hey all -- my lovely friend Deb helped me to design a new blog, This Mama's Dharma! It is still very much a work-in-progress, but my first post is there. Please save the following URL:
www.mamadharma.net
I am a little sad to retire this blog, but all the content has been transferred over to This Mama's Dharma, so it lives on...
Monday, August 25, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Benign
Breathing a sweet sigh of relief tonight through my fever, raw throat, and body aches. I think it's no wonder that I get sick now, after all the stress of the past few weeks. My body fought it off for as long as it could, and now it's giving in.
Thank you to all who prayed for me and wished me well during this challenging ordeal. I am more grateful than I can ever express. More thoughts when my fever breaks.
Must...sleep...now.
Thank you to all who prayed for me and wished me well during this challenging ordeal. I am more grateful than I can ever express. More thoughts when my fever breaks.
Must...sleep...now.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Ten years, three lives
Tonight I realized that it was about this time of year a decade ago that I came to Washington, DC for grad school -- a fresh-faced twenty-two year old with a head full of enormous dreams. In my mind, I was going to become a diplomat, maybe the next Madeline Albright (before she said that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children was "worth it.") Little did I know they would educate me too well: I became so disenchanted with US policy in the Middle East that I knew I could never be part of that machine.
The next phase of my life was coming into my own as an artist and an activist: I wrote dozens of poems and articles and became an outspoken advocate for my two great passions: peace in the Middle East and human rights and informed consent for people diagnosed with mental illness. I led a peace delegation to the Middle East with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and traveled around the US speaking at conferences about resisting corporate psychiatry and healing ourselves and our communities. I was active with the DC Guerrilla Poetry insurgency and other open mics around town and sometimes did five poetry readings a week. I almost got my memoirs published, having landed a literary agent in New York, who pitched my book to several editors in New York, but had no success in selling it in that form.
In retrospect, it was a rich time for me, but still I felt depressed, depleted, and perpetually enraged. I became sick, both physically and mentally. At the end of this phase, I became a student of Buddhism and began to practice meditation on a regular basis. This experience opened up new vistas of understanding for me as I developed witness consciousness, or the ability to step outside of my thoughts and feelings, if only for brief seconds, and to observe them from a higher standpoint. Slowly, I began to develop an inner life, a spiritual life, which balanced out the completely outward orientation I had had for most of my life, buffeted about like a football by causes and conditions.
The third phase of my life in DC, which I believe dovetailed nicely with my nascent spirituality, began with my pregnancy and becoming a mother. This has by far been the richest experience of my life. The sheer joy of parenting Sami Gabriel would be enough in itself. But as the title of this blog suggests, and as I have been posting about here since February of 2006, parenting is the most powerful spiritual practice I have ever known. I have been stretched to the limits and have discovered how strong I am, how I can expand to meet just about any obstacle or challenge that comes my way. More than any other phase of my life in DC, this phase has transformed me utterly. It has been no less than the transformation from maiden to mother.
Throughout all these phases, my ex was a constant. Sometimes it seemed that he lived on the periphery of my life. He did not share my interests, and we intersected only in the brief spaces in my insane schedule. Parenting briefly brought us closer, but eventually we were torn apart irrevocably. Even after our separation in September 2006, my life was dictated by two pillars: Sami, and the question as to whether or not our marriage would survive. I will admit that the second question hung quite steadily in the background of my life, even after my ex announced last November that he had found someone else. Now, with the divorce, that long chapter has concluded.
I feel like I am on the brink of a completely new life, perhaps my best life yet. It is a truly exhilarating feeling. Of course, I carry within me all the lives I have led thus far, but now I stand on an altogether new path, into which all these others have converged. Today, I don't need to know where I am going. I trust my feet to keep walking. Regardless of the results of Tuesday's breast biopsy, which I should know tomorrow, I have this strong faith that surprises me. I have faith in the natural unfolding of things. While I am not without remorse for my unskillful actions, especially those that have hurt others, I would not change one second of this life. My faith is not blind or dogmatic. It comes out of the direct experience of the many lifetimes that I have already lived in this incarnation. While I can rarely ever see it at the time, everything in this life fits together in a way so seamless, so perfect, that it is hard not to be in total awe.
I am reminded of the three refuges on this night. Tonight particularly, I take refuge in the dharma. These are some true refuges in a world full of so many false refuges. I repeat them here -- for myself and for you. May they bring comfort to us all.
I take refuge in the Buddha,
the one who shows me the way in this life.
I take refuge in the Dharma,
the way of understanding and love.
I take refuge in the Sangha,
the community that lives in harmony and awareness.
The next phase of my life was coming into my own as an artist and an activist: I wrote dozens of poems and articles and became an outspoken advocate for my two great passions: peace in the Middle East and human rights and informed consent for people diagnosed with mental illness. I led a peace delegation to the Middle East with the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and traveled around the US speaking at conferences about resisting corporate psychiatry and healing ourselves and our communities. I was active with the DC Guerrilla Poetry insurgency and other open mics around town and sometimes did five poetry readings a week. I almost got my memoirs published, having landed a literary agent in New York, who pitched my book to several editors in New York, but had no success in selling it in that form.
In retrospect, it was a rich time for me, but still I felt depressed, depleted, and perpetually enraged. I became sick, both physically and mentally. At the end of this phase, I became a student of Buddhism and began to practice meditation on a regular basis. This experience opened up new vistas of understanding for me as I developed witness consciousness, or the ability to step outside of my thoughts and feelings, if only for brief seconds, and to observe them from a higher standpoint. Slowly, I began to develop an inner life, a spiritual life, which balanced out the completely outward orientation I had had for most of my life, buffeted about like a football by causes and conditions.
The third phase of my life in DC, which I believe dovetailed nicely with my nascent spirituality, began with my pregnancy and becoming a mother. This has by far been the richest experience of my life. The sheer joy of parenting Sami Gabriel would be enough in itself. But as the title of this blog suggests, and as I have been posting about here since February of 2006, parenting is the most powerful spiritual practice I have ever known. I have been stretched to the limits and have discovered how strong I am, how I can expand to meet just about any obstacle or challenge that comes my way. More than any other phase of my life in DC, this phase has transformed me utterly. It has been no less than the transformation from maiden to mother.
Throughout all these phases, my ex was a constant. Sometimes it seemed that he lived on the periphery of my life. He did not share my interests, and we intersected only in the brief spaces in my insane schedule. Parenting briefly brought us closer, but eventually we were torn apart irrevocably. Even after our separation in September 2006, my life was dictated by two pillars: Sami, and the question as to whether or not our marriage would survive. I will admit that the second question hung quite steadily in the background of my life, even after my ex announced last November that he had found someone else. Now, with the divorce, that long chapter has concluded.
I feel like I am on the brink of a completely new life, perhaps my best life yet. It is a truly exhilarating feeling. Of course, I carry within me all the lives I have led thus far, but now I stand on an altogether new path, into which all these others have converged. Today, I don't need to know where I am going. I trust my feet to keep walking. Regardless of the results of Tuesday's breast biopsy, which I should know tomorrow, I have this strong faith that surprises me. I have faith in the natural unfolding of things. While I am not without remorse for my unskillful actions, especially those that have hurt others, I would not change one second of this life. My faith is not blind or dogmatic. It comes out of the direct experience of the many lifetimes that I have already lived in this incarnation. While I can rarely ever see it at the time, everything in this life fits together in a way so seamless, so perfect, that it is hard not to be in total awe.
I am reminded of the three refuges on this night. Tonight particularly, I take refuge in the dharma. These are some true refuges in a world full of so many false refuges. I repeat them here -- for myself and for you. May they bring comfort to us all.
I take refuge in the Buddha,
the one who shows me the way in this life.
I take refuge in the Dharma,
the way of understanding and love.
I take refuge in the Sangha,
the community that lives in harmony and awareness.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Father Issues
In doing a little internet research on the origins of Father's Day, I was fascinated to discover that it was apparently the idea of the daughter of a single dad (widower) who wanted to honor his hard work and dedication to his children. And here I thought it was just a corporate-created Hallmark holiday and boon to the necktie and cologne industries.
You are both mother and father to Sami now, said two different friends to me recently, unbeknownst to each other. I never thought of it that way. Instead I have been fairly obsessed with the shortage of dads around here -- mine and Sami's. Even all my grandpas are dead. (Damn, I have a lot of dead people.) To put it simply, there is no one to send a father's day card to.
For the first time in my life, there is no man -- save for the little 2.5 year-old man-to-be sleeping in the other room. There are no father substitutes. No one to project my father issues onto. In my ex, I found someone to take care of me, and I am grateful to him for everything he did do for me, but his caretaking stunted my growth in some ways. Now I feel like I am picking up where I left off when I married him at the age of 23. I have to be a grown-up again.
I never really knew my own father. My parents were never married, and he was not in the picture much as I grew up, except for visits here and there. We got a bit closer when I became an adult, but I always sort of held him at arm's length. He suffered from a lot of things: he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for one, and was severely overmedicated for said disorder, which caused a lot of other problems.
The night that he died, suddenly and unexpectedly, he should have been at my house. My aunt had asked me if I would be open to him staying with us that weekend. I declined, and promised that I would go to visit him early the next week. I was too exhausted, with a new baby, and not much support myself, to take on my dad that weekend. Would he have died if he had stayed at my house? Could I have prevented his death? There is not much point in asking such questions, and yet I do. When I care to, I tell myself the story of being a terrible, selfish daughter who could have saved him if she had just put his needs before hers for once. But tonight, I am too tired to lay such a trip on myself.
Father issues. I still have not worked out all my anger towards my father. Yes, he is dead, almost two years gone, and much of the resentment has dropped away. But there is a nameless rage: the rage of the abandoned child, and that is much harder to release, as some of it is almost pre-verbal. Most of the time, I don't even know it is there. It comes out in funny ways--mainly in the longing for men to make everything better.
Perhaps it is the thwarted longing that provokes rage. I remember how I used to long for a dad. It wasn't something that happened all the time, but it was most acute when I spent time with my fathered friends. Yes, I had a wonderful step-grandfather who raised me as his own, but being raised by my grandparents only fueled my sense of myself as a freak. I loved them, but craved a father who was one, not two, generations removed.
Tonight, I sit with this a weird combination of exhilaration, remorse, and sadness. The aching for my ex is still unbelievably painful. I will endure it for as long as I need to, perhaps it will get more intense, perhaps less, and then it will change into something else or fade away entirely. For four months I was starved of him, and I'm perhaps dealing with some kind of a relapse, now that I got another dose of him in the court house.
I watch the ache: it's like a hollow in my solar plexus, from which a massive steel cable emerges and tries to connect to him, but can't. I keep trying to mentally pull back that steel cable, but can't quite seem to sever this longing to merge with my son's father. I wonder how this Father's Day is for him. More thoughts that are pointless to think.
It occurs to me that perhaps, by being both mother and father to my son, some of my father issues will resolve themselves. I have no idea how this would happen, but I am open to the possibility. I think I could be a good dad to my son, even though I'm not very butch. I need to find a way to redefine fatherhood so that I fit the bill. No answers on that front, but I'm brainstorming...
You are both mother and father to Sami now, said two different friends to me recently, unbeknownst to each other. I never thought of it that way. Instead I have been fairly obsessed with the shortage of dads around here -- mine and Sami's. Even all my grandpas are dead. (Damn, I have a lot of dead people.) To put it simply, there is no one to send a father's day card to.
For the first time in my life, there is no man -- save for the little 2.5 year-old man-to-be sleeping in the other room. There are no father substitutes. No one to project my father issues onto. In my ex, I found someone to take care of me, and I am grateful to him for everything he did do for me, but his caretaking stunted my growth in some ways. Now I feel like I am picking up where I left off when I married him at the age of 23. I have to be a grown-up again.
I never really knew my own father. My parents were never married, and he was not in the picture much as I grew up, except for visits here and there. We got a bit closer when I became an adult, but I always sort of held him at arm's length. He suffered from a lot of things: he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, for one, and was severely overmedicated for said disorder, which caused a lot of other problems.
The night that he died, suddenly and unexpectedly, he should have been at my house. My aunt had asked me if I would be open to him staying with us that weekend. I declined, and promised that I would go to visit him early the next week. I was too exhausted, with a new baby, and not much support myself, to take on my dad that weekend. Would he have died if he had stayed at my house? Could I have prevented his death? There is not much point in asking such questions, and yet I do. When I care to, I tell myself the story of being a terrible, selfish daughter who could have saved him if she had just put his needs before hers for once. But tonight, I am too tired to lay such a trip on myself.
Father issues. I still have not worked out all my anger towards my father. Yes, he is dead, almost two years gone, and much of the resentment has dropped away. But there is a nameless rage: the rage of the abandoned child, and that is much harder to release, as some of it is almost pre-verbal. Most of the time, I don't even know it is there. It comes out in funny ways--mainly in the longing for men to make everything better.
Perhaps it is the thwarted longing that provokes rage. I remember how I used to long for a dad. It wasn't something that happened all the time, but it was most acute when I spent time with my fathered friends. Yes, I had a wonderful step-grandfather who raised me as his own, but being raised by my grandparents only fueled my sense of myself as a freak. I loved them, but craved a father who was one, not two, generations removed.
Tonight, I sit with this a weird combination of exhilaration, remorse, and sadness. The aching for my ex is still unbelievably painful. I will endure it for as long as I need to, perhaps it will get more intense, perhaps less, and then it will change into something else or fade away entirely. For four months I was starved of him, and I'm perhaps dealing with some kind of a relapse, now that I got another dose of him in the court house.
I watch the ache: it's like a hollow in my solar plexus, from which a massive steel cable emerges and tries to connect to him, but can't. I keep trying to mentally pull back that steel cable, but can't quite seem to sever this longing to merge with my son's father. I wonder how this Father's Day is for him. More thoughts that are pointless to think.
It occurs to me that perhaps, by being both mother and father to my son, some of my father issues will resolve themselves. I have no idea how this would happen, but I am open to the possibility. I think I could be a good dad to my son, even though I'm not very butch. I need to find a way to redefine fatherhood so that I fit the bill. No answers on that front, but I'm brainstorming...
Friday, June 13, 2008
In the midst of the spiral
Spiraling. I know the sensation so well. It can be set off by anything or nothing, and before you know it, the painful thoughts pile on top of one other until you are buried in your own worry and despair. At some point my peaceful bubble of yesterday popped and a profound sadness set in, hanging around my heart like a thick fog. I think it has something to do with the approach of Father's Day, and the realization that Sami and I will both be without our dads on that day -- mine due to death, almost 2 years ago, and his due to -- reasons I still don't know, and may never know.
I sit with the not knowing -- not knowing why Sami's dad has chosen not to be in his life, and not knowing why my dad died suddenly in the night at the age of 63. It's good to sit with uncertainty, but do it too long and you start to feel a little nutso. I could see where all the mind stuff was going -- it was headed down the "everything, and absolutely everything's wrong, and it's never gonna be right" rabbit hole. Wow, it feels so good that I can see that, hold that in awareness, and see that it's not Truth, it's not even lower-case truth, it's just static in the old mind-space, it's just a tired old pattern, driven by habit-energy. Patterns can change. I have the choice to change the channel blaring inside my brain.
Sometimes distraction is the most compassionate course of action. My experience is that we don't have to go into everything and process it so deeply all the damn time. Sometimes we can give ourselves permission to back off the pain a little and revisit it later, if it is still there after the distraction is over.
After Sami's nap, I convinced him to go to see Kung Fu Panda with me. Oh, was it funny. I laughed out loud so many times, and Sami just looked at "silly mommy" in wonder. Plus, the movie had some nice dharma chunks in it and a meditating monkey (which I found ironic, given the term "monkey mind" for the mental chatter that comes up when we try to meditate). Sami frickin' loved the panda. After it was over, he demanded to see it again, and I promised him we'd go back another time. As we walked out of the theater, I thought about how much the movie reminded me of my ex, who shared my love of Kung Fu and martial arts movies. Then I had to stop thinking about that.
I took Sami to play around in the downtown Silver Spring fountain, but then he was expelled by a security officer for running, which is against the rules. He is still too young to understand about rules, except that we don't hurt people and we hold mama's hand in street. But the concept of no running is a totally foreign one to him. Why on earth would one not run, if one could? He was having so much fun playing with the blasts of water -- just seeing the pure joy on his face was infectious and I found myself standing alone, watching him, laughing out loud, and probably looking like a slightly insane individual.
After his expulsion-induced tears died down, the night went on. Downtown Silver Spring was packed with the usual groups of teenagers and families. Breakdancers battled it out on the astroturf to old school beats. Sami and I kicked a ball around for quite a while, until his cheeks turned very pink and his curls were damp with sweat. Life went on around us, and I felt somewhat enlivened in turn. My son, my sweet son, helps me to keep my melodrama a "mellow drama" as Ram Dass so cutely put it. He keeps me from letting the grief swallow me whole. For us both, I try to practice a middle path: feeling the suffering without too much pushing away, without too much giving in to it.
A little distraction, some wallowing, and some sitting with. That is my formula for survival through these post-divorce blues. As a Daily Om sent by a friend reminded me today, this confusion and discomfort signals that something big is shifting, that that which has died is making way for something new. I hover, precariously, between the death of what was and rebirth of an unknown. Right here is the place where I stand, the center from which the spiral unfurls.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
D-day.
As of about 1:15 this afternoon, I got divorced, in the same DC Superior Court where I married my now ex-husband.
Flashback to 1998. I was 23, and my ex was 25. Our marriage ceremony appointment was scheduled for November 25. As we were getting dressed to go to the courthouse on our wedding day, thinking we had a good two hours to get there, the judge's assistant called us and asked if we could come now. The judge had decided that he wanted to leave early for his Thanksgiving vacation. If we couldn't make it in half an hour, we would have to reschedule.
Perhaps we should have seen it as an omen. But we had been psyching ourselves up for weeks. This was going to be the big day. We hurriedly put on the rest of our clothes and jumped in a cab. My ex jumped out of the cab to buy me some flowers. I remember that the judge smelled like cigars. It was all over in a blur. This was not the wedding day that I had dreamed of as a young girl. But I was young, and in love, and we had to marry quickly so that we could get his citizenship process started. I remember crying. A lot. In the few photos that were taken of us, I look terrible. I am trying to smile and look happy, but my face is swollen and red.
I didn't cry during the divorce hearing.
My hands shook almost violently as I sat with my dear friend Y in the crowded waiting area outside the courtroom, waiting for my ex and my lawyer to show up. Y, who is a yoga teacher and healer, reminded me to strike a posture of balance between open-heartedness and protection: to hold my shoulders back, chest open, to slightly suck in my gut, to make my core strong. You don't need to protect your heart, she reminded me, you need to protect your core, and you are doing that.
My lawyer had been delayed in the metro and ended up being fifteen minutes late to the hearing. Because I couldn't get a signal in the lower floor of the courthouse, I didn't get her calls. So there I was, wondering if she was going to show up. Inside my stomach, an army of butterflies fluttered. Dread rose from deep within my solar plexus. I tried my best to stay within my body and just to be with the tides of fear as they rose and fell within.
My ex walked right past us and didn't seem to see us--maybe he was pretending not to or trying not to? His face bore a stressed and scared expression, and he was walking quickly. This glimmer of vulnerability touched me. I hadn't seen him for four months, but he looked the same. I was sort of surprised at that. In my mind, I had made him into someone else, some Other, but there he was, just like the man I married, but ten years older.
At about ten minutes after our scheduled hearing time, he came out of the courtroom and found Y and me. We awkwardly said hi to each other.
"Your lawyer ditched you, huh?" he asked, teasing.
"Yep -- that's why you're paying her the big bucks," I joked back.
That was nice. It was nice to smile. It relieved some of the tension in my body and mind. I felt like he was human again, the man I once joked and laughed with, not this Other who had been built up over four months of absence.
I didn't cry during the divorce hearing. But I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to, especially when the judge said those words: "no reasonable hope of reconciliation." Oh, how I wanted to, especially when the judge mentioned the name of the child born of our union, our beloved Sami. But my eyes would not sting, and the sweet release of tears would not come.
It all unfolded as quickly as our marriage ceremony had, a blur of legalese. We were sworn in. Going over the separation agreement, I verified the facts: our marriage date, our separation date, and a host of other questions that my lawyer asked me. Yes, yes, that's correct, yes, yes, that's right. My ex, who chose to represent himself, answered all the questions that the judge asked him, essentially asking him if he agreed with what I had said. Yes, your honor, answered my ex to every question. Nothing was in contention; all had been agreed upon.
We both waived our right to appeal, which means that rather than waiting 30 days for the divorce to become final, it will become final as soon as the judge enters it into the docket, which will be tomorrow at the latest. So, as of tomorrow, or maybe even now, we are officially, legally, no longer connected by the bonds of matrimony.
After it was over, we drifted towards each other and hugged in the courtroom. I honestly had had no idea what to expect, but hugging was not something I had considered.
Out in the hallway, my ex and I hugged again, this time for longer, maybe ten seconds, I don't know how long but it felt like a long time, and it was a real hug, an authentic hug, an embrace that I will never forget. Perhaps it was even more memorable than our wedding kiss. It felt so familiar, so comforting, to be held in his arms, against that body that I know so intimately, although I have not touched it in at least 6 or 7 months.
I remember the last time I tried to hug my ex: back in January, the night before my back surgery, when he came to pick up Sami. I had wanted to hug him the whole time he was in the house, but didn't. I started to run after him as he was getting into the car with Sami, only to be stopped and informed by my aunt that his new girlfriend, whom I had not yet met, and still haven't met, was sitting in the passenger's seat. I turned back to the house as they drove off, so embarrassed, so mortified, so horrified at my naked need for his comfort, his touch, his love. Love that he now reserved for another.
My ex choked up as we embraced.
"Take care of yourself," he said.
"You too."
I wanted to meet his tears with my own. But still, they would not come. And as friend reminded me, perhaps that's because it's no longer my task to share emotions with him.
It is now, when I think of that embrace, that the tears come. I am aware that I am far, far, from over him. I miss the details of him. The smell of him, the feel of his physical and emotional strength. His strength is no longer mine to draw upon. It is my own strength that I must cultivate now, day by day. I realize that although we are officially divorced, a powerful form of closure, there are so many more levels of closure that I will have to come to within myself. In time, it will happen.
While I can honestly say today that I am glad to be single, and that it is exhilarating and exciting not to NEED a man, there is a profound grief at the loss of him. It is an open and bleeding wound, still. It needs air and sunlight to heal.
My companion, for ten years of my life. My lover. My friend. We shared so much together. We both came from horrendous battlefields of childhoods--childhoods so awful that they make you feel like a freak, an outcast, a broken person, like no one else could ever understand you, like no one could ever love you, and we found refuge in one another. Together, we made the most wonderful, magical, beautiful child. I remember how we planned out the name for the girl we would liked to have had, a sister for Sami. She would have been named Hannah.
So much pain, dissatisfaction, quiet desperation, and ugliness went down during our marriage, during our long, roller-coaster separation, and it's so beyond true that we are ultimately incompatible. Yet what I remember most is the love that brought us together, the beautiful moments, big and small, strung together like a necklace a decade long. Am I wearing rose-colored glasses? Perhaps. But I've decided that the good memories can be mine to keep for as long as I wish, and maybe I'll hold on to them for as long as I live.
Yet there is no reasonable hope of reconciliation, and it is truly over. Now, even as I mourn the end of ten years of marriage, I see the blessing in this rite of passage, this divorce. It was a good divorce, as good as a divorce could ever be. In some ways, it was more peaceful than our marriage ceremony (even with the MIA lawyer scare).
This is an ending, a stopping place, the place from which a new beginning is inherently born. May we both find joy in the new chapters of our lives. On our separate paths, may we find wholeness and love.
Flashback to 1998. I was 23, and my ex was 25. Our marriage ceremony appointment was scheduled for November 25. As we were getting dressed to go to the courthouse on our wedding day, thinking we had a good two hours to get there, the judge's assistant called us and asked if we could come now. The judge had decided that he wanted to leave early for his Thanksgiving vacation. If we couldn't make it in half an hour, we would have to reschedule.
Perhaps we should have seen it as an omen. But we had been psyching ourselves up for weeks. This was going to be the big day. We hurriedly put on the rest of our clothes and jumped in a cab. My ex jumped out of the cab to buy me some flowers. I remember that the judge smelled like cigars. It was all over in a blur. This was not the wedding day that I had dreamed of as a young girl. But I was young, and in love, and we had to marry quickly so that we could get his citizenship process started. I remember crying. A lot. In the few photos that were taken of us, I look terrible. I am trying to smile and look happy, but my face is swollen and red.
I didn't cry during the divorce hearing.
My hands shook almost violently as I sat with my dear friend Y in the crowded waiting area outside the courtroom, waiting for my ex and my lawyer to show up. Y, who is a yoga teacher and healer, reminded me to strike a posture of balance between open-heartedness and protection: to hold my shoulders back, chest open, to slightly suck in my gut, to make my core strong. You don't need to protect your heart, she reminded me, you need to protect your core, and you are doing that.
My lawyer had been delayed in the metro and ended up being fifteen minutes late to the hearing. Because I couldn't get a signal in the lower floor of the courthouse, I didn't get her calls. So there I was, wondering if she was going to show up. Inside my stomach, an army of butterflies fluttered. Dread rose from deep within my solar plexus. I tried my best to stay within my body and just to be with the tides of fear as they rose and fell within.
My ex walked right past us and didn't seem to see us--maybe he was pretending not to or trying not to? His face bore a stressed and scared expression, and he was walking quickly. This glimmer of vulnerability touched me. I hadn't seen him for four months, but he looked the same. I was sort of surprised at that. In my mind, I had made him into someone else, some Other, but there he was, just like the man I married, but ten years older.
At about ten minutes after our scheduled hearing time, he came out of the courtroom and found Y and me. We awkwardly said hi to each other.
"Your lawyer ditched you, huh?" he asked, teasing.
"Yep -- that's why you're paying her the big bucks," I joked back.
That was nice. It was nice to smile. It relieved some of the tension in my body and mind. I felt like he was human again, the man I once joked and laughed with, not this Other who had been built up over four months of absence.
I didn't cry during the divorce hearing. But I wanted to. Oh, how I wanted to, especially when the judge said those words: "no reasonable hope of reconciliation." Oh, how I wanted to, especially when the judge mentioned the name of the child born of our union, our beloved Sami. But my eyes would not sting, and the sweet release of tears would not come.
It all unfolded as quickly as our marriage ceremony had, a blur of legalese. We were sworn in. Going over the separation agreement, I verified the facts: our marriage date, our separation date, and a host of other questions that my lawyer asked me. Yes, yes, that's correct, yes, yes, that's right. My ex, who chose to represent himself, answered all the questions that the judge asked him, essentially asking him if he agreed with what I had said. Yes, your honor, answered my ex to every question. Nothing was in contention; all had been agreed upon.
We both waived our right to appeal, which means that rather than waiting 30 days for the divorce to become final, it will become final as soon as the judge enters it into the docket, which will be tomorrow at the latest. So, as of tomorrow, or maybe even now, we are officially, legally, no longer connected by the bonds of matrimony.
After it was over, we drifted towards each other and hugged in the courtroom. I honestly had had no idea what to expect, but hugging was not something I had considered.
Out in the hallway, my ex and I hugged again, this time for longer, maybe ten seconds, I don't know how long but it felt like a long time, and it was a real hug, an authentic hug, an embrace that I will never forget. Perhaps it was even more memorable than our wedding kiss. It felt so familiar, so comforting, to be held in his arms, against that body that I know so intimately, although I have not touched it in at least 6 or 7 months.
I remember the last time I tried to hug my ex: back in January, the night before my back surgery, when he came to pick up Sami. I had wanted to hug him the whole time he was in the house, but didn't. I started to run after him as he was getting into the car with Sami, only to be stopped and informed by my aunt that his new girlfriend, whom I had not yet met, and still haven't met, was sitting in the passenger's seat. I turned back to the house as they drove off, so embarrassed, so mortified, so horrified at my naked need for his comfort, his touch, his love. Love that he now reserved for another.
My ex choked up as we embraced.
"Take care of yourself," he said.
"You too."
I wanted to meet his tears with my own. But still, they would not come. And as friend reminded me, perhaps that's because it's no longer my task to share emotions with him.
It is now, when I think of that embrace, that the tears come. I am aware that I am far, far, from over him. I miss the details of him. The smell of him, the feel of his physical and emotional strength. His strength is no longer mine to draw upon. It is my own strength that I must cultivate now, day by day. I realize that although we are officially divorced, a powerful form of closure, there are so many more levels of closure that I will have to come to within myself. In time, it will happen.
While I can honestly say today that I am glad to be single, and that it is exhilarating and exciting not to NEED a man, there is a profound grief at the loss of him. It is an open and bleeding wound, still. It needs air and sunlight to heal.
My companion, for ten years of my life. My lover. My friend. We shared so much together. We both came from horrendous battlefields of childhoods--childhoods so awful that they make you feel like a freak, an outcast, a broken person, like no one else could ever understand you, like no one could ever love you, and we found refuge in one another. Together, we made the most wonderful, magical, beautiful child. I remember how we planned out the name for the girl we would liked to have had, a sister for Sami. She would have been named Hannah.
So much pain, dissatisfaction, quiet desperation, and ugliness went down during our marriage, during our long, roller-coaster separation, and it's so beyond true that we are ultimately incompatible. Yet what I remember most is the love that brought us together, the beautiful moments, big and small, strung together like a necklace a decade long. Am I wearing rose-colored glasses? Perhaps. But I've decided that the good memories can be mine to keep for as long as I wish, and maybe I'll hold on to them for as long as I live.
Yet there is no reasonable hope of reconciliation, and it is truly over. Now, even as I mourn the end of ten years of marriage, I see the blessing in this rite of passage, this divorce. It was a good divorce, as good as a divorce could ever be. In some ways, it was more peaceful than our marriage ceremony (even with the MIA lawyer scare).
This is an ending, a stopping place, the place from which a new beginning is inherently born. May we both find joy in the new chapters of our lives. On our separate paths, may we find wholeness and love.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
In honor of tomorrow's divorce: an interview with Charlotte
Here is my debut Mama Dharma interview, with the fabulous and talented Charlotte Schoeneman. I joined GoMomGo, a listerv for divorcing moms in the Washington, DC area, just as I was separating from my spouse in October of 2006. Those were beyond crazy times, beyond terrifying times, when I felt as if every foundation I had ever leaned upon crumbled in an instant beneath my feet.
Although I barely knew her, I immediately looked to Charlotte as a mentor. After a particularly scarifying conversation with my ex, I remember calling her in near-hysterics, asking for her counsel. We had not yet met in person at that point. That night, she was kind and calm and reassuring and took the time to talk to me, a stranger, for quite a while. After hanging up the phone, I felt a glimmer of faith that I would survive the experience. I'll never forget that. Tomorrow we have our day in court, and I can hardly believe it is almost over. I hope that having gone through this journey, I, too, can be a resource for women who are where I was on that night when I called Charlotte.
In the last 20 months or so that I have been on GoMomGo, I have been touched and impressed by all the women who post their hearts out every day. Rants are always welcome and met with concern, practical advice, and solidarity. Charlotte is a constant presence, there with a helpful resource, compassion, a useful insight, or some much-needed humor. Plus, she is an absolutely stellar swing-dancer!
Can you tell me a little bit about what motivated you to get GoMomGo "going?"
I was going through a divorce myself, following being assaulted by my then husband, and was looking for a support group. It was difficult finding support and understanding among my circle of friends and family. None of my friends were divorced, and no one I knew had been in an abusive relationship. My family were helpful but not really very supportive, and I had a hard time asking for what I wanted.
After several unsuccessful tries, I found a group starting up on DCurbanmom.com. It sounded great and lots of women showed for the first meeting, but the founder insisted on keeping meetings in the evenings and kid-free, so the group quickly dwindled, as few women were committed to getting a sitter for each meeting. Fortunately I had my mom to babysit for my one year old, but I would drive to Chevy Chase each week and be the only one. I suggested starting a listserv but was rebuffed. So I waited until the group died and started my own.
In addition to the support of other divorcing moms, what got you through your divorce? What gets you through the day-to-day struggles of co-parenting, child support, financial stresses, etc.?
From this long, hard, divorce process I've learned so many skills for getting through tough times. I've also discovered how strong and resilient I am, and that I can survive just about anything.
I do yoga, take care of myself, get help from others, identify when things are out of balance, and work to get back on track before I get spread too thin or get too stressed out. I have a list of things to do when I'm feeling stressed. I go to counseling. I seek the support of friends.
Financially, I've learned to live with little. I buy all my clothes, and most all of our stuff used (this dovetails nicely into my personal values re environment and recycling).
Concerning both happiness and finances, I try to evaluate at least weekly whether I can do anything to improve on the status quo. Of course some things fall through the cracks - like rolling over my IRAs and researching graduate schools.
What is the most useful piece of advice you received as you were going through your divorce?
Free counseling at the House of Ruth DC for survivors of domestic violence. #2 would be that life is comprised of good things and bad things, and it's all normal, and part of being alive; I try to appreciate the difficult times and suffering as well as the easiness and joy.
Even though divorce is so common, most mothers feel isolated, ashamed, and overwhelmed when they first separate from their spouses. What would you say to them?
It's normal to feel this way. Society puts a lot of pressure on women to take care of the marital relationship. It also esteems women for having a spouse. Recognize these beliefs and biases for what they are, and appreciate that you are in a difficult position. Then garner whatever resources and support you can and move on!
What are some of the primary lessons you've learned from your divorce?
Hitting rock bottom really paves the way for transformation and growth.
Forgiveness is the kindest thing one can do for oneself.
It's not a zero-sum game; we are all in this together, especially when there are children involved.
It's important to support a child's relationship with their father (even if he doesn't pay child support and has negligible parenting skills).
What are some of the spiritual practices or creative outlets that sustain you?
I dance and I practice yoga. I garden, sew, cook, make things, paint, draw. Keeping the body moving facilitates processing emotions and thoughts, and really helps with moving on mentally. The act of moving is cathartic and stress-reducing.
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