The truth can set you free

Many, many years ago—26 of them in fact—I was sucker punched in the side of head by someone I was married to.

I was holding my four-year-old daughter at the moment he punched me, and even though it dropped me to the floor my child never left my arms.

Then he said he was going to get his shotgun and the words drowned my lungs in terror and I could not breathe. At the moment he left the room I leapt from the floor with my child, threw open the doorway to a flight of stairs that led outside, and ran like hell.

I was so terrified, that I left my other child—a one year old—playing on the kitchen floor because I didn’t think I had time to stop and pick her up.

I tore up those stairs like a steaming locomotive and burst into the front yard of the little suburb street of the city I lived in, and ran.

Instantly, he was behind me and I expected to be shot.

There was no one around to help me.

I made it to the neighbor’s front yard across the street before that man grabbed me, and when I turned around to face him he didn’t have a gun after all.

I pushed myself to the ground, determined to cement myself there on the grass, arms wrapped around my daughter, as I listened to that man shout abusive violations as he pulled at my shirt.

Within the hour I was back in the house with him trying silently to figure out what I’d done to deserve that.

I couldn’t walk straight for a week because that punch damaged my equilibrium and when I went to the doctor about it, I lied to him about how I got that way.

The man who punched me never apologized and I never talked to him about what he had done to me. I didn’t want to make him mad. I believed I could fix it by myself with magical thinking, library books on relationships, and by just keeping my mouth shut.

I never told anyone about that time nor any of the other times when he got really mad and said things that leveled my self esteem.

It took me another five years after that punch before I believed in myself enough and found the courage and made the choice to stand up for my children and myself and walk away.

When I finally made the decision to leave him, it got much harder for me than I ever imagined, but I kept my eyes ahead. I asked for help, told my truth, and learned just how amazing that village of support is that awaited me when I made a stand.

I think one of the hardest things in the world is watching another woman walk a really hard road, a situation unique in its own right and yet not so far off a path I once walked.  

I know all about magical thinking, second-guessing yourself, feeling helpless, alone, empty, and overwhelmed.

Change is hard, change is damn scary. “Stepping onto a brand, new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”

I listen. I hear.

Keep going. Reach out. Ask for help.

Eyes ahead.

You are not alone.

And again.

Stand. Stand. Stand.

Do right by yourself

So goes the Universe, ebbing and flowing over our lives, swirling experiences produced of free will mixed with an unfolding set plan we often do not understand.

Or so I believe, anyway.

Many of us remain stuck in old ways that aren’t working for us, and yet we are unwilling to change the one thing that would change everything. We question what our heart tells us and keep doing what we’ve always done because it is grossly familiar and the unknown is a scary place.

Pay attention to your intuition. Follow it. It speaks the truth.

Or so I believe, anyway.

Of particular interest to me, of late, are the wise little children around me who don’t worry what others think. They believe in their voice. They ask for what they want and need and aren’t afraid to put themselves first. 

Some of the women out there could take a lesson or two from the primary school of thought and start acting like the grown ups they think they are. 

We are not born to be quiet, hide our emotions, our wants, and our needs. Somewhere along the line, some of us lost our way—were encouraged and convinced by selfish forces to put those precious gifts of individuality at the back of the line. Some of us forgot that our individual precious inside happiness matters. What a shame.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that children are the greatest teachers. They are more honest with their immediate feelings than most any other living creature on earth. They are not afraid to wear their heart on their sleeve.

You there. Don’t use others as excuses to hide behind. Do not blame the other for what is wrong in your own life. Find better things to do than soak in self-imposed sticky pudding excuses for not standing up, hard as it may be, and owning yourself.

This life is not about what someone else has to fix in his or her own life. This is about what you are willing to live with and what you are not, and what makes you happy and what does not. No one else can do that for you.

Today, begin to believe you are a phenomenally strong woman who knows for sure that choice is possible and that “stepping onto a brand, new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation which is not nurturing to the whole woman.”

If you want positive change, start with you. If you need help, ask for it.

The late Martha Graham, one of the pioneers of modern dance, believed that we learn by practice.

“Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one’s being, a satisfaction of spirit.”

Or so I believe, anyway.

An unforgettable moment on ice

Ice fishing. Ever since I tried it for the first time two years ago, the sport has remained my #1 favourite pastime of the winter season.

I’ve spent countless blocks of time in the fishing tackle aisle at local hardware stores, reading package specs of small bait hooks, trying out ice fishing rod and reel sets that beg to be rescued from the store shelf and put to work on landing the big one.

I’ve watched YouTube videos on how to tie fishing knots and how to spool a spinning reel, and I’ve joined the ranks of ice-fishing websites.  

I love the sport so much I daydream about taking a day off middle of the week and sitting in an ice shack for the whole day, quiet, and focused, and feeling like I’d won the lottery because it wasn’t yet the weekend.

The entire ice fishing experience fills me up with such excitement that my heartbeat races the closer I get to my fishing destination. It’s the truth.

Driving on a frozen lake to get to where the fish are still fills me with wonder at the scientific process of how ice is made, across miles of a liquid sea of fresh water.

I’m 55 years old and I feel like a little kid, eyes big as saucers, when I see an ice auger drill that butter soft hole in the ice until the volcano of winter white shavings change to an icy blue snow cone mixed with the water that signals the break through. Amazing.

And then there’s the refracted sunlight that bounces back through the ice-hole, decorating the auger rings and lighting up the minnow on my hook, on its way down, down, down, glowing until the dark deep waters swallow it up.  

I’ve read the ice fishing advice that suggests that the best thing about ice fishing is that you don’t need a lot of equipment. It’s a simple pleasure.  

And it’s a newborn fantastic experience every time, when I see the bobber dip below the surface and get dragged down with a fish on—and the excitement of pulling up my line with my hands, in what always seems like a forever moment, and spotting the fish I hooked, lit up in the light of the ice hole like a piece of gold as I pull it through.

I used to think that part was the best thing about ice fishing. I was wrong.

The best part, the part I will never forget, happened this past Saturday when I looked out the window of the ice shack at my 10 year old grandson who was my fishing partner, on his inaugural ice fishing adventure.

He’d been out there fishing a hole for quite some time on his own, deep in concentration. As he was reeling in his line, no fish on, just in the moment he was, he turned and looked back at me and smiled. He was hooked.

Now that, folks, was a Kodak moment.