so…we will take the first pic.

IMG_6517f

 

so.  this would be 1989?  i think?  or so, give or take?  how old was i then?????   math is like glass shards in my head.  43?  could it be?   someone correct me if i'm wrong.  i'm 67 now.

so  here i am.  in Debs Minnesota.  on my brother's farm where my mother then had come to live.  i had Set Out from Ann Arbor Michigan and went there first to say adios to my mother, mostly.  but them too.   and that was the first time i said what i will never say again.  a "for sure" thing.  a promise, really.  she kept saying "Why are you doing this?"  i said,  "i'll come back if you need me".

and who decides  the nature of need?, this  becoming  the question over the years.  i went back once.  for her 90th birthday.  i did not go back when she died.   i don't know if that matters.  still.  

so..what WAS i doing?   i left these things:  a job of 17 years on the acute admitting ward of the Adult Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Michigan.  a year old  part ownership of a New Age bookstore,  a newly blossoming career of Art Therapy with spinal cord injured men.  and MORE, an almost 14 year old son and an almost  18 year old daughter with a one year old daughter herself.  

What was i doing?

I had a dream.  it was one of the "Narrator Dreams" where i would dream and then just before waking,  a "Narrator" would pull it all together and give me a One Liner.   this one was……………. "Your Life is a Kind and Loving Nightmare".  no need to detail the dream other than as these words were "spoken",  i was about to open a black lacquered box that was in front of me on a pedestal.

so, this.  and a woman who i had studied Tarot with,  very casually almost,  said to me…." is it possible that you have fulfilled your karmic obligation?"

i'm trying to make myself slow down with this telling.  there is an urge to hurry through it.  i've thought about it so many times.  so many times.  but….i am going to try to go slow.  see if there's something i might have missed.

so.  for over a year,  i had these loooooong draining conversations with the kids.  i repeated.  over and over and over what my "bottom line" was with them.    Which was…go to school.  simple.  Not.  Having brought them up to question everything,  they both were adept at it.  and really, they didn't believe me…that i would leave.  that they could rely on their Dad from then on.  

But i did.  The house was sold even before it went on the market.  the cats given away.  i left a lot of stuff just IN the house and told everyone i knew to come by and take anything they wanted.  and i packed several bananna boxes from the grocery store with cloth, with threads, beads, drawing paper, colored pencils, graphite pencils, pink pearl  erasers, kneadable erasers, books, books, books, and my sewing machine.  and left.  i left in my beloved 197o Ford Econoline, Fern.  and i drove and cried.  cried and drove.  and drove and cried and cried and drove.  all the way to Oregon.

what was driving me nuts was the Question….

What was the Basic Equation?  the MOST basic equation?

?????=a good Life  

 

 

 

 

Posted in

53 responses to “How we end up where we are. and do we stay? Julie’s Good Question”

  1. grace Forrest Avatar

    Julie..you can ask me anything. anything at all.
    like: did you feel like you were abandoning your children?
    ans: yes. i did. but i did it.

    Like

  2. Stacie Avatar

    Wow. How incredibly hard for you to do that, what you said to them time and time again then felt had to do. I don’t comment hardly ever here, but wanted to send you a hug… both the for the you back then that made that choice and saw it through and the you now that has so much living from then. I hope you feel you have and are living a good life, a meaning-full life to you.

    Like

  3. linda Avatar

    i left too. i left and my mom thought i was crazy and had migraines all the time. i felt so guilty. i took my kids but sent one back and forth.. poor boy. it was the only thing i could do at the time. it was the best thing. i still think about it some. not often.
    sometimes we are just done with all that, karma or something.
    i have been gone and am catching up. i just read this one first. will continue reading tomorrow. not much else..

    Like

  4. kat Avatar

    Similarities here, in some ways – I just packed up and left one day, too. Only I never went back, and I finally came home here, to NM.
    Thanks for the courage to share.

    Like

  5. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    I don’t know if this is tender territory for you. It might be. It would if it were me searching for the whys and whats, and I wouldn’t want to trespass. I’ve mined my past seventy years more than once, and what I know from that is that it can be painful, that it is worthy to examine one’s life path (“the unexamined life” thing), but that there can be danger of being sucked back in to the unresolvable question marks. I doubt you will fall in to that. The palpable now of your now is too crucial. It is interesting, though, to look back over the map, trace one’s footsteps through the unforseen twists and turns, and can reveal forgotten scenes, dialogues that illuminate the present. It is potent material, your story, your struggle to make a good life–Potent and moving, like your alter cloths, your land, the goats, and all the just-going moments you share with us.

    Like

  6. Michelle in NYC Avatar

    (altar not to alter, though that’s true too…we alter everything by our presence) As a poet friend (Wendy Videlock) recently posted, and I took comfort in:
    In the wind, by the water, a friend turns around to say
    just so you know,
    the wind carries your words away.

    Like

  7. Julie Avatar
    Julie

    i had only the single mechanical question of how you wound up there w goats, so unbelievably generous and courageous that you share this depth. I am just sitting here watching this unfold, like you watch a screen so intently and so rivetted to an epic drama. Which this is.

    Like

  8. patricia Avatar

    oh grace.
    and i think you answered the equation.

    Like

  9. grace Avatar
    grace

    hugs are always good…thank you…..
    and you know…i think the question is still ongoing,
    really

    Like

  10. grace Avatar
    grace

    i told them they could come once i got there, “found a
    place” but they didn’t want to leave what they knew for
    such an ify proposition. i left my son airfare with
    a friend so she could buy him tickets, take him to the
    airport…

    Like

  11. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes. it takes some doing to “come home”

    Like

  12. grace Avatar
    grace

    no, not tender territory any more. but what’s interesting
    in writing this here, is that the farther away from it
    i get, the more surprising it is to me to notice how i’ve
    lived my life, all along… that part is very interesting.

    Like

  13. grace Avatar
    grace

    the wind carries your words away
    how many many times that has been real in my life

    Like

  14. grace Avatar
    grace

    but it wasn’t a single mechanical event

    Like

  15. grace Avatar
    grace

    in the moment i’m realizing that really, i’m still
    answering it

    Like

  16. Valerianna Avatar

    A new story of your journey that I appreciate knowing. I love the question in the title of the post. I continue to ask that question right now. Choices…. freedom…. too much stuff to really be free… I can’t imagine having the courage to surrender most everything, as you did, and JUST GO… puts a new depth on that which you say, the just going. I imagine that the underlying current of wondering in me of what someplace else would be is just a kind of middle-aged oh, so this is it, kind of thing. NOT the absolute I NEED TO GO thing that clearly was flowing through you. Wow.

    Like

  17. grace Avatar
    grace

    this is a GREAT comment and helps some thoughts come to
    the fore about Going….or, the way it plays out in me
    this is great…these words….i’ll carry them around
    today
    love…

    Like

  18. Jan Avatar
    Jan

    there is much to be said for teaching our children in this way as well. showing them how life can go by doing it ourselves. and the story is here if they want it, as well as what passes between us and them. another way of mothering.

    Like

  19. grace Avatar
    grace

    THIS. yes.
    “the story is here if they want it.” a resounding yes.
    the story we were all caught up in in Ann Arbor was
    becoming more and more to me … not Real. it was
    a kind of mindless thing about More and being unable
    to slow it even enough to see it at all clearly. it
    wasn’t working. it wasn’t what i needed to give them.

    Like

  20. lindamorris Avatar
    lindamorris

    wow grace ! and i was worried about you having to make hard decisions about the little goat fellows bcz that would be tough for me. but of course that was very self centric of me. thank you for sharing your story which helps me to see and understand you better, and in turn , self. and therein lies the healing and the growth

    Like

  21. grace Avatar
    grace

    lindam…that decision may still come someday down a
    road, but not for now…
    and i’m glad…re you thinking the story is ok and good.
    for me, other women’s stories have made huge differences
    in being able to stretch my View, and this story of
    my own made me humble.

    Like

  22. Mo Crow Avatar

    “the wind carries your words away.”
    it does and it has over & over for real in your life Grace… & right here on this electric page… this is the place where a few of those words have spun down in a little eddy to unravel the tale…& we (your readers) can catch the traces and ask the questions…
    what a compelling line that is that moved you-
    “Your Life is a Kind and Loving Nightmare”
    with a dream like that you had to move with it & it would have been a very tough thing to do… to leave a steady job & a family with a house and a bookstore (BTW I always wanted to own a bookstore) and teaching art therapy & you would be very good at that too!
    “We get many lives in this one lifetime” the woman who taught me glass engraving told me that 25 years ago when she was in her 60’s and I was in my 30’s and it really helped me see more clearly how each one has it’s own colours and it’s own time, lived with all the heart & soul we can muster until it’s time to go.

    Like

  23. elizabeth fortes Avatar
    elizabeth fortes

    Dear Grace: the woman (you) in the picture is standing tall, her head displaying an undeniable determination. She hugs the children who could’ve been/are her own. A girl and a younger boy. Her holding them against herself is a mother’s message: Love is here: You are under my aegis.
    An Undoubtable image.
    I honour your journey with all the forks on the road and the visits to the cul-de sacs. You’ve figured your maze, from this momentary point of view. Now.
    This entry #146 has started another blogging trend: “Women who Left”. At least, a wave of reflections.
    Looking back is an act of courage. Much love, e.

    Like

  24. grace Avatar
    grace

    “unraveling the tale”
    how interesting…the subtle, often unseen connections
    if we choose to see them as such
    when i read that, i thought of the lizard i am stitching on in this moment…how the tail had caused me so much
    comotion…how i’d wanted it solid and substantial and
    ….but it wasn’t right…it’s threads with spaces in
    between, a wind like tail, an almost
    fairytale tail although there are no fairies in my
    cosmology, but little earth spirits made of mud and bits
    of debris and
    love, Mo,

    Like

  25. grace Avatar
    grace

    elizabeth, just to say
    and i have to say it
    just to say that i know so so little about you, almost
    nothing, well, really….nothing but the words you
    write here, have written here..
    but when i see your mail pop up , i anticipate what
    you might say. and this is important…that i
    trust
    that your words ring true in your own ear first and so
    i can trust your words. and that if something here
    should sound evasive or “off” that i could trust too that
    you would comment on that in a kind, of course, but honest
    way too. so…it’s with that tucked in my belt that i
    will go along. i guess, really, i am asking you for this.

    Like

  26. jude Avatar

    puts an extra spin on just going grace.

    Like

  27. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes…when i began understand your use of that concept,
    i felt so kind of Vindicated (when you talked about it
    on SpiritCloth blog and then in the workshops/diaries…
    that there was someone else in the world who Just Went
    i loved you so much just for that

    Like

  28. jude Avatar

    i did some going of my own before the blog.  someday i will tell those stories.

    Like

  29. beth Avatar

    Oh Grace. A kind and loving nightmare… Thank you for your openness.

    Like

  30. Laura R Avatar
    Laura R

    Grace, thank you for sharing how you came to be in NM. I can only imagine how it came to be. I used to wonder how it would be to make a new life for myself, but I thought I was indispensable. I even had a new name picked out…
    What took you to Oregon, and where were you?

    Like

  31. kathyd Avatar

    thank you grace for sharing you … you do it so well .
    xxoo
    kathyd

    Like

  32. Valerianna Avatar

    Oh, glad they are useful.

    Like

  33. Deb G Avatar

    I read this yesterday and have been thinking about what it is like to just go, about things I have left behind. And about what it would mean to not walk away/to not have walked away. About how we all have our own stories. Thank you Grace, for what you share…

    Like

  34. grace Avatar
    grace

    the stories create their own timetable

    Like

  35. grace Avatar
    grace

    yes, isn’t that something? i’ll never forget that
    moment. looking at the beautiful black lacquered box
    hearing those words. i didn’t open the box, but woke
    to hear the words echo

    Like

  36. grace Avatar
    grace

    i love that you created a new name…that’s very beautiful.
    i went to Cheshire, not far from Eugene. my friend from
    when i was 17 lived there on 45 acres and the thought was for me to build a yurt on the back of her land. i would then
    somehow create a different, “better” life.
    and then i moved soon after to Horton. rented a tiny
    flat space on a mountain from the couple who ran the
    Post Office and General Store. Sandy and Marilyn…i can’t
    remember their last name. They might still be there.
    The mountain was extraordinary. where the Second pic
    is. there were 2 of us on this mountain, a guy some
    ways further up. 2 people on a mountain.

    Like

  37. grace Avatar
    grace

    telling the story. looking back.
    too bad we don’t have a campfire.

    Like

  38. grace Avatar
    grace

    we do. and some, maybe most of them are about staying.
    i still talk to people in Ann Arbor, still hear word about
    the book store, the classes my old Mentor Kay still
    teaches. My kids father still has a house there. i talk
    to my friend Nancy who still is a nurse on the same unit
    at the hospital i worked on with her. She is the one who
    used to come for dinner after work almost every day…
    from when they were born, the kids. i have told her that
    if i die “early”, i have told them, and my granddaughter,
    that if they wonder things about when they were little, to
    call her. she will remember it all.
    and so…i can hold my now in one hand, the thought of if
    i’d stayed in the other…feel the weight of both.

    Like

  39. kathyd Avatar

    well that would be some kinda of campfire . we might need to pass a stick so everyone gets a chance to tell their story . i might need a few campfires .(:

    Like

  40. elizabeth fortes Avatar
    elizabeth fortes

    Dear Grace: don’t worry. Whatever I say are echoes from your sharing. Your life, lived on a vibrant edge provokes my feelings and reflections, sometimes words. I respect and admire your vulnerability to share. So many of those who participate in theses circles are generous and inspired by the Spirit in the Cloth. Many Journeys. Your sharing invites the witnessing of life around and in me. Without strings.
    We don’t know each other in realistic terms. Only in cyberspace. Words and pictures. This is human too, but does not warrant trust to arise and be trusted. No oracles. Only resonance. I hope that you do well, by your standards, as a woman of my generation, facing the challenges of n! changes. In Solitude, while carrying this amazing ability to incite dialogue. Thanks,e.

    Like

  41. grace Forrest Avatar

    yes. a talking stick. yes. we All need a few campfires

    Like

  42. grace Avatar
    grace

    this morning i am looking at those words…without strings.
    without strings
    without strings

    Like

  43. elizabeth fortes Avatar
    elizabeth fortes

    … and I am looking again at all these words…again.
    The curiosity about my earthly existence sparkled an old pattern. Fright. Being hidden for so long, the comfort zone is precious. The only way to survive. The dialogue in obscurity is too precious to be lost. Even the possibility frightens.
    Perhaps this practice of responding to words, images, stories in vacuumland is like the possibility of carrying on conversations -back and forth- within our dreams… Ethereal.
    Perhaps this is actually dreamland. Safety is relative… Be well. The mimosa is blooming! e

    Like

  44. Saskia Van Herwaarden Avatar

    well you did it! packed what you felt you needed and took off…wow
    I have thought about it, and that’s where I still am, wandering in a small way inside my head and staying on, here with the boys.
    I really want to be here for them and for me, and share; life with the husband is good as well, we spent a lot of time together this summer holiday and I never tire of being with him, there are not many people I like to be around if I’m honest, but he is definitely one of my favourites.
    I love that you’re telling your story, gutsy and true! x

    Like

  45. grace Forrest Avatar

    e…”the comfort zone is precious”
    and as all comfort zones need to be. kept close to the Heart. protected.
    “carrying on conversations withing our dreams”…
    of late, there is a LOT of this. and in the dream it is
    very clear, there is “fade out” around the two conversants,
    and the conversation exchange is very very clear and i can remember very distinctly everything upon waking.
    this would be true especially of the dream last night. almost as if the dream of the Black Lacquer Box was given a sequel. and the Box had been opened. the dream was FULL
    of dialogue, FULL of people i KNOW in this waking life as well as figures representing Things. The GOATS were major players, and the dogs. my daughter. it might have been THE most extraordinary dream i have ever had.
    and to try to “tell it” reminds me of your words…
    “the dialoge in obscurity, too precious to be lost”.
    MUCH LOVE,

    Like

  46. grace Forrest Avatar

    it can happen in so many different Ways, leaving.
    i think you can leave and stay at the same time.

    Like

  47. yvette Avatar

    ooo Grace…thanks for letting me feel i’m not the only one who left

    Like

  48. Dee Avatar

    “who decides the nature of need”?
    and what happens when our needs change, but the structures around us don’t? YOU had the courage to move on. I don’t think I would have or do.
    I am going to read forward now. and can’t wait. Answers in a queue like treats for tomorrow… but now it’s time for TV and a snack before bed (that sounds so profane, and yet, I am smiling, because you, I doubt, would feel the need to label it so).

    Like

  49. grace Avatar
    grace

    the Sacred and the Profane
    i see
    no
    difference.
    none.

    Like

  50. mimmin Avatar
    mimmin

    i don’t believe you would have gone if you hadn’t thought that your children would have been able to cope or even benefit from the awakening in yourself and the going to a BETTER life, the choosing to LIVE. there was choice and possibility, not abandonment.
    such an incredibly brave thing to do. the almost impossible weight of that decision. i thought of you as a strong woman but this is more than that…
    and i love what you took with you
    thank you

    Like

  51. grace Avatar

    sometimes now, mimmin, i still need to look back and relive it…
    check it out. and still. still. yes. it was what was right to do.
    it was the Right thing. if i had stayed, it wouldn’t have been True. it would have been False. and the consequences of that, well….

    Like

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