Have you ever had that time in your life, that event that changes everything and while none of it makes sense, you just somehow go with it. I have been waiting for a place to start. A place that can articulate my experience this past year, my reasoning, my truth… a place that makes sense. When in actuality, none of it makes sense and yet I completely trust it all even as I am still in this great process of discovery.
A year ago while visiting a friend, I randomly ran into an old crush at the airport and my world was abruptly shaken to its core. The simplicity of this creation was that I had felt a spark that seemed so foreign and the complexity was being left with ‘now what’? My eyes were now opened to the truth of my own illusions I held in my life and there was just no possibility of going back to sleep.
I wanted to believe that I was ‘happily settled' within my marriage, living in paradise (Hawaii) with my three sons and that my life was just fine. Yet deep down, I was waiting to ‘live’ my life…waiting for the freedom to just be myself as I felt imprisoned into my roles. Before that day I would have argued another to the ground to defend the appearance of my life, my marriage and the reality I was living. I would have justified everything with a smile and you more than likely would have bought the ‘postcard of happiness’ I was selling. But that’s just the thing, isn’t it. We need to defend, sell and justify our mountain of white lies…the lies we tell ourselves to keep our reality in tact, the lies that feed our coma.
Looking back I see where I settled. I see where I reasoned my reality to accommodate the positive sign on a pregnancy stick and let the role of mother hit me like a fucking freight train. I see where all of my choices were made from the role of mother and then why not throw the role of wife into the mix. And that is when ‘who I knew myself to BE’ had faded into the background.
Despite the many spiritual journeys, retreats and my commitment to my evolution of consciousness over the years- nothing could wake me out of that coma until now. The heaviness of beliefs sold by every generation of women before me were woven into the fabric of my being. My belief that this is the bed I made and therefore I must lie in it…..even if it means lying to myself. And right now, if you are reading this and defending your ‘motherhood’ or ‘wife-ness’ then I urge you to become curious.…really curious.
Ironically as we grow into adulthood I rarely hear declarations of people wanting to grow up to be ‘just like their parents’. And yes, this is a dig at your childhood because as long as you defend it -you will replicate it. And yet, the work it takes to let go of the roles and passed on belief systems is just that…its work and a commitment to self. It is a commitment to consciousness and self evolution that many of us sadly have zero time for and so the default is the coma of replication. And god forbid if we BE bold enough to live outside of the parameters of stars quo and drift away from the ‘norm’. Everywhere we look, everything we buy, every system we partake in and every role we slip into is simply repeating what we already know….normal living.
The laughable part for me is that I realize I am not the first -nor the last woman to sink into a lifeless marriage and to have a spark of chemistry ignited by another -BE what wakes me UP. That spark was the most destructible gift I have yet to call onto my path. Destroying the hardened illusions I had clung to and waking me up to a world I had long contained inside. Not so easy to see the coma nor the storm coming while we are steeped in it and yet as I continue to dig and reveal ,I continue to find more of myself. I have used this gift to my full advantage and consciously choose to see that the spark that I was ‘seeking’ was my own, the internal spark that I allowed to fade away.
My journey this past year has been intense and revealing. It’s like seeing what lives underneath the surface, underneath the patterns and underneath the roles- all at the same time-while being fully awake. To see that my husband and I were each replicating what we had been modeled and what society has us believing is the ‘norm’. And of course the very thing he believed he FELL in love with was the very thing he now admittedly and subconsciously suppressed. Which ironically is the very thing I believed did not belong within the confined roles of mother or wife. My wild and free spirited gypsy self took a back seat…who am I kidding that self wasn’t even in the car…she was towing behind the car while silently screaming to get back in!
And herein lies the messy amongst the beauty. To look back and now see how things got to BE this way and yet have no fucking clue as to what’s next. To drop the label of marriage and try on living partner as we continue to raise our three sons while sleeping in separate bedrooms and living separate lives. To know that there is no putting things back together after the sleeping giant is fully awake. To know that at the end of the day this wasn't about an old crush nor a shitty marriage. It was about the fact that I had awoken to my truth that I despised who I became as I chugged along within the role of wife. I hated myself for forgetting that feisty, wild and fun loving -crazy ass spark of a woman- I once knew myself to BE. I hated myself for collecting fat and that it covered my once bad ass sexy body that was solely mine and my choice with whom I choose to share it with. I hated myself for suppressing all the uniqueness that I had once loved about myself. For losing my authentic voice in this partnership and believing that it no longer mattered. This pool of hate ran deep and the water has been an accumulation of old patterns, old beliefs, old toxic shit…half of it mine…half of it his and all of those who came before us. The beautiful part is that, as we choose to separate, he too is discovering, revealing and growing into his own and now sharing that with our sons. There is a rawness and vulnerability that lives in our home that is unlike anything I have ever witnessed and we are consciously choosing to live a different way.
And so what does this beautiful mess look like moving forward? It looks like moment by moment, truth by truth, discovery by discovery and a newly committed connection to self unlike ever before. It looks like a beautiful mess that continuously invites me to show up in my authentic chaos, connected wisdom and a reclamation of my wild and free spirited -gypsy self. It looks like I have three incredibly dynamic sons who I choose to show up more as Ange and less as ‘mom’. It looks like completely letting go of the normal plan of marriage and parenthood and LESS future planning to live in the now. It looks like two adults who are now committed more to themselves and their self discovery after letting go of their ‘marriage’ to create something different. As cliche as this may sound- my life moving forward feels wide open to possibility, change and a much deeper sense of who I am- beyond the roles I still occasionally slip back into! Living my truth is really the only 'plan' I have in this moment!!
