On the Road – Part 1
I had a dream, back In the spring of 2015, where I was standing on a rocky beach. Sitting on a large rock between me and the water was an angel. He looked like a man, but I knew he was an angel. His gaze was focused on the water, but I was the only one there with him, so when he spoke, I knew he was talking to me.
“Pack your things,” he said. “It’s time to go.”
“Will I be coming back?” I asked. He shook his head no.
The clarity of the dream, and my remembering of it, put it in the category of what I call message dreams. But I had no idea what the message actually meant. At the time, I figured it was probably a metaphorical leaving of some kind.
Nope.
A few months later, I was listening to a ten-minute guided meditation on abundance that had dropped into my email inbox. The speaker asked us to imagine what abundance meant to us and I found myself immediately transported into a scene. I was standing behind a nice, two-story house surrounded by pine trees, holding a warm mug of coffee as I looked out on a lake. Beside me, his arm around my shoulders, was a man who was very much not my then-husband. I couldn’t see him clearly, this was just in my imagination, but he had the coloring and build of my brother.
I looked back at the house, wondering where my then-husband was. It felt like this was my house, felt like it was in the Pacific Northwest, maybe? But we lived in the D.C. suburbs, an area with few pine trees. Was he out riding his bike, I wondered?
What happened next I can only describe as a sudden knowing. And what I knew in that moment – knew to the marrow of my bones – was that he wasn’t here, in this place, with me. In some way, I was moving, and he wasn’t coming with me. Nor would he want to.
I came out of that short meditation knowing that I was getting divorced. Ten minutes before, I would have vehemently denied that I would ever leave the good man I’d been married to for so long, even if we didn’t have anything in common any more. And yet here I was, knowing I was getting divorced. I walked around stunned for the rest of that day, and for weeks after.
I did some automatic writing for myself and was told not to rush this, that it would probably be a year and a half to two years before the door opened to my leaving. My awareness that it was going to happen was important, in order to prepare me for what came next, but the energy wasn’t yet in alignment for this to happen in the loving, peaceful way that both of our souls desired.
I went to see one of my favorite energy healers at the time, a powerful psychic who saw my husband’s and my often combative connection over lifetimes. She explained that our souls had been working toward peace together for awhile, and that this lifetime was all about expressing true peace between us, throughout our life together, which we had. But then parting with love, if I chose to leave. In order to do that, she confirmed that I needed to wait until the time was right. I had no idea what that would look like, but I trusted that I would know when I saw it. And a year and half later, I did.
In the meantime, our guides and angels began moving us apart, preparing for our ultimate separation. My now-ex had only ever snored when he was lying on his back, and a quick nudge to his arm would have him rolling over and ending the noise. But now, suddenly, he started snoring all the time. I bought ear plugs, which worked well enough, so our guides tried something else. He started shaking the bed in his sleep, at least that’s the way I perceived it. He’s a bicyclist, so I assumed he must be riding his bike in his dreams. He denied it. After several nights of getting awakened in the middle of the night by a shaking bed, I finally moved into the guest room. There was no other way.
As an aside, a few years later, I saw a cartoon of a little boy sitting up in bed, glaring at the old man ghost standing at his bedside. “Stop shaking the bed!” the boy commands. “Sorry,” the ghost says sheepishly. I literally gasped when I saw this. (Your guess is as good as mine.)
My husband of many years and I never fought. He’s far too easy-going. And he is genuinely a kind man who just wanted me to be happy. How do you leave someone like that? Something needed to come between us, and the Universe delivered in the form of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. We supported opposite candidates. And while I would never have left him over his political views alone, it drove the necessary wedge between us. I recognized it for the gift that it was, and I nursed my frustration, hard. By Christmas that year, I was barely speaking to him.
In February 2017, a month after the inauguration, the door that I’d been waiting a year and a half for opened. We’d shared our usual Friday night Chipotle dinner in virtual silence. As I stood to throw away my container, he said unhappily, “What do I have to do to get out of the doghouse?” I stopped, suspended in that moment, almost frozen, because I knew this was it. I knew it. I could either say what I needed to say, or I could chicken out and have to find a way to do it later. And I’ve never been a coward. “You’re not in the doghouse,” I said quietly. “But this isn’t working. I want a divorce.”
As I said those words, I felt this enormous rush of jubilation that I swear wasn’t mine. Not the human’s, at least. I could almost hear both of our guides and angels, and likely our higher selves, whooping for joy. They’d been guiding us towards this parting, but as humans, we have free will. Until that moment, they didn’t know if I would even recognize the door, let alone find the courage to walk through it. Then or ever.
I could feel, almost hear, the joyous celebration of our teams in spirit as I stood there, half in shock at what I’d just done, and as I watched the devastation cross my husband’s face. It was a surreal moment, one that I will never forget.
It breaks my heart that I broke his, and it always will. But I knew that our soul contract was up, and that our souls greatly desired that we part, with love still alive between us. Which we did. For four months, I stayed in the house while we worked everything out, while I taught him how to use the washer and dryer, and while I shared the bigger picture with him, trying to help him find some understanding and peace.
In June 2017, I left my home of nineteen years, with little more than my clothes, laptop, and some books. I didn’t want anything else. For two years, I remained rootless. Free.
But that’s another story.