The First Leaf Unfurls

125 Marbles 

    My favorite shirt right now is one given by my running partner to my son who promptly outgrew it.  I was in the process of throwing it into the donation bin when I took it out and kept it.  I started wearing it despite the fact that I don’t really like t-shirts.  It is a light green shirt with a silhouette of an expansive tree with roots reaching deep into the ground.  It reminds me of a yoga teacher who once kept us all in Tree Pose for a delayed amount of time and told us all to “Grow roots.”  At first I was fixated on trying to maintain my balance but that phase passed and soon I reached a few moments of equilibrium where I was just able to be.  It was only when I was able to let go of my focus on balance that I was truly able to find my core. 
    I went into my kitchen this morning and noticed that my rubber plant (Marble 295) has grown a new leaf.  At first this tender new leaf grew protected in a spike-shaped sheath but today the protection fell away and the new leaf unfurled. 
    It’s been 242 marbles and almost eight months since Ex-man moved out.  I finally feel like my feet are directly under me and I have my balance, now the question is “Where do I want to go?” (I can’t stay in tree pose forever.) I’ve been thinking about that question a lot these days and the response that keeps pestering me as I’m working on my script is, “I want to go to New Orleans.”

Do you feel that you have your balance post breakup? If so, where would you like to go?

Every Love Story is a Tragedy…

126 Marbles …If you follow it to the end.
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.  
Kahlil Gibran

       I had a writing teacher that used to say, “Every love story is a tragedy.”  I used to think that her point of view was pessimistic but since then I’ve seen her sentiment in action.
        Ex-man’s parents were Irish and shared the uncommon names of two famed lovers in Irish folklore.  When the real-life lovers met, there lives entwined and they became best friends, spouses, and travel companions.  Theirs was a relationship of acceptance and abiding love.  I remember watching as they slow danced in the living room at a family dinner after forty something years of marriage.  I basked in their glow.
       Then the husband got sick.  At Christmas dinner he was still asking, “What can I get you in a glass?” with his heart-warming Irish accent.  A couple of weeks later he was diagnosed with cancer and in February he died.  His wife was in deep mourning and shock of losing her husband in less than two months.
       Ex-man’s parents were both so engaged in life and his mother continues to make efforts to life a full life.  Yesterday at eighty-something, she went on a cruise through the Panama Canal.  I saw her before she left and I admired her spunk but I can still sense that there is a gaping hole where her mate and lover used to stand beside her.  I wonder to myself, will I be brave enough to sustain that type of love, especially if every love story ultimately ends in tragedy? 
       Tennyson’s In Memoriam says, “I hold it true, whate’er befall;/ I feel it, when I sorrow most;/‘Tis better to have loved and lost/ Than never to have loved at all.” These words have become trite but this much I know for sure: There’s always risk with love - risk of loss through breakup or even death -  yet I would rather risk this and know love again than the alternative of shutting my heart down.

Is it time to open up your heart to the possibility of loving again?  What comes up for you when you think about it?  Are you still mourning the loss of your past relationship?  (PS As much as I’m moving on and rebuilding, I know I still am.)

Integrity

127 Marbles 
Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

     My eldest sister came for a visit yesterday and we chatted about the lessons that we had learned from growing up in our family.  One of the things that I learned was to be aware that people might not act in my best interest, or the best interest of the family.  We laughed at our inclinations to prepare for the worst case scenario. I told her, “There’s not much that surprises me,” then I added, “Actually it surprises me when people act with the highest level of integrity.”
     But I love being surprised…I borrowed my Ex-husband’s computer this afternoon to do some writing work on a program that isn’t available for my Mac (unbelievable but true).  We shared a meal and a glass of wine afterward and talked about our son and how proud we are of him.  My Ex said, “I’m happy that things have always worked well between all of us.  I hear horror stories of people’s court battles and I can’t imagine that kind of pain.  I hope our son will be spared that in his life.”
    My ex-husband was emotionally open and honest through our break up, he was non-judgmental, vulnerable, and strong.  He never used anger as a shield for his vulnerability.  I will always admire the space of integrity he held for us during that time.  We made a promise that we would always share a glass of champagne to celebrate our son’s birthday.  As time went on and our separate families grew, we didn’t always have the champagne but we did preserve was the spirit of the commitment to always be on good terms.
    When the author of Life’s Little Instruction Book wrote the above quote about fairness, caring, and integrity, he didn’t write the caveat: unless of course, you’re divorcing the other parent.  But breakups often bring out the worst in people.  What would it take to stand in integrity especially during a breakup?

What would it take to follow Miguel Ruiz and “Be impeccable with your word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love”? If you’re still going through the details of your breakup, what would it take to allow these words to set the tone?

Audacity

128 Marbles 
With audacity one can undertake anything.
Napoleon Bonaparte

    Audacity fascinates me.  Intrepid humans make me cheer their fearlessly daring acts (and sometimes they make me thankful that I’m not their mother). They embody T.S. Eliot’s belief that, “If you haven't the strength to impose your own terms upon life, you must accept the terms it offers you.” The audacious are the ones that have that strength.  
     Lady Gaga, the pop queen of boldness, has built her brand with audacity.  What interests me is her confidence that her fame was destined even before she “arrived.” As a result, she deflected everyone who told her otherwise. She says, “I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never succeed, never be nominated for a Grammy, never have a hit song, and that he hoped I’d fail. I said to him, ‘Someday, when we’re not together, you won’t be able to order a cup of coffee at the fucking deli without hearing or seeing me.’” She was right;  He was wrong.  
    To be audacious is to be “bold or insolent, heedless of restraints, as of those imposed by prudence, propriety, or convention.” Yet I wonder, although those restraints may look like they are imposed from the outside, how many of us are really chained from the inside?  Perhaps Lady Gaga was in a relationship with a guy who didn’t believe in her because she still held that shadow belief about herself.  Was he an exterior mirror for an interior belief?  Did he graciously play the role so she could cut off her last chains of self-doubt and comfortably take center stage?  
    As girls, we are often taught to avoid rocking the boat.  The audacious rock the boat without care of who’s not holding on.  They are the ones who change history by their bold moves such as Rosa Parks’ refusing to go to the back of the bus.  They go against the tide and impose their terms on life.  What is deemed audacious is indicative of the times - who would think it bold for an African American woman today to remain seated in a bus whilst a white woman stood? Yet a bold move in history made our current reality as it is.  
    Benjamin Disraeli claimed, “Success is the child of audacity.” Winston Churchill said, “The first quality that is needed is audacity.” Goethe wrote, “In every artist there is a touch of audacity without which no talent is conceivable.” I say, “Bring it on.”

What would it take to be more aware of the chains that hold you back? What would it take to cut those chains and embody audacity?  

Trusting Your Compass, Again

129 Marbles 
Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart ... Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens. 

Carl Jung

    Einstein believed that “the only real valuable thing is intuition” but because intuition is the silent voice or gentle prodding in a noisy and rambunctious world, it can be difficult to heed its message.  Our intuition doesn’t come to us as a post to our Facebook wall nor do we receive it through tweets. Yet, though silent, it can be insistently persistent.  Intuition can be a gentle awareness that keeps us safe and it can be the knowing of which paths we should choose to lead us to where we’d like to be. 
    Yet, after a breakup, intuition may be something that is questioned because most of us don’t desire discord and breakups but there we are, signing separation agreements, or splitting up assets.  Was it a mistake to marry/attach to that person in the first place? Was there a niggling intuitive feeling not to become attached? Or worse, did our intuition stay silent as we chose a situation that ultimately “failed”? 
    Eckhart Tolle wrote, “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” Does that mean if you had a breakup, you were meant to have a breakup?  The breakup was exactly the medicine required to evolve your consciousness?  That’s a tough pill to swallow. 
    Perhaps the biggest trick is coming to peace with a breakup, whether it was self-initiated, jointly decided, or, in colloquial terms, like me, you were dumped. For a lesson, I turn to the guru of acceptance Michael J Fox who says, “If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal - with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever - in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before - I would, without a moment's hesitation, tell you to take a hike.” Here Fox talks about living with Parkinson’s disease, yet it could also be the litmus test of a relationship - are you a better person than you were before the relationship? Before the breakup?

What would it take to be able to say, “without a moment’s hesitation” that you wouldn’t trade the person you are now for the person you were before your breakup?  If you can’t say it now, become the person who could say it.