Life’s Hard

278 Marbles 

    My mother can’t talk very much anymore.  When I visit her in the senior’s home, she sometimes tries a few incoherent words but generally is content to stay silent.  I give her her manicure and I attempt to stay present with her.  Having my kids along with me helps me to feel less sad about the bits of my mother that I am slowly losing over time. 
    Today when I was with her, I drifted into the past and remembered her voice in our home, the refrains that she used to say when I’d be relaying a story.  One of them that I remember hearing her say often was, “Life’s hard, Dear.”  I pause to use the past tense because her words often reverberate in my mind in the present tense.  This phenomena makes me curious about the legacy of words and beliefs that we pass down from generation to generation.  Is life really hard?  My mother thought it was.  The question is, what do I think? 
    I’ve had moments of complete ease in my life when things have fallen into place with no sweat from my own being.  I’ve also had times where I’ve felt things more stagnant, when there was less flow.  Yet I’ve often noted that when things felt really challenging, it was usually my method of framing the situation that made it so.  When I’ve tried to get outside my own myopic way of looking at a problem, I’d usually find more ease in finding a solution.  A little bit of surrender goes a long way. 
    When I think about my own children, I don’t want to pass down the notion that life is hard.  This is not to say that I don’t want them to be “hard-working” but what is that really?  Hard-working to me is the ability to maintain focus to get a job done.  It means putting your best energy into whatever you do.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be hard because when you love what you do, it can be time-consuming but not difficult.  Any challenges and obstacles that may occur can help us dig deeper - as Dolly Parton says, “Storms make trees take deeper roots.” I hope for my children that they will find ease in their lives and meaning in what they do.  I hope that they won’t have the core belief from their ancestors that “Life is Hard.”

Are there mantras that you remember your parents and grandparents repeating?  As an adult, do you believe these phrases?  Let go of the ones you don’t believe.  Edit the ones you partially believe.  Enjoy the ones that you wholeheartedly endorse.  I’m starting to wonder what my family would be like if I often repeated to my kids, “Life is fun!”

Litmus Test

279 Marbles

    Today I had proof that I have many marbles to go.  I went to my email and found a message meant for Ex-man.  It was an invitation for Ex-man and the kids from his sister (who sent it to my address by mistake) to a family celebration for Mother’s Day. 
    Now, logically I knew that it was an honest mistake and she wasn’t trying to be hurtful or exclusionary, but I still felt a bit sad that I’d be the mother absent at their celebration.   These are the type of unresolved feelings that, if I didn’t have 279 more marbles to go, I would carry into a new relationship. 
    Thankfully my logical mind was able to respond to the email in a short, polite exchange of information about Ex-man’s new email address but the heartburn lingers.  It represents the loss – the loss of family and connections.  In 279 Marbles, I hope that running into Ex-man’s family or getting a mistaken email will generate a neutral reading on my litmus paper heart.

I used to have and Ex who claimed that only “Time & Distance” healed the heartburn of a breakup. Unfortunately or not, the distance element can’t usually be part of a breakup when there are shared children.  My equation has become, “Time + Marbles” and I’m hoping that when the last marble drops, my life will be less about surviving a breakup and more about rebuilding a life of my choosing for me and my kids. I paraphrase Robert Frost when I say, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep/  But I have promises to keep/ And marbles to go before I sleep/ Marbles to go before I sleep."

Sexual Compatibility isn’t Compatibility

280 Marbles
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation…The other eight are unimportant.
Henry Miller, "Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch"

Instruction in sex is as important as instruction in food; yet not only are our adolescents not taught the physiology of sex, but never warned that the strongest sexual attraction may exist between persons so incompatible in tastes and capacities that they could not endure living together for a week much less a lifetime.
George Bernard Shaw

    It must be Spring – the celibacy thing is becoming a physical and mental challenge.  Anatole France wrote, “Of all the sexual aberrations, chastity is the strangest.”  As the air gets warmer, and the layers of winter clothing start revealing flesh in all shades and shapes, I’m tending to agree with old Anatole.  Yet I know my chastity oath is meant to be a short-term goal and method for breaking old cycles so I remain intent. Yet seeing as I can’t engage in sex, I can at least think about it...  
    One of my recent realizations has come from my relationship with Ex-man who taught me not to confuse sexual compatibility with compatibility.  This seems so straightforward – a no brainer - but somehow I would always get snagged on it.  I’d believe, “If the sexual connection is so good and if I can feel my heart open to him while we’re together in bed, then it must mean something.” It did.  It meant that my heart was open to him erotically but not emotionally in our everyday life.  If we could have lived our lives in bed, ours would have been a happy, even blissful union.
    I hope that my daughter learns this lesson easier than I did.  Somehow I think she will.  I remember one night after Ex-man said he was moving out - I was in the bedroom having a wee cry after I tucked my kids in bed.  My daughter came down into my bedroom and asked what was wrong.  I told her I was sad.  She curled up next to me and I said , “Don’t worry, it’s normal that I’m sad.  Everything is going to be okay. “ She asked me, “Why are you sad?” I answered, “I’m just sad about Daddy and me.  We’re not a good combo platter.  We don’t go well together.” She looked me in the eyes and took her little finger and tapped my forehead, “Took you long enough. I realized that when I was seven.” She smiled at me and I laughed.  Smart girl.  She’ll be okay.

Have you ever mistaken sexual compatibility for compatibility?  Have you ever tried to force sexual compatibility when it just wasn’t there?  I know in my next relationship, I’d like to be with someone with whom I have an emotional, intellectual, and sexual connection. I have a friend who claims that I'd be better off searching for a unicorn but I refuse to believe that this type of relationship isn't possible for me. 

A Dinner Party

281 Marbles 
A house is not a home unless it contains food and fire for the mind as well as the body.
Benjamin Franklin

    Tonight  I had my second dinner party since Ex-man moved out.  Can I afford it? Not really.  Can I afford not to?  Absolutely not.  I have to stay social, after all.  
    When my kids are here with me, I don’t like to go out; I’m miserly with my time with them and I don’t like to get a babysitter.  My job at the restaurant is social but most of my co-workers are considerably  younger than me and often we have different ideas of what it means to socialize.  
    For this dinner I had a dozen good friends and family including kids.  I made a long table out of two short ones and found a dozen mismatched chairs from throughout the house.  I set the table with my Mother’s silver and her best tablecloth. 
    I have a friend, Lisa P, who is the most gracious and organized hostess.  For tonight’s party I took a page from her playbook and prepped the dinner the day before – 2 lasagnas, 2 salads, and 2 appies (with my school year over, I now actually have spare time).  Tonight, when my friends arrived I was completely relaxed. 
    I can’t relay how important these times are to me and my kids.  They fill our walls with laughter and joy that radiates in the days that follow. 
    Next month, I’m not having a dinner.  I’ll save my entertainment budget for the following month – a Summer Solstice party – a celebration for the return of light.

Oscar Wilde wrote, “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”  I would adjust that to say, “After a good dinner party one can forgive anybody, even one’s own Ex-man.”  Dinner parties help me let go and move on.  Good friends, food, wine, and conversation - how could that not be fun?   
What are you doing for fun post breakup?  Are you doing enough socializing?  

Bad Connection

282 Marbles

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Marianne Williamson "Return to Love"

    I had a great day with myself today.  I went for a run, got some reading done, and did some writing. Then I went to work where I found the gossip mill running full throttle: The main focus was a new guy who has difficulty respecting personal boundaries. 
    At the best of times, working in a restaurant gets me out my insular world of writing and schoolwork.  It balances my introvert with my extrovert.  Today, however, I had a choice to connect with people (join in the gossip) or to bow out.  Bowing out would make me feel more connected with myself but disconnected from my co-workers.  Being a social creature, I chose to join in the chatter and within a few minutes, I regretted it.  It was jarring to the peaceful connection that I had nurtured with myself all day. 
    This pattern of choosing connection with others at the expense of my own connection was prevalent in my relationship with Ex-man.  Countless times I chose to engage with him in an adversarial manner, over walking away and coming back to myself.  I often chose a bad connection with another over a good connection with myself.   
    As girls, we are taught to stay connected.  What we aren’t taught is that good connections with others will come when we are centered in ourselves.  I see my young daughter struggle with this in her relationships.  Recently, in an assignment for school, she wrote, “I stress about friends because I have grown different relationships with my friends and I feel if I lose them I will be alone.”  

    Girls are conditioned to be social and, as a little girl one of the worst things that can be said is, “Who does she think she is?” This type of coercion is used to get those who are choosing to paint their lives outside the box back in line.  What was never asked is, “Who does she know she is?” But when we know who we are, we shine. 

Today, ponder the question, “Who do I know I am?” If it didn’t matter what other people thought of you, who would you be then?

283 Marbles...And Counting

283 Marbles
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.
Albert Einstein

    This morning I  conducted an audit of my marbles – not something I do everyday -  just a physical count to see that I didn’t miss a day of dropping a marble into the garden. 
    My eldest son came into the room and asked what I was doing.  When I told him, he said, “That’s a bit OCD, Mom.”  “I know,” I answered.
    My daughter joined in and said, “You’re crazy,” (in the most loving way possible). 
    My youngest son entered and started playing with the marbles as they were spread out on my duvet.  I became slightly anxious at the thought of my marbles rolling on the floor and being used as a game (tee hee, I do see the irony here). I told him, “You can play with the marbles that are outside, but the ones inside are mine.” He looked at me curiously because I’m usually a good sharer.
    So, I know that the marbles are a bit obsessive compulsive and a tad crazy, plus I get that marbles really are for playing with, but I hope that my kids see this eccentricity of mine as a coping strategy.  They see me functioning in every other way and the marble thing is usually part of my life, not theirs.
    The marbles are my meditation.  My mudra of change.

I write this from five years down the road, Dear Reader: If you haven’t become part of the marble movement, you may consider doing it by going to the dollar store and purchasing your own.  I guarantee that if you discard a marble a day for 365 days, your life will feel better when that last marble drops.  My earliest marbles post breakup were raw and therapy-like.  As the year progressed, the marbles became lighter, marble-seeds for the new life that I’ve built for myself and my kids. 

Gap Disease

284 Marbles
One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it's left behind.
Charles Dickens

    I am in the throes of the Gap Disease – the chasm between my sentimental memory of Ex-man and the reality of what it was like to be with him.  Once the anger, sadness, or regret has past (or at least lessened), I go into a feverous delirium where I can remember only the kind things, the sweet times, the good sex, and the love.  Gap Disease has many symptoms including the lure of sex with the ex, which is now reaching dangerous levels for me (believe it or not). 
    I don’t really have a cure for this disease, but a few ways to manage the symptoms could include:

• Seeing him – this may be enough of a cure (like a bathtub filled with ice cubes when you have a fever)

• Engaging in a good fight - as a reminder of why it doesn’t work

• Picturing him with a new mate – enough to make me angry and a good temporary cure

    One of the most dangerous symptoms of Gap Disease is its ability to attack your Internal Judgment Center: The disease can make you second-guess the choice to be apart.  If there’s been infidelity or an acrimonious divorce, consider yourself lucky as, in an odd way, those events often permanently inoculate against Gap Disease. 
    For me, I can only wait for the delirium to pass.  In the meantime I work on release.  I write . . .
Dear Ex-man,
I will miss … your whistling, your piano playing, your sweet voice, your shoulders, dancing with you (the one time when you led and I followed without contention), your sparkling green eyes, the way you gave your body, the perfect fit. 
You are loveable and you will be missed.  Godspeed. 
Xo,
Me

Are there parts of you that are still holding on to your X?  Even if the breakup was acrimonious, can you remember the good things about him/her and write a letter stating what you will miss? 

Love at First Sight

285 Marbles
The power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that it has come to be disbelieved in. Few people dare now to say that two beings have fallen in love because they have looked at each other. Yet it is in this way that love begins, and in this way only.
Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables”


    There seems to be a love theme in my daughter’s world.  Today, at the dinner table, she asked me about when I fell in love with her Dad.  “Was it love at first sight?” she asked.  “Yes,” I answered.  “How did you know?”  “The heart just knows,” I said. “How old were you,” asked my son.  “Fourteen, but when I really felt my heart grow two sizes was when he played the piano for me and a friend of ours.  We may have been fifteen.”  My daughter said, “But Dad always says that I don’t know about things because I’m too young.” “Hmmmm, that’s his point of view but what do you think?” “I don’t think I’m too young,” she responded.  It seems she’s getting curious about love and relationships.   
    So my first contact with Ex-man was at the Mayfair at his boys’ school with my friends from my girls’ school.  I saw him and our eyes locked - - then I blasted him with a water balloon.  He turned to me and pointed.  He saw me.  It’s almost like we’ve been throwing balloons at each other ever since.
    I spent the next few years being pals with him, putting him into headlocks just to get close to him.  He became the object of my love and I somehow thought that if he loved me back (in a way other than wrestling buddies) all would be fine in my world.  When we started dating a few years later, he told me that he had loved me all along. Everything was just as I had dreamed it would be, that is until he broke up with me on Thanksgiving Day when we were eighteen. 
    When we reunited ten years later after both of us had experienced a divorce, it felt that all was right in my world again.  It took me another breakup with him to start to realize that my world being right has little to do with him or anyone else.  These marbles are helping me break the cycle of letting my happiness rest on another.  They are helping me learn to be in love whether I am with someone or I’m solely with me. 

Can you be in love today, despite your breakup?  Vincent Van Gogh said, “Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.”  When you step out your door, walk in love…

When You Smell Gas, Get Out of the Kitchen

286 Marbles 

    I have a gas stove in the house where I live and tonight when I was cooking dinner for my kids, the flame must have gone out when it was on low.  When I went to turn it up, the gas started pouring out into the kitchen.  I almost went to relight it when I thought, “Bad idea.”  I left the kitchen until the gas dissipated and I could go back and safely relight the flame. 
    Funny thing is, as I was sitting in my bedroom away from the gas fumes, I wondered, “How come you didn’t have that simple skill of knowing when something was going to ignite when you were with Ex-man?”  It’s not like I couldn’t “smell the gas” when things got heated between us, yet somehow I thought it perfectly normal to continue engaging in an incendiary manner with him until things became explosive.  I’m not suggesting that he was the explosive one (I’ve already admitted the contrary) yet he had his own internal combustion going on, more like subterranean volcanic magma.  I always knew the tension was there but it was more dormant and he rarely exploded.  
    One aspect of my Earth and Ocean Science course I took last term that intrigued me was why the areas under dormant volcanoes are usually so heavily populated.  The primary reason is that the soils are fertile for growing things.  As I look back on my somewhat incendiary and sometimes explosive connection with Ex-man, I note that it was also fertile ground for growth.  My only hope is that in my next connection there will be a little less fire and a little more fun. 


If you look back on your relationship with your ex, are there elements of your dynamic that you'd like to leave behind?  Are there new aspects that you'd like to explore in your next relationship?  Can you be open to those aspects now while you are with yourself?   

Being In Love

287 Marbles
When another recognizes you, that recognition draws the dimension of Being more fully into this world through both of you. That is the love that redeems the world. 

Eckhart Tolle

    My daughter asked me last night as I was tucking her in bed, ”How do you know when you’re in love?”
    Hmmm, I said, “That’s a tricky question.” I have an interesting point of view about being in love that I tried to explain to her, “Most people say they’re in love when they have a feeling of joy being with another person.  They feel really, really happy but I think this is the way we are supposed to be all the time.” I told her that in a perfect world, I think we’re meant to walk “in love” every minute of the day.  Our hearts are meant to be open to the world, but they aren’t so we have this little reflection of what being “in love” is.  To make matters worse, we project our little reflection on another person so that if they leave, or die, or otherwise vanish from our life, we think that they take our ability to be “in love” with them.  When you look at truly great spirits (e.g. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama) these people walk the world “in love”.  They’re understanding of love isn’t limited to one person, one family, or one nation. 
    “That’s weird,” my daughter said then she asked me again, “But how do you know when you’re in love?
    I answered, “You know you’re in love when your heart grows two sizes, just like the Grinch’s did when he brought back all those toys to Whoville.  You know you’re in love when you’re with someone who can make even the rainiest day seem like sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows.  You know you’re in love when your whole being lights up around another person. When you feel this, know that it isn’t about the other person.  It’s about your own sweet heart.”  (I don't really expect her to get this as I'm still getting this myself.  All I can do is plant seeds)
    “Some people say I’m too young to know what love is,” she said. 
    “I don’t believe that for a minute. You have a heart, just like the Tin Man always did.  It’s not like you’re going to grow one over time.”
    She smiled at me and closed her eyes.  

If the ability to walk in love isn't lost after a breakup then why does my heart feel like a shriveled raisin?  I am simply mourning the loss/change of connection to someone I loved.  I'm mourning the loss of a dream of a nuclearish family.  I'm letting go of all the things I projected into our future. I'm letting go of our long history together (over 1/4 of a century- Yikes!). I'm learning to stay present.  

Know too that with time, your heart will plump up and love again.  It's the nature of hearts.  It's what they do. 

A Home for a Bunny

288 Marbles
You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. 
Maya Angelou

    Before I could read, I was obsessed with Margaret Wise Brown’s picture book “Home for a Bunny.”  I insisted that my Mom read it over and over again until I finally had it memorized.  When I could recite it by heart, I thought I was “reading”. 
    Not only did this book tickle my literacy bone, I still remember the story about a bunny searching for a home “under a rock, a tree, or a stone.”  The bunny asks various animals where their homes are and all of the habitats are unsuitable - in trees or bogs.  Finally, the bunny finds another bunny and the two rabbits shack up. 
    I think that most of my life I’ve been searching for home.  I’ve found lots of critters to co-habitate with, but none of them have been home.  I’ve gained some good insights along the way about what home feels like and what it doesn’t feel like.  I started on the quest because the place where I came from didn’t feel exactly like what I wanted home to be.  Turns out, from a young age I was hard-wired to be domesticated. 
   So what is home to me?  A soft place to fall but not because the world is a spiky and dangerous place but because I can get tired fluttering out in the world.  So maybe it’s better to say that home is a soft place to land, surrounded by people whom I love, the incubator for all our creativity.  And now that Ex-man is no longer part of my equation of home, I have the freedom in the next 297 Marbles to figure out exactly what I want my home to be like and feel like. 

Here are a few quotes about home:

Home is not where you live but where they understand you.  

~Christian Morgenstern 

"There's no place like home.  There's no place like home." 
Dorothy Gale, The Wizard of Oz Movie (or in the book, "Take me home to Aunt Em!")

Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., Homesick in Heaven

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.  

~Charles Dickens

He is the happiest, be he king or peasant, who finds peace in his home.  

~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.

~ Thornton Wilder

Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it - memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey.

~Tad Williams

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.
~Gaston Bachelard

It is not so important where one settles down. The best thing is to follow your instincts without too much reflection.

~Albert Einstein 

Home is the girl’s prison and the woman’s workhouse.  

~George Bernard Shaw

Tee hee - the last one is for contrast but it's humor is in its accuracy. What is home to you?  Have you created the home you want?  Do you want to be at home more?  Do you want your energy to be out in the world more?  What would it take to create the balance that you desire?

The First Attraction

289 Marbles 
Breaking up. It happens kind of suddenly. One minute, you're holding hands walking down the street, and the next minute, you're lying on the floor crying and all the good CDs are missing. 
Kennedy Kasares

    We had a guest speaker tonight in my Human Sexuality course.  He had kind eyes.  He was well-spoken.  He believed in his work.  He made me laugh.   I talked to him after class and there was a spark: He was a shaft of light and I thought for the first time, “There may indeed be life after Ex-man.” (Yes, I know, in 298 Marbles)
    Then I got home.  Ex-man had dropped off the kids and put them to bed.  In the process he had decided to go through my CD cabinet and take more CD’s that were “his”.  When I called him, I was pissed off.  It’s not the CD’s (they can be replaced), it’s not the fact that most of them were “ours”, what bothers me is that Ex-man had promised to call to discuss any further removal of possessions.  I felt like I couldn’t trust him as he had broken our agreement and violated my space with the kids.  I tried to convey these feelings and he kept saying, “It’s not important,” “Get over it.” The problem was that it was important to me, and it was important enough to him to enter my home to take the CDs.  Although I couldn’t see myself doing it, for argument’s sake, I suggested I go to his house to retrieve them when he wasn’t there.  He was incensed.  

    I wondered, “Was it a coincidence that the very night that I felt the possibility of another attraction, Ex-man did something that put me right back into a conflictual relationship with him?”  I don’t know the answer to this but I do find the synchronicity of the two events curious.  I also know that people have connections on several levels and even though there is a physical separation between Ex-man and me, there still exists an emotional connection that seems a little more tedious to unravel.  What the evening made crystal clear is that my letting go process is not quite complete, despite my wanting it so. 

My questions today are, "What would it take for these situations with Ex-man to hold less of a charge?"  "Are arguments a way of re-establishing a relationship after a breakup?"

Canker Sores

290 Marbles
Have you ever been hurt and the place tries to heal a bit, and you just pull the scar off of it over and over again.
Rosa Parks 

   I have a canker sore in my mouth.  My tongue always goes to it, probing it, hurting it.  I’m not sure why my tongue won’t leave it alone, find another resting spot in my mouth that isn’t quite so sore.
   I have an Ex-man in my head.  My mind festers with arguments with him, defending my point of view and the way I see the world.  Just like with a canker sore, I function through my life without anyone really knowing it’s there.  Sure, some people know that there’s been a breakup but they don’t see all the little strings of connections that just won’t be cut, they don’t see all the underground angst (the exception is you, dear Reader, who has access to all my neuroses). 
   A good friend reminded me that I have a choice what to decorate my mind with.  When my mind goes to the negative, she suggested I wear an elastic and I snap it to get my mind back on track.  My wrist is now sore.  I probe at the breakup.  It hurts.  I don’t know why I just can't leave it alone, find some other area of focus in my expansive mind. 
   I’m not sure why my mind keeps going there.  It’s like the tongue on the canker sore.  It only causes more pain and it doesn’t help in the healing.  What would it take for me to let go?  Another person? Ha, I’ve decided against that remedy.  I ask again, what would it take for me to let go?  The answer comes back: Time.  Marble upon marble of time.

I try to remind my children that the body moves toward healing.  When they cut themselves it takes time but eventually, their bodies heal the cut.  Know today that if you’re still feeling pain from the severed feel that a breakup can have, the spirit moves toward healing and in time, the cut will feel healed. 

Yoga and Drag Queens

291 Marbles
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.
George Bernard Shaw

   I had a dark night of the soul last night and could not fall asleep until well after four am.  Ex-man and I had a stupid fight last night about an ipod charger.  He was telling me that the charger our daughter took to his house was “his” charger.  We have bought our kids (or they have been given) four ipods over the years and each came with a charger. The details of possession seemed irrelevant to me. The fact that it mattered to him was relevant.  It felt to me like he was hoarding. Why the heck is a charger important between friends who have known each other over twenty five years?  And what is it with his need to own two of something that would leave me without one?  Yes, I could buy another charger, but should I have to?  And where are the other two missing ipod chargers?
   I couldn’t fall asleep until after four in the morning.  I think the contrast of yesterday’s post about there still being so much love and last night’s fight about an ipod charger seemed ripe with irony.  On the one hand there may be love but on the other there is utter incompatibility.  I should be thankful for life’s way of reminding me of this last simple fact.
   My running partner has been sober for two years and he says that when I talk about Ex man, I sound like a junkie.  According to him, Ex-man is my bad drug and just like with any drug, I need to realize he is bad for me, do the detox work, continue to avoid him, and do the work to make myself well.
   So what to do to make myself well this morning when I’m exhausted from lack of sleep? When I have a couple of hours to put on a smile and work tonight?  Yoga and drag queens.  Yoga because it reminds me to breathe.  Drag queens, I can’t explain so easily but I’ll try: Fabulous drag queens make me happy.  I can’t get enough of them: I watch them on Youtube, I go do drag shows whenever I can, I watch RuPaul’s Drag Race.  Drag queens are subversive, creative, funny, and fabulous.  Perhaps I know that if the world can make room for subversive, gender-bending men, that world is expansive enough for me.  There is a quote from Proverbs that says,“Your gift will make room for you”  and I find this most applicable to the talent of the entertaining drag queen.  And maybe it’s just that drag queens are downright fun; they remind me about play.  My world needs more fun.

What do you do that has no value except fun?  Things like sports can be fun but there are benefits to health and physique.  Is there something that you can do that’s sole purpose is for fun?  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “It is a happy talent to know how to play."

Sitting in Sadness

292 Marbles
When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn’t a sign that they “don’t understand” one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.
Helen Rowland

    Today I had t o talk to Ex-man re:soccer pick-ups and drop-offs.  At one point he said my name and at that moment, I knew that he loved me in a deep and abiding way. We have loved each other and been together and we’re not together anymore and although there has been the recognition that we are not compatible as life partners, the love is still there. 
    I felt incredibly sad for myself.  I felt incredibly sad for our children.  I felt an invisible leg-hold trap contracting my heart.  The most challenging thing when I’m sad is to disconnect from all the stories around why I feel the way I do, and just stay in the feeling. When I got off the phone, I had a good cry.  After a few minutes of sitting in sadness, I said the serenity prayer:
    God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
    Courage to change the things I can
    And wisdom to know the difference.   

    The reality is that I can’t wallow in my sadness often - I have to keep things together for myself, I have to keep things together for my kids, I have schoolwork that needs doing and a job that I need to pay the bills.  Yet when I allowed myself to sit in the sadness and have the release with my tears, I felt lightness coming into my being again.  The leg hold trap loosens its grip on my heart and I feel more open and able to go back into my life feeling more present. And I let go of the need of having the love that I sense is still there expressed in one particular formula.  

Can you experiment with what it would look like to still care for/love your ex and not be with him/her?  In our limited reality, there are often these two formulas: loving & being together and hating & being apart.  Could you create a new formula that suits the two of you?

Breast Test

293 Marbles
Independence is happiness.
Susan B. Anthony
Interdependency follows independence.
Stephen R. Covey

    I found a lump in my breast two weeks ago and today I went to the doctor to have it tested.  The doctor couldn’t tell whether it was in the breast tissue but she said it is small and very mobile – both good signs.  She scheduled me for an ultrasound next week. 
    I had to ask Ex-man to pick the kids up from school so I could go for the test.  He asked why and I told him, “Small lump,  no big deal.”  I’m not sure why I even told him as it made me feel so vulnerable.  In hindsight, I wish I had opted for a bit more of a filter and a lot more opaqueness but I think my psyche still doesn't quite get it that this man knew everything about me up until a few short months ago.  It's still playing catch up.   
   “Good luck next week,” he said.  That’s when it hit me: I’m doing this on my own.  When I hung up, I had a bit of a cry. 
   I’m not sure why I’m such an fool.  I’m sure I could find a friend to come with me but I know everyone is busy with their own lives and I don’t want to be a drama queen or a hypochondriac.  I rationalize that the lump is probably nothing.   If the news is bad then I’ll call in the reinforcements.  If it’s good, I might have a cocktail and a really good chocolate bar.  

Breakups require the reestablishment of independence.  What was once interdependence (or co-dependence) now looks more like learning to stand alone again.  There can be great freedom in independence including the liberty to create your own unique life.  Yet the trick is to balance our independent selves with our interdependent selves.  Can you picture a interdependent life for yourself that includes a tribe of family and friends around you that you can lean on in challenging times and celebrate with in happier times?  I know I’m trying to create this for me and my family after the musical chairs of the breakup (Marble 336).  

Refinishing

294 Marbles 
Sometimes you have to kind of die inside in order to rise from your own ashes and believe in yourself and love yourself to become a new person.
Gerard Way

    Last year for Mother’s Day, Ex-man bought me a single wooden deck chair for me to lounge in and enjoy.  Later that month, he would tell me he was leaving and that lone chair would become a metaphor for our relationship - no complete matching sets in our backyard.   
    All winter long, the chair sat out in the rain and snow.  It became weathered but internally, I was feeling so winter that I didn’t notice.  I’d pass by it everyday but it didn’t even cross my mind to bring it inside to protect it.  I don’t think I was even thinking that Spring would come and I would want to lounge outside again. 
    This morning I noticed it as I passed by.  I had a good look at the chair and decided to take action and revive it again.  I sanded it until I came down to the unweathered wood and then I stained and varnished it. 
    Mother’s Day is soon (in my place in space and time) and the chair and I have endured the winter.  I’m looking forward to enjoying some warming Spring sunshine as I sit in my new again chair. 
Something to be grateful for today: the smell of water on warm cement.

Look around you and notice anything that needs reviving.  Can you make it a project to breathe new life into your surroundings?  Goethe said, “We must always change, renew, rejuvenate ourselves; otherwise we harden.”  I believe this sentiment applies to our physical surroundings: We must always renew, change, rejuvenate our surroundings otherwise they stagnate.”

Keep Growing

295 Marbles -
Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.
Morihei Ueshiba

    Today as I passed my marble out my window, I looked at the severed rubber plant that my friend Lisa P gave me (354 Marbles) and decided it was time for it to be planted.  I went to the local garden store and bought the right type of rooting compound, some soil, and a terra cotta pot. 
    Turns out, I’m a bit of an oddball – talking to my little severed limbed plant as I repot it.  My little plant pep talk went like this, “You’ve got everything you need.  Now all you have to do is sprout some roots and grow.”  Hmmm, sounds familiar. 
    It felt so good to tuck the little severed branch into its bed, smoothing the soil around it.  Who knew a little bit of indoor gardening could be such good therapy?

Do what it takes to keep your spirit in the land of the living.  What would it take today to make your spirit feel alive? 

Gardening Inside

296 Marbles
Life is change. The degree that we refuse to accept this fact and resist the natural life changes, we will continue to perpetuate our own suffering. The acceptance of change can be an important factor in reducing a large measure of our self-created suffering.
Dalai Lama

    I’m trying to keep flowers in the house – mini daffodils, irises, tulips, and hyacinths.  I like the feeling of growth in the house: growing flowers, growing children, growing strength. 
    Flowers are something that lovers buy for each other and since this year is about getting over a breakup and not focusing on an exterior relationship (with anyone other than friends/family), I like the feeling of buying flowers for myself.  The cut ones seem too much of a lesson in impermanence as their only redemption after they die is as compost fodder.  For now, I like growing flowers.  Yes, they too inevitable die but then the bulbs can be salvaged as a reminder of life’s cyclical nature.  My flowers help me remember to enjoy the moment of bloom.
    I purchase these little plants for a few dollars at the market and after they’ve bloomed and died, the bulbs go outside into the garden.  Next year, when I see the buds emerge after a cold winter in the soil, my year of marbles will be over.  Sometimes what looks like death is really just a perennial bulb waiting to sprout.
    I realize that a great deal of my pain over this breakup comes from resisting the change.  I imagine if I were a better life surfer that I would be able to take whatever life gives and ride the wave with more grace.  Perhaps that is a goal: to have greater ease in letting go of the things that cannot be changed.  

It feels good to surround yourself with things that are living.  Are there ways that you can bring more life into your home?  Flowers? Plants?  As our worlds shift post breakup, there are often things that are hanging around us with which we no longer have a connection.  Can you dispose of things that are not alive to you?
   

Change Yourself, Change your World?

297 Marbles
The person who sends out positive thoughts activates the world around him positively and draws back to himself positive results.
Norman Vincent Peale

    I have five older sisters and an older brother – kind of.  The sisters are my blood, the other is a brother of the heart: When life didn’t give me any brothers, I needed to improvise and there he was.  I talked to him today on the phone and he told me some great news - he recently reunited with the love of his life from college.  They just got back from a birthday getaway in San Francisco to celebrate his fiftieth birthday.  I was so happy for him as since this first "full meal deal" girlfriend, all subsequent women were nothing but table scraps.  When I hung up the phone I smiled.  He sounded so content. 
    Then I got curious – whatever happened to the emotional undulations of this extremely passionate person?  I called him back, “Are you able to be with her now because you are more able to be with yourself?” “Absolutely,” he answered.  He had spent so many years after his first girlfriend unsuccessfully looking for love outside of himself. When he exhausted the idea of love as external, he turned around and there she was again. He claims the change was first within himself and then his world rearranged to support him in a new and more expansive way.  
    I have another friend whose husband often teased her with deprecating remarks.  She recently landed an amazing new job and the last time I saw them together, her husband was filled with nothing but complimentary remarks.  I commented on the change in him and she said, “The change was all in me.” 
    So is that it then?  Change yourself and change your world?  Albert Einstein attested, “The world we have created is a product of our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”  Whereas you can doubt the validity of the law of attraction crowd, you cannot deny the word from one of the most brilliant scientist of our era. 
    I have a friend from high school who always used to say to me, “You are so creative.” In her view, I could paint, write, arrange flowers, take and develop photographs, and cook or bake up a storm.  She saw herself as not the creative type but when I looked at her, I saw what an amazing and happy home and life that she had created for herself and her family, including a loving relationship with her husband. This latter manifestation of her creative abilities has eluded me to this day.
    What I know is that I once feared being a single mom with every cell in my body.  I cannot deny the possibility that my very thoughts and fears brought me to the reality in which I am now living.  Here I stand and not only do I feel less scared because that which I feared has happened, but I also realize that I am breathing, loving, and at times, feeling great joy. Now that I have entered the place that I feared I would create, the question is, what is the space that I actually desire to create?

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”  Become aware of your thoughts that are heavy, restrictive, contracting, and imprisoning.  What would it look like to turn the key of your mind and open up to more light, expansive, free thinking? 

Thought Power

298 Marbles
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
Henry David Thoreau

   There are many sages throughout the ages have agreed on this one theory/fact: Our lives are the physical representation of what we believe.  Gandhi said, “A man is but the product of his thoughts; What he thinks, he becomes.”  Kierkegaard wrote, “Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts.”  Galatians 6:7 gives us “You reap what you sow” or whatever you plant is what you harvest (I believe this is related to thoughts as well as our actions).  Norman Vincent Peale had this to say about transformation, “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” 
   This breakup and these 365 Marbles are an excellent time for me to unpack my baggage of thoughts and decide which ones I truly believe.  This involves going through my thoughts as if they were clothing and deciding which thoughts are old and tattered and no longer fit me (sometimes those ones are hand-me-downs from my family) and which thoughts feel light and fun to wear.  The former thoughts can be discarded once there is the realization that they no longer serve me, the latter thoughts can be repacked into my kit bag and taken into the future.   I know there will also be gaps in my wardrobe of thoughts that will have to be filled in with new, more expansive beliefs. 
   What I also know is that a breakup is the perfect time for this process.  There are silent agreements that we sometimes make when we are in a relationship.  Sometimes we wear thoughts that we don’t really like because our partner likes that type of thought on us and it is easier to dress accordingly than to find the wardrobe of thinking that truly represents who we are as individuals.  A breakup can give us the freedom to examine and sort through these old thoughts to make way for the new, better fitting ones.

Become aware of your thoughts as the seeds from which everything in your life grows.  Are there seeds that are growing weeds?  Can you replace them with seeds that will grow something more beautiful or more nourishing? 

The First Holiday

299 Marbles
Drag your thoughts away from your troubles... by the ears, by the heels, or any other way you can manage it.
Mark Twain

    Yesterday was Easter, the first holiday since move out date.  I did the usual hunt with the kids then we went to a family brunch to celebrate my Mom’s 85th birthday.  Ex-man came and it all went remarkably well.  Then I went to work and ultimately to bed.  I guess there was too much for my sleeping mind to process so I woke up at 4:26 am, wide awake.  A dose of herbal Valium ushered me back to sleep, but as I drifted away, I dreaded my dreams.  
    At least with my conscious mind I can squish thoughts that I don’t want to hold, kind of like the ant infestation I’m having in my kitchen. Last Spring, the ants had the decency to arrive announced and mannerly through the front door.  A line of ground coffee along the doorsill remedied the problem and sent the message that they were not welcome.   This year they arrived in full force on several fronts, including under dips in the floorboards.  Normally I keep a fairly Buddhist sensibility when it comes to insects: Arachnids, flies and bees that make their way inside get let out through a window.  Mosquitoes and ants, however, I squish every time.  Similarly, I’m beginning to watch the negative thoughts that make their way into my mind much like I watch the ants.  I get curious and try the watch the thought to find out where it’s coming from – the source of the infestation.  I’m getting better at squishing the thoughts before they run away on me. 
     As I dozed off to sleep last night, I had the feeling that I was spreading the kitchen floor with apple juice and jam and turning off the lights, letting the ants and the thoughts run amuck. 
    I dreamed we had lost my daughter’s white shoes outside.  She found some shoes but they were a stranger’s black sandals.  I told her we had to find her shoes and when we went outside again, Ex-man’s whole family were playing a game of soccer.  We had to weave through the field looking for the sandals and my eldest son started to help us.  As we were searching, I met every person associated with the family.  Many ignored me, not knowing what to say.  I was bereft but tried to hold my head up.  At the end of the field, we found the sandals. 
    When I woke this morning I was sad.  Sadness is not a thought  - it’s a feeling, and I can’t squish the feeling. Yet as I read Mark Twain’s quote, I wonder if by focusing on the bits of sadness, I’m not ignoring all the other areas of my life that are more expansive.  Is it like sitting in my kitchen, obsessing with the pesky ants?  Sure, I have to deal with the ants but there are so many other rooms in my house that are far less troublesome. 

Thoughts from an Easter Monday: Breakups can feel like death and there are many areas of your life that have to be mourned.  Yet the celebration of Easter can remind that life arises even after death.  Know that you are perennial: when you have survived this winter of your life you will spring forth with beauty and life again.  Like perennials we have the ability to endure and last an infinitely long time. 

My Deepest Fear

300 Marbles –
Fear is the cheapest room in the house.
I would like to see you living
In better conditions
Hafiz

    I remember watching a talk show with a mother who lost her young son when he contracted E. coli from a swimming pool.  The thing that struck me about this woman was that she was a germaphobe who was hyper-vigilant about cleanliness.   She would consistently bleach her counter surfaces, appliances, bathrooms, etc. so that the germs wouldn’t stand a chance.  From the time her son was born, she was fearful of him contracting salmonella, E. coli, botulism and the other bacteria that could endanger his health or be fatal. Her house was immaculate and yet she couldn’t protect her son from his death. 
    How does this happen?  How does a woman whose deepest fear was germs lose her son to E. coli?  She  reminds me of the king from Sleeping Beauty who, after hearing the oracle that his daughter would die from the prick of a spinning wheel, destroyed all the spinning wheels in the kingdom.  Yet even in his vigilance he could not keep his child safe.  Did the mother somehow sense her son’s demise to germs?  Or is it that sometimes we draw our deepest fear into existence by the very energy that is intended to oppose it?  I don’t have an answer to these questions.  Maybe it was mother’s intuition.  Maybe it was a completely random “accident”. 
       What I do know is that one of my deepest fears was to be a single mother.  The reason that I was so afraid of this path was that single mothers in my family do not thrive; There is an underlying belief that we need a man to survive. This fear plays out in myriad ways but in my case, when Ex-man started coming around again when my eldest son was a toddler, I re-entered the relationship despite the numerous warning signs and my intuition telling me “Don’t go back”.  My son and I were doing well, and we could have continued to thrive on our own but I was afraid of being a single mother.  The irony is that I ended up with a man who never really took me in so my single (parent)hood was continually reinforced. 
    I can’t regret the path I chose as I wouldn’t have my youngest two children in my life if it weren’t for our union.  Yet, perhaps the charge around the fear caused me to end up precisely where I did not want to be - in the position of a single mother.  And when I stand in that position and truly own it, I realize that it is not as bad as I thought it would be.  I wake up from the nightmare that I’ve created. 

The poet Hafiz wrote:
You carry
All the ingredients
To turn your life into a nightmare -
Don’t mix them!
I believe that when you have large doses of fear, you automatically mix the ingredients and nightmares pop into your life. Think about the role fear has in your life.  Can you sift out the fear before you mix the ingredients? 

Empty House Syndrome

301 Marbles
When I’m dating I look at a guy and wonder, “Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?”
Rita Rudner

   It’s been just over two months since Ex-man moved out and the kids started spending half the week with him.  At first the house echoed with emptiness and it was challenging to get used to the gaping holes that they left in their wake.  Now that a bit of time has passed and my resilient spirit has kicked in a bit, I’m starting to grow accustomed to all the space that has opened up on the weekends. 
   Kids take up lots of space.  I always tell pregnant friends to get ready because when you have children, it’s like you become a stuff magnet.  It’s great - everyone passing on their baby clothes, toys, and accoutrements (such as baby swings, bouncers, etc.), but you have to be selective or you start to drown in things.  But it’s not just the physical space, but the mental space required to be a parent and now that I’m a tag-team parent, there is way more brain space.  It’s not like I’m not a parent when my kids are with Ex-man, it’s just that I know he does an amazing job of parenting them as well.  It’s true, we don’t always agree on technique but I know that his intentions are always good when it comes to his kids.  This gives me a lot of security and as a writer the extra brain space is a welcome relief. 
   What I’m noticing is that new characters are starting to take up residence in the sometimes empty rooms of my brain left by my children.  It may sound a bit crazy, but I’ve always claimed that writing is just a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.  I’m curious to know more about these characters dancing in my head and what stories they will whisper to me in the months to come.
   I wouldn’t have written my life to be like this: I wanted a cohesive family but as I learn to let go of what I don’t have control over, I’m able to open to the things that work in ways that maybe I couldn’t have consciously planned. 

Are there things in your post breakup life that you can learn to accept and maybe even feel grateful for?  Are there new spaces being opened up?  As Eckhart Tolle writes, “Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

The Claddagh Ring

302 Marbles

I know what I have given you…

I do not know what you have received.

Antonio Porchia 

   Ex-man gave me a Claddagh ring one Christmas when I was pregnant with our daughter.  It was originally his silver ring that he had re-sized for me.  His aunt gave him heck for not giving me a gold female version of the traditional Irish ring, but I preferred his chunkier male version. 
   The Claddagh ring has two hands clasping a heart topped by a crown.  The hands symbolize friendship; the heart, love; the crown, loyalty.  The ring is used as a token of friendship or as an engagement/wedding ring and the way the ring is worn denotes the wearer’s marital/relationship status:
1. For engagement - on the left hand with the point of the heart toward the fingertips
2.  For marriage - on the left hand with the heart in reverse
3.  For singles looking for love - on the right hand with the point of the heart toward the

    fingertips
4.  For those in a relationship whose heart is “taken” - on the right hand with the point of

     the heart toward the wrist
   I always wore the ring on my left hand with the heart facing inwards denoting marriage, although at the time I thought that it meant that my heart was taken.  In hindsight, the appropriate placement for the ring would have been on my right hand because in our dozen years together, we never quite made it to the altar. 
   I haven’t been wearing the ring since the breakup.  The last time I went through my jewelry box, I knew there was no reason for me to hold on to it anymore.  Today, I put it in a box and returned it to him.  It was his ring originally and although he may never wear it again, it was time to give it back. This gesture was another step in the slow process of extricating ourselves from each other.  I do not know how he received it but I do know that I felt lighter after I did it.   

Breakups are all about extricating yourself from your ex, string by string.  The definition of extricate is “to release from an entanglement or difficulty; to disengage.” Are there physical representations of the entanglement that you are still holding on to?  Can you release one of these symbols of your connection? 

Heart Gifts

303 Marbles

If you have much, give of your wealth; If you have little, give of your heart.
Arab Proverb

    “This is the year of heart gifts,” I tell my friends.  What I don’t tell them is that my cash flow could be better and the heart gifts are a necessity.  A heart gift is the type of gift I made loved ones in elementary school when the piggy bank held only pennies but the love ranneth over.  So, I’m reapplying this practice and I’m marking birthdays with pampering manicures or pedicures (I give a mean French manicure) all wrapped in lots of heart. 
    It all seems good in theory but today my friend Fay arrived from out of town for a visit.  Her birthday got muddled in with Ex-man’s move out week so it was marked with a birthday song on her answering machine.  I let myself off the hook because I clearly couldn’t package my personal manicure and send it to her but today I aimed to celebrate her birthday.  I picked her up from the airport and brought her home to my freshly squeezed OJ with some bubbly then I set to work on her nails.  In the middle of her hand massage she jested, “Will you marry me?” Ha, everyone needs a good wife – part personal assistant, part housekeeper, part bartender/chef, part massage therapist and beauty consultant. 
    Mid-manicure, I noticed her new purse and commented on it.  She told me the story of how she would frequently go into her favourite department store and ogle the $500 purse that she felt too thrifty to buy.  Before her birthday, a friend of hers went in and asked the sales associates what Fay would really like.  They both pointed at the purse, so the friend bought it.  My immediate response was to marvel at what an excellent magnet she had become, but my verbal response was, “Some friends get you $500 purses, some give you a manicure.”  She looked at me, even I was embarrassed by my shame -  I was that little kid bringing my sparkly macaroni-shell necklace home to my Mom when I knew that there was real jewelry to be had in the stores. “And those are the friends who are important,” Fay answered.  

   She may be right, but the real question remains – just when will I feel what I have to give is good enough? If I could only truly take in what Kahlil Gibran wrote in The Prophet,"You give but little when you give of your possessions.  It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

A breakup affects the status quo rippling into many areas of life.  Can you make peace with the adjustments you have to make to live in your new normal?  If needed, can you work towards changes to improve your situation?  

Draw me a Heart

304 Marbles

Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

Antoine de Saint Exupéry, "The Little Prince"

    My blond, curly haired little prince came to me today with a pen and a piece of paper and said, “Draw me a heart.” 
    I drew my son a heart then he wanted to know if he could learn to draw a heart.  We practiced several times but it’s tricky to get the heart looking like a heart when you’re little.  So I showed him how to cut one out: We folded the paper and drew the half-heart shape.  We decided that this shape looked like a whale sticking his head out of the water.
    My son was happy to see a heart when I opened the paper.  He tore the heart in half and said,  “I’m going to give this half to daddy so he knows that you love him.” 
   The heart connection that I still have with Ex-man is now invisible to the eye but it hasn't gone unnoticed by my littlest prince. 
    
My stories have been mainly about how this breakup affects me, but of course the breakup with Ex-man has transformational effects on our children.  One of the things that I've done to support them is to make sure we make regular visits to our homeopath/naturopath.  She helps their physical bodies and emotional bodies and continues to be someone that they can talk with about the changes in their lives. 
   

The Diving Tank

305 Marbles
Every orientation presupposes a disorientation.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger

    There's a device that's used in naval aviation training that stimulates what happens when an aircraft lands in water.  The trainee is turned upside down and submerged and must find his/her way out of the cockpit and quickly make way to the surface.  Sometimes this breakup can make me feel like I'm in one of these devices, like my job is to find which way is up so I can reach the oxygen at the surface. 
   My friend, Lisa P, told me a story of how when she was 5, she was at her Grandma’s swimming pool.  She fell into the water while she was carrying a big beach towel and the weight of it started sinking her to the bottom.  She couldn’t let go of the towel because she thought she’d get in heck, so she clung to the towel despite it being what was pulling her down.  When she realized that she was drowning and she couldn’t tell which way was up, she decided to follow her air bubbles to the surface (even as a five-year-old she was incredibly smart).  This is how she saved herself.  By following the bubbles.
   This breakup feels disorienting especially since Ex-man and I have such a long history together.  He has been one of my frames of reference for over half of my life.  In addition, I often feel like I'm diving into my past, the places where I first learned about love, and I'm being asked to untangle the truth from the misunderstandings about love.  Then my job is to follow the bubbles of truth to the surface because that's what will save me.  That's what will save my family.  

Can you identify any metaphorical wet towels that are pulling you down?  Can you let them go?  More importantly, if you're feeling like you're overwhelmed, like you're drowning, can you follow the bubbles to the surface?

He said, She said

306 Marbles 
You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present.  
Jan Glidewell
 
    Ex-man and I have so many stories about each other - at times I find myself doing a reality check.  How much of the stories are true? How much are embellishments? 
Recently I went to a family dinner where Ex-man told the story of how when we were reunited in our twenties and had a long distance relationship, my eldest son and I would get so upset when he left to go home on the plane.  Eventually, we couldn't even take him to the airport because we were so distraught so his friend had to drive him.  As a result, he ended up, in his words,"selling my multimillion dollar business and becoming a gardener."  
   I sat there fascinated at his rendition of "our" history as it bore no resemblance to my own recollections.  Sure, I used to be sad to see him go but I always remember driving him to the airport.  In addition, his story shmacked of a person who didn't want to take responsibility for the choices he'd made in his life.  
   What's the point of arguing whose story is closer to what actually occurred?  We both have an investment in our own versions - his investment is that he didn't have any other choice but to get out of a business that was financially successful and find another way to make less money closer to home (this is another version of the victim theme).  My investment in my story is that, despite my feelings, I can handle my emotions and, like a good girlfriend, I continued to drive him to the airport even if it made me sad.  Yet I sat there as he told his story and bit my tongue because I knew that somewhere between what he says and what I say, there is the truth of what actually happened.  At this point, however, the past is a moot point.  My job is to let it go so that I can embrace the present. 

Do you waste time and energy in "he said, she said" debates with your ex?  If so, know that you will probably never remember the past in or see the present in the same manner.  Whenever possible, disengage your energy from this struggle.  Sometimes this type of engagement can ease the feeling of losing someone in your life by maintaining a negative connection.  The tension can also give a sense of relief for "not having the person in your life anymore".