Well... I've Been A Long Time Gone...

... and a lot has happened in that time...

the boy and I were homeless - in Seattle, on Vashon Island and back in Seattle... though we never had to sleep in the van or in a shelter, thanks to loving people in our lives, old friends and new...

we are now in transitional housing - we have a warm, dry, comfortable house to ourselves with our cats, with a big yard full of tall trees, in a beach-side neighbourhood just a bit north of the Seattle city limits.   And we have some breathing space to rebuild our lives here, seeing the courts said I couldn't take the boy back to Australia to live...

found out a while ago that the people the boy's father hired to represent him and give evidence in court on his behalf were FATHERS' RIGHTS people.... wondered at the time what was the hidden agenda being played out, given the weirdness of these peoples' actions and attacks - now I know... I didn't stand a chance against them, especially without an attorney representing me...

and I have to say I am seriously pissy that total strangers, with an anti-woman axe to grind, have managed to interfere in our lives so much!  There are things to be done about that - all in good time...

have pulled back from much of the social activism I was doing, including this blog, obviously!   Much of what I was seeing going on in the world and was dealing with personally, was making me angry and bitter and cynical, and using that anger to fuel my social justice advocacy, and having that arena as a place to vent my resentment, wasn't working any longer... I had to step back and focus on our own immediate environment and needs...

and I have been doing a second go-around with breast cancer... After a year of dithering and playing around with alternative ideas regarding treatment, I finally put my hand up for some neo-adjuvant chemotherapy to shrink the tumours prior to surgery and radiation... it hasn't been much fun and the novelty really and truly has worn off!  

and we have been doing unschooling stuff with classes on basic electronics, geology, astronomy and chemistry... and the boy started Aikido three months ago, loves it and has already earned his yellow stripe... he's aiming for a black belt, he tells me...

looking forward to the arrival of daughter number 2 in December, staying for a month... Haven't seen her for almost 10 years...

and so very, very grateful for all the kindred spirits in our lives, who have loved and supported us, and continue to do that, as we are walking this path... 

speaking of this blog... am kinda committed to getting it back up and running... I notice that on many older posts, the embedded videos no longer work - Youtube pulled them for various reasons.... I don't have the energy right now to go and find new pieces to replace them, and I probably never will have the motivation!   Sorry about that!

Shooting Myself In The Foot...

On a purely personal note today, I have become increasingly conscious of how often I "shoot myself in the foot" and take actions - or more accurately NOT TAKE ACTIONS - that result in more 'difficulty' in my life than is necessary...

Compared to 4 billion or so other souls on the planet, my son and I are living well; we have somewhere warm and dry to live, clothes, food, transport and people around who care what happens to us...

Compared to others who are similarly or more privileged, there's a lot in my life that could be 'improved'.

We are living day-to-day financially which is stressful and not how it has to be.   And that's because of several factors:

• Politically and personally, I find it almost impossible now, to participate in the current economic and social paradigm - it's  anti-life, dysfunctional and toxic...

• Because of that, I'm choosing not to work in the corporate madhouse (though some might say that with 25% unemployment in the US that is not a choice I - as an older, over-qualified, woman - am making necessarily)...

• The journey here in the US has been completely intense, complicated and difficult, comprised of getting into and then getting out of a situation of domestic violence and experiencing cancer... This has taken much of my focus and a great deal of energy.   And it doesn't seem likely to end anytime soon, as my son's father continues to play power and control games (mostly now around money) and I go back to court tomorrow to ask  for the renewal of a Protection Order for yet another year...

• Single parenting my son takes time, focus and energy that would otherwise be available for money-making activities.   I don't have the same amount of energy as I did when I was raising my first family, and I choose to give my son first call on the energy I do have - everything and everyone else has to queue up behind him...

BUT.... there are things I can do that would both add to the positive in the world and bring in cash...

I have plans to start the Purple Dove Foundation to raise money for and awareness about (and the eventual eradication of) the horror of domestic violence.

The Foundation would do what the Komen Foundation does in the field of breast cancer - raises billions of dollars and then distributes it to organisations working to cure breast cancer and to individuals living through the experience - basically acting as a clearing house for funds...

The Komen Foundation is successful because many people can't deal with facing their own mortality... fund raising for disease-fighting is quite easy...

But most people don't want to talk about domestic violence - it's the nasty little secret thing that happens to other people, behind closed doors in the house down the street...

And that's just not true... it happens in one-in-five households and is probably happening to your next-door-neighbour as I write and you read this... or it's been happening in your house, or in the house where you grew up...

It happened in my house where I grew up, though I didn't know what it was and that it was not 'normal'... and a form of it happened in my first marriage, though again I didn't recognise it for what it was until much later...

Did you know:

• One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.
• An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year.
• 85% of domestic violence victims are women.
• Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew.
• Females who are 20-24 years of age are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence. 
• Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.

- Domestic Violence Fact Sheet

I've had this in my head for five years now - a fully fledged, perfectly sound, perfectly viable  idea that only needs implementation...

And I have begun taking small steps to make it a reality... 

BUT... something inside holds me back from taking the big strides forward necessary to make this idea really come alive in 3D...

My inner critic says it's because I'm lazy and afraid of failure, all talk and no action...

I know I'm not lazy - I've worked hard all my life...

I know I'm not all talk and no action - I've done things in my life that have changed reality for quite a few people.   I've walked the talk and put my money where my mouth is...

Am I afraid of failure?   I have put myself out there, laid it all on the line in the past and sometimes that has cost me a lot AND I kept going, no matter what, because it was the right thing to do...

Am I afraid of exposing myself, telling the story over and over again, perhaps being pitied or shunned?

When I teach - in the personal growth/spiritual arenas - I always use personal experience as the main teaching tool... after all, I'm the only person/thing I am an expert on... and being prepared to be vulnerable and to take myself down to my students' "level" gives them permission to open up and share... the most amazing learning/shifts happen all around...

I believe in equalising/leveling the playing field...that's what's real and takes the "power over" element out of teaching/sharing/nurturing.    

I tell my students (and my kids and the kids I teach electives to at school) that in some aspects of life, I'm a master, in some I'm a novice, in some an apprentice, and in some a scholar, as are they... And in some areas they're the masters whereas I'm still a novice or an apprentice...

Am I afraid I wasn't really a "victim" because I got out before it got really bad - I didn't end up in the hospital with broken bones, that I'm just a fraud?

Just as  I wasn't really a "victim" of cancer because I  'only' had a mastectomy and reconstruction - I didn't need radiation and chemotherapy, my hair didn't fall out, I didn't spend days huddled over the toilet puking up my guts?  

I know, quite ridiculous really, but that's how the uncontrolled mind works for many of us, especially women...

Am I afraid of success?   What would the world look like with no violence in it?

Maybe I'm just plain mad, mad, mad, having a huge temper tantrum that my life isn't all peaches and cream... a case of sitting on the pity-pot crying "why me, why me?"...  What is it they say?    "Shit, or get off the pot already"!

Maybe I'm just plain mad at my supposedly intelligent self, for having made certain choices that have gotten me/us to this place...

And yet, I know this particular section of my life's journey was 'meant to be'... I don't think any other experience would have led me to recognise what was the pattern of abusive relationships the female line of my family has endured, for generations, and to decide "It Stops With Me"... 

And it has stopped with me... my daughters and sons now have knowledge I didn't when I was young and they need not make the same dysfunctional choices I did, as my mother and grandmothers did before me...

Indigenous people say that what you heal in this life time, heals seven generations into the past and seven generations into the future, so maybe there was a worthwhile point to all this after all!

But there is no complete peace in that; there's still anger, rage even, at the men who carried out this abuse - sexual, physical, emotional. 

To them - dead and alive - I say: "I understand your pain and why you did what you did... You did the best you could with what you had, as we all do... 

BUT - please, accept, own and live with your guilt instead of denying it... live with your guilt as I have to do with mine, for not protecting my children as I should have, just as my mother did not protect me..." 

 

Maybe I (still) want to be rescued - have the proverbial white knight  come galloping in on his charger, solving all my problems, whisking me and my son off to the always sunny land of happiness ever after, flowing with milk and honey, all rainbows and cherubs playing heavenly music!

Maybe I'm just resistant to change in my own life...good at helping others handle/achieve change in their lives, but when it comes to my own little world, Life has to drag me kicking and screaming through the hedge backwards!

Maybe my ambivalence about being in this country is what's getting in the way... If I put in more energy creating something, that means on some level that I'm committing to staying here, in a place I dislike...  I like, love even, many of the people in my life here, but this society gives me the creeps... I want to go home, but where is home now?

Or maybe I'm just tired... too much needs attention in this world and I'd rather just sit back, take care of me and mine and let all the rest go to hell in a handcart...

We shall see...