THE JOURNEY... I Couldn't ...But I Did!

When I began THE JOURNEY four weeks and four blogs ago I wrote that among the many things I wanted to do during this year was "...to re-examine my life and find a depth, a significance, a beauty that I may not have noticed...or discounted"

For too long I limited myself by measuring my potential by what other people thought I could do. It took some deep God Moments and a few years to realize that there was a potential in me that circumstances could not bury.

In my growing up years, for reasons of their own, my folks moved all the time. I lost count of the schools I went to. One time we moved to somewhere in Indiana. The first day at school I got all my books, made a new friend and excitedly rode the bus home that afternoon to find a truck backed up to the front door. A few hours later off we went to only God remembers where. This happened over and over.

Because of the numbers of schools and unsettled life I found it impossible to learn. Early on I got by because of a good memory and a flair for drama. I would memorize the reading assignments when my grandpa went over them with me the night before. The next day at school I'd rattle off the story word for word, 'reading' and turning the pages in a very convincing manner.

I could even write the letters on a spelling test and get them right. When the teacher said “coffee,” I would carefully take up my pencil and form C O F F E E on the page and not have the foggiest notion why those shapes made a word. I continued to fake out a lost number of teachers until the next moving truck showed up.

I eventually taught myself to read while cooking. It must have been my first 'aha moment.' I was 9 years old the day my life changed forever. We were living somewhere in the mountains of West Virginia. I was in the kitchen stirring something on the stove when I glanced up and saw a tin of Hershey Cocoa sitting on a shelf. The letters C O C O A jumped out at me from the can and it clicked...letters have sounds...sounds create words! Who knew? I sure didn’t, but from then on I could read.

From that moment on I read non-stop. I was drawn to books about girls and women following impossible dreams. Joan of Arc heard a voice and led an army...Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross...Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman doctor...all fueled my imagination.

Books anchored my dreams as each move and the years became a blur of memories. I was thirteen when I gave up trying to go to school. We were not going to stay in one place long enough for the truant officer to catch up with me anyway, so what was the point? That marked the end of my formal education.

BUT I could read! Half a century later books are still a passion. I own thousands.

Most people consider me successful because I’ve had four books published, been featured in periodicals and anthologies, written a newspaper column, won writing awards, teach writing classes, and am invited to speak, do workshops, and retreats.

A new friend reminded me this week that the common thread that seems to run through most women is insecurity. I am learning to move past my insecurities...so can you.

As I traveled inward this week God reminded me that my 'success' was no accident...it was an attitude. As a little illiterate Appalachian mountain girl in the 1950’s, I caught a glimpse of a new and different world. I waded out of the ocean of ignorance onto high ground by reading and believing. I KNOW people can do anything, learn anything and be anything, simply by having a dream and reaching for it.

I am coming to honor the path I have traveled...I am not ashamed of where I came from...I am proud of who I am at this moment.

Ayn Rand said, “Don’t work for my happiness, my brothers—show me yours. Show me that it is possible. Show me your achievement and the knowledge will give me courage for mine.”

I guess that is what I’m doing this week. Have courage. No matter what you start with...you can be a success.

Still feeling limited? Watch this video and go be who you were created to be. As my friend Cindy Juckette said this week...Take The Leap!!

THE JOURNEY ..."The Road Ahead Lies Within."

 THE FIRST TIME I HEARD "The road ahead lies within," it struck me as a very simple but powerful truth. In the 67 years that has brought me to this journey of discovery the only place I have left to travel is within. Every other road I have ever taken turned out to be a dead end.

God knows I have made an art form of focusing outward. I've tried comparing myself to others wanting to be someone, or somewhere I am not. I have found myself endlessly falling into the dream of another life. Sometimes the fall was into the delusional la-la-land of thinking that if 'they' would change then 'I', and 'my life,' would be fine.

From time to time I also tried 'behavior modification' to make my life work. Behaviour modification books and classes sound reasonable. "Just act like this, and they will do this and everything will be wonderful." But one of my problems is I have a hard time being reasonable. There has always been a voice deep within my soul that called me to beyond what is reasonable. And that flickering flame of a voice has set me on this journey.

Poet Mark Nepo says. "To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim." I have been a nomad...I have been a chameleon...now I am a pilgrim.

As a pilgrim I have come face to face with myself as I step into a world I have only dreamed of inhabiting. It is the world where I take full responsibility for my happiness. No more 'ifs'...but a choice.

While talking to a friend about her own challenge to stop allowing other peoples moods, actions and words to control her happiness, I recalled a little fable about a kind old sage who waded into the river everyday and prayed. One day in the midst of his loving prayers he saw a poisonous spider struggling in the water and cupped his hands to carry it ashore. As he placed the spider on the ground it stung him. Unknowingly his prayers diluted the poison. The next day the same thing happened. On the third day the kind man was knee deep, and sure enough there was the spider, legs frantic in the water. As the man went to lift the creature yet again, the spider said, "Why do you keep lifting me? Can't you see that I will sting you every time, because that is what I do."And the kind man cupped his hands under the spider, replying, "Because this is what I do."

My friend and I agreed that our goal was to journey so far into our souls that we know exactly what 'we' will do no matter what 'they' do. I believe the Bible calls it, 'Purity of heart." It is our choice. As long as we are on this earth we will know, or be in relationships with people just like us, who carry baggage in their wounded souls. Our choice is to re-act out of our own woundedness...or respond from a place of peace to do and say the right thing.

NOTE TO SELF: Regardless of how others act I will 'do what I do'...and let God handle them and the poison they try to inflict. I no longer want to just act kind...I want to be predictably kind. I choose happiness. It is my decision.

The road ahead indeed lies within and the farther I travel inward the more peace I experience. Thanks also to all the readers of this blog. for your feedback, comments, and for sharing it with other ''pilgrims'.

In closing please  make a decision to be happy...try it for five minutes...then an hour...then a day...take a deep breath and step from that day into you entire life...you will never regret it. I promise. (:

THE JOURNEY PART 2...Seeing With New Eyes

 As I stepped wholeheartedly into my year of discovery I wonder why it is so hard to embrace who I really am with nothing held back?

This week I read about a man who wanted to clean his small fish tank. He filled his bathtub with water and placed his fish in it. After he'd scrubbed the film from the small walls of their make believe deep, he went to retrieve his fish. He was astonished to discover that, though they had the entire tub to swim in, they were huddled in a small area the size of their tank.

There was nothing containing them...nothing holding them back, so why wouldn't they dart around freely? What had life in the tank done to their natural ability to swim? That story haunted me...I kept seeing those little fish going no where except into themselves.

Then I had a dream...I saw a woman in a basement room. She was very well taken care of, in need of no material possession, but seemed to be under house arrest. I saw her look wistfully through her high window to a bit of sky where a bird sailed full of grace and beauty. As she turned away from the window I could feel her painful loneliness for something she could not define.

I continued to watch from a distance, feeling sad for the woman, when suddenly I realized she was me. That's when I heard a voice saying, "The door is locked from the inside."

"The door is locked from the inside." So why didn't I walk out?

Why didn't I?

I began to ask myself some serious questions...

I have written four books, so why do I dread book signings?
Why do I pay good money for writing workshops and duck out the moment they move into groups to share about our work?
Why would someone who has known me for two years not know I am a published author? And... for that matter, after being well published with an established platform, why did I stop writing once for twenty years?
What am I afraid of?

Actually I knew the answer. My training started early. First with my family, then teachers, society, church, relationships, each sent messages, or outright told me, that certain actions, thoughts, jobs, attitudes, opinions, use of time, and clothes were unacceptable. Either they didn't want me to fail, or they were not comfortable with my success. I was given to know that stepping outside the 'tank' of 'our' value system was a risky and dangerous business.

I learned my lessons well. In trying to make other people happy I continued to swim in the 'tank' and shrunk my world until I lived in a self imposed captivity... especially in my gift as a writer.

Over the years I had jumped out of the tank now and then to create beauty and touch lives, but I had been unable to stay free and productive for any length of time. I was always second guessing myself.

I realized this week that the tape of my 'training' about my writing runs like a river through my soul...."you have no education you can't be a writer...who would want to read anything you wrote...I am miserable when you write..."all spoken by people I loved and who said they loved me.

I also realized that it was as though my mind was a bus and I had been letting others drive it.

So on The Journey I am making a few changes...

First: I began blogging last week with a deep commitment to continue. So far I have this blog My Journey: In Black & White....as well as one called Life After the Storm: Celebrating Survivors... http://lovingsurvivors.blogspot.com/

AND ...since I had a book signing setup for Family Secrets the day after my birthday, I made up my mind turn off old tape by creating a new one. After setting up...before the event began, I wrote in one of my black & while journals....

"I am an excellent writer...this is a great, potentially life changing book...I will talk to a bunch of great folks...have fun and sell books!! My books sell well...I love book signings...people love me and I love people. I vibrate with success, favor and energy...I am happy! "

All day long I played that tape and smiled. I began seeing myself with new eyes...and guess what!! It worked! I am having a wonderful time!! People say you can see it in my face.... (:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/album.php?aid=52212&id=1589641306




























































Now on my Journey, when I am endeavoring to clarify many things, I am asking... in what ways have I

Why the Journey?

I could deny the symptoms no longer and made the appointment. Up until the last few months I had not been sick for ten years or more. But something had happened to compromise my immune system and the consequences were sobering.

I would be 64 soon, my mother had died with breast cancer at my age. In fact all of my immediate family had died near my age or earlier. The possibility of my following suit was a major medical reality.

So I did all the test...scans...x-rays...lab work and thank God all came back negative...in fact I was told because of my lifestyle choices (vegetarian...non smoking...outdoor enthusiast) I have the body of a woman twenty years younger. Really good news except that this twenty-years-younger body was wracked with pain, had re-occurring breathing problems, and was in a state of chronic exhaustion.

My doctor, who happens to be younger than my youngest child, looked at me and said, "Stress."
I could feel my body tensing up in denial. "Stress!! Stress? Who me? Why I wrote a book about Searching for Peace and finding it! Stress? Ridicules! What does 'that child' know?"

After doing some research on stress I was a bit more humble. I discovered that 'that child', with her freshly minted medical degree, was one smart cookie. Every symptom I had could be a textbook study on the repercussions of stress and I came to know if I didn't change something much worse could happen.

Basically I discovered 'stress' is not so much what happens to you it is how you respond to what happens to you. Eventually I was led to write down every potentially stressful thing that had happened to me in the last year. The list was an eye opener...at the end of 2008 on Christmas Day my brother, and only sibling, was found dead. He was 59 years old. New Years Day 2009 I was in Tennessee making arrangements for his memorial service and cremation. In February I was back in TN being made executor of his estate and trying to decide what to do with his property. In all I made eight long distance exhausting trips in 2009. On the home front some of my children had serious marriage problems and one daughter ended up in a homeless shelter overnight with her five kids. The year progressed and the list went on and on and on.

Toward the end of the year I had to put my cat to sleep. That day I hit a wall. I am not an overly emotional person. I can be stoic, calm in crisis, peaceful. I actually have faith and people call me when they are troubled. But when I realized I was going to loose that little stray I had a major melt down in the vets office. My heart broke. I sobbed as if I were dying.

Doubled over in pain I wept for the death of my sweet Mi Amor. He was a scrappy little cat with an attitude but I loved him and he loved me. Tears rained down my face falling on the soft fur of my dying cat. My whole body shook. I seemed to be weeping for every tragedy that has ever taken place across the earth since the beginning of time. I wept for Haiti, hungry children, lonely women, and troubled men. I wept for my mother, my brother, my children, the lost years of my own life when I had tried to please other people and lost myself in the process. I wept for the death of my own soul. Soon after that the physical symptoms began.

The plan for The Journey in Black & White came as sort of a spiritual challenge...perhaps from God, but for sure from myself. If I was going to live and not die something had to change. I would set apart a year between my 64th birthday and my 65th and discover who I really was and what part of how I lived my life was the real me? For as long as I can remember I had been embracing life for others, doing whatever it took to make every bodies everything work...this year is mine.

During this year I want to connect more to the solitude deep in my spirit where God lives. I want to find my lost childhood and see God, and the world, through un-wounded eyes. I want to have fun. Actually I want to find out what fun is! Not just what others think fun is but what is fun to me? I want to be Wanda, who ever she might be. I want to regain my health. I want to take full responsibility for my own happiness. I want to know who made the rules for my life and why do I keep them? I want to be kinder. Love purely. I want to know the black & white truth about myself and why I try to fix things and people. I want to re-examine my life and find a depth, a significance, a beauty that I may not have noticed before. In essence I want to live the next year as if it were my last.

I intend to travel light without a lot of preconceived ideas of how this year will play out. As a writer I did gather some tools of my trade to take on my Journey...five composition books, a thick journal, black inked gel pens, my Bible. Being obsessively into details...they are all black & white. There they are spread out on my table in the picture above. As I fill them I will share their contents here on this blog. April 30th is my birthday and my journey will begin.


I hope you will journey with me...comment and give feedback on each post...share your own journey to your truth.


Peace,
Wanda G