Creativity and Abandonment

For the last several months, I have felt increasingly driven to create. I am currently in the process of creating a collage. I have also received visions of two paintings that I am to create representing abandonment. Funny thing, I don't really consider myself an artist, and certainly not a painter.

A colleague of mine at work this week told me that he has decided to completely change direction in his life. He feels he has been beating his head against the wall in his current career. The interesting thing? His decision was prompted from a question I raised with him: "What are you doing in your life that is creative?"

Two weekends ago, my neices and I got together for an art project. It was interesting to see how the three of us each approached the task. It was also interesting to see how different the results were. The same project, three different artists, three different results. That was very much a lesson to me. When we were finished, one of my nieces told how she felt her art piece was a reflection of her and her personality. Another lesson. Have I ever looked at a piece of art that I have created to see how it might reflect me?

So, as we work with healing from abandonment, how can we use our creativity to help us in the process? Creativity is a true expression of the soul. What are you doing these days to let your soul speak? What are you doing these days to listen?

Let your heart fly this week. Do something creative.

Hope, Hope, Hope

I hesitate to write in this blog many times, waiting until I feel I have something significant to share, fearing that my words and message will have little or no import and desiring—hoping, really—that my words do have import for those who read them and those who need them. One of the few blogs I follow is Ivy League Insecurities, written by a fellow Ivy League graduate, who freely admits to her insecurities. "No league," she says, "prepares you for life." I think sometimes that those of us who attend Ivy League institutions do so because we are so driven by the depth of our insecurities. But that is for another blog, and another day.

I want to address again the issue of abandonment and the pain that accompanies it. I have come to believe that abandonment causes some of our deepest wounding. Perhaps, no, certainly, abandonment is at the heart of our most profound, cut to the very bone and into our marrow wounding. It seems to be accompanied by an immeasurable hopelessness, as if they are Siamese twins, inseparable companions, bosom friends. In a conversation with a good, good friend just the other night, we uncovered the wounding of abandonment, and in the midst of the realization, she said, "I feel so hopeless." For me, at times, it has felt as though the pain of the abandonment and the extent of the hopeless were so deep that neither could be sounded.

So, what does that leave me (us?) with: incredible emotional pain and the feeling or belief that there is no hope, no way out. But I refuse to believe that. I refuse to lose my grip on hope, no matter how tenuous it has been at times over the last several months. And, there have been times when I have relied on others who love me to help me strengthen my grip. If you are struggling with this issue as I am, I suggest you make sure you have at least one or two people who love and care for you who know the struggle you are facing and can believe in healing for you when you can't believe it for yourself. Let them know this is their job for the next few months until you have reached a place where you can consistently hold onto hope yourself. This experience has taught me, as has nothing else in life, how fundamental hope is to our very existence. Hope is a precious thing, and of itself needs to be cherished and cultivated.

I read something today that has given me some breathing room in the midst of the sadness and has strengthened my will to continue to work through this pain and reach a place of true healing. In response to a woman who was speaking to Deepak Chopra about what to do with the pain of losing a child, he said, "This pain is not your pain." I can imagine that must have been a shock to her. How could something so devastatingly painful, the very physically palpable pain I am sure she was feeling not be her pain? He went on to explain that the pain she felt was not just her pain, but pain shared by countless others around the world. And the truth is, the pain of my abandonment is not my pain. It also is shared by countless others around the world. Some who may feel it even more profoundly and for far longer than I have felt it. As I work through it, as I fight my way toward healing, can I allow myself to uncouple myself from it? Can I allow the pain to be bigger than me, so that my fight to heal it is not just my fight, but a fight for others as well? Can I allow it to be a fight that even heals the pain of this carried in the very dust of the earth itself? For today, I think I can. And for today, that is enough, and even more than enough. And the fight continues, for today, there is hope.

Beauty, the Light of Truth, and Some New Coping Mechanisms

Two very profound things have happened this week, both related directly to abandonment--it's effects as well as the hope for healing. Some new insights have come forward for me which I believe to be very profound, and think they may be profound for others too.

This week, a very dear friend of mine and I spoke after 12 and one-half years of being apart. The fault for this is entirely mine. I had done something which I felt was so unforgiveable that I chose to disappear rather than stay and face the situation and the inherent hurt involved. And, as many of you might be able to well believe, after 12 and one-half years, I can no longer remember what I did that at the time, I judged to be so unforgiveable. Because of this, I chose to cut myself off from one of the loveliest people on this planet. For 12 and one-half years (and, yes, I am repeating this on purpose because I know that each moment of those 12 and one-years without the gift of her in my life is significant--it's a precious, precious loss.), I denied myself the gift of her presence in my life because the pain that I was going through at the time, the fear of being unforgiven and thus abandoned by someone I loved so dearly, was too much for me to handle. Instead, I chose to turn my back on her, and move through this life without Barbara's wit, humor, intelligence, compassion, incredible integrity, and support. How in the world could I have done that, both to me and to her? And the only thing I can say in my defense is that I didn't understand 12 and one-half years ago that I had abandoned myself so very long ago, and because of that, my coping mechanism, in the face of overwhelming emotional hurt has been to flee. Not surprisingly now, it has been something of a pattern for me. Truthfully, I only began to understand this last night, and wouldn't be writing this today if it weren't for the second profound thing that happened to me this week.

A friend of mine who has been so instrumental in my healing over the last year and a half, and someone whom I have come to love very dearly is moving out of the country on Monday. While I have known this for a while, the immediacy of it came as a surprise this Thursday. I am feeling his loss so very deeply right now. Following a very sleepless night, this triggered in me yesterday a flood, although flood is perhaps too insignificant a word to describe yesterday--a tidal wave? and avalance?, of feeling betrayed, desolate, abandoned, and alone. I felt, quite literally, as though I had no place in this world. I thought about moving halfway around the world and starting all over again--another country, another job, another life. These feelings are so familiar to me; I have felt them over and over again as this recurring pattern has played out in my life.

After he told me on Thursday night that he was leaving the country on Monday, I sat in my Jeep, unable to think about beginning to drive home, and asked God, "What do I do now?" And the same answer that has been coming back to me for the last two months came again that night, "Love him." Yesterday, I fought so hard against that. The feelings of hurt--the betrayal, the desolation, the abandonment--were so overwhelming, I could not bring myself to even imagine making the choice to continue to love him. I looked at the world all day yesterday through tear-stained glasses.

He called me last night to check on me, as he knows this transition is hard for me. He kept assuring me that he was not abandoning me, and I kept trying to hear his words. And then he said something very profound after I finished describing what I was feeling. He said, "It's time you had some new coping mechanisms for dealing with these feelings." And after some more discussion, he said the most profound thing of all, "Don't abandon me."

In the moment that he said that, I realized the pattern in my life in the face of overwhelming hurt has been to flee. I abandon others before they have a chance to abandon me, and I do it in numerous ways. You see, and oh, I do hope you do see if you have ever abandoned yourself in the way that I did so many, many years ago, when I made the choice to abandon myself (not that I did it consciously) as such a little girl, I set up the pattern of flight in the face of overwhelming emotional pain. And I have carried it out, time and time again. Sometimes in small ways, and sometimes, as with my friend Barbara, in big ways. And, it is no surprise to me, and shouldn't be to you, that the people in my life that I tend to abandon are women and the people I most fear will abandon me are men. If this doesn't make sense, go back and read my first blog post.

In the middle of my sleepless night, it came to me that my beauty is meaningless without truth. And I desparately needed this truth. It doesn't make me any less sad, but it opens the door for me to truly change my life. I realize now that, in being asked to love my friend in the face of his leaving, I am being asked to stand and fight the fear, to engage and not to flee, to allow space--even if it is just a little bit right now--for there to be a new pattern in my life, a new freedom, a new beauty, a new miraculousness, and a new power in spite of the tears which are still flowing this morning as I type. I am doing what I know is one of the bravest things I have done in my life: I am choosing to love my friend and not abandon him. I am choosing to love myself and not abandon me.

There is a contract with myself on the back of my bedroom door, and I see it every morning and every night when I go to bed. It says, "I am a powerful, passionate, committed, loving woman." And today, I am.

Feminine Integration: Can we leave abandonment behind?

Today feels a little auspicious in that I have decided to begin a blog--something I really didn't imagine mysefl doing and am still a little hesitant about. My decision came after I heard various women in my circle saying to me, "Funny you should say that; that's what I've been dealing with," or "That really resonates with me," or, "How did you know?" It became clear to me a number of us were going through similar emotional issues simultaneously, and, in my perception, are truly on the leading edge of a transpersonal transformation that extends far beyond our individual selves.

The current process I believe we are in began about two months ago, when it seemed that every woman in my circle of friends, myself included, was dealing with issues of abandonment by men in their lives. This took various forms and happened in various ways, but the underlying issue was the same in every case. Many of us, two months ago, were feeling abandoned in some way by some man who was significant in our lives.

As I began to acknowledge this for myself and work through my feelings, I received a significant gift from a man whom I have never met and have only spoken with one time. This very special man gave me the insight that I needed to help me understand what was happening. Highly intuitive, he began to share with me his insight. He told me that as a child, the feminine was not highly valued in my family and as a result, I had abandoned my more feminine gifts and focused on developing my mind and intellect. He went on to share that the little girl in me, who came into this world with all these feminine gifts, felt abandoned by me and was actually feeling quite lonely.

As he spoke the words, I could feel the truth of them. I knew then that the abandonment I had experienced recently with a very dear friend of mine was simply a reflection of my own abandonment of all of my feminine gifts so many years ago. As I write this, I'm smiling because I am actually a very girlie-girl and it seems a little ironic for me to be writing about my abandonment of the feminine. But the feminine I am speaking of, and still haven't fully defined for myself, goes much farther than what many of us have traditionally defined as feminine. It includes intuition and sensitivity, but I have the sense that it goes so much deeper than that. I acutally can't wait to see how my understanding of this feminine unfolds over the next several months. But, I'm getting a little ahead of myself.

As I began to work with the new understanding and committed myself to accepting and integrating any feminine aspects of myself that I may have chosen to abadon as a child, I again noticed that many of the women in my circle were moving into this phase as well. I had a very strong sense that individually and collectively, as we women move into true acceptance and integration of this aspect of ourselves, we are actually part of a global movement, one that is affecting the very core energy of our planet. This new phase, integration, and acceptance may last for one to two years for many of us. I am excited to see how it all unfolds, not just for me, but for us all.

So, here's to us--women on the leading edge--and here's to the men who love us and are supporing us (we hope!) as we go through this transformation. And here's to greater understanding and even further transformation as we join together to support each other through this process. In that spirit, I welcome your comments, not just to me, but to the others who may be reading this blog as well.