YES! "Devastation and ruination are gifts in the big picture of a life". At the top of my daily gratitude list is the fact that the spectacular implosion of my marriage and my entire life at 57 provided me with the opportunity to wake up and re-evaluate. Took a little time to get beyond the revenge or redemption narratives, but 8 years later I'm living my life, my way, and continuining to learn and grow.
This was really excellent timing for me, thank you so much. I've had some messy emotional relational stuff this week and impending, and I was ABSOLUTELY retreating into my easy stories about who’s always been wrong about me and who deserves to be taught a lesson. Thanks for the reminder that I can tell new ones! How lovely to remember that I have that agency!!
Damn, great reflections and truth there. I gotta reorient my mind to find joy in these dark moments, because while i'm tired of experiencing them, they're gonna be worse if I don't find the joy.
Oh man. What an important lesson. And you’ll hear it virtually nowhere in our victory-fixated culture.
YES! "Devastation and ruination are gifts in the big picture of a life". At the top of my daily gratitude list is the fact that the spectacular implosion of my marriage and my entire life at 57 provided me with the opportunity to wake up and re-evaluate. Took a little time to get beyond the revenge or redemption narratives, but 8 years later I'm living my life, my way, and continuining to learn and grow.
Ariadne Thanks Theseus for Abandoning Her
Ioanna-Veronika Warwick
I hear you married my sister, the one
famous for her blue eyes.
You think you can control her.
No one is harder to control
than a woman who spends her life
before the closed doors of mirrors.
She fingers her necklaces,
combs her endless hair,
and gets what she wants:
a man, a child.
We with more mind are in love
with the shadow everything casts,
the watery color of doubt.
I was the path home
that unwound behind you.
I held you by the thread of breath,
hollowed out slim foothold.
Who could endure such love?
Your ship growing smaller
against the flawless blue,
the tapering black sail,
tried to teach me the essential
stone, but I only cried.
I cried until star-blind sleep,
I cried bruised by the sun.
Then among the voices
of silence I heard
an overlay of sound
preparing for its meaning.
If you hadn’t left me
I’d never hear,
talking and laughing,
serving heated wine.
If the horizon hadn’t swallowed you,
I’d believe in it still,
let it hold me in like a wall.
Deceiver, I thank you.
Betrayer, I bless you.
You can’t imagine
the labyrinths I travel.
I am entering such music,
you seem no longer a giant.
Time pares you down
to a roadside post,
a place I had to pass.
This was really excellent timing for me, thank you so much. I've had some messy emotional relational stuff this week and impending, and I was ABSOLUTELY retreating into my easy stories about who’s always been wrong about me and who deserves to be taught a lesson. Thanks for the reminder that I can tell new ones! How lovely to remember that I have that agency!!
Damn, great reflections and truth there. I gotta reorient my mind to find joy in these dark moments, because while i'm tired of experiencing them, they're gonna be worse if I don't find the joy.