Author: gypsywoman

The other day, the man who has been in my life and in my heart for what feels like a long time, now, asked me a question. The question had something to do with contentment. He asked me, as I sat here in another life…in this room in Ireland…if my life had “turned out.”

I replied that my life is in continuous movement…like a river.

Of course it is.

My life hasn’t “turned-out” yet, because it isn’t over. Isn’t that a marvelous thing…a wonder?

It continues to move. It continues to change. I continue to feel.

I had heard “feel your feelings” from many different directions until, sometimes, it had sounded a lot like when I was child being told to “eat my vegetables”.  I didn’t want to do that. It hurt.

I see that I don’t look at it that way, anymore. My feelings are my guides..my breadcrumbs. I am learning more and more to put my shields down and to meet them. Sometimes I even run to meet them, now.  There is forgiveness in that, for myself and for everything. Feeling my feelings is a well of mercy, and kindness.

So…

Has my life turned out?

To be continued…

For the last few days I have been in resting and gathering mode.  I have been gathering energy and maybe some guidance through the static of my spiritual GPS.

What I know is, sometimes I have tried to press on through messages to stop, just stop…and to get really quiet. Lately, I had been trying to “power ” my way through some haziness about purpose…and some sort of self-talk in the back of my head about using my time here in Ireland wisely.

I don’t want to mess up this opportunity, after all.

Hurry. Hurry. Hurry. Get this right! Don’t screw it up.

It doesn’t work that way, does it? When I start wandering off into the dark like that, it just gets darker.

The body says, “Breathe.”

The spirit says, “Listen.”

When I finally listen, the heart says, “Thank you. Oh, thank you. Thank you.”

So I got a little laundry done today. I hung it up on a line outside. (I haven’t done that in a long, long time…maybe even never. Maybe it was my mom who last hung my clothes on a line.) That was my accomplishment for the day.  That…and this…stopping in to say hello to you, which I’m really glad I did.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I realized something today:

I don’t aspire to be fearless, anymore. What I do want is to be able to feel my fear, move through it with love, and not allow it to hold me back. (That’s a whole other thing, isn’t it?)

This is my prayer.

Amen.

Onward

Well, Readers, I am feeling my little avatar at absolute zero today. I am depleted.

I am exhausted, groggy, grumpy, wishing it were cooler in this room (everyone is talking about how this is the hottest summer in Ireland in a long time)…and something is going on with my stomach.

I am not venturing out with people today. Today is a day to drink tea and water and maybe eat something as the need strikes…and rest, rest, rest.

Athlone is beautiful. The River Shannon runs through the town and there is a huge church there; The Church of Saints Peter and Paul. It’s gorgeous.

Of course immediately after I spoke of writing a little something every day, I was too tired when I got back to my room to catch up.

I also notice the Universe tested me almost immediately on the things I said about mistakes yesterday. (“You’re going to roll with the mistakes and take them as learning experiences? Lets see…”)

I met a man while I was sitting on a bench next to the river and ended up spending some time with him (enough for a chat and a walk and a cup of coffee). He turned out to be a bit of a “masher”.

What was I doing and where was my inner guidance system?

It was a huge lesson, though; a lesson that had to do with setting my boundaries and sticking by them.

I am unharmed. The man seemed lonely and awkward more than anything. I do notice that it took me way too long to acknowledge my discomfort with certain ways he was touching me…rubbing my hand with his thumb, squeezing my shoulder, even forcing a kiss a la Pepe Le Pew when I told him I was going to explore on my own again and said goodbye.

What I’m saying is…this was really showing me to stand up for how I want and don’t want to be touched. It was showing me to feel my boundaries and to give myself permission to take care of myself. My inner guidance system was right there the whole time. I had been ignoring it.

No more.

The other lesson regarding mistakes happened on the way home.

I missed telling my bus driver from Tullamore where I wanted to get off…and I ended up in a village down the road; much to far to walk back, (especially in the heat, yesterday). At that time of day, the bus is in for the night. It isn’t turning around…and there is no such thing as a taxi in the little village of Kilcormac. So, I was in a quandary.

I finally called my kind host at the B&B and was picked up…once I found some nice folks who showed me an open shop. In the shop was a gentleman who was extremely helpful. My own phone was dead and the phone number to my host was buried in some some messages we had back and forth through airbnb. (I hadn’t needed it up until last night!)

First item on the agenda: Charge the phone. The shop owner had a handy charger. Yay!! Check.

Second item on the agenda: Get on WiFi.  They had WiFi in the shop, too. Yay again! Check.

Third item on the agenda: Find the phone number. Check.

Fourth item on the agenda: Ask the shop owner to ring my B&B so I can speak with someone. Check.

Once that was all done I  had my ride back. But I wondered why I didn’t have the phone number in a handy place…and how I managed to miss my stop.

Today all I want to do is to be kind to myself, take in the lessons, learn from them,  and forgive. I. am. so. tired.

I will leave you with some photos of the River Shannon:

         

and the Church of Saints Peter and Paul:

                    

    

 

 

I have given myself a challenge to write an entry every day…at least for awhile…at least something.

Right now the cursor is blinking at me going: “Okay, ‘Ms. Writer’, you asked for it. You wanted it. Well…now you have it. What the heck are you going to do with it? You wanted to write. Write.”

Ugh! That voice. Do you know it? It’s that voice that likes to tell me that whatever I’m doing, it isn’t quite good enough.

Right now I’m going to start by taking a really deep breath and giving up on trying to please it.

What am I learning, so far?

I am learning that things that might show up, at first, as frustrations or might look like “mistakes” along the way are actually pointers. They’re pointers to lead me in the direction of what I really want.

I’m not always all “Pollyanna” about it…but it really is the truth.

Was it a “mistake” to have my first stop be out here in a rural farm area, on a dairy farm…and to do it for a month…and to do it without renting a car? Do I want to be in the countryside, or would I rather be in the city? Do I want to focus on honing my writing or do I want to play? (The answer is some of both!) It’s a matter of stopping, and listening, and getting the message.

It’s a matter of making whatever adjustments I might like to make.

On a day like today…when I am feeling tired, and alone, and wondering what the heck I “ought to be” doing with myself, sometimes the questions show up again. The thing is…I know very well I can feel the same way in the midst of a crowd.

How I feel is just how I feel now. It’s never forever. My energy level is low. Sometimes I just need to give myself permission to rest. How I feel right now is asking me to take care of myself.  It’s asking me what I need. It’s not that there’s been a mistake.

The question is always: “What would open me up to a greater level of gratitude in this moment?”

I made the choice in my first few days here to stay. As it turns out, I am having fun this first month having this quiet room from which to work; and I’m finding there are plenty of ways to feed my curiosity to venture out, too.  I love walking, here. There are buses and trains. I’m hardly “stuck”. Tomorrow I am going to Athlone. Yesterday I was shown around the dairy farm and got to see its workings.

Do I want to complain about about the Irish summer sun that is out this week shining its big ol’ heart out until 10 PM? Do I want to chastise it for keeping me awake? Really? (Yes…I regret to say I have felt like that.)  Or…am I going to breathe, and say yes, and put chair in front of my bedroom window, and then take in the amazing sunset if I’m still awake?

Which is going to feed my spirit better? I ask you.

(Okay. I can always try a sleep mask, too; that’s another option. Silently stewing isn’t an option. Well, maybe it is…but  it’s a lousy option…it gets nowhere.)

I get to do this however I would like. I get to make myself happy.

 

 

I don’t have a lot to say right now, Readers. I hope you are enjoying your day.

These are some treats I found in Tullamore one day…some rose scented soaps from France and the cutest little change purse to carry around my Euro coins for bus fare. Sometimes, it’s the little things!

Right now, I’m going to have a cup of coffee in the shade. It’s a glorious morning.

I had a goal for my sixtieth birthday(which recently passed).

The goal was simply to surprise myself. (Well, over the past year-and-a-half or  I so have definitely been doing that!)

At sixty years old, I feel as if I am finally beginning to grow up.

I am beginning to learn to ask for what I want and to take care of myself. I’m taking the first steps. That’s what this trip to Ireland is really about…doing things for myself that I’ve never done before.

I am beginning to take responsibility for how I feel and to let go of blame.

I am moving out of a sense of dependency that I had carried with me for a long, long time. I am being gentle with myself and taking small steps.

As I write this today, I am not quite sure what I am going to do next to support myself…or where my life is taking me. That’s in the realm of the unknown right now; and I am learning that the unknown isn’t good or bad…it’s just unknown.

I am blessed with enough…with more than enough…and I am feeling into the next thing.

I am moving past some really old beliefs about my limits and I’m pushing the edges…just a little bit at a time…just enough. There is a part of me that still can’t quite believe I am living this new life.

I think maybe part of my reason for putting this out here as I am is to own it.  It’s less easy to slink bank into one’s comfort zone when one has made an announcement, right? I’m part excited and part nervous. If I look at those two emotions closely enough, I can see how related they are.

There used to be a voice in my head that kept repeating that I’m too old to do this. I’m too old to start a new adventure. I don’t listen to that voice, anymore. It doesn’t know. It doesn’t know my heart.

 

So here I am. I am finding myself pretty much right in the center of the country of Ireland. I had  been dreaming about doing this for awhile, and here it is!

Yesterday I took an excursion to the little town of Birr.  The host at my airbnb was going that way and she offered to give me a lift. Yes! Yes! Yes! (How could I say no to a new place to explore?)

Birr is a charming town, replete with a castle and a courtyard where there’s a lovely coffee house. I had a cappuccino there and a bite to eat for lunch, and  then I took a walk around.

    

 

On Monday, the plan is to take a train into Galway. I’ll let you know how that goes.

I am still learning the ropes, here, Readers….the ropes of Ireland and the ropes of blogging.

I’ve gotten myself ready to enough to write some posts here. (Yay!) There’s more to learn, and the thing is…I’m actually having fun at it!

I’m making new discoveries every day.

 

 

 

 

There are times, it seems to me, in each one of our lives, when our reality does a full turnaround. At least that’s what happened here; and from what I’ve seen, there are other stories and experiences “out there” where people have experienced, or are experiencing, pretty much the same thing.

Life can turn on a dime and leave you shocked. It can leave you confused and bewildered, at first. You find yourself standing on new ground, feeling into a brand new normal. (What’s happening? What can it mean?) There’s an ache, perhaps, or a call that refuses to be ignored, or some unexpected event, or maybe you meet someone…and suddenly everything is different.

So, what I once thought was my life, all neatly arranged and set out for me, all of a sudden was turning out not to be my life after all. I had a job where I had been for almost twelve years. My husband and I had just recently bought a house. I had been quite prepared to coast. I was complacent and fairly content. Yet inwardly, I was begging for something else. I was begging for something to jar me, jolt me, give me a sense of confidence I seemed to lack, make me brave. I was begging for something to lift me out of the interminable rut of circular thoughts and too similar days and weeks and months.The thing is: I didn’t actually believe the answer to this sort of vague, amorphous, almost secret prayer was on the way…and then it showed up! (I discovered that’s how it works. That’s how thought works. That’s how prayer works. It’s creative.)

Getting catapulted out of your comfort zone can be dizzying. Receiving what you wish for is not always comfortable. This wasn’t even close to comfortable. In the midst of the confusion I wanted to blame. I wanted to attack. I wanted to scream and to cry and to vent my anger. I did those things. I did all those things. A lot.

What feels like your heart breaking can actually be your heart cracking open. What may feel like abandonment is asking you to come back to yourself.

My husband was doing things like packing up and moving into a hotel room, leaving me in the house we’d just bought, and later taking off on a road trip without knowing when (or even if) he would be returning. He had met people. He had gone away to a retreat. I was aware of this…no big surprise there. What I hadn’t expected was for him to return so changed…so ready to launch into something that felt so radical to me. (How often does a “retreat” actually shift one’s life?) The first thing he did was to ask me to call him by a different name. He wanted to mark the change.

At various points I heard him saying things like: “We’re not married,” and “Goodbye forever.” He was also saying things like he was always right there with me…that we were One.

He also said this could be the best thing that ever happened to me. He asked me to sit with that idea for just a second a day, to begin with. Not once did he say he didn’t love me. (Although there were times when he mentioned not being so sure what love is.)

He wanted to be free. He was in some sort of existential pain that wasn’t quite making sense to me, something that seemed just out of my reach, and he wanted to be free. (My God, wasn’t I enough?) My boss at work put it beautifully: He was climbing his metaphorical Mt. Everest. What on earth was the meaning of all this?

He spent the holidays with me in 2016, with all the ensuing tumult and confusion and sweet moments of connection. On New Year’s Day of 2017 he was off on his journey. He was on his road trip. I was in the house trying really hard to remember that “this could be the best thing that ever happened to me.” What I didn’t know was that I was about to go on a journey of my own…one that had nothing to do with him.

I found myself in my own existential pain. It all seemed so surreal. I couldn’t quite explain it to anyone because I couldn’t really explain it to myself.

In February of 2017, I wanted my own retreat. I wanted to see, for myself, what this thing he had experienced might be for me. After all, it seemed like this was some powerful stuff. What might happen?

Well, let me tell you what showed up…

One thing was that showed up was that the two of us ended up moving in and out of each other’s orbit…not quite “together”, and not really “apart” either. Sometimes he was calling or texting me. Sometimes he he wasn’t. Sometimes we found ourselves on the road, right there in the same car. We flew off to Paris, as it turns out, together. We went to Burning Man and stayed in separate tents…and the tents were next to each other.

I was doing a dance around this idea of independence…wanting it…not wanting it. I was hiding from it…and seeing some places where I was coming out of hiding and getting just a little bit stronger.

In April of 2017 I quit my job. Somehow I knew it was the right thing to do right then, and I was scared to death. What was I doing?

In March of 2018 the house we had moved into at the end of 2016 was sold. Gone. A buyer was found and the house was cleaned out of the furniture and most of the “stuff”. (What a strange and unusual way for my wish to simplify to show up!) There was no “outward” home now. Everything was moving me to find the inward one. It had been something like a year and a half since the house was bought. (“He wasn’t in that house five minutes!” a friend of ours exclaimed at one point.) The funny thing is: He was gone more than I, but we both ended up spending quite a bit of 2017 away, discovering what was happening inwardly along the way. We had left the house in the care of a friend.

I had to finally realize that I was the one who knocked my own world off its axis and that it’s all right. I am all right. (Wow, I really am all right!) I am even grateful. I am still in the center, in the eye, of that process.

I set my sites on a trip to Ireland, and guess what: here I am today! Dreams and schemes are showing up. Possibilities are showing up. I don’t have it all planned out. I’m not exactly sure how it’s all going to happen…and I’m starting to believe in wishes. I’m learning how to play this song by ear.

 

What I know is, there is only forward. There is no way back to an old life. I am also learning that we are present in this life to feel and I’m learning not to be afraid of that.