It is a conundrum I carry with me. It infiltrates my thoughts, creeping into every crevice creating ripples of fear that billow around my mind like smoke from a chimney, causing my breath to catch and me to gasp for air.
Which is where the conundrum lies.
Each breath is fear-laden yet, to dissipate fear, I must breathe. Slowly. Deeply. Steadily.
And I don’t want to. Breathe. At least not here, in a hospital where the air fellow humans have expelled could be laden with unwanted guests. Not in this place where my beloved has been resting and healing since New Year’s Day when a winter cold had turned to pneumonia necessitating medical intervention.
My mind scurries around ‘What if…?’ with the slithery adeptness of a fish moving through water.
What if that molecule of air I cannot see is rife with poisonous particles? What if my next breath draws in unwanted viral content eager to attach to my airways, its only mission to spread through my lungs?
What if…? I get infected and don’t know it and give it C.C. and… What if?
I imagine holding my breath. A long time. Like a looonnnnng time. And, even though I know it’s impossible and that in that one breath the undesirable is possible anyway, I catch myself standing outside the sliding doors of the hospital taking a deep, deep breath.
I hold it for as long as I can and exhale.
And take another, letting the power of breathing calm my jagged fears, soothe my worried mind.
And I walk in. Mask in place. Sanitizing my hands at every possible station. Keeping my distance from everyone I meet. As I step onto the elevator and use my elbow to press the button for his floor, I keep my mind busy with thoughts of well-being, chanting silently to myself words I learned years ago in a meditation class, “I walk in beauty now. Beauty lies before me. Beauty lives above me, behind and below me.”
And I walk into my husband’s room, calm of mind, gentle of heart, letting the smile behind my maskt be visible in my eyes. I greet him with a kiss blown from a safe distance and sit down at the edge of his bed for a leisurely visit.
Perhaps my fearless presence will remind this pernicious bacterial visitor who has taken up residence in C.C.s lungs that only love is welcome here.
Bundled up against the chill of this December 21st morning, Beaumont the Sheepadoodle and I head out for our early morning walk beneath the glow of the full moon waning.
It is still quiet at this early hour. A few cars. No pedestrians. Upriver, unseen, I hear geese squawking and chattering where they huddle on an ice island stretched out along a gravel bar close to the river’s edge.
It is in these early morning walks, my boots crunching on the snow, my breath forming an ethereal misty cloud in the air around me, that I feel the unfathomable mysteries of life moving deeply through and within me, connecting me to the wonder and awe of it all.
It is here I feel wholly immersed within the joyful embodiment of this precious moment full of life’s delicate, mystical enchantment.
It is here I feel one within the presence of the sacred nature of all of life.
It is here I awaken.
Namaste
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On Sunday evening I joined in a Solstice celebration in the enchanted forest of Kerry Parson’s magical backyard haven.
We stood around a fire and bid farewell to the things that no longer serve us and welcomed-in the light.
The word for 2022 that arrived for me from the depths of the fire within was Transformation.
I am enthralled. Excited. Beguiled by its possibilities.
After taking a break from visiting me while I was in the bath, my mother returned. For one last visit, at least for this year or until I do something, or don’t do something that makes her want to shake me up, as is the case now, she tells me as I lay immersed in hot, bubble-laden water, trying to ignore her presence.
“You can’t ignore spirit,” she says. Her voice is laced with more of her French accent than it was in the past. It’s stronger, more sing-songy too.
“What happened to your Holly Golightly get-up?” I ask, wanting to avoid at all costs, any conversation with my dead mother about spirit. If we never had those conversations in real life, why would we have them now?
In her previous visits, she was always dressed, a la Holly Golightly of Breakfast at Tiffany’s fame, in a red satin cocktail dress, black high heels, bouffant hair sprayed stiff. In one hand she held a martini glass. In the other a long ebony cigarette holder.
“Oh that. She was for you. You always wanted me to be a little more flamboyant than I was. So, I decided in this iteration of my being, I’d at least make myself over into someone you could relate to.”
Surprised, the bubbles wafting up around my hands as I tried, vainly, to vanish this latest apparition of my mother, I sputter and say, “You’re dead. You’re not here. I am alone in the bath.”
“Well, you’re definitely alone in the bath. I am no longer in need of such cleansing. But, I am definitely here. Sort of like a message in a bottle, only this time it’s in a spirit.” And she does that thing I seldom recall hearing her do in life. She giggles.
My mother started appearing, (always while I was in the bath), shortly after she… passed over, as she likes to call it. “The spirit never dies,” she says. “After its human journey, it returns to its eternal state, energy, or as you humans euphemistically call it, Love.”
Originally I wasn’t that surprised to see her. We had a lot of unfinished business and I needed to clean it up to heal.
I thought we were done. Which is why I am surprised to see her. After several attempts to conjure her up earlier this year when it became clear her visits were over, I’d decided she was gone. Forever.
Which was a bit of a relief. I felt very uncomfortable entertaining my mother while I was in the bath. No matter how high I piled on the bubbles, I always felt she could see right through me.
And in spirit form, she always could.
Something I didn’t give her much credit for in life.
I always thought she was so immersed in her own stories of worry and woe, she couldn’t see me, at least not the real me. The one I liked to think I was in the world.
It took many of my adult life years, and hundreds of hours in therapy, to get to a place where my anger and disappointment in what I judged as her inability to be the mother of my dreams, didn’t interfere with my capacity to love her as the mother she was. Human. Flawed. Imperfect. Carrying her own history. Her own schtick.
Just like me.
And then, she died just before her 98th birthday leaving me to deal with my grief that in life, I’d never found the secret to being the kind of daughter to her that my daughters are to me.
“You know you’re doing it again, Louise, ” she says as if reading my mind, which apparently, in spirit form she can, she reminds me.
“What’s that?”
“Well, for one, right now, you’re trying to play innocent. Like you don’t know what I mean when you do.”
I sigh. I am positive she was never this perceptive, nor direct, in real life.
“What you are living right now is not ‘real’ life, Louise. Take it from me. It gets a whole lot more real on this side. In fact, all you get is real over here, ’cause you no longer have to hide behind your smile, or make-up, or pretending you’re anything other than who you are. Yourself. On this side, judgment, criticism, one-upmanship… it all vanishes as spirit claims the purity and love at its essence. It’s quite refreshing actually.”
It is about the longest speech I’ve ever heard her give. Not to mention the deepest.
And with that, she begins to merge with the air around her.
“Quit hiding,” she tells me on a parting breath. “Write the story. You have something to say.”
I wonder sometimes, if he hadn’t been arrested, if I hadn’t survived those harrowing years of his abuse, where would my daughters be today? Would their lives, already turned upside down by that relationship, ever have righted themselves? Would my disappearance have left them exposed to creating their own history of abusive relationships and other crises too scary to imagine?
It was May 2003. They were 16 and 17 and I had been missing for 3 months. For the almost five years leading up to my disappearance, they had watched me slowly disappear before their eyes. And then, in February I disappeared completely.
He was trying to flee the country, or so he said. I had no choice but to go with him, he told me.
I didn’t argue. I knew my life was over. Leaving with him was the only way I believed I could save my daughters. And so, I did what he said. It was what I had grown accustomed to doing. I did not question. I did not fight back. Fighting back was too scary.
That’s how abuse works.
A simple question. A piece of toast too dark. A coffee not hot enough and suddenly, you are the villain, the perpetrator and the reasons why his world is crumbling and you are cowering.
For the abuser in this story, his world had fallen apart because of his lies and manipulations. But I couldn’t see nor think about that. To think that the story he’d told me, the one about my daughters being at risk of abduction and forced into the sex trade by evil men, to think it was a lie was unthinkable. Only a monster would lie about something like that. And he wasn’t a monster. He loved me. He didn’t lie. He promised. And when he showed me the three bullets he’d received and told me about the photos the evil men had sent him of a young girl, who looked a lot like my eldest daughter, doing unthinkable things, I had to believe him. Who would make up a lie like that? Why?
He would. Because he could. Because it served his purpose. Because it was his way. To do whatever he had to to keep me in his web of lies and deceit.
If he’d hit me on our first date or second or third or even fourth date, I’d never have stayed.
But abusers set their traps with care. They prime and preen their victims, waiting until they’re sure you’re under their spell. And then the Prince of Darkness rears up and pounces. Of course, in his wake, Prince Charming rides in on waves of contrition, smoothing over your confusion and pain with his apologies and gifts. And the cycle begins again.
It’s called, ‘intermittent reinforcement.’ With the abuser who was in my life, he sowed seeds of terror first before letting out his anger. The consequences were always the same, confused, frightened, I’d threaten to leave and he would remind me of the ‘evil men’ lurking.
Terrified, and believing him when he said it was all my fault, I froze. I stayed silent. I stayed.
When we first met, I embraced his lies as if they were the truth because he was so charming and convincing, and I wasn’t looking for lies. I was expecting love.
By the end, I knew he was the lie, but I didn’t have anything left within me to fight back. I was his shill, his object. Me, the woman I’d known, the mother who loved her daughters deeply, had a career she loved, a vibrant circle of friends and loving family, no longer existed.
In her stead stood the woman who believed if she could just unhook gravity’s hold on her body, she could fall into the ocean and be washed away. And in that one final act, all memory of her presence would vanish from her daughters’ minds. Erased. Without me, they could go on with their lives forgetting they ever had a mother who had loved them deeply and disappeared.
And then, one day he was arrested and I was given the gift of getting my life back. It was a long journey home, to myself, to my daughters, to my family and friends. It was a long journey. And it was worth every step.
Today, I am a grandmother to two beautiful children. Seven years ago when I married a kind and caring man, my daughters walked me down the aisle. Together. Just as I walked my eldest daughter down the aisle a year later.
And while sometimes I might wonder what might have happened if the police hadn’t walked in that day and arrested him, I do not have to worry about where they are, or what happened to them.
They have taken this journey back into life with me, blessing me with their unfaltering love and support.
Too many women are not so fortunate. Too many women stay trapped in relationships that are killing them because they believe there is no way out. Nowhere to go.
There is always a way out. Always somewhere to go. To get there, you must reach out for help. You must take that first step into naming his hitting you, his calling you names and locking you outside in sub-zero temperatures with no coat or shoes to protect you, what it is. Not Love. Not anger. Not his having a bad day. Not ‘he didn’t mean it’. It’s ABUSE.
And the fact is, you can heal from abuse with every step you take away from the abuser.
If you are in a relationship that feels like it is killing you, there are resources and people who will walk with you as you take those steps back into life without abuse. Please reach out.
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This LINK provides a list of resources for every province and territory.
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I don’t often write about those days of darkness and terror. Today, in honour of the women and girls who face sexual and physical abuse every day, to support efforts to end family violence, I do.
I believe when we tell our stories of coming through darkness into the light, we shine a light for others to see, there is hope.
That story, the one about me who was so lost and frightened and ashamed of what had become of her she wanted to end her own life, it is no longer my story.
My story today is rich and full of life and love, laughter and joy, creativity and the freedom to be me and to love me, all of me, including the woman who was once so lost, she believed she had to desert her children to save them.
I do not question the muse. Even when she arrives, as she did in the early morning hours, with words and ideas and images to play with.
No. I rise up and heed her calling, if only to clear my mind so I can fall asleep again.
I wrote the framework of this poem at 2:30 this morning and worked on it again when I arose (for real this time) at 6am.
I do not like to label my words, or put them in a box called… feminist, or militant, or any other constructs we use to name the ways of women and their allies that fall beyond the allowable places women have been allowed to inhabit. Those names are seeds that have been planted and cultivated throughout time by the pervasive nature of this patriarchal world we inhabit.
I prefer to write them out and give them space to be present. An expression of something deep within me seeking light, form, voice, substance. Something created to give me pause, to wonder, ponder, devour and hold up to the light to see through all that has appeared, all that is happening into the essence of all that I have divined, all that I have experienced, all that I have left unsaid that is calling to be said, now.
Recently, while on a Zoom call with a group of men and women, I felt compelled to draw attention to something that was being said between some of the men that caused me discomfort. Their conversation was rife with sexual innuendo. It felt totally inappropriate.
In the process of thinking about speaking up, I felt my heartbeat quicken, my throat constrict, my body tighten with fear.
“Why am I afraid to speak up when what is happening is not reflective of the best of our humanity?” I wondered.
I didn’t want to say anything, I wanted to pretend as I have done too often in the past, that ‘boys would be boys’ and what they were doing was harmless.
But it wasn’t harmless. Along with making others feel uncomfortable, it perpetuated the patriarchal concepts of allowing ‘boys to be boys’ because, “It’s a man’s world baby. You better get used to it.”
And so, still quivering inside, I took a deep breath and spoke up.
This poem rose up out of hundreds of such conversations and encounters I’ve endured, and too many women I know have also endured, without speaking up or drawing a line to say, No More.
PS. In speaking up, others spoke up too — and that felt empowering. One of the men immediately apologized and others wrote to thank me for drawing attention to something they too believe needs to change.
I am grateful. In speaking up, I am reminded, every voice matters and when we give voice to what needs to change, we create space for change to happen.
Far away, at the edge of the land where it meets the sea, there lived a young woman who believed she could fly.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the townspeople said when she stood at the edge of the cliff to test her belief. “Birds fly. Humans stay walking on the ground.”
The young woman did not believe that was the only way to be human. Every night before going to bed, she did push-ups and lifted weights to strengthen her wings.
And every night before falling asleep she whispered to the dream fairies, “Let my dreams be filled with flight.”
And every night the dream fairies flitted into her sleep, scattering visions of flying and soaring into her dreams.
And in the morning, she would awaken, repeat her exercises and go out to the edge of the cliff overlooking the ocean far below to test the strength of her wings.
One day, as the young woman stood at the edge of the cliff lifting her arms up and down like the seagulls high above, a little girl approached and asked, “Why are you standing here flapping your arms?”
The young woman, surprised that a child would even have to ask such a question, replied without stopping what she was doing. “Practising flying.”
The child watched for a few moments longer before saying, “Well that’s silly. Why don’t you just leap?”
The young woman stopped lifting her arms up and down. She gazed down at the little girl where she stood looking up at her. Sky blue eyes met sky blue eyes. Flaxen hair floated around her face just as hers floated in the morning breeze.
The child smiled up at her and the young woman felt all her fears of falling come crashing into her like the waves crashing against the cliffs below.
“What if I fall?” she asked the little girl.
“What if you don’t?” the little girl replied as she threw her arms wide and cast her body off the edge of the cliff.
The young woman watched, wide-eyed and breathless, as the child’s body floated gracefully on the air, catching the breeze and letting it carry her down to the surface of the waves before lifting her up and up and up to the top of the cliff.
In awe, the young woman watched the child land effortlessly back on the cliff beside her.
“See! It’s easy,” said the child.
And the young woman took a deep, deep breath and spread her arms wide.
And stopped.
“I don’t think I can,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes and rolled down her face.
And the child shrugged her shoulder and smiled and said, “That’s okay. One day, you will stop practicing and cast your doubts to the wind and follow me!”
And with that, the child leapt from the cliff and soared with the seagulls flying high.
Watching and wishing she could, the young woman slowly lowered her arms and turned away from the cliff. Shoulders hunched, feet dragging along the dusty trail, she began the long walk back to the village.
“It is not the townspeople who doubt,” she said to herself. “It’s me.”
And she stopped and repeated it to herself. “It’s not the townspeople who doubt. It’s me.”
And she kept repeating it and repeating it until realization dawned. “I’ve been hiding behind practising flying because I doubt I can actually do it!”
Full of the awareness of the power of her doubts to tie her to the ground, she stopped walking away from the edge, turned quickly around and began running towards the cliff. Arms spread wide, she screamed and laughed and yelled loud and fierce as she cast her body over the edge.
And as her feet left the ground, her wings unfurled and she began to fly.
And that’s where you’ll find her today. Far from the edge of fear, wings unfurled, soaring amidst her dreams and dancing in the lightness of being free from doubt.
I am scrolling through news of the tragic aftermath of the atmospheric river that deluged much of BC, destroying lives, livelihoods, homes, and infrastructure.
I am sitting at my desk looking out at the autumn-naked branches of the trees that line the river.
And I think about the pain thy must feel at the loss of their brothers and sisters this past summer as wildfires swept through BC’s interior.
And I wonder if they are hurting now in the sadness of knowing many of their sisters and brothers were swept in the storm’s wake — and how, if they could only have stood their ground against the fires, some of what happened might not have been.
I am breathing into the trees this morning. Breathing and listening, deeply, to their pain and what they have to say.
In The Language Of Trees
by Louise Gallagher
The language of trees
lays buried
deep within their roots
digging into the earth
stretching their arms
in search
of whispers of life
within the cracks and crevices
of time lying still
beneath Mother Nature’s soiled covers.
The language of trees
is felt
rising up through crenellated bark
and rugged trunks
standing tall
against the wind
hurling obscenities
at their unwillingness
to give up ground
to its demands.
The language of trees
is heard deep
within the sibilant whispers
of its leaves
telling stories
to the birds and bees
and scampering squirrels
who clamber along its branches
in search of place to hide
through winter’s storms.
The language of trees
is written
everywhere.
We must listen
before it’s too late
to hear
their roots calling us
to help them
stay grounded.
In a sea of ordinary, she dares to steer her course into the extraordinary.
Thank you everyone for your kind words, your thoughts, ideas and empathy.
My ring is still missing but, as I often do when I’m feeling turbulent inside (and the wind is howling outside, which it is) I go into my studio and dive into curiosity and creativity, allowing whatever is seeking to appear, come to light.
The muse was all about exploring the question… “I wonder what would happen if I…”
In this case, the ‘if I’s’ were all about mixing different media to see what might happen.
Layer upon layer. Additions. Subtractions. Layer upon layer.
Like life. We try on a new pair of shoes and if they don’t fit, we try a different pair.
My art process yesterday worked the same. I tried spray inks and acrylic inks on top. Gesso through a stencil. Inkpad on top. Again and again and again.
No hesitation.
No judgment.
No groans of disappointment.
Just pure, unabandoned experimentation.
Because… in a world where confusion, disarray, and dismay become the ordinary tidings of our days, sailing into a rainbow world of magic and mystery is a wonderful way to transform every day into something extraordinary!
For our fifth anniversary, C.C., my beloved, gave me a beautiful sapphire and diamond ring. I promptly removed my original wedding and engagement rings and took to wearing it only.
I’m not a big jewellry person and loved both the symmetry and simplicity of the ring, and how it looked on my hand.
Saturday, when Beaumont the Sheepadoodle and I returned from the park I took off my gloves to discover… my ring was missing.
Dusk had already set in which meant it was too dark to go back to the park to search for it. Yesterday, as soon as the light permitted, Beau and I headed back to the park to do a search.
There were two possible places I thought it might have come off when I removed my gloves. 1) when I sat on a bench to take off my left boot to dump out a piece of gravel;
2) when I took off my gloves to clean up after Beau did his business.
Alas, after spending time searching in the morning and evening, I have not yet succeeded in finding my ring. Dried grasses and leaves cover the ground everywhere making spotting it difficult.
We’ll return this morning for another look — I’ve ordered a metal detector which will be here tomorrow. Until I’ve exhausted all avenues, I won’t give up.
It is both a strength and a weakness.
The never giving up.
When I was doing Investor Relations consulting, a client likened me to a Terrier because, in his words, I never gave up fighting to get the attention of analysts. It worked well for the client.
My mother used to throw up her hands and tell me to ‘give it up’ when I wouldn’t stop wanting to talk about things that had not gone well between us. That did not work well for our relationship.
Right now, my ring is missing. I am not willing to give up looking for it. Not only is it precious to me, (and very expensive) it was a one of a kind
And, because it’s still in the missing category in my mind, I can’t give up searching for it. Last year when I lost my phone and keys somewhere in the bushes, I couldn’t give up until I found them – and I did!
But then there’s the time, in my 20s, when I lost my beautiful silver necklace and bracelet my grandmother sent me from India — I searched and searched and never did find them — which is where the challenge comes in. I still think about that necklace and bracelet.
I have to let them go.
Which is really where my ring comes in today — it isn’t about the ring. It’s about thinking about it incessantly.
Not one of my greater qualities. Ask my beloved… I can become fixated. On fixing things. Righting wrongs. And even, changing the world.
While I regret the missing of my ring, I am grateful for its reminder to not become so fixated on ‘the thing’ that is lost that I miss the value of letting go.
And yup. I’m trying to trick my mind into getting itself righted — because the regret of not noticing when it fell off is tiring. I can’t change what happened. I can only work with how I deal with it — and the regret of its loss is far too heavy to carry.
Namaste.
PS — about the photo:
I spent time on the weekend making more bookmarks to go with my She Dares Boldly calendars. Every calendar purchased comes with a hand-painted She Dares Boldly bookmark! Check it out on my Etsy store!
For the “She Dares Boldly” desktop calendar I have created “She Dares” quotes to go with some old and some new artwork. None of the artwork has been in a calendar before — it’s just some of the pieces might have appeared on my blog in the past.
January’s “She Dares” quote is, “She dares to hold on to magic.”
When I was writing it, I vacillated between, “believe in magic” or hold on to magic”.
Hold on to magic won.
I can believe in anything. But, to actually hold onto it, to keep it in my sights, to keep it as a constant companion on my journey, that takes real daring.
There is magic in this world. Everywhere.
Yesterday, as I walked with Beaumont through the woods along the river, I wondered at the magical and mystical capacity of a seed to grow into a tree, to give birth to branches and leaves, and to continually renew itself every spring after having shed its leaves every fall.
And while science can explain it away with terms like photosynthesis and formulas that dissect the process to its tiniest quark, there is still something magical to me in the whole transformative process of shedding and sprouting, shedding and sprouting.
I want to hold onto that magic and the wonder and awe of it all. I want to dispense with formulae and calculating processes to the nth degree so that I can live and breathe completely immersed within nature’s mystery.
And so, the 2022, She Dares Boldly calendar begins with magic, mystery wonder and awe leading us into the New Year.
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And yes, there’s not a lot of mystery in this here promotion of my calendar.
I do hope you come and check it out on my ETSY store – Dare Boldly Art – shipping is free in Canada and I’ve adjusted the cost to include shipping to outside Canada as Etsy was charging almost as much for shipping as I charge for the calendar!.
It makes a great stocking stuffer, friend gift, hostess gift and so much more!
(and now to figure out how to adjust the colour so the calendar appears with its white background – ’cause that’s what it is!)
Dare Boldly 