanted it to.  or sadness because in the singularity we find ourselves, we feel an empty instead of a blessing.

we get so tied up in day to day "have to's" that we lose pieces of ourselves.  or we forget them, thinking that we can find them again when and if we have the time.  every now and then we think back and wonder where did i go?   i really liked me then.  now i don't even know me. sometimes it takes so long to remember, that we are not even sure it is really us we are remembering.  perhaps it was a dream of what we needed to be exactly how we wanted to be but knew we couldn't really be.

family and friends.  i grew up in the LDS church and had the "families are forever" mantra drilled into my head from the moment i walked through the threshold of  the 5th ward.  i never learned to think of forever.   life changes too much, too fast. how could anything last forever? i never could wrap my head around that belief.   friends disappear, die,  lovers dissolve, seasons betray me.  i am 50 next year,  do you know i still naively believe  in the endless summer?   i am  so stunned as i look out the window and see the trees changing colors and settling down for the winter to come.  i am doing that as i speak, beautiful yellow with a back drop of still green trees.  I sip my wine in disbelief. and ponder things i can't express.

children.  they are the most wonderful experiences i have or will ever have in my life.  yet with every day you teach them to learn to live without you, away from you, singular and hopefully whole in their singularity.  when i think about them, i miss every single day of their lives.  every laugh, every tear and i pray.  i pray that they are on their own journey of self.  i pray that there will be more times that i share with them to add to my book of memories.  but forever just doesn't fit inside the cover of the book of my life.   even the bible has a back cover.

40ish-ness

for over a year now i have been describing myself as "almost 50".   not for any particular reason other than it sounded fun.  50 yowza!  i am not sure how i got here but i must have actively participated in it.

i think about my 40's as a time of change and spiritual travel as well as pregnant  with many losses and many founds.   9/11 marks the loss of my innocence of thinking that we were safe from the violence in other parts of the world.   it was a foolish innocence to have in the first place.  there are no guarantees.  i gave birth to my last baby.   i also heard a voice telling me it was time to start paying attention to the reasons i was living my life the way i was and why i was so uncomfortable.  it was the assumption that i was supposed to do everything in my power to make everyone else happy and everything perfect in order to measure my self worth.  it was a foolish assumption to have in the first place as well.

i came out as a lesbian at 44.  left my husband's house and set out to figure out what all of that meant.  i fell in love twice in my forties and learned that having the right person to direct my emotional and physical love towards was intoxicating and wonderful.  i learned too that heartaches hurt just as bad.

i went back to school and earned a AS degree.   i went out job hunting which seems to be a never ending non-paying job for me. when you tell people you haven't worked outside the home for 12 years they look at you like you are a rare type of insect.  interesting to view but not something you want flying around your office.

i found my higher power after thinking i would never bother to look again.   i changed my name.  i found major flaws in my character and relationship issues which stem from other decades of my life.  i found good counseling.   i found some really good friends.   i lost some very good friends.  i lost my step mother. 

reading  back over this, it seems obvious why i am so tired.   i have some time yet before my 50ish-ness begins.  i need to clean up the house of my 40's to make sure there is room for my 50's.  i need to clean the dust bunnies out from under all the dark spaces.  i look at my counselor as my psychic organizer.  she points out the areas that need attention and hands me the broom.   i intend to begin it with more grace, more insight, more compassion, more joy, less fear, less dust bunnies.  a job.