Your past always informs your present, which gives birth to your future. “I'm going to be a working lady. I don't want babies.” According to my mom, this was what I insisted when I was about eight. I've been amazed any number of times that my inner self was speaking my truth decades before my adult self caught up. The trajectory of my life actually never did veer in the direction of child-rearing. Like most young girls, I babysat as much as possible. Not reluctantly, but also never because I loved taking care of kids. I did it for the twenty-five cents an hour that I earned. And I still remember how nervous I was when I made the decision to raise my rate to thirty-five cents an hour. Would the parents balk? They did. Recently, I was at a neighborhood gathering and learned that the going rate for babysitting, at least in my neighborhood, is now ten dollars an hour. And no balking!
What I did want as a young girl was independence. I wanted to make my own decisions. I wanted to be in charge. And I wanted distance. In fact, I wanted it from the toddler stage on. According to my older sister, I never shed a tear after tumbling down two flights of stairs onto the cold, hard cement of the basement floor when I was two years old. When she came running to pick me up to comfort me, I pushed her away. I didn't want help. Had I already determined that putting my trust in others wasn't wise? Sometimes it still troubles me. Why did I push love away when it was so freely offered?
Not unlike millions of young people, then and now, I knew I wanted to be different in many ways from my family, and specifically from my sisters initially. It wasn't that I didn't like them; on the contrary, I did. I simply wanted a “bigger” life. I didn't want to work at the tiny corner grocery across the street from our house that was owned by our uncle.
It was assumed I would follow in their footsteps, but I adamantly refused. I wanted to work downtown, in a department store, where I could chart my own path unsupervised by any family member. So at age fifteen, to the chagrin of my parents, I marched into the largest department store in Lafayette, lied on the application, claiming to be sixteen, and got my first real job. I was a salesgirl! With a time card and an employee discount. I had arrived!
Even though I had a job I loved and was good at, I lacked confidence in so many other areas of my life. Was I genuinely liked? Was my boyfriend planning to reject me? Was I making the grade with my friends and in my classes? Was I going to be truly special to one man someday?
Truthfully, that was the all-important concern. Would someone want to marry me? I hate to admit how focused I was on that, but it undergirded my decision to go to college. That's where marriages were made in the Fifties. I had seen it happen with my sisters. In that one regard, I did want to be like them. I did want to be chosen, and who “the chooser” was wasn't even important. I didn't want to be left standing on the sidelines as the bridesmaid again and again.
My early years foreshadowed who I was to become—something that is true for all of us, I believe. As is true of most young girls, I played teacher to my dolls and then to my friends. And I eventually became one: first an elementary school teacher and then an instructor on a college campus. My evolution was perfect. I was always in the right place at the right time.
Right Place, Right Time
You will always be where you need to be for the next right thing to happen. This is a truth you can count on. It's the unquestionable certainty for everyone, everywhere, actually. And you need not even know this for it to be true.
My first book was a testament to that as well. In grammar school, I began writing stories about a girl with a life more interesting than mine. Most important, her parents didn't argue all the time. There wasn't an undercurrent of tension in her home that touched each person. Living “through” this fictional family gave me palpable relief. This family also gave me direction and hope, and a determination to reach beyond where I was.
Every book I have written over the last three and a half decades has grown out of my determination to create a new reality—the very same determination I had as a nine-year-old. I realize now that these stories were akin to the vision boards I would be inspired to create as a young recovering woman. Vision boards are like the story boards that screenwriters use to create dramatic plots. The difference is that vision boards can help to project a real, not a fictional, narrative. With vision boarding, I believed that if I could see it, I could make it real. If I could write it, it could materialize in my life and help others too.
The most profound experience I had with vision boarding, and why I believe in its power, happened the very first time I tried it. Every picture I placed on my first carefully considered board did, in fact, manifest. One picture showed a woman playing tennis; another showed her playing golf; a third picture showed her wearing a business suit and carrying a briefcase. And central to them all was a woman standing next to a dark-haired man. He was building bookcases against a wall in a home. A little more than a year later, I realized that the dark-haired man was the man who was to become my husband. And he actually built the wall of bookcases for me. As I watched him do it, I fully understood the power of envisioning an experience I wanted as my own.
A vision board's power can be remarkable. I had never really taken to heart what I had heard so many others say about sending out to the universe that which we hope to experience. Do we actually need vision boards to send out our requests? Probably not, but the process of making one creates its own magnetism. It requires being pensive, prayerful, actively hopeful, and expectant. All four of these qualities lend weight to the request we are making. And the creation of the board is our invitation to the universe to manifest our vision, along with our decision to let the fretting go.
While preparing for my final oral exam for my doctorate, I didn't opt to make a vision board. I had recently read a fascinating article in Psychology Today about the power of meditative envisioning. As a result, I instead sat for thirty minutes in quiet meditation every day for a month, “seeing myself” in the room where I knew the exam would take place, answering each question asked by my six committee members. We smiled and nodded as we talked. On the day of the exam, I walked into that room feeling quite comfortable. I had been there before. I was ready to proceed. And I passed the exam, earning my degree.
I find it rather curious, in hindsight, that my stories as a youngster could be considered juvenile attempts to send ideas out to the universe. Those stories didn't actually materialize as written. After all, I was quite busy fulfilling the many pacts I had made with many carefully selected learning partners in real life. But the process of creating those make-believe families had an impact, nonetheless. It trained me to listen to the voice within, to trust its words, to let them comfort me.
Nothing that we ever do is wasted. Everything that calls to us—whether it be an idea or an experience or a person—does so for a reason that will become known to us at the right time. For me, the call to write was born when I was nine years old, and that call never died.
I was brash as a young girl. And fearful too. I came by both of these characteristics honestly, a saying so often heard from the lips of my dad. I feared abandonment from the moment I took notice of others on my path. Would they be long-time or fleeting friends? Would they choose someone else over me? This very thing happened, as a matter of fact, when I was in the sixth grade. A classmate and I had been best friends for three years. Every day after school, I pedaled as fast as I could to her house to hang out. And then another girl moved into our neighborhood and became a classmate.
Instantly, I was afraid that she would come between my best friend and me. My worst fears materialized. No matter how fast I pedaled to my friend's house, she and our new classmate had already gone for a ride. The devastation I felt then was repeated many times throughout my life, particularly in my relationships with men. As I mentioned earlier, I tried to hold on to people, but my clinging drove them away. It happened more than once, but the most devastating time was when my first husband left me.
Fortunately, when I got into recovery, I went to a counselor and the first words out of her mouth were: “You were abandoned in the womb.” I was both shocked and confused. How could she know that and what did it mean? Truthfully, I was immediately suspect. There were crystals hanging from the ceiling and pillows instead of couches all over the room. Fortunately, I was young enough then to get up and down from the floor—something I can no longer easily accomplish.
The counselor was insistent that I had been abandoned in the womb, a common syndrome with recovering women, she said. I certainly did identify with the abandonment diagnosis, but not the womb. And then, about a year later, my mom and I had a talk that changed my life completely—and hers as well.
“Tell me about your life, Mother.” I was fulfilling an assignment for a family of origin class, not expecting much of a response. She seldom provided much detail about her life, and in particular about her past. Her general response was always: “I can't remember.” Instead, a flood of tears began to flow. “I never felt like a good wife or a good mother, and I didn't want you when I was pregnant with you.” Bingo! I had been abandoned in the womb. In those few words, the seed of my discontent, which gave rise to my need to cling to others, emerged. My fear, indeed, had roots—deep roots. The information gave me hope that I'd finally be able to let go.
But the additional gift from that exchange with my mother was her freedom from a secret she had carried for more than thirty-seven years. She could never have told my dad how she felt. In the era in which she grew up, she could never have told any one, in fact. Her shame and guilt had festered for decades. That she was able to tell me released her and opened the door to a bond that comforted both of us for the rest of our years together. We cried long and hard together and, from that moment on, I was so grateful she was my mom.
Speaking truth about the past as well as the present unleashes a power for good, for spiritual growth, for universal connection that moves each one of us—all 7.5 billion of us—into a rhythm that comforts all of humanity. Does this seem like an extravagant claim? Think again. What affects one of us does, indeed, affect all of us. My mother's words changed me; they changed her. And my spiritual journey has convinced me that they left no soul untouched. Not one.
I continued to learn things about my family when I spoke with my dad about his life. I posed the very same question. His response stunned me: “I have been afraid every day of my life.” To the rest of us, his success and dominance in our family didn't look like fear. In fact, his eruptions over the smallest incidents looked more like bullying than fear. In the intervening years, I have come to understand the connection between the two, however. But his feelings of fear had their roots in his childhood, as is true for most of us.
My father's explanation for his fear wasn't complicated, but it saddened me, particularly when I realized how it had infected how he looked at himself and everyone of us too. As a six-year-old, he was mowing his family's lawn and accidentally cut off the tips of two of his younger brother's fingers. His parents weren't home, but they came running when they heard and he was severely punished. From that moment forward, being perfect was the requirement imposed on him by his parents. And then he demanded it of himself and of all of us as well. If my mother overcooked the eggs, she was shamed. If my younger brother couldn't catch a ball pitched to him by my dad, he was ridiculed. When he couldn't read without stumbling, which was a constant occurrence, he was a “dumb bunny.” And on and on it went.
I fought back to no avail. I felt as if one of us in the family had to defend my mother and younger brother. For years, we battled, my father and I. Even after I left home, our battling continued. Hearing his story did soften my heart, however. His demons held sway over his life forever. Unlike the relief my mom seemed to get from her revelation, I didn't sense that my father felt any freedom from actually admitting his “secret.” I'm not sure he even realized how freed he could have been. Anger had been his companion for too long to let it go on its merry way. But his story freed me. And it allowed me to forgive him and myself for my years of judging him. Expecting perfection from yourself and others is a heavy burden. He was weighed down by it for all eighty-six years of his life.
That we can glean greater meaning about our own lives, in particular how we perceive them as they unfold, is one of the many blessings of being attentive to those individuals who have “been called” to join us on our journeys. My story needed my mom and dad. And theirs needed me as well. That's the beauty of our unfolding lives. The pain and confusion we experience are part of the learning curve, even in those moments that feel intolerable. I'm grateful that I understand and can accept that my brother's pain at the hands of my dad was part of his chosen journey too.
As I've said already, nothing on our journeys is superfluous—past, present, or future. Every experience fits snugly into its perfect place like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. As we near the end of our journeys, as is the case for me, it's far easier to breathe easily and say: “Now I see.” What a comfort it is, in fact, to understand—finally—how every experience in my life was so very necessary to transport me here, to you, to this point in time.