New chapters in life generally have phases. Letting go of the old life. A transition tug between old and new. Then moving onto the new.
Sometimes it does not happen like that.
Such was the day when they began logging the valley opposite to where we lived. I was thrust into this next era which spanned ten years, eight with intense pressure. Family life was put aside as we moved into a world of politics, fighting for justice, defending free speech and questioning our own sanity. Continue reading
This is my third post of a challenge to post a picture with a story every day for five days. I am writing on the theme of my new beginnings at times of change in my life.
I had planned to be a career woman. That idea came completely unstuck in 1980 when my first baby was born. From the moment I first held him, and for the next eighteen years until 1998 when my first child left home, my focus and drive became my family. I wrote a poem about this in 2013. I am not much of a poet but to me it captures the essence of this next phase of my life – motherhood … Continue reading
This is my second post of a challenge to post a picture with a story every day for five days. I am writing on the theme of my new beginnings at times of change in my life.
Adulthood
The second big change in my life was becoming an adult, moving from that secure world of a supportive family base and community, out into the scary world of reality.
Rather than one single change, the period from 1971 to 1979, ages 17 to 26, were for me years of transition as I slowly took the steps away from my old life, and moved into my new life. Almost everything about my old life disappeared. Those nine years were years of excitement. Yet at the same time they were filled with uncertainty and, at times, sadness. Continue reading
A blogging friend sent me a challenge to post a picture with a story every day for five days. She felt I was ‘facing a sea change’ which is true as I am indeed facing new beginnings on many fronts. I have faced new beginnings and challenges before. I decided that I would rise to this writing challenge by making it a theme of my new beginnings and looking back at those times of change in my life.
School
The first big change in my life was starting school. It was that first scary step away from my parents as it meant that I would now be without them for six hours a day, five days a week. Nevertheless, the years from age five to age seventeen – which represent my school years – were a very stable period in my life. Continue reading
I have returned home again, having spent the best part of the last two months, with my siblings, caring for my mother in her final days.
Sometimes I wonder whether I am actually returning home, or whether I am leaving home behind me. I am feeling a quadruple loss. As well as losing my mother, I am leaving behind my siblings, my extended family, my hometown and the community I grew up in. To leave all that behind me, to return home alone has been difficult. What am I coming home to?
Two days after my mother’s funeral, I took a phone call from my solicitor to say that the marital settlement was complete. You may remember that papers were signed earlier this year. From that signing date, the actual process to untangle our various investments and loans took a few more months. Now the process was finally over.
I was very sad that I never got to share that moment with my mother. However, only days before she slipped away, I did share with her my dreams for my future. That conversation had made her relaxed, and she gave me a smile. She was happy to know her daughter would soon be on the road to her own life, with a vision of a life of peace and contentment.
Now, three weeks later, here I am.
Home again.
Yet, it will all be so different …
My home is now actually my home.
My finances are now my own to manage.
The business settlement period is drawing to a close.
I am finally free of the marital entanglement.
Four major changes in my life, and with the death of my mother, that makes five.
My life will be so different.
So today I am clinging on to that vision, that vision I shared with my mother, that vision for my life being one of peace and contentment.
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Image courtesy[/FreeDigitalPhotos.net]
My mother passed away peacefully last week.
We were able to grant her wish to keep her at home, right to the very end.
Before her candle went out she lit my candle, and will forever be the spirit within me.
This song was her choice as her message to us all.
“I am not sure what I shall do. Nothing here has worked out quite as I expected.”
“Most things don’t. But sometimes, what happens instead is the good stuff”
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
About a year ago, after much soul-searching, I was emotionally in a place where I wanted to move on. I wanted to begin a course. I wanted to try something different. I wanted to move away. I wanted to begin my new life.
I couldn’t. I still had to finish off the marital settlement and run the business.
I became stationed in this horrible place of being here and wanting to be there.
Everything was overwhelming me and I was in deep pain.
At the time many friends, family and supporters assumed I was still suffering the end of my marriage, the leaving of me by my husband, its emotional effects, and my shattered self-esteem. Whilst those issues added to my pain, they were no longer the main problem. What I was experiencing was not something that I had to ‘get over’. It was something that I had to ‘get through’. The problem, and hence my misery, was all the legal and practical things that still had to be done surrounding the marital settlement. There was still all that mud to trudge through, before I could begin my life as I wanted it.
I yearned for a better life yet to ‘get through’ to that better life, I had to put that better life aside. I had to put aside my dreams. I had to stop writing poetry. I had to stop planning my future. I had to stop indulging in soul-searching. I had to face what needed to be done and devote my time to getting done what I had to get done.
Nevertheless I had been instilled, with a vision of a better life.
In some ways, the vision made things much more painful. Up until that point, I had clung onto the remnants of my old life. The relative uncomfortableness surrounding my marriage end had become tolerable. I had become used to feeling under-par rather than happy. I had become used to scattered grey clouds over my head. I would smile and carry on.
However…
Once the vision of a better life had been planted in my head, that world I was in became a scary deep hole. There were no clouds to see. There was total darkness. It was the vision of a better place that made the world that I was in so painful and intolerable.
And yet …
It was the vision of me striding towards that better place that kept me going forward, that kept me trudging onwards through the mud, until I was through it on the other side.
which is where I am now –
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Image courtesy[digitalart]/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Song: Jimmy Cliff version of the Johnny Nash hit ‘I can See Clearly Now’.
One of my greatest beliefs has always been to be part of a proactive civil society. I believe that if something is not right, one should speak out, or act to change it. As a couple, my husband and I lived by that code and were active in community affairs together. I was the quiet gatherer of information. He was the negotiator, the voice, drawing in supporters with his gregarious nature. One thing was for certain, if there was an issue we believed in, we did not let it go. We were a formidable force. Together we could change the world.
My belief system crumbled with my marriage collapse. For a long time, I could not think of world affairs. I could not think of community. I could only think of myself. I was down on the floor in a reflective haze gazing at the walls thinking only about me. I felt that I had lost my inner compass, that I was not acting on my own beliefs. I was not out there contributing. I was not righting the wrongs. I was not speaking out. I was not standing up for others less fortunate. I thought it must have been us as a steadfast couple that gave me the energy to speak out and the courage to make a difference. I thought it must have been our professed shared values of peace, fairness, and respect for all, and the unity of sharing those values, that gave me my inner core of strength. I was so strong that I was able to stand up and speak out. I wondered what happened to those beliefs that we had stood for together. I wondered whether I only acted the way I did, and I only believed what I thought I believed, because he was beside me.
The truth was, at the time when I was down on the floor, I felt that I had lost peace, fairness, and respect at an individual level. If I had lost them at an individual level, and they were my source of strength and therefore my strength was gone, how could I help others?
I have now changed. My beliefs have changed. They changed when I was down on the floor. This is what I now believe.
What do you believe in?
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Image courtesy[africa]/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Spring into Summer 