Well, life here in la-la land has become increasingly painful. Apparently I have overstayed my welcome! This light dawns upon an interesting compilation of events, not the least of which is Hillary Clinton’s testimony this morning in the Senate.

Wow! This woman is smart AND present. IF Hillary ever spent any time at all in la-la land, it obviously didn’t hold her interest. Yes, she stayed with an ass of a husband. But I maintain that she always knew his weaknesses, yet consciously decided that their marriage served her life goals better than any other position could have.

Illustrating the opposite stance, I scrambled to dig myself a new head hole whenever I was being pulled out into the light of day. Just over a year ago now, I divorced my neglectful husband…but not before giving it seventeen years of thoughtful consideration. I quickly immersed myself in yet another highly dysfunctional relationship with a man who lives almost a thousand miles away. We hashed out our petty defenses via email and phone until I’d had enough of trying to prove my worth there.

Daily I continue to live with and support my father, who still treats me like an adolescent and berates me for not following his sage example. But my brother lives here in my home, too, also free of charge! He came to stay for a few months after his home was foreclosed upon four YEARS ago. He contributes nothing at all financially. So my father and I argue over who will pay the utilities. Actually, we don’t argue. He agrees to split them, and then he doesn’t pay his share and I catch them when they become overdue.  And yes, I make the house payment. And yes, his income is three times mine…I could go on…

It just sounds like I’m trying to prove my stupidity. In truth, I have given my husband, brother, father and boyfriend numerous opportunities as well as ultimatums. I have set deadlines that have come and gone. Blahblahblah…guess whose problem it is?! That’s right -only mine!

When MIGHT I wake up???!!! Being entirely fed up and facing my last resort option of moving my dying father into assisted living and taking legal action to evict my brother, I picked up a book my friend Jane lent me last week: Love First. It is about how to do an intervention with an alcoholic or drug addict. While I am not dealing directly with substance abuse here, it was nevertheless very enlightening. There is a little checklist for the reader, a quiz so to speak, to assess the level of your co-dependent behaviors. Well, I’m not just an enabler, I am a “desperate enabler”…

Desperate, indeed…I think it may be time for me to TRULY re-invent myself, from the inside out. It is time, once and for all, to be the leading lady in my own life…so long la-la land…

An extra post today, for my friend Nadine who says I have a musical heart. Sometimes, like just yesterday in fact, she has to help me find my way back to my truth….and I am so grateful.

“When I came to understand that there are mythic patterns in all our lives, I knew we were all living a life we were told was reserved for gods, heroes and saints…” – Deena Metzger, Miracle at Canyon de Chelly

Within my mind and physiology lie mine fields and booby-traps too many to pass through with any hope of coming out whole. Every self-doubt, every ache or pain that beckons me back to bed mid-day, failures too many to list…where will this get me?

So pervasive, so insidious these habits; who am I to hope for anything…let alone for true love…

for abounding health…

for prosperity…

who am I indeed? And the spiritual battle ensues…

It isn’t that I’m unpracticed at spiritual battle. Quite the opposite is true, actually. I’m very good at it, better in fact for others than myself (aren’t we all?!) Having been a spiritual warrior all my life, even while too young to have any cognitive understanding of it, I learned to conquer demons daily. My life has been a dichotomy described only as “blessed turmoil”.

Lest you think I over dramatize let me give a brief background. I am the eldest of five children of cross-addicted parents. We come from multi-generations of substance abuse and the physical, sexual and psychological ravages that ride that monkeys’ back.

Yet somehow I have never had a substance abuse problem, do not now drink or take drugs or smoke. I tried them all at a young age and knew right away that I was not interested. The extent of any mental illness I have inherited seems to manifest as the habits I cited in the opening paragraph; self-doubt, self-recrimination. It seems my conscience is intact.

This can be no accident, my strength. This came built-in. But I have had to fight for it every day of my life, AS WE ALL DO. And because it happens that I have always drawn and painted and re-arranged and decorated since a young child (and that creative urge ALSO came built-in) – and because I see metaphor in all I do – I now see the mine fields and the booby-traps as doorways. Within my mind and body they provide both protection and obstacle at once.

Lord, I ask that all the doorways I encounter remain unlocked and open.                     
Let my path to freedom remain unhindered by doubt and fear.

As I move toward freedom, let every doorway I approach be used FOR DECORATIVE PURPOSES ONLY. Amen.

The practice of being present is called into this new year. It is far and away the most difficult thing I have ever needed to learn…but it requires only that you give up thinking that you know anything. The Kingdom of Heaven is all that is at stake here. Only your health, your sanity…your life.

The past few months have been an ongoing near death experience! And I die hard…now life requires that I PARTICIPATE. The word, the concept haunts every meditation, every train of thought.

I don’t profess to comprehend what it means, but I’ve decided to give myself the year to explore it…and every day I seem to stumble deeper into the remote jungle of my mind, through the grueling pain of dis-ease and self doubt.

It feels like I am fighting my way through the overgrown landscape with only naught but a feather…only a virtual machete…and the progress is S L O W goin’…

There is no time to revisit the past… I need to participate, to show up to my day and what is presented…to begin anew this moment..
and this moment…

Beginning to write here is one form of my participation. My life has become too small and isolated, and this calls me out.

Getting my house in order – literally!- is another. As I said recently, I want to immerse myself in GREEN…I want to paint the house green, The Rules of Staging be damned. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Pantone chose Emerald as the Color of the Year. I think I will participate in Emerald.

As silly as this may sound, the idea of participating in life and immersing myself in green makes perfect sense. Green symbolizes life. In many Asian cultures it is believed to bring healing.

This is certainly a time for healing, for myself, and hopefully for my human community. Please join me in Bringing Forth the Emerald this year. You will be hearing from me…