Let me give you a tiny glimpse of the “before” portrait of myself. My 44th birthday was essentially a major rebirth into how I relate to myself and Life now. That Angel number….
I was born in 1964 in Oakland, California. The story starts out a bit rough but gets better 😺
I was raised mostly in the suburbs of Seattle in a highly dysfunctional, abusive and neglectful family. No religion. White middle class public schools. A house and a yard and a dog and a cat and TV. I sang, played cello and piano, directed plays, some ballet and swimming. Skiing in my teens. I lived to play outside. My dad sexually abused me since basically birth until I was 7. I went into a “permanent” dissociative state, a coping mechanism, at about 5, that I am still trying to extract myself from. This whole aspect is very complicated due to the fact I only remember bits and pieces, thus it’s been unconscious and unadressed all these years. I’m finally getting to it and perhaps will recover soon! I can hope! [Update: I think I succeeded!! Part of that is told here. ]
The first time I remember planning and visioning killing myself was when I was about 6. That suicidal urge plagued me into my 50’s. Part of that recovery is told here. There were several more formative early childhood traumatic events that I will write about elsewhere.
My maternal grandparents always made sure there was enough money for food, rent, clothes, Christmas presents, and college. We saw them twice a year in cross-country visits. A month in the summer, a week during the holidays. My paternal grandparents were scarce, as were my uncles and cousins on both sides. My mother was very depressed and almost never spoke except to complain about me or my little brother. She was actually a nice person, she just couldn’t handle this family life.
When I was six, my father survived a gunshot to the head but was brain damaged. We were forbidden to speak of it unless absolutely necessary, and then only to refer to “the accident.” I didn’t learn the truth of what happened to him until I was 39. His half-brother finally told everyone at the family reunion dinner table when I asked him. The only thing accidental was that he survived the murder attempt. Murder sucks hard but surviving was a disaster too. When I was 14 my father was diagnosed with cancer and he died when I was 15. He had lots of other physical and emotional troubles in his life. The medical mismanagement of his death had a significant lasting impression on me, leading me to volunteer at hospice and study to be a death doula.
Once my brother and I moved out, my mother fared a lot better, and then even more so once she retired from work. She lived 27,929 days. Her memorial was attended by at least 50 people from the organizations she volunteered for, and neighbors, and very extended family, all who remembered her in high esteem. I started trying to get to know her when I was in my 20’s, and got along with her better and better as the decades rolled on. I did manage to get to massage one of her hands before she died. My goal had been to hold her hands, which I never got to do. So I did when I prepared her body for cremation. My father was the abusive one. He was actually a nice person in a deeply troubled life too. That’s a story within a story you’ll see elsewhere. I’ve completed my karma with him, and my mother too I believe. All seems to be well.
Growing up, I barely had any friends. In my teens I had a group of friends who went skiing and hiking together. A saving Grace to me. I was book smart but did not respect school because it was so lame. I could get B’s without much effort and was happy to leave it at that. I did however, study many things on my own, including teaching myself the basics of particle physics when I was 12, directing plays in 4th grade, studying cetaceans and the solar system, programming on a TI-99, reading Dostoyevsky and philosophy and science fiction, you get the idea. I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up, because for a time that was the only career I knew of associated with Space and Stars that I loved *so* much. My Mom wanted me to stay on Earth!
I ended up getting a B.A. in Drama, Directing track. I never followed that professionally. I had started out as an astronomy-physics major but soon realized I wasn’t smart enough to compete for the good jobs. I didn’t want to spend my life in a basement lab, collecting data for some impossible formula to solve, begging for grant money. I wanted to make instructional films about astronomy to replace the god-awful outdated ones I had to sit through in school. The university’s Film department was small, so after I took all those classes I moved over to the Drama department where I was familiar but still didn’t fit in, as I was still rooted in science and not metaphysics nor mysticism at the time. I worked for a Volcanologist on campus, having a good time in the basement computer lab, using Unix and reel tapes to input and output data, and watching all those flashing lights! Hahahahaaa how things turn! I didn’t quite fit in there either. When the other people in the lab found out I was a drama major they kinda turned on me. But nothing terrible.
I took several graduate classes in Educational Communication Technology. I learned about making computer-based lessons using interactive videodiscs. (The 80’s!) This is WAY better than school films!! The dean said I couldn’t continue until after I worked in the field for awhile. This made no sense to me. How would I get hired without the skills but not be allowed to learn the skills first? Perhaps it was just that he didn’t like me. As Fate would have it, I got a job as a programmer for a company making software for Boeing to train pilots to fly the new 767s. This was my introduction to a whole new field. I worked in the multimedia field for 12 years, in near the start of the public Internet and rise of CD-ROM and websites. 1988-2000.
I was a big fish in a little pond. I ran local and international levels of the professional networking association. I gave talks at the largest convention in the world, NAB. I could get a job pretty easily. Programming, interface design, instructional design, project management. I guess that dean did me a big favor saving me the cost and time of the degree? Eventually the terrible ethics in the industry got to me and I bailed to write a book on compassion. I immediately got pregnant instead. I had a lot to learn.
The man I married was my senior prom blind date. I met him 3 days after I turned 18. A friend of mine was dating a friend of his and they thought we’d be perfect for each other. We did indeed have unusual things in common and had fun the first few years. I never had any time on my own as an adult. Big mistake, I highly recommend against it!!
We got married when I was 25, out of inertia and economic convenience. I had a low threshold. I figured he was never going to turn out to be a mob assassin. I had disavowed the idea of “Mr. Right” waaaaayyyyy toooooo faaaaaarrr. He turned out to be pretty narcissistic. Maybe with Asperger’s on top. We didn’t particularly like each other but we were overly attached to each other.
It was a critically toxic marriage and lifestyle that nearly killed me in more ways than one. I was a nervous wreck and he was verbally, financially and emotionally abusive. I didn’t know terms like “gaslighting” and “sociopath” and “narcissist” until after the divorce. I didn’t know shit about trauma until far later. Yikes what a clusterfuck. As awful as it was for both of us, he still wanted to stay married because he could not bear to be alone. Within a year of the divorce he got attached to another woman, and it has not gone well for him. I don’t date. I tried a couple of times. No bueno. I have adjusted well to my solitary life, perhaps a little too much. I am ready to not be isolated anymore, to live in healthy loving community. May it be so now and always.
We had a daughter when I was 36. As difficult as it was for all three of us, as tempting as it is to regret bringing a soul into the morass of this world, subject to the dire craziness and cluelessness of her parents, she came in with a very strong soul and is quite multi-gifted. She is definitely here for a purpose and contributing to a better world. She knows herself unusually well, beyond the veil. She is currently half way through an individualized program at a very good art school. Bless her dear sweet Soul. I’m a lucky mama for sure.
By the last 3 years of the marriage, I was so sick I was 90% bedbound from 33 different mysterious disorders and the pills the doctors piled on in our ignorance. This had quite a lasting effect on my daughter that we are still struggling with in our relationship.
One day I realized I was never going to get better as long as I was in that house and marriage. One day I finally was well enough to sit at the computer long enough to search for a community to live in compassion with. As Fate would have it, I stumbled upon The Ojai Foundation. They had 40 acres of semi-wilderness and did retreats around peace, compassion, ecology, rites of passage, and the way of council. They had a work-trade program. It was beyond absurd to think I could work, as sick as I was. I applied. The volunteer coordinator could tell I was completely neurotic, but for some blessed magical reason followed an instinct to give me a 2 week chance. She is my oldest and dearest friend to this day. On my 44th birthday, off I went. That two weeks turned into eight months of opening up my life in ways I would never have imagined possible.
This writing project is an attempt to describe and share what turned out to be possible.