Monday, May 14
On this first day of the rest of my life, I feel cleansed and unburdened.
So much so that though I have never before in my entire life, even coming from an Observant Jewish family, ever thought for one moment that I might wish to partake of the Jewish women’s ritual bath known as the mikveh, today I long for it.
The mikveh is a bath used for the purpose of water immersion in Judaism to achieve ritual purity.
Traditionally, Jewish women visit the mikveh after menstruation or childbirth, before they and their husbands may resume marital relations. The practice applies also to brides about to be wed; an archaic and absurd tradition, I have always thought; the practice so repugnant that I would immediately re-rout even a hint of a discussion of it for me, by my elders.
But today I crave the purifying waters of this immersion; this washing away of the impurities cast upon me by my sexual harasser/power abuser, the subject of my formal Ethics Complaint.
It was a laborious, often disappointing and, at times, heart-wrenching task to prepare all that was required of my submission. I dare not say much, if anything, about the content of it, actually almost nothing at all, until I am advised that I might. And, then, perhaps, what I might be able to say could still be restricted. I must wait patiently to see.
It will be a while before I am to be notified of what will be required of me next by the Ethics Committee which I must abide by, to the letter, if my charge is to be valid. An outside maximum of six weeks for the initial response, I’ve been told.
Thank Gods and Goddesses I am not a young adolescent like the gymnast victims of Larry Nassar or the victim of a recent rape or other, more violent, sexual intrusion, going through this process.
And, the fact that the incidents I am reporting are decades old helps, too, to dilute my distress.
Nonetheless, it hurts to see the damage that a careless, selfish, self-centered, ego-driven man inflicted on me, especially a man I trusted and respected.
The sum of these inflictions and their injuries to me are the impurities I want now to wash away.
And, the shadow of my own damaging of self, I wish now to wash away too. Whatever it was in me that allowed me to hold back secrets for twenty-five years that I did not even know I had.
This is my Dark Side, as I tell of it repeatedly on my Exploring Your Dark Side blog site.
These were my contributions to the sustaining of that which was sordid; mainly the "not telling" that I did.
And with this go all the many costs of the quiet I maintained; the self-imposed, self-inflicted harm that lacked the sense, possibly the esteem and certainly the fearlessness and confidence to speak truth to power rather than allowing myself to just keep marching on in my life, carrying the burden of another’s wrongdoings, rather than “manning up,” oops, do I mean “goddessing up” to the truth I so frequently extol as among the highest of virtues.
This holding back of truths that will displease, fearful and timid, is so much a part of me. I am examining it with a careful eye, once again, having done so numerous times in the past, knowing it to be one of my personal failings.
Yet with compassion for myself, I see it, once again, as a way of being I learned as a child, victimized by the emotional torture of a mentally ill mother, fortified by a sexually abusive husband who robbed me of my innocence and much more.
If one was not enough, the combination of the two, once they joined forces against me, frightened and intimidated me into a submission that has taken great effort to overturn, working diligently on it for most of my adult life, as I have. And, obviously, as this Ethics Complaint submission shows, still remnants of the pattern appear now and again.
Successfully forcing me to keep secret the darkness he brought into my life, just as I believed I was crossing into the Light on my wedding night, the night I thought I had officially freed myself from her, the power over me these two held between them seems destined to fade slowly, if ever completely
Instead of her, on that blessed night of my wedding, I got him, my next jailer and torturer.
I've been free from most of what these two did to harm me and devastate essential parts of my life for decades. But today I am freer still and lighter and airier at a new and higher level, liberated from the burden of carrying secrets I did not even know I was holding.
So light and free. Each step an exploration.
As if just learning to walk. And walk I did this morning, as the air was still crisp and cool, almost tripping over a box turtle in the middle of the road who I immediately steered onto the safety of the soil bank at the road’s edge.
This turtle reminded me, as I quickly checked my handy smart phone, at the ready, that Native American lore would have us consider that --
The turtle acts as a teacher for the art of grounding. She helps us focus on our thoughts and actions and to slow to a pace that assures completion of what lays before us. We learn to not “push the river,” especially at times where resolution or completion doesn’t happen too soon.
I am grateful that turtle came to me today to remind me how best to move forward as the “maximum six weeks” ahead looms before me, for hearing back from the Ethics Committee.
Turtle’s pace setting, as a prompter, also, can help me clear away the impurities this ethics issue represents, as both mikveh and turtle guide me in the direction of the kind of life I choose and manage for myself, typically, and that I must now be more cognizant of than before to always maintain awareness that sometimes people can enter one’s personal space with less than high-minded intentions.
Thus I am the one, who must be aware, on my behalf, that both Light and Dark can exist, sometimes, side-by-side, in the same person. And, I am the one who must always be the maintainer of peace and Light for all areas of my life, if these are the values by which I want to live.
