Meandering Mind - Eva Dillner [37]
As you can see there were emotional remnants that surfaced in the writing. One never knows what will come up or out. The best advice I can give is to just write, don't censor, and simply let the words flow. If the tears overwhelm you, pause, and let them flow. If anger surfaces, go find a pillow to beat on and sit with the feeling deep in your body until it has passed through. Make sure you squeeze out all the bits and pieces so you can be done with them. Keep in mind that it can take a few turns, deep hurts often take many layers to work through. Instead of reacting with, “no, not that issue again,” see it as another step on your healing journey. Each time you work on an issue, you will see that it alters, there is another aspect you are working on. Sometimes the differences are subtle, sometimes big. The only way out of it is by going through it, that I can say for sure.
What do I know?
Who am I to pretend I know enough about the subject of relationships to write a whole book? Well, I can't say I've had a life long marriage that works, quite the contrary. I've had lots of friends and lovers and have pondered the meaning of it all. Perhaps we look at it from the wrong perspective. Maybe, the goal is not to find your partner and glom onto him, or, as we say in business, find your niche and stay there. Perhaps the whole game is about finding new ways to look at relationships. If an experience lasts a lifetime or a fleeting moment, what difference does it make? Is the value we place on an experience measured by the time we spent in it? Food for thought.
I think there is no right or wrong way. Each one of us has to find out what is important for us and live our lives accordingly. For some, life long marriages are the path to salvation and deep growth, for others, it is something else entirely. There is nothing inherently better or worse with one alternative or another, the most important is to be true to ourselves.
I have been made to feel very wrong about my choices, criticized by others and myself for failing at relationships. Before I could start this book I had to emotionally release that feeling of failure. As the tears washed down my face, facing my feeling of failure, something deep inside me released. Perhaps I had been looking at it from the wrong angle? I had tried to make myself fit into a norm and pattern imposed by society. But did this fit me? Why would it, when everything else in my life was about breaking patterns? I became an engineer when only 2% of my class were women. I was the first woman engineer at Scott Paper in Everett, WA and became their first woman engineering supervisor. At one of our international meetings my Spanish counterpart walked up to me and asked, “whose wife are you?” I didn't fit any molds then, and I certainly don't now. After all, my spiritual name is Pathfinder.
So it's not so strange that I should write a book about breaking relationship molds. Many years ago I attended a talk by Jennifer James, a well-known anthropologist from Seattle. She said women can now get their own antelope at the grocery store, but we still act as if we are dependent on the man to bring it home. How true. Our assumptions and expectations about relationships have not kept pace with the changes in our lives.
In my second book I wrote about some of my relationships and my longing to connect at a deeper level. To connect emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. Interestingly enough, many people assumed I meant I was looking for a marriage, live together and stay together situation. That isn't what I said. I said I want to connect. I didn't specify for how long or how frequent. I want to be free to be myself and I want to connect with the other person's true self. I want to let go of all the roles we play. There is work to do here. In every meeting there is a mirror of the unhealed parts of ourselves, opportunities to grow and discover.
Do I have a