Heavy Lifting

“OMG!,”said I, as my morning contemplation reminded me that the middle of January was approaching and I had barely contributed anything reasonable to my two main blog sites; New Horizons Small “Zones of Peace” Project and this one, Anastasia The Storyteller.

Now, how did that happen? 

I was writing like a screeching banchee, almost up until Christmas. Then shortly after, my writing efforts went dark.

Where had I gone, I asked myself, wandering around lost in reverie, once again up against that disheartening feeling of –

“Who am I in this place called life?”

The Harvey Weinstein/Hollywood/Matt Lauer scandals and the expanding #Metoo movement had raised a sense of renewed hope in me for possibilities, formerly unimagined, for a new way of being in the world, unfettered by the power-0ver dominance from male oppressors I had encountered, on occasion. Being controlled by these dark male influences had not been enough to rob me of completely, but enough still to have exacted heavy tolls in my life.

With the “Weinstein Effect” and its fallout propelling new kinds of actions from me, I had risked taking steps upward and onward to a level I had not previously envisioned; a place that only the momentum of recent, past months based on a collective force, especially from female quarters, could have produced.

But now a shutting down and feeling disoriented rolled in like a dense fog, prompting one more of those existential musings I come up against from time to time.  

Where was I?  Who else was here with me? And what was I to do next? 

What were WE to do next?

Experiencing myself lost in the dense forest of my existence, first I reached out for the pinhole in the universe that is my window to greater understanding.  The effort did not resolve my quandary. Next, I did what any woman who is blessed with a sister soul mate does, called up that sister of mine.

My goodness I am blessed to have her!

When I was a little girl and learning to wish upon a star, I wished for only two things; a piano or a baby sister. For a too long time I got neither. Well, actually I did have a baby sister but she died before I even laid eyes on her. And the piano never came at all.

Then, about twelve years ago  I met Sue deVeer . She became my long-lost, wished-for sister. 

No matter that she is of Dutch heritage, blond haired and Quaker to my Eastern European background, dark hair and Jewish! It’s the soul level traveling she and I share, along with New Horizons as our practical, down-to-earth work that has now bonded us together for the run of the show we call “this life.”

Talking to Sister Sue, receiving wise input from her, I soon realized that while I had been traveling one road on my soul’s journey, added to some earth walk pressures these past weeks, she had gone off on a bit of a different direction; just as I was moving into some critical spaces of my own. The Christmas and New Year’s holidays plus a new crisis with my eye and the extreme cold we soon faced in the early days of the new year exacerbated our distance.

Not only were immense changes going on in my life since last I had written regularly on my blog site, but I had, in some ways, separated on the soul level from my Spirit Sister Sue, which had somehow estranged me a bit from ME, along with disconnecting me from my writing. 

OMG! Strange how all these parts work together!

Thus I had been doing the heavy-lifting in my life --- all on my own, while she had been having her adventures apart from me.

As of today, however, we are back in sync again. Reaching out to Sue yesterday and this morning, too, did net me some added and much welcomed clarity about where I’ve been and why so few blogs; heavy lifting – alone -- is the answer! It just got too burdensome all alone; heavy lifting, too weighty over an extended time!

A lesson to be derived here, of course, is one I keep learning and relearning; there is a point where solo and alone with one’s Higher Power, though a powerful way to move through life, especially for an introvert such as I, is not always enough over the long haul.

We need other people to round out our edges and in other ways, too, such as the benefits of different viewpoints one cannot see on one’s own, if the broadest perspectives and options are desired.

On my own, I’ve been hauling quite a load on my shoulders of late. Not sharing the day to day intricacies of the effort has been an essential ingredient missing, I think. Enough so that I have been finding it easier to keep quiet, removed even from my blog writing; a state of being for me that almost always signals some kind of disconnect, not only from friends and family and  blog readers but, usually, also from myself, to some degree.

All this heavy lifting, which I think I can see, retrospectively, goes back, emotionally, to, at least,  just before Christmas – and – even further back to those momentous few days between the reporting of the sexual misconduct allegations of Harvey Weinstein by the New York Times on October 5, 2017 and the Ronan Farrow article in the New Yorker on October 10, 2017. There were many times Spirit Sister Sue was assisting me with the lifting, physically, while the emotional and spiritual had gotten lost between us.

So to take a word from Katie Couric who has, now, just begun to express her reactions to the Matt Lauer scandals, I had become “disoriented,” feeling, at times these days, that I had lost my way. My sense of direction, which had already been challenged, significantly, all of thie past year by the upheaval brought about by Trump’s election and his subsequent manner of handling our national affairs, was totally off course. 

Now, on the heels of the “Weinstein Effect” and its repercussions, I am sometimes confused; unable to find my way out of disorientation. Realizing this, now -- today, clarity, hopefully, can begin its return.

However, for the past weeks or so,  when something like Simone Biles revealing that she too had been victimized by that serial pedophile doctor of gymnasts, Nassar, my life felt as if had taken another hit from which I have not easily been bouncing back these days.

But staying still and quiet hasn't worked either as a hunger was growing in me that I, today, recognize as a need to connect with other women such as I have not experienced, perhaps, in decades.

I have been disoriented and lost at times. Other times I continued to feel liberated, seeing bright open skies above. Both have come and gone.

Sometimes, these days, I feel hamstrung by circumstances I am unable to manage to my liking, my frustration level, overwhelming. Other days I am excited by unimaginable possibilities that make me feel as if I could fly. That is before I take my next dip.

Above and beyond these ups and down, one element stands out for me; it is not my destiny to take flight all on my own, nor to sink into the potholes on the downside solo, completely, either.

I must travel, at least, part of my journey with others – BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!

That is why New Horizons is going to keep backing me up to revitalize our former, VERY SUCCESSFUL SUPPORT GROUP APPROACH, as far and as wide as we can in the coming weeks and months – and years, hopefully in tandem with many other BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN -- POWER IN OUR STRUGGLES! 

BEAUTIFUL WOMEN -- POWER IN OUR PAIN!

The evidence I am moving forward is here – my first blog post for 2018!

Too long coming, too little for my liking!

But, at last, I have found my voice, once again!