An interesting idea came up in a book that I just finished reading. It is titled: Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson. A small book, a 5×7 inch format which in itself, drew me to it. It contains the fictional letters that a man and woman, strangers to one another, write over a period of time. In the act of writing, they come to know one another and themselves.

The woman is a farm wife, who has raised three children with her husband. Her sons work on the farm with their father as does the daughter, though after marrying, she leaves with her new husband to try out a different life in the city. The farm wife got pregnant, was married and had her first child by the time she was twenty years old. Her life was set and she did her best to care for her husband’s physical and emotional needs, and aid his devotion to the farm, which was not her love in the same way. It had been the farm he grew up on. She writes, ” I have seen it as my job to do everything possible to make him comfortable and support him in his work. ”

Her life takes an unexpected turn when she returns from a trip to discover their bedroom in the same clean state that she had left it, down to the exact sheets that she had made the bed with. She discovers that her husband has been having an affair with another woman.

The feelings echoed some of the turnings in my own life. To have seen to my husband’s comfort in every way, to have engaged in the daily tasks of raising the children, cooking and cleaning and later, working outside the home while maintaining the same neverending chores, to discover that he had led a secret life. The farm wife knows the new woman, and wonders at this choice as the woman is overweight and dresses terribly, is loud, demanding and critical, not someone whom she enjoys at all. Yet, she sees how her husband fawns over her and cares for her in ways he did not with her. She watches her husband run through the rain to the parking lot to get the car and drive it close to the door so that the new woman would not get wet.

“This was a courtesy I would not have expected him to show me. He would have done. I acknowledge, if I asked. Only, I would never have asked. I would have accepted that the car was over there,that I was not very far from it, and that I had legs. Perhaps Daphne will be better for Edward in some ways than I have been. She will force him to take notice of her. ”

It recalls to my mind, how my former husband’s choice of a partner was someone whom he waited on and spent money on in ways that he had not done for me. Yet, I did not ask nor demand. I felt it was my job to give and give. Perhaps that ends up being an uncomfortable weight on the other person, and so they seek someone who is needier in some ways so that they can be the giver. Interesting thought.

Reading fiction can help us grow. I see how I still have a tendency to overgive with my adult children. I anticipate and offer to fill a need before they have articulated it. Before they have asked for assistance. Reprising that childhood role of being the little mother where from an early age, I learned to sublimate my own needs to fufill those of others. My radar scanning the horizon for a need that I can fill. Wow, that is unsettling to feel remnants still remain of this conditioning.

I took a decade to myself, traveling on my own, discovering who I was. Then the first grandchild was born into a dissolving relationship and I became the second mother to my grandson and support to my daughter. Recently, she has now moved on with a new partner and they are expecting another child. He has a teenage daughter so they are creating a new family. My daughter no longer needs me in the same way. After nine years, there is a shift. A welcome one for us all. I feel a sense of completion as well as a void. A space opening for me to discover new things. There are new pathways of self care for me to find. Reading this book, illumined ways that I can do better towards myself. How to stand back and observe in a more detached manner. I can feel how freeing that will be for everyone. It has been nine years of being the mother with a capital M and it is time to move back and allow Nana to be my role. Still present but more open to time and distance to pursue my own inner world.

Lines that resonated for me: “I thought that at least I understood what that life was. The weft and warp of it. The firm ground and the boggy. I thought I knew where it was roughly darned and where neatly patched, but despite all the flaws in the fabric, I believed in the essential wholeness of it.”

It is time to weave a new fabric, using new materials to see what beauty I can create.

Lately, I have been noticing habits and wondering anew about them. Vitamins….they have been a hit and miss experience for me. I do not like take capsules and often feel like I am gagging to get them down. I have sourced more liquid forms and that works better for me. Though now the cod liver oil liquid is leaving a burning feeling in my throat. Ah, I am a sensitive flower. But….do I feel better having taken vitamins? Truly I do not notice a difference in my energy or being. If I did, it would be more compelling to continue but now I am left pondering. Is this another thing that we have been told is necessary and perhaps is not? So, I will finish what I have and wait to see if I feel different. My sense is that our bodies can heal themselves, keep themselves running perfectly as we move closer to our true frequency. Of course, we live in a world that is full of toxins and elements that actively work against that innate health. Yet, our beliefs are a large part of experiencing radiant health. I can choose to hold a vision of myself shining with energy and vitality.

Exercise, a hit and miss event for me also. At times, it feels fun and right. Days like today, it feels that if I were an engine, its plug has been pulled and all the oil has run out. Exercise, even a walk. feels foreign. Deep rest, perhaps time in front of the sauna lights in my closet, and that makes a day. Trusting that my body can maintain its health without a schedule or routine as both go by the wayside for me. I know this, I have lived this way for years yet interesting how when I have a run of a few days in a row, I start to make a story about what I need to do. I have marked it on the calendar….starting a list of days and then felt bad when a number of days have disappeared without having done anything physical. How is this helping me? It is not. So, I am letting go of that way of being. I have done this time and time again. It makes me smile at my tender self. How dear we are, wanting to do the right thing, follow the script, get our gold star. I was such a kid, wanting to get all A’s in school, wanting to do all that was expected at home to get the approval of my parents. I return once again to trusting the energy flow and my body to lead me. It is then a joy filled experience each time I engage.

It feels that we are walking deeper into the dream. Time dissolves and if not for my phone’s alarm, I would not show up when it is important to do so. I have started to label the alarm so that when it chimes, I can read what I intended for myself as that might have flown out of my mind. An hour can pass in a moment, days in hours. I am often shocked at how much time passes and I have been elsewhere in my being. I am floating in the dreamtime while awake. More and more the night and day blend into one another. The delineations are dissolving taking us with them. It is so interesting to be aware of this while living it.

The grandchildren and adult kids are anchors, keeping me tethered to this reality. I am grateful for them. As I am grateful for the dreamy floating feeling. I can get lost in a flower or a view or simply the space around me. Coming back due to someone at the door, calling, “Nana!” can be a jarring experience at times. Other times, the popping back and forth comes with ease. Simply a turning of my head to view this reality and then another. All laid out, like bands of color in a rainbow yet fluid. It gets more difficult to find the words that express the experience.

LIght language flows freely, perhaps it is the frequency where sound holds so much more meaning than our minds can process or interpret. When friends and I engage in allowing that language to come forth, there is understanding but not one that we can put into words. Our inner being takes it in and our bodies feel it. Like listening to whales and dolphins..their sounds penetrate another stratum of my being. It feels good to my body. Sound is so powerful and we are only beginning to understand how it can benefit us.

This morning I awoke with a crunchy back. Crunchy, my term for my back not allowing me to stand up straight. It is this way some days, not all days. Once I get up, move about and take a short walk, it eases and I stand up straight and the discomfort passes. Today, I fell into a pit of despair. I had been looking at the route I will drive next month to attend my 50th high school reunion. I knew that I would not do the eight hour drive in one day as my back no longer tolerates long car rides. I have been getting excited about where to stop on the way to explore new and old places. I want to camp so that I can be in the woods and take hikes. I spent many years doing just that but it has been a long time since I camped. This past spring I had camped for two nights with my daughter and grandson and my back took longer to straighten after a night in the tent. I felt like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

All this came up and I felt the worry that I would not be able to camp and enjoy the trip. I have been more diligent of late, doing my back exercises and caring for myself. Yet, here I am, crunchy! I went out to my son, who was getting in his car to go off to work. I cried and asked for a hug. He responded that we need to get me a new mattress……perhaps a good move, worth a try…..but in that moment I needed to be witnessed in my despair. He did that and soon I went off for a long walk with a friend and felt so much better.

The trip is three weeks away and who knows how I will be feeling by then? I went into despair because I was projecting my present self, who was in pain, into the future. Afterwards, I reminded myself how I had floated through the twenty- eight hour plane ride to Western Australia, last spring. I had visualized myself getting off the plane feeling great and that happened. I can do that again, see myself feeling wonderful for the entire trip, enjoying the campsites and hikes and arriving at the reunion, feeling wonderful and strong. Whatever happens, I will be alright. I can stay at motels, I can rest when I need to.

We are all of it, weak and strong, despairing and optimistic, sad and joyful. The friend I walked with this morning was describing a forty-three year friendship she has and how they totally accept one another in all the guises that we wear. How if she expressed an opinion one day, her friend would accept that she might express the opposite opinion the next day. She marveled at how freeing it was to be so accepted. So honored for being who they each were in their shared moments.

Allowing ourselves to be inconsistent, to change our minds, to be up or down. We were trained with such a narrow scope of behavior that was deemed acceptable. Consistency, following things to the letter, these were our training wheels. And yet, our humanness is a wild thing, we are mammals and at times we live that nature without the veneer of conditioning.

Nature demonstrates this over and over. I am sitting in the library, looking out the bay windows at a maple tree outside. A batch of leaves near the top of the tree is living autumn with its oranges and faint reds, the rest of the tree is singing summer songs of green, green. One tree, different songs. We are more complex than we have been led to believe. As more light pours into the planet, the veneers are being blasted off and more of our essence is being revealed. Who are we? Who am I today, this moment? Time is dissolving as are our known markers. We live more and more in a sea of uncertainty as the structures are collapsing around us. The outer reflecting the inner that is coming undone. Notions of the person that I am, unwind as more of me shines through. I look in the mirror and see a playful five year old, the next time I see an ancient crone staring back at me with eyes of infinite wisdom. All me, all here.

The wildness is stirring and asking for greater expression. Perhaps that was me this morning, crying in front of my son and asking for the hug I needed. Not my usual behavior but that was me at that moment. Allowing more of me to be and express. That is why the camping is important, sleeping on the ground, being immersed in the night sky, hearing the quiet of the trees. My heart is in need of some wilding. My body leading me onward.