Lindsay Lock's Blog

It didn't feel like long enough.

Yet it felt like more years, 66,

than it should have to make things right.

I miss that I will never embrace her again.

She reached 66.

Yet it has been many years

since our last embrace.

I miss that she will never again 

tell me that she's proud of me.

After she reached 66.

I wonder,

was she proud of me?

I miss that she will never again

say she loves me

and I know she did when 

she was 66.

But I think she still would have

cause me harm.

It's hard to know since

Death imparted it's kiss

at 66.

  I never thought that one of the hardest parts of my life would bring so much gratitude.But it's true. I'm grateful.

I started life over.

At the beginning of this year, I moved out to a place of my own to share with my kids.
I started a new job which I didn't know if it would last past September.

I finalized the divorce from my ex and we figured out our co-parenting plan for the benefit of our children.

No, things aren't perfect.
They are still hard because I don't know what's coming next, but I'm grateful for this:
Children who often inspire me to do my best because I want to be around for them.Family & friends who support me and love me for who I am.My tribe of wild ones who help remind me to see and appreciate the wild in me.Lessons on love and loss.My writing and art for being tools to help me process and express my complex emotions.Moments of serenity.Magic of nature and music to soothe my soul.A roof over my head, food in my belly, and clothes on my back.I found beauty in the chaos. For that, I am grateful.

I don't dream often or at least I don't often remember my dreams, but earlier this week I had a doozy.
It was one of those it felt like I was actually in the dream. I thought about it for days.

I played the scenes in my head over and over trying to decrypt its messages. And I decided to share in case someone else has ever faced something like I have.

The dream:

Background of the dream: People have been kidnapping characters from story books. A lady who looks like Kate Micucci is trying to get away while a lady who looks like Regina (from the show "Once" is walking after her.)

Regina: "Please don't leave. I understand it's hard. No one here knows who I am."

Kate: (turns around as if to ask why she should stay)
Regina: "I found this (hands Kate a delicate, golden bracelet) in a locker where they were keeping you. I don't know if it makes a difference..."
Kate: "Thanks." (Turns to leave.)
Regina: (Pulls out a doll that is Barbie sized, but American girl style that looks like Kate, but Regina is unsure what it is and what its purpose is. She starts picking at the skin on the neck.)
Kate: (Scratches at her neck.)
Regina: (Doesn't notice effect on Kate. Starts a match and brings it closer to the doll.)
Kate: (Starts to get red in the face.)
I blow out the match.
Regina: (Sees what the doll is and hands it to Kate.)
Kate: "I was trying to get away from this. People have been controlling me with this all my life. No one has given me it before..."

This is where I woke up.

There's a lot of symbolism here...

Obviously the doll is a sort of voodoo doll which symbolizes someone/ something out side exercising control onto the victim (in this case Kate.)

In my life, I feel like people were often trying to control me. Whether they realized it or not... and regardless of the intent of said trials of control. I felt like the doll (control) was often handed to one party to the next, just out of my grasp and I was wanting to not be controlled, but didn't know how to get away from it.

It went from my mom to religion to my ex and often intermingled with members of society and sometimes well meaning friends/ family members. In society all we fight over is to be accepted/ loved by our peers/ family.

And sometime in the pursuit of love and acceptance instead of just getting it, it comes with this horribly toxic message of "I'll love you if..." or similarly "you'll be lovable if..."

"You'll be lovable if you follow my god just this way..."

"You'll be lovable if you don't speak to loud or take up too much space..." (A message too many women in our society hear one way or another.)

"You'll be lovable if you submit to my authority..."

But at the end of the day, all of those if statements are utter bullshit.

The turning point of the dream is where I blow out the flame.

That is me deciding that I won't be burned up by control.

It's my higher self (Regina the queen) giving me permission to take control of my own life. And it's letting Regina (the higher self) be seen and heard (and known.)

In the face of all these things in society that would rather kidnap them and take them as their own... In the face of the things that would rather I just follow the program instead of speaking up... I choose to defy those who want to control me.

So, I have to rain on society's parade... and anyone else who doesn't want me to take stewardship over my life.

Because I have the doll now- or otherwise said:
I decide what to do with this life.

There's times in life where you must choosebetween what is easyand what will leadto growth; between what is healthyand what is unhealthy; between what someone elsemay what of youand what is trueto you.

photo credit

I keep talking about the hard things.

On my Facebook, in my articles, online in my circles, and in real life where I feel safe.

I talk about my anxiety, depression. I talk about divorce and the many feels about the adjustments to co-parenting.

I have exactly zero intention of stopping the talking of hard things.

Because while my demons while like me to shut the hell up about them, every time I speak their names and tell their tales, their chains loosen their grips on me a bit.

I become less afraid of the monster in the box (a.k.a. anxiety/ depression).

I become more empowered at facing the various facets of loss related to divorce.

I heal every time I share my experiences with another, but there's more...

Every time I share my experiences, it gives permission to someone else to share their experiences with someone else and watch them heal.

Now that is powerful shit.

I'm not saying they need to announce it publicly like I do. Nope.

Some of my hardest stuff I talk about only in smaller circles because it's vulnerable shit.

And I think that it's important to have those small circles where I'm safe to say what I need to say.

And hopefully others find those circles too.

  
   It was raining this evening and the pavement was glistening under the streetlights as I looked out the window of the cafe. The back of my legs touched the cool, red seats as I sat upright to reach for the cream and sugar. My coffee had steam rolling off as I doctored it up.

     I found myself lost in thoughts of him even though it's been over two years since he last loved me. I shook my head knowing that what was there would never be again, not with him. Tears formed in my eyes and a couple started to roll out of my eyes as I breathed in deeply.

     I can do better, I thought. I deserve better.

     Yeah, it wasn't all terrible. Truthfully, most of it was pretty damn good, but I knew I couldn't do anything to change his mind that he was done. He wasn't going to try anymore and I was tired of coming to the table and waiting for whatever crumbs were served me.

    I can do better, I thought. I deserve better.

    I can't, to this day, say how long I was surviving on crumbs. Mostly because for the longest time that's all I thought I deserved...  

    A cool wind from the door opening brought me back to cafe. My eyes catch the empty, white mug in front of me. I put a dollar on the table and get up from the booth. The waitresses' brow furrowed  in curiosity as she asked, "Everythin' alright, miss?"
    
     "Yeah, fine," I waved her off. She raised an eyebrow at me. Her green eyes say me she wasn't buying my social protocolled response. I can't say I blame her- the words fell off my lips like wood: hard and hollow. But I can't bring myself to bring soft and deep to a stranger.

      I step out into the rain and let it fall down my face as I walk through the night. My tears intermingle with the raindrops dripping down my face.

* Image from Pexels.

31 flavors of griefare being served,one atop another.Covering itwith toppingscan't sweetenthe taste. No tripto the ice cream shopcan fill grief's void.31 flavors of griefcan only be unscoopedone at a time.Sometimes it feelslike grief soupas its partakerwades through-for grief layersmelt slowly.It's going to bea rocky road.
Image source

The lesson about love somehow got confused along the way...  Somehow I'd learned that love was to earned rather than an automatic thing that I deserved.

It wasn't until I read "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver that I really started to make the connection that I had it all wrong:

 (from my article "I Found Myself by Getting Lost")
Game changer.
So what I started to think... what love is and what love isn't:
          I long for a love
          in which no part of my soul
          need be hidden:
          who & where I am accepted.
          I long for a love
          who will kiss away my tears
          and hold me close.
          I long for a love
          who will dance with me
          under the stars.
          I long for a love
          who will labor beside me
          and spin tales long into the night.
          I long for a love
          that will behold my wild
          with wonder.
          I long for a love
          that reaches the depths
          of my mind, soul, heart.
          I long for a love
          that reaches me beyond
          when it's convenient
          and without any conditions.
          I long for a love          that leaves me breathless, wordless.
          Sometimes I see
          this love I long for
          her face stares at me
          in the mirror.

I look out at the world and sometimes I’m moved to tears when I see all the fear and hate. I see companies trying to take away land from Native Americans at Standing Rock, refugees without a safe place to call home. I see bigotry and misogyny. I see fear all around.
 
There is so much self-made division that sometimes it's overwhelming. In these moments, I breathe, I collect myself, I look:

I see connections. Millions of them in fact...
Connections that trail from one lifetime to the next.
Connections that bond species in intricate fashions-
Like a spider web that connects to the bolter of a barn
Protecting the horses from flies.
I wonder at times if I’m the only one that sees it-
The way our actions ripple and nudge lives of our fellow beings...
Do we realize that we are not solely our own?
But rather the stewards of all the divine splendor before us...

From grandest whale swimming in the sea
To the smallest snail slugging along
All are connected.
One drop of water seems like not much to behold,
But when drop upon drop fall,
It fills the lakes and seas
Sustaining all below.

Our actions [or inactions] I think can be like that too.
If we spill a drop of blood of our brother,
Does it not lead to shedding of tears of their loved ones?
If we slaughter a ewe,
Does her lamb not cry?
I cry for the horror that sometimes we unleash in our own lives.
I weep when hatred is unleashed upon my fellow beings
From the lack of understanding that we all belong to one another.
We are humanity intimately entwined at the hip of existence.
I am connected. 

Every breath I share the air with my fellow beings.
Every food I eat (even if a plant) was once a life.
I bow at the great divine that lies around me,
Showing the fantastic connection that exists- love.
For love can weave all together...

It will outshine hate and fear- every single time.
I know it may seem all impossible,
But many beautiful possibilities once started as such-
They started out as whispers of dreams
Uttered in the darkness of night.
They started in the shadows
Where it seemed all hope had faded,
But then a spark came
Rekindled by one revolutionary soul
Who wouldn’t give up hope.
She found her soul sisters and brothers
Who also thought their hope had faded,
But you one cannot extinguish the flame
That is fostered out of love and human kindness
In those fine values we may still be lead
To the other side of this grey curtain.
Into something beautiful, wild, and free.
And we will be awestruck in wonder
at the great things we did
in connections of love.

These fine threads wove
with each kind word spoken,
with each lovely deed performed,
every time we gave our hearts
to our fellow beings in loving service.
Each time I released the spider into her home.
And when hate and fear emerged,
I chose to speak peace and love.
I understand my actions are like ripples in the pond
touching lives beyond what I can see.

A soundscape to my life...

Most of my life, I gave up my agency. I thought that the answers were outside of myself instead of within. After all that’s what I was taught. The notion of sin being equated with not being enough was indoctrinated into my younger self. Yes, I own that some of this was due to my own, then perfectionist standings. One song reverberated through my teen years, but I didn’t see until adulthood how it would prove to be my north star...
 
 So my reflections on the song, “She” by Green Day:

"She...
She screams in silence
A sullen riot penetrating through her mind
Waiting for a sign
To smash the silence with the brick of self-control"

Little did I know that this self-control and silence were the things restricting and harming me in the first place. I couldn't see my own chains of trying so hard to fit in. There were so many rules in that prison that I almost became a shadow... a whisper of who I could truly be. Big, brave, beautiful.

"Are you locked up in a world
That's been planned out for you?"

I answer that I was locked up in such a prison which I resided in for a long time. I was scared to break out though. I was afraid of what life would look like if I was wild enough to oppose the establishment laid out before me. The fears echoed in my brain from the sea of voices around me.

"Are you feeling like a social tool without a use?"

I nod as I realize the only use I had fulfilled was that of wife and mother. Those jobs weren't necessarily bad, but I was more than that. I had dreams of my own... I wanted to be a difference in more than my little microcosm.

"Scream at me until my ears bleed
I'm taking heed just for you"

I release my siren, my objection to being controlled, oppressed. Admittedly, this act of defiance is scary to those still within the establishment. I’m aware of this, but I know I must cast off the chains I wore voluntarily for so long...

"She...
She's figured out
All her doubts were someone else's point of view
Waking up this time
To smash the silence with the brick of self-control"

I look within to the quiet places of my heart, I listen. I slowly prune away the messages that don’t work. I peer out before me and make a way on a road of my own making.