It's a Love Thing

Art requires a safe hatchery, says Julia Cameron in the Artist’s Way.  I am currently repeating week 3 of the Artist’s Way course, because last week seemed to get hectic and I didn’t even get to finish reading the chapter, chapter 3.  There is too much good stuff in chapter 3 to just skip over it and move on, so I made an executive decision to repeat week three.  I didn’t hear any arguments.

Week three is all about recovering a sense of power.  It touches on some really important “root chakra” topics like shame and guilt, and criticism.  When the root chakra is out of alignment and needs healing, old wounds centered around childhood guilt and shame might arise. As is par for the Artist’s Way course, synchronicities may and probably will arise, and lessons might just be around the corner. Expect no less.

It is no surprise to me then, that over the weekend I was forced to face the difficult reality that life on my little urban farm is out of balance.  Way out of balance and I am, at least partly, to blame.  It is easy enough to look around and find a willing critic, ready to tell me that I failed at this little goat experiment thing and letting me know it’s time to pull the plug.  There are mirrors everywhere.  God knows I feel guilty enough for holding on to this dream despite the odds, regardless of anyone else’s dreams.  Maybe Life is telling me, it’s time to let it go.  Maybe it is threatening me.  Maybe it’s giving me permission.

Generally speaking, I don’t criticize, and I don’t do particularly well with criticism.  I prefer to be kind, and nice and I prefer to give people hope and usually the benefit of the doubt.  I prefer to choose love.  The belief of a Loving Source is at the core of my philosophy, therefore, whatever is going on here, I believe, must be coming from Love. It must be for my greatest and higher good in the end.  I know this sounds remarkably emotionally intelligent of me, but I didn’t just come up with it on my own you know.  I read it in a book.  Go figure.

That book has been a real comfort to me in some serious times of change and distress.  That book is a little gem called Love is Letting Go of Fear, by Gerald Jampolsky. 

When my son, after his 8th grade year in NC, decided to move back to Illinois to attend high school, I literally thought my world was coming to an end.  As a divorced young mother, I had done my best to raise him and when I remarried, I found myself living in Texas and my son was still in Illinois with his dad, and even though I was incredibly fortunate to be able to travel regularly, weekly even, back and forth from Texas to Illinois to be with my son, some part of me still always felt like I had abandoned him. 

For years I harbored so much unspoken guilt and I suppose even shame, at the choices I had made.  I loved my son, I love my son dearly, and the last thing that I ever wanted to do was to be separated from him, especially at that young tender age.  I always, only, ever wanted to protect him and give him the best life I possibly could. So, when he made the decision, of his own free will, to move to North Carolina in the 8th grade I was ecstatic.  The plan was for him to go to high school here and I was so very, very happy.  At last, my weary, guilty soul could rest.

And then he went back to Illinois for the summer after 8th grade, called me on the 4th of July, 2013 and told me that he didn’t want to come back to NC for high school after all.  He wanted to stay in Illinois.  He was kind.  He was loving.  He wasn’t trying to hurt me.  He was just trying to make the best life for himself.  But I was devastated. Utterly, bleakly, depressingly, completely devastated. 

I remember feeling like I had absolutely nothing left to live for.  I remember feeling like my life was over.  Like I had absolutely failed.  The only thing I had ever wanted to do with my life, the only thing I had ever really wanted to be was a mother, and now it was over.  He was gone and I had missed my opportunity for my one and only son to live with me and be my child and have a peaceful, beautiful, wonderful normal existence together. I had hoped for all of the years before, throughout all that time that I was traveling back and forth from Texas to Illinois that maybe someday he would be able to come and live with me.  Now that chance was gone.  That hope was gone.

Looking back, I see that my reaction was probably a little bit extreme.  It definitely was irrational, but guilt and shame do crazy things with our psyches.  Guilt and shame can destroy all hope, all reason and all rationality.  What saved me?  Love.

I remember sitting in my living room, curled up in the chair reading Love is Letting Go of Fear, crying, sobbing at times, trying to unwind my twisted mind, trying to get back to a place of stillness, a place of peace.  I really do credit that book for saving my life.  He writes in the opening sentence in the author’s notes, “We teach what we want to learn, and I want to learn to experience peace.”  He end’s his note by stating, “Teach only love, for that is what you are.”

And here we are now, wrapping up the first month of 2024.  Wow!  It just occurred to me that it was probably my son’s leaving that started me down this crazy, driven, homesteading road, trying to find something within myself, or some success outside of myself, that could give me worth, that could make me feel valuable, that could replace the hole that was left in my heart when he left.  For the record, I am crying now.  Catharsis. They are healing tears. This is the very first time that I have correlated this.  This is a very important discovery.  This is very healing and helps me understand so many things about my life and about my dreams.

And ironically, Sam, my son, who did finally move out to North Carlina to live to attend college and make a life for himself out here, Sam and his young family are going to be moving back to Illinois the end of March.  This time I am not irrationally crushed and devastated.  Although I am sad to see them go, I realize that this is a very good move for him and his family and that makes me happy.  I did pull out my little book to help remind me of all of that when I start feeling sorry for myself.

But maybe it is time to let this dream of mine go. Maybe this dream wasn’t real, I don’t know.  I will need to take a little bit of time to think about this some more.  I have a plan to launch a mini documentary the first week or two in February to try to salvage this dream of a Zinnia’s Way paradise.  I will move forward with that project as planned, but this discovery has really put a new lens on things.

This whole thing, my whole life, I mean, what am I running from?  What am I running towards?  I don’t know.  Stick around and maybe we’ll find out together.