Category Archives: Essential Journey

Blessed are we in this circle of love.

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In my dream, someone, a young woman who used to work with me I think, asks, “How old are you anyway?”

I reply, not without some trepidation, “Sixty-seven.”

The young woman looks surprised. By the look on her face I think she’s going to say something like, “Wow. You don’t look it at all! I’d have put you 15 years younger.”

Instead, she says, “Wow. That’s old.”

Fortunately, I woke up before I did anything I might regret.

When my mother was 67 I remember thinking she was old. So I suppose it’s only fair that my dream reflect my judgements of my mother.

And then, of course, I want to justify why I thought she was old. How her tendency to cry, “Woe is me!” shadowed the light and kept her tethered to the darkness. How her ability to see accidents waiting to happen kept her from seeing the miracles falling all around.

I want to prove how, at sixty-seven, I am not like her. At all.

I don’t know if it is because it is just the melancholy that pervades this Christmas season or because my mother loved Christmas, but she has been on my mind and heart. A lot.

The other day, while on a Zoom call with a friend, I was telling them how my mother loved this season of joy. They asked, “Do you find you miss her more now that it’s Christmas?”

It was a powerful question.

Even when we lived an ocean apart, I never felt like I was ‘missing’ my mother. We never had that kind of relationship. She was not the person I called if I needed advice about life or love or career. Nor was she the first person I thought to call with good news.

I told my friend. “Even though I know regret serves no useful purpose and I know my dream of having that kind of relationship with her was just a dream, what I am feeling most is the regret that for much of her life with me, my mother felt my judgements harshly.

It wasn’t intentional. It was just the way we were together. I always felt she wanted me to live life by her rules, her way. And even though now, I can see her way was founded on love and her desire to protect me, I felt smothered by what I thought were her limitations and fears, not love. I wanted to fly free. By the very act of spreading my wings, I was saying to my mother, your way isn’t good enough for me.

It was a continual dance of life between us. My mother wanting to keep me safe on her terms. Me wanting to experience life on my terms.

And as I finish typing that sentence I glance up and see the beauty of the world outside my window.

The sky is streaked in rose and golden hues of morning. A flock of Canada Geese are floating past on the fast-moving river, their bodies turned backwards, drifting with the current. A squirrel is bounding up a tree trunk and a chickadee flits and frolics in the bush outside my window.

The world is alive with beauty.

And just like that, the sun breaks through and I remember what is true and real in this moment. The memories of my relationship with my mother are just that. Memories. They are only kept alive in my thoughts.

And I can change my thoughts.

Regret. Sadness. Sorrow. They are fleeting.

Love. Joy. Gratitude. They are enduring.

‘Tis the season. It is different this year. Quieter. Yet, no matter the times, what never changes, what endures always is Love.

This Christmas, I shall hold the Love close and let regret float away like the geese on the river. Sometimes, as it drifts off into that quiet place where memories that do not serve me well go to rest in peace, regret turns back to look at me as if to say, ‘Give me another chance.”

And I smile and wave and turn my back and return home to the one truth that cannot be changed. Can never be denied.

My mother is the miracle of life that gave birth to the miracle of me.

I am grateful for this miracle.

I am blessed by this act of love that endures and ripples out in waves of possibility and hope and joy and beauty through the lives of my daughters and my grandchildren.

Blessed are we in this circle of Love my mother created.

Let It Be And Love Will Have Its Way

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For several days now, the Beatles iconic hit, Let It Be, has been playing through my mind.

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be

When I chatted with both my sisters yesterday we talked about how this is our first Christmas without mom. And, though her arthritis had made it too painful for her to make the journey to join us at our Christmas dinner table, she was always present.

My mother loved Christmas. In her 80s, living alone in a one-bedroom apartment, she would spend days decorating it up with boughs and bows, glitter and glitz. Garlands of fir, poinsettias, stars and angels graced every surface.

And always, her small Christmas tree was placed on a table visible from every corner of the living room. And Mary and Joseph and all the animals were placed in the manger in the middle of her sideboard. Of course, just as when I was a child, the baby Jesus would not be amongst them. At least not until Christmas eve when, as if by magic, we’d return home from midnight mass and there he’d be, lying peacefully on the straw, surrounded by his tiny family of Mary, Joseph, the animals and the three Kings.

He was only a small clay infant swaddled in a white cloth but he held such magic for me.

Of course, Santa would also have paid a visit while we were out so after a cursory check to make sure the baby was safely tucked into his place of honour, I’d run off to join my siblings in “The Great Christmas Present Opening Mayhem”.

What I remember most about my mom in those bygone Christmases is how she never sat down when we got home from midnight mass. While the rest of us raced in to check out what had appeared under the tree, she’d head straight to the kitchen to put the finishing touches on ‘Le Réveillon de Noël’, our post-midnight feast. And to wrap some last-minute gifts because, inevitably, my father would have invited friends from church to join in the festivities. And in my mother’s house, no one ever left empty-handed.

While we kids tore into the gift-laden tree, my father would pour drinks and mum would glide in and out of the room carrying platters of mince tarts and deviled eggs and cheeses. By 1am, I’d be yawning and trying desperately to keep my eyes open as the Tourtière was carried in.

And the eating and drinking would get down to business as I sleepily watched the mayhem unfolding around me.

I think it is the mayhem I miss.

The comings and goings, the toing’s and froing’s of getting ready for Christmas throughout the month. And, of course, the staying out of trouble to stay on the ‘good’ side of Santa’s list.

Staying on the ‘good’ side of Santa’s list was a struggle for me as a child. But in December, without my mother’s eagle eyes watching my every move and with my siblings equally as excited about Santa’s visit, (which gave them less opportunity to tattle on me) it seemed easier to stay out of trouble – though as the youngest of four whose nickname was, “The Brat”, getting into trouble came too easily to me. At least, that’s what my mother told me.

But at Christmastime, she was so busy shopping and cooking and decorating and wrapping gifts and volunteering at the church, she didn’t have as much time to notice when I wasn’t behaving ‘like the others’, which was her most frequent request of me.

Even as a child, that one confused me. “How could I be like the others if I was going to be me?” I’d ask her, innocently enough (at least in the beginning) but, as the years went on and her desire for me to ‘be like the others’ remained just as strong, my question became more of a ‘poke’ than innocent curiosity.

Eventually, with my mother’s repeated requests that I just ‘Let it be’ so she could have some peace, I learned to poke less. And though it never meant my mother and I had an easy relationship, it did mean I quit searching for my answers in her and started looking for them in me.

Sometimes, to find our answers we must let grace open our hearts so that we can find peace with the unknown.

The heart always knows.

And sometimes, all the heart wants is for us to “Let It Be” so that Love can have its way.

________________________

And… just in case it’s been a while since you watched or listened to the version of Let It Be from one of my all-time favourite movies, Across the Universe, I’m sharing it here.

Two Simple Words

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Morning light — photo unfiltered. untouched.
 
 I want to write of gratitude
 of how this year hasn’t been so bad
 how there’s so much good that’s come out of
 the bad
 and how I’ve learned so much and grown
 and found my way clear to living in this moment
 but the darkness outside my window
 seems to linger
 and I feel myself falling
 into its cloying embrace
 hoping it might hold me
 just a little bit longer
 all the while hoping
 it will let me go
 find my way out of the darkness.
  
 And my shoulders slump
 and my body grows tired
 of waiting for the morning light.
  
 I lean back into my chair
 close my eyes
 and try to take a deep breath
 but it’s not very deep
 this morning breath filled with
 the weary and worry of 
 these times
 that seem to grow heavier
 with every news report I read.
  
 And as I sit with eyes closed
 I hear my Auntie Maggie’s voice
 who at 90 lives alone in the city in southern India
 where she and my mother were born.
 She hasn’t been out of her house since March
 her only contact with ‘the outside world’
 her two servants who come daily
 and a neighbour who visits regularly
 and her What’sApp calls
 where she sometimes laughs and sometimes cries
 and always sings me a song from her childhood
 when she and my mother and all their siblings
 lived together in what they called
 their own private Shangri-la.
 Your mama loved to sing, she says
 And I remember and hear her sweet voice singing
 her favourite Christmas song, 
 “Il est né le divin enfant
 Jouez hautbois, résonnez musettes”
  
 And I smile and open my eyes 
 and see
 that in those few moments
 while I sat with eyes closed and spirits flagging
 the sun has broken through the darkness
 and streaked the sky with rosy hues
 that glow and pulse across the horizon
 in undulating waves
 of violet and pink and tiffany blue
 and the trees are dressed in cloaks of rose-brushed gold
 and the river flows deep in the morning glory
 of dawn breaking free of night.
  
 I want to write of gratitude
 and find myself here
 in this moment
 falling
 breathlessly
 into the beauty of light
 bursting through the cracks.
  
 I want to write of gratitude
 but words escape me
 as I breathe into the grace
 that arrives with every breath
 when I let go of what I want
 of what I miss or regret or yearn for
 and let this prayer
 of two simple words
 be all that I can say.
 Thank You.

Across The Grid (a poem to Zoom on)

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 Across The Grid
  ©2020 Louise Gallagher
  
 Across the grid
 of this digital universe
 we momentarily inhabit,
 faces smile and laugh
 brows furrow and foreheads crinkle.

 Sarah, sitting alone 
 in her box in London
 yawns and stretches as dusk settles in.
 She raises her glass 
 to the screen in front of her
 and takes a sip of wine.
 It's not really drinking alone, she hopes,
 when there's a virtual world of people
 right in front of her. 
 In LA, morning sunshine 
 streams through the window
 behind Jarred’s head.
 He wipes the sleep
 from his eyes
 and tries to shake off
 the dream he had last night
 as he takes another sip of coffee.
 While in Julia’s box down-under
 Tomorrow has already arrived.
 She can’t stay long. 
 She's got lots to do today.
  
 Amidst the ebb and flow 
 of conversation tethered 
 to an invisible web of binary code
 spinning around the globe,
 a fluffy black cat’s tail
 flits across the bottom
 of one, one-inch square,
 a brown and white dog
 patters through another
 paying no heed
 to the virtual world 
 of many lives 
 full of thoughts passing through
 unseen
 within each box 
 of constant dimensions
 holding everyone in place.
  
 Ripe with straight-laced consonants 
 and plump vowels rounding out
 the stream of conversation
 time keeps flowing
 past words and images
 cascading and falling
 into the constant flow
 of lives 
 gathered here
 in virtual reality.
 Connected
 yet so far apart.
  
 There is no time in the universe
 for distance
 to keep us apart
 in a locked down world.

On Wednesday evenings, I gather with a group of five other women on Zoom for an hour and a half of writing and sharing.

Facilitated by Ali Grimshaw of the Flashlight Batteries blog, she reads aloud a poem by another author and invites us to write whatever those words inspire.

The poem above was inspired by a poem called Zoom Morning Weather, by Josh Jacobs.

May’s Woman – Rise Up. Speak Out. Act Now.

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May Woman – #ShePersisted 2021 Calendar https://etsy.com/ca/shop/dareboldlyart

In a comment on yesterday’s post, Iwona wrote, “The timing of this post is uncanny given the resurgence of news about the RCMP’s class action lawsuits and the release of the special report by former Justice Bastarache on the long standing “mysoginistic, racist and homophobic attitudes” within the RCMP. Equal rights. Equal voice. Equal opportunity. Maybe one day, maybe.”

I wish it were just the RCMP where such attitudes and behaviour persisted.

It’s not.

It happens everywhere. Not always to such a blatant degree as the report found in the RCMP, but throughout our world. As Justice Bastarache says, “The problem is systemic in nature and cannot be corrected solely by punishing a few ‘bad apples.’

We must Rise Up. Speak Out. Act Now.

Many years ago, I worked as a stockbroker. (I know. Seriously? Me?) I only lasted 4 years in the business.

In part, because I was good at longterm portfolio planning. Terrible at day-to-day trading, the bread and butter of the trade.

And also, because I grew weary of the misogynistic attitudes many of the predominately male brokers held, particularly those of ‘the older generation’. Like my VP at the first firm I worked at. He offered to share his ‘book’ with me (a book is a list of client names and contact info – gold to a broker) if I had sex with him. “I can make your life easy. Or make you wish you never set foot in this office,” he tsaid. He went on to inform me that whether I accepted his offer or turned him down, if I told anyone, no one would believe me – “I’m a VP. I make this firm a lot of money,” he said. “You’d just be some little chick looking to either sleep her way to the top or stick it to ‘the man’.”

I stayed silent and left the firm. It felt like my only recourse.

A few years later I was working for a technology company as their Director of Marketing. A counterpart in the US office kept making sexual innuendoes on the phone. My response was to laugh and pretend I didn’t get ‘the message’. I treated it as a joke. Until one night, while we were at a conference together in Dallas, we happened to be the only two people in the elevator at the end of the day. The elevator stopped at his floor first. The doors opened, he turned to me and asked, “So? You coming with me?” And once again, I laughed it off. He turned and walked away. The doors closed and I thought that was the end of it.

He didn’t agree.

The next day, where once he treated me like the golden child of marketing, suddenly, everything I did was crap. And he made no bones about telling everyone how incompetent I was.

Even the president of the company noticed. In a meeting one day he asked me what was up. I told him the truth. His first response was one of disbelief. “You sure he wasn’t just kidding?” Eventually, he shrugged it off as ‘boys will be boys.’ The solution – say nothing. Pretend like it didn’t happen.

I am not alone as the Me Too movement and others so clearly illuminate.

In my response to Iwona, I wrote,

“I get so tired of what some days feels like ‘same old, same old’ misogynistic, racist, homophobic practices all packaged up in some worn-out patriarchal suit.
To raise myself up, to find my balance and calm my pounding heart down, I must write and paint it out. It is there, in the creative field that courage draws me out to face my fear that these ‘things’ will never change.
They must.
And they will if we continue to speak up, act out, and raise our voices above the fray so that those who have been bullied into silence can find their voices again.”

May’s Woman is the reminder I need – Silence is the adversary of change.

Silence allows disbelief and make-believe to overcome truth and reality.

To change the world, to make a difference, we must speak out against the practices, policies, social mores and discriminatory laws that disenfranchise, minimize and segregate people into ‘haves and have nots’, ‘worthy and not-worthy’ of being treated as human beings worthy of dignity, respect, kindness, fairness, equality and justice.

It is just one century-in-time since most women were enfranchised in Canada (Asian Canadians and Indigenous Peoples had to wait a few more decades.)

The roots of patriarchy that kept us ‘in our place’ run centuries deep.

We must keep digging them out with our hands, our feet, our bodies, our voices. We must keep working together and stand up tall for what is right, just and fair, again and again.

And we must not allow our silence to be heard as a vote of confidence for the voices who would tell us to not ‘worry our pretty little heads about the state of the world.”

It is those voices that have created the state of the world.

It is our voices united, calling out for justice, rising up in a song of freedom and equality for all, that will make the difference that will change it for the better and make a difference for everyone.

Namaste.

Leaning Into Hope

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I am not good with surprises. I like to know. Before things happen. This trait is so deeply ingrained that I generally read the ending of books first. Even non-fiction.

Some of it’s possibly because I can be somewhat competitive. Ok. Highly.

I like to think I can figure out the ending of movies and books before they happen. Hence why I read the ending of books first. Somehow, my brain thinks that if I know the outcome I can go back to the beginning and focus on the story without having to spend time trying to figure out where it’s all going before I get there.

I didn’t say it was a rational thinking pattern. It’s just the one I’ve adapted to for most of my life.

Yeah. I know. But… My thinking pattern does have its benefits.

Seriously. It does.

I am an observer by nature. I love to watch both the world around me and how people move through it. And, I love to watch myself as I journey through any given set of circumstances or events to bear witness to ‘my process’. My state of mind. My attitude. My blindspots. My weaknesses and strengths.

And here’s what I’ve noticed about my mental state in the past while.

I’m on edge.

I’m not focused.

I have a tendency to start one thing and then another and then another only to discover I have 3 or 4 things ‘in process’ and nothing finished.

I also immerse myself in mundane tasks (and complete them), which is great except, there’s no pattern to how or what I’m tackling.

For example. On Monday I cleaned out all my flowerpots. I’d started the process a couple of weeks ago when the forecast was for snow the next day. After cleaning out the six pots that line the front walkway, my hands were frozen as was the earth surrounding the roots of the plants so eventually I stopped. As an aside, it took about half an hour for my hands to warm up once I stopped digging in the ice cold dirt.

Did I mention I’m also stubborn? Yeah well. It’s possibly true.

Anyway.

As Monday was unseasonably warm, I decided it was as good a time as any to finish the unpotting job. ‘The job’ included wheeling the giant green compost bin down the hill at the side of our house to the bottom deck to give me easier access. After emptying all the pots on the lower deck, I positioned the bin on the grass so I could then go out on the main deck above it and throw all the dead plants off the deck into the bin.

Worked like a charm.

Except… I then had to wheel a now completely full bin up the hill and back into the garage until pick-up next week.

Which wouldn’t have been too bad except for the fact I’d just spent two days flat on my back with Sciatica.

Yeah. Well. I did say I was stubborn….

I spent most of the rest of that day flat on my back again.

But the pots are all winter ready!

See what I mean though? I’m doing things without being fully present.

Granted, I could have asked C.C. for help but… remember that competitive streak thing? Mix it with a dollop of stubborn and I am convinced I can do it myself. Thank you very much.

Which brings me back to my state of mind.

Yesterday, after cleaning the oven (it really needed it and my sister was cleaning hers so…) Anyway. Clean oven makes for a clean mind. Or something…

I went into the studio and began to work.

See what I mean? This piece is not particularly pleasing nor a good reflection of my artistic nature. But I want to keep it real so sharing my failures is important. this piece reflects the disquiet and lack of focus that consumed me when I sat down at my studio table.

The first piece left me feeling very dissatisfied.

I could feel my nerve endings, zapping one another, seeking contact.

I could feel my thoughts skittering about my mind like a fly trapped in a bottle. Ever notice how they seem to fly in squares. Weird. Right?

Never mind.

Back to my story.

So. Knowing I was unsettled and unfocused, I decided to work small.

I decided to create a mini art journal and call it, “Hope is…”

I can’t tell you why this idea popped into my mind other than to say that the muse is my ally. In times of distress, she tends to gather my thoughts and target them on an idea she knows will help me focus.

Working small helps me focus. Working on something inspirational, does too. It soothes my troubled mind and eases the strain in my heart and reminds me that trying to know the future is like trying to control how fast the river flows outside my window.

Now is the only moment I have to be present.

Now is the place and time to invest my best.

Now is where I find myself at peace. In harmony. Full of gratitude, leaning deeply into… HOPE.

What about you?

What do you do to bring peace of mind into your state of being?

How do you settle yourself in the present?

___________________________

Bonus! The muse also offered up four more quotes for my Hope Is… journal. That’s what I’m going to focus on today.

Thank you universe for your beauty. Your gifts. Your everything!

And as to the world out there. I am of much better service to the ALL when I am All Present in the Now.

Namaste.

Love Finds Me. Here.

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On the kitchen island, sunflowers stand in a white vase. Their yellow heads are beginning to droop. Time is passing on.

In my studio, two cacti blossom. Life’s natural impulse to grow and flower is on display in riotous pink pressed against winter’s presence lying in pristine white outside the window.

In the trees that line the bank between our yard and the river, a squirrel scurries down. Winter is coming. There are preparations to be made.

It scurries towards the birdfeeder hanging along the fence at the back of our yard. It has become a squirrel seed depot.

The squirrel grabs at the tiny lip of the feeder and hangs on. Its body swings precariously from side to side. It steadies itself and opens its mouth ready to catch the seeds as they spill out.

Pouches full, it leaps back to the fence onto a tree branch, scurries up the trunk, sailing effortlessly from one branch to the next until, high up, it reaches a hole in the tree and disappears.

Another squirrel replaces it at the feeder.

I wonder if squirrels have a sound for gratitude?

Do I?

Is gratitude heard in the deep sigh of contentment as I sit in the darkness at my desk breathing in the beauty and wonder of the world around me?

Is it heard in the quiet hum of the furnace blowing warm air into the house?

Is it in the rustle of Beaumont’s body as he moves against the hardwood floor where he sleeps beside me?

Is it felt in the quiet, slow lightening of the day seeping across a nighttime sky ebbing into dawn?

Is it known in the halo of the lamp that lights my fingers as I type or the glowing of the candle on the desk beside me?

Is it tasted in the sip of my latte, foamy milk flowing warm and silky across my lips, down my throat and into my body?

Is it seen in the silent shimmery dark silhouettes of the trees dancing in the morning breeze outside my window, their not yet fallen leaves black against a not quite morning sky?

It is all here.

Filling me with gratitude.

This beauty.

It does not wait for the right season. Better weather. For time to flow from one moment to the next.

This beauty is here. Now.

And so am I.

And so is Love.

Namaste

.

My Mother’s Prayers. (Video flip-through)

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Front and back cover of altered book art journal — My Mother’s Prayers

It is done. This journal I began several months ago with my mother’s prayer cards. It is done.

When I began my intention was to honour my mother’s life journey through using her prayer cards as a collage element on each page in the journal. I wasn’t thinking about healing. Or growth. Or change.

I was focused on diving into the creative field of creating an altered book art journal with her cards.

And then… Transformation beckoned.

Which makes sense, given that the premise of an altered book art journal is using an existing book to transform it into something else.

Don’t you love how art mirrors life and how when we open up to creative expression, life awakens in all its magnificent hues like a crystal prism hanging in a window refracting and reflecting rainbow shards of sunlight?

Through working on this journal, I have found myself falling with grace into all the colours of my human emotions. Grief. Joy. Sorrow. Gratitude, Regret. Compassion. Denial. Appreciation. Sadness. Joy. Anger. Love…

As I’ve written on one of the pages, “There are no mistakes in the human heart. There is only Love.”

In the end, and in the beginning… there is only Love.

There are no mistakes in my life. No paths not taken I wished I had. No roads wandered I wish I hadn’t.

Every path, every road, every step and word and gesture and action and encounter have all added up to create this space in which I live today. Breathing deeply of the divine nature of life.

It is here I find myself floating on a sea of gratitude, waves of joy and love and friendship and laughter and harmony and grace washing over me as I bathe in the waters of sacred communion with Life.

And so I say the prayer that stirs my soul and fills my heart with gratitude. “Thank you.”

__________________________________________

For the past two days I have been working on a flip through video of the book.

On each page I share the words that are most evocative of that page.

I am pleased. The book has turned out better than I imagined (Yes Jane. I’ll say it. “I did a good job!” 🙂 )

But, more than how the book has turned out, I am so very, very grateful for having taken this journey. I began without expectation of an outcome. I end with gratitude for the transformation that has appeared on my path through stepping into the creative exploration of My Mothers Prayers.

A note on the cover — my mother loved baubles and bling. She always wore sparkly things. On her fingers. Around her neck. In her hair. On her wrists. The original cover was orange – not one of my mother’s favourite colours. I painted it purple, covered that with gold spray paint and sprinkled gold dust over the entire thing. The jewelled pieces were my mother’s earrings and on the back, the embroidered bird is from excess fabric from the skirt I wore when C.C. and I were married. Made of hand-embroidered silk from India, I felt it would bring my mother to our wedding as she was too frail to attend. Underneath the bird is one of my mother’s prayer cards.

Forgive And Grow. Forgive and Grow.

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We are, once again in the season of the long shadows. The sun’s light dims and shadows reach far across the earth like a memory that will not die in yesterday.

“How do you forget the awful things someone did to you?” a friend asked me awhile ago.

“I don’t strive to forget,” I replied. “I seek to forgive.”

When we forgive someone, or ourselves, it is not that we are saying the deeds that hurt us do not matter, or that it was right for those things to happen, or that the other is not accountable for what they have done.

Forgiveness isn’t about righting wrongs. It’s about accepting the wrong happened and letting go of the pain of reliving the wrongs day after day after day. In letting go, we become freed of the past. Freed of the past, we are free to walk in the light of today savouring its beauty, wonder and awe without carrying the burden of the past into our tomorrows.

To forget we must be able to wipe the slate of time and our memory banks clean. I’ve never found the magic wand that will do that.

What I have found is the power of forgiveness to take out ‘the sting’ of remembering. Just as when stung by a wasp, it’s critical to take out the stinger so that you can heal more quickly, removing the stinger from the past frees you to embrace this moment without the pain and trauma of what was in the there and then casting long shadows over your journey in the here and now.

Forgiveness takes conscious practice.

I remember when I was in the depths of healing from a relationship gone really, really bad, well-meaning people told me that to heal I needed to write a list of all the awful things he’d done so that I would remember how awful he was.

I didn’t need reminders of how awful those days were. The evidence was all around me. His transgressions were many. My brokenness profound.

I was not powerful enough to make him change or even be accountable for what he’d done. I could be accountable for my role in the debacle and aftermath of that relationship. I could make amends in my life. To do that, I needed to focus on sifting through my brokenness to find myself in peace, joy, harmony, love.

And it all began with forgiveness.

Forgiveness was my path to setting myself free of him. It meant, whenever a thought of what he’d done and what had happened arose in my mind, I repeated to myself the simple phrase, “I forgive you.”

No listing of the countless ways he’d ‘wronged’ me. No remembering of all that had happened. I did not need to recite the litany of his sins. Recitation wouldn’t change them. Repeating “I forgive you,” could and did change me.

“I forgive you” had nothing to do with him. It was all about me. And after almost five tumultuous and devastating years of his abuse, I deserved and needed to make my life all about me.

It also meant I had to forgive myself. To write a litany of all my sins in those first heady months of healing, to force myself into ‘the remembering’ of all I’d done to cause pain to those I love would also have forced me to relive the trauma. And in those early days of healing, I was not strong enough to withstand my desire to whip myself with the lashes of all my transgressions.

I had to rest beneath the soothing blanket of being free of his abuse, until the cold, harsh winds of the self-destructive voices inside my head that wanted to ensure I never forgot how much pain I had caused in the lives of so many, abated.

Just as every spring’s arrival awakens new life, forgiveness awakens gratitude for the beautiful dawning of each new day.

In gratitude, there is no need to remember, there is only the call to forgive and grow. In gratitude. Joy. Beauty. Harmony. Love.

Forgive and grow.

And slowly, like snow melting under spring’s lengthening days, memory will release its hold on dark days and cold nights. As shadows shorten and the sun’s warmth awakens the earth, buds will once again appear and beauty will grow brighter day by day by day.

That Ain’t My Gig.

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The words for this page appeared before I began creating it.

“And in the end, when the veil that separated life from death was lifted and she slipped through into the ever-after, all that she left behind were her prayers and the Love that carried her through her life into the eternal grace of God’s embrace.”

This is the final page of the altered book journal I’ve been creating for the past few months with the prayer cards my mother left behind.

When I first began this journey I thought it would be… effortless. Seamless. A traipse through memory sweeping the past clean and closing doors on remembered words and perceived hurts that haunted me in my mother’s silence.

It has been non of that and all of that and so much more.

This deep dive into the power of prayer and my ‘mother memories’ of the rights and the wrongs, the beauty and pain, has brought me face-to-face and heart-to-heart with the quintessential ‘mother wound‘.

Healing the mother wound has been a lifelong journey for me. While it might seem all about a woman’s relationship with her mother, it is bigger than that.

The archetypal mother wound is generational. It is the universal struggle to fit into a world that is constantly changing, yet struggling to transform. It is a world that does not make room for a woman’s exploration of her power and potential because the world itself is constructed by a patriarchal set of rules that do not acknowledge the power and potential of women. It is the fight against the ties that bind while holding onto the apron ties that taught us how to be women in a world constructed in man’s ways.

According to Dr. Oscar Serrallach in THIS ARTICLE on GOOP,

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“The mother wound reflects the challenges a woman faces as she goes through transformations in her life in a society where the patriarchy has denied us ongoing matrilineal knowledge and structures.”

“This agenda tells females not to shine, to remain small, and that if you are going to try to be successful, that you should be masculine about it.”

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I am still searching. Scouring mind and heart for the words that will describe this journey I am on. This journey of reckoning.

With my mother’s passing. The words unwinding. The deeds undoing. The messages deconstructing. The lessons unlearning.

It is a journey of Repatriation. Reclamation. Restoration. Rejuvenation. Of myself.

It is a journey not just through time and space and generational legacies and patriarchal ties that bind me to a way of being that does not fit my skin, my soul, my sense of who I have the right to be in this world. A world that does not know how to create space for the art of the feminine to rise up and be heard and seen and known with grace.

I have come to the final page of this journal I have been creating of my mother’s prayer cards.

I can no longer blame my mother or hold her hostage to my unrealized dreams. I can no longer pray for my freedom from the past, from all that has kept me tied with invisible threads of silence and shame to beliefs and ways of being that do not fit me.

I have come to the time when I must claim my right to be free or crumble beneath the sorrow and rage of a life not lived.

No 5. #ShePersisted Series Mixed Media 2017 Louise Gallagher “Rock the Boat”

My mother has taught me well. Through her silence and her belief it was better to not make waves, I have learned to rock the boat.

Through her insistence I walk with both feet firmly planted in obedience, chastity and faith, I have learned to peer into the darkest night of the soul and see the light within.

In showing me how to be a woman bound to man’s ways she has gifted me the freedom to be unbound. To run wild of heart and free of spirit.

And now it is time.

Time for me to dive into the rising tide full of the song of the soul rushing in to greet me on the shore where I stand in anticipation of life washing me clean of the past. Body arced, arms flung wide above my head, waves crashing over my feet, I dive deeper and deeper into the sacred waters of the Divine Feminine. Into the depths of the great mystery where magic flows free and life dances gloriously unbounded by the conventions of a way of being that is not mine.

It is time for me to hold onto only Love and say to the rest, “The hell with that. That ain’t my gig!”

Yup. It’s time to shine big and dance!