There is no getting around it. 2024 has so far been like a "Life Final Exam", or PhD dissertation. It's kind of like, "You are going to pull all the strings of your life together this year, whether you like it or not." I'm not sure whether the same thing is happening this year to 30- or 50-year olds, but at 68 it packs a real punch. Every possible fear, pain, lost thread, and regret is coming under the microscope, because you know you have a lot less time left to set things right. I'm sorry, because I know this is intense for my readers, but I plow ahead nonetheless.
The big issue of the day is being really, really truthful about one aspect of my essential nature. Lordy, I've written 800-plus posts, and even touched on this topic, but now it is under the microscope big time: whether I have always liked it or not, the young woman I started out to be was "Trans-Atlantic" (New York-London) and ultra-intelligent. (Not to denigrate Smith or the University of London, but I now understand that I could have chosen Harvard, Yale, Oxford or Cambridge, but at the time I wasn't self-confident enough.) I was cultured and articulate, and I hope I still am! And although my particular family lacked inherited money and only $725.00 made its way down the ages to me, the milieu, ambience, and expectations I grew up with involved blue blood, private schools, and all the old paradigm tastes, institutions and potential leadership that come with them.
By about 1983, my connection to that world was rapidly fraying. I now understand that this wasn't just because of my parents' descent into total poverty, or knowing I couldn't take part in the world of English church music. I now get that it was all a patriarchal construct which, as a woman alone with an emerging Goddess consciousness, I had no desire or skills to navigate. And by 1990, when I left New York City and decided to "see America", it was less a positive goal than it was a cranky, "Gosh darn it, I'll never again sing choral evensong or want to live in the UK without doing that, so I'd better see if I can find somewhere in the U.S. where I can become a normal American." A long, circuitous route brought me to the shores of Lake Superior, and I've been drawn back here a few times.
Still, am I really at home here? No. I'm sorry to say it, but that is the truth, especially now. All you have to do is hear my deep speaking voice, with its Upper East Side-cum-upstate New York-cum-Canada-cum-England inflections and expressions. It is many things, but it is not Minnesotan! (My sense of dislocation is on so many levels, it can be completely breathtaking.)
And yet (as we are on the cusp of earth-changing environmental, social and spiritual changes), I could hardly just chuck it all and marry a rich old NY or London aristocrat and be done with it. I'm not their kind of person either. So as of today, this isn't about immediately changing my outside reality. It's about inwardly completely embracing and forgiving that world -- and my evolution away from it.
I have made one decision. I hope that at some point soon, someone will invite me to speak in person about my journey. Whether it is to five people or fifty or 500, I don't care and I literally can't wait! Will I wear a "pagan" hooded robe? No. Brightly colored flowing goddess dress with lots of necklaces and rings? No. Outdoorsy hiking gear? No. My usual schlumpy hand-me-downs and inexpensive big box clothes? No. I'll go to Talbots or Ann Taylor or wherever still reflects that classy look, and find the right (probably blue or teal) outfit for me. And pearls. Because of all the parts of me I've participated in killing off, this may be the one that needs the most significant visible resurrection, somehow without embracing the traditional "power over" ethos. My usual impossible balancing act, right?!
