Make Way for the New

On The Road – Part 3

From one of my journal entries from early June 2017:

He’s going to keep the house, all the furniture, most of the stuff. I want it that way. He is happy to share everything with me, and I do mean everything. But what I want and need most is freedom. The freedom to go wherever I wish, to discover who I am and what I want out of life. I feel like I’m leaving the nest for the first time, finally about to be on my own, and it’s a feeling that is at once exhilarating and a little bit terrifying. 

“Where are you going?” friends ask. I don’t know. Wherever I’m led by my heart, by the muse. I’m a writer first, at the core of my being. And the muse is hungry for new experiences, new adventures. ‘Filling the well’, as it’s often called in creative circles. A research trip. My entire life is about to become one big research trip.

Leaving almost everything I owned probably should have been more difficult than it was. But I’d been feeling the need to declutter for a while, and had been hitting constant resistance from a partner who loved our “treasures”. Our house was full of knick-knacks and collectibles – stuff – in the way that so many Boomer homes are. And I was over it. 

Yes, I loved our house, and there were certainly parts of it that I still miss, like the dining room where I wrote so many books, and the living room where I read and watched television alone in the evenings for years. I miss the patio that, at the time, was brand new. I spent hours out there with the trees, as I contemplated the universe.

Walking away from it all should have been hard, but it felt more like shrugging off a heavy cloak. Stuff carries a weight beyond the ounces and pounds. It carries an emotional weight in the memories. The things that had once belonged to my parents and grandparents were the worst, laden with the heaviness of duty, of the responsibility to be the caretaker of the things they’d cherished. 

How do you throw away the Hummels that your father brought back from Germany in the 1960’s and became your grandmother’s prized possessions? It felt like an act of betrayal. But I desperately didn’t want to carry that weight any more.

Don’t worry, I didn’t throw away any Hummels. Lucky for me, my ex loves all the treasures, regardless of whether they came from his family or mine. He’s taking good care of it all for future generations, in the off chance anyone wants it. 

I did, however, have to ruthlessly cull my personal things – my clothes, shoes, purses, and the like – and that was no easy matter. At first, I thought I’d only be able to take what would fit in my car. But then my friend offered me a closet to store what I didn’t want to take with me, and that was a life-saver. Still, so many things had to go. 

Four months after I told my husband I needed to leave, the time to go was approaching. Back in February, I’d had no idea when the physical exit would occur, but I knew the universe would orchestrate it in a way that would be obvious to me. 

And they did.

My friend invited me to join her family at their lake cabin in Maine for a week, right after the fourth of July, and I knew that that was the door opening I’d been watching for. I’d drive to Maine, spend a week with friends, and then begin my solo journey from there. Back then, I still thought my travels were going to lead me west. Maine wasn’t exactly (or anywhere close to) on the way. But starting there felt right, so I said yes.

Now that I had a starting point, and a leaving date, I began to make a few plans. What does this look like when you’re trying to follow the energy? Usually, an idea pops into my head. I’m going right through New York. Maybe I should stop and visit a friend who moved to Long Island. Then I feel into it to see if it feels good. If I get a clenching in my gut, the answer is no. This isn’t an exact science, by any means. I’m often not sure, even now, and I still regularly forget to feel into it. 

When something is not for me, and I fail to realize it, I’ll get roadblocked. (Which is something I’ve asked for, by the way.) By this I mean that I’ll get stopped. Often, this comes through technology. I’ll be trying to book something and the website kicks me out. Or I’ll reach out to someone and they won’t reply, only to respond days, or even weeks later. “I just saw your message! I don’t know why it got marked as spam.” Or I’ll catch a cold and simply won’t be able to go.

Let me be clear. Something not being for me doesn’t mean it’s bad in any way. It just means that it’s not in the highest good for me, or others…at that time. A friend of mine once told me she couldn’t make a plane reservation. She just kept hitting roadblock after roadblock, until she tried making it for the next day and it went right through. She didn’t understand why she was roadblocked initially until she realized the headache she would have faced trying to coordinate daycare pickup per her original plan. Waiting until the next morning made everything a breeze. Her guides had seen what she couldn’t, and had steered her down the easier path.

If you’re reading this, thinking, “Why don’t my guides ever help me like that?” It’s probably because, 1) you’ve never asked, and/or 2) when they do try to help, you either don’t notice, or you ignore them. One of the basic laws of the universe is that our guides and angels can’t interfere without our permission. To get started, just say, “Please help me whenever and wherever you can!”

So in this way of being open to inspiration, and then feeling into each idea, I roughly planned out my first few weeks. But it occurred to me that I’d better give some special thought to the night I left.

Where was I going to spend that first night alone? I knew that I was likely to be emotional. But I felt like I needed to pay homage to this profound moment in my life. 

I mentioned my conundrum to my BFF and she offered the answer. “Come here, first,” she said. “Stay with me for a couple of nights and then head north to Maine.” She lived two hours south of me, so it didn’t make sense on paper, but I knew she was right. She was my rock, the one who’d supported me through all of this. If I needed to fall apart, she was the one I knew I could lean on. Plus, she promised that we would toast this new beginning with champagne. Perfect.

As it turned out, I was really glad I made the decision to go to her first, because I  needed her help. Desperately. Just not in the way I expected. 

Finally, the day arrived that I was to leave my home and my husband of thirty-six years. It was a normal morning in most respects – I had his breakfast waiting for him when he came downstairs and his bagged lunch sitting on the counter. I sat with him as he ate, as he read the paper. But I could tell he was holding it together with effort, and so was I. 

Finally, he got his keys, then turned to me and mouthed, ‘good-bye’. He was too choked up to speak. I went to him and we hugged, hard, but briefly, then he turned and left. I watched him drive away, then I had tea on the patio for the last time, saying good-bye to my trees. Finally, I walked through my house and said good-bye to each room.

Grief kept welling up, but I pushed it down, ruthlessly. I refused to start crying, now, when I still needed to drop off the notarized documents to the lawyer, then get my haircut. I had too much pride to do either with red, swollen eyes. So I decided that once I was on the road to my BFF’s, I would give myself permission to cry. I’m not a naturally emotional person, and this seemed to work. It was a couple of days before I realized my mistake.

I finished packing up the car, drove the document to my lawyer, then went to get my haircut, which had me driving a road I don’t think I’d ever driven before. On this round-about way to the hairdresser’s, I passed two rather extraordinary sights. More accurately, the same sight twice.

On the way to the lawyer’s, I passed an office building in the middle of being torn down. Not ten minutes later, I passed a house that was in the exact same state – half-demolished, presumably to make way for a larger house to be built on the lot. 

It didn’t take much rumination to get the message. The universe was reminding me that you have to dismantle the old to make way for the new. And that was exactly what I was doing with my life. 

My errands complete, I started south. Time to cry! I told myself. Come on tears! But no tears came. The emotion was no longer there. I was kind of disappointed, actually, because I’d come to believe that emotions need to be expressed. And I was pretty sure I had some. But maybe not. Maybe I really was totally at peace with this change. Cool.

I arrived at my BFF’s, feeling a bit strange and off-balance, but I’d spent a lot of time at this particular friend’s house, and so it was at least a familiar and welcoming haven. That evening, my back started to ache a little bit. I thought it was just from lifting suitcases. But the next day, it was worse, and that night, I awakened at 3:00 am in so much pain I could hardly breathe. 

I thought, “Oh, Universe, what are you doing to me?” I suspected it was another test of my trust in this journey. If I’d injured my back, how was I going to handle my bags and boxes – all the stuff in my car – let alone drive from D.C. to Maine? All my adult life, I’d had a husband, a partner, to lean on. I was on my own, now.

I sat there in the dark, in the middle of the night, trying to breathe. Expanding my rib cage was excruciating. My friend, my hostess, was a gifted healer, but I didn’t feel like I could wake her up unless I genuinely needed to go to the hospital. I didn’t know what to do other than ask for help from my guides and angels. 

I was absolutely certain that my journey was being carefully orchestrated by my higher self and my team in spirit, but that didn’t mean it would be easy. I knew that everything happened for a reason. But what was the reason for this pain? I begged them to ease it for me, at least until the morning, and I promised I’d look into it then. 

They did. Within moments, I was able to breathe again. The pain wasn’t gone, but it was a lot more manageable. Eventually, I was even able to sleep, if fitfully. 

The next morning, my friend had me lie down, then she tuned into my energy field, my body, and my guides and angels. We recorded the session, as we always did.  

“The blockage is located in the kidney meridian. It’s a blockage of emotion, fear and grief that literally got dammed up in your right kidney. It needs to be released.” She told me that this was a common way that kidney stones begin. But we’d caught it in plenty of time to avoid that outcome.

Whelp. Now I knew what had happened to all the emotion I’d intended to cry out on the drive south. I’d heard that swallowing emotions can cause physical problems, but I had no idea it could happen this fast, or this dramatically.

She cleared the blockage through her energy work, then I asked her to tune into my kidneys and ask if they had anything they still needed to give voice to. I’d learned, before this, that literally everything has consciousness, including every part of my body. (Which still fascinates me.) 

When she tuned in, she said the right kidney sounded like it was snuffling and catching its breath after a really hard cry. When she tuned into the left kidney, she laughed. It was looking at the right kidney like, “What the heck is wrong with you?” Clearly the left had not been affected.

That pain never came back, by the way, but the grief wasn’t entirely gone, and from then on, whenever it rose, I sat with it, felt it fully, crying if I felt the need to, then let it go. 

Later that day, I retreated to my room and meditated. During the meditation, a large male with long gray hair and a flowing robe appeared in my mind’s eye. God? Gandalf? Hard to say. He smiled at me and held out his hand. “Are you ready?” I took his hand and rose, and he linked my arm with his, then led me down a beautiful path through the forest, flowers everywhere. The path glowed with light, as if lit from beneath. 

Up ahead, I saw dozens of angels and other light beings waiting for me, and I could sense their excitement. Suddenly I realized they were each holding a suitcase! I laughed, delighted at this visual promise that they would be accompanying me on my journey. My escort released me to them and as I continued down the path, the angels, suitcases in hand, fell into step beside and behind me. Yes, I was heading into the unknown, but I was not doing so alone.

Two months before I left home, I wrote these words:

How do you leave a life? How do you fly? With a combination of courage, faith, meticulous planning, and good friends standing in the wings to offer support and encouragement. But what is life, if not a journey? What is living, if not an adventure? I’ve always loved epic tales of characters setting off alone in search of something. Ultimately, in the best tales, they find themselves. They discover who they are, what they want, what they’re made of. They learn and they grow. And when the journey is over…when that journey is over…they start another.

Looking back, I’m amused at my inclusion of ‘meticulous planning’ on that list, because it didn’t take long for me to realize that my planning was mostly for naught. Nothing transpired the way I’d expected. But as things tend to do when we allow the Universe to guide the way, in the end, it was perfect. Even if it didn’t always seem that way at the time it was happening.