I have some more serious posts up my sleeve, but I wanted to end The October of the 13 Epiphanies on a lighter note. After all, so far we have touched on emotional abuse, forgiveness, aha! moments in mother-daughter relations that continue after the mother's death, and, yes, human rights and personal democracy. I think it may be about time I signed up for my Righteous Babe t-shirt, or otherwise arrange to be impaled by a unicorn for seeming to be humorless.
So first, a silly little story about self-acceptance, and about how no matter how many times we conquer something, in some areas of our lives the "fixes" aren't permanent. We continue to evolve, which sometimes means finding ourselves back in the spiral of fear and doubt in things we thought we had gotten over.
In my late teens I started exchanging letters with an amazing woman who I connected with immediately. She was my first, and for many years, only, goddess sister. We wrote long letters predicting how glorious our lives would be once we'd reached some magic age (yep, long surpassed, it, still waiting!) and shared what we were learning along the way. We even read Women Who Run With the Wolves at the same time, and she gifted me with a skeleton key that was a sacred symbol from the Bluebeard tale in that book. It still hangs from my rearview mirror.
So first, a silly little story about self-acceptance, and about how no matter how many times we conquer something, in some areas of our lives the "fixes" aren't permanent. We continue to evolve, which sometimes means finding ourselves back in the spiral of fear and doubt in things we thought we had gotten over.
In my late teens I started exchanging letters with an amazing woman who I connected with immediately. She was my first, and for many years, only, goddess sister. We wrote long letters predicting how glorious our lives would be once we'd reached some magic age (yep, long surpassed, it, still waiting!) and shared what we were learning along the way. We even read Women Who Run With the Wolves at the same time, and she gifted me with a skeleton key that was a sacred symbol from the Bluebeard tale in that book. It still hangs from my rearview mirror.
One day in my early twenties, she unexpectedly turned up on my doorstep. She was on a road trip, looking at colleges, wanted to meet me. I was a little stunned, but we hit it off in real life the way we had on paper, though admittedly I was much more guarded and way less spontaneous than she was! I wasn't working at the time and she convinced me to come back home with her. So I went to visit her family in her New England town a couple states away, and had a fun week doing something totally out of the norm for me. While there, we visited a feminist bookstore where I got my first We'Moon day planner, and went thrifting. She found this gorgeous floor-length blue dress with this old vintage piping along the breast. I adored it, but by rights she found it first and I had, after all, found some cool things as well.
When it was time to return home, I came back by bus, and she came along with me on an excursion to Boston, where we then parted ways at the bus station. Somewhere on the bus ride home, I realized that buried in my bag was a gently wrapped and tied package, containing the blue dress with the piping. I was so touched, and forever after it called it my "goddess dress".
I was at that age where the thing to do was to wear dresses, long or short, with the biggest boots possible. I had my own clomper-stomper Doc Martens (though all my friends were wearing John Fluevogs). One day I was planning a trip to the library to do some photocopying, and I wanted to wear the dress, but it was too long and I hadn't gotten around to pinning it up so my mother could hem it for me. I decided to improvise, and I grabbed a roll of masking tape , folded up my fake hem, and taped it. This would have held for quite some time, if I didn't have a slight itch inside my left leg that day, and I raised my booted right foot to scratch it. The boot came down in the tape and, in the hush of the library, a very loud ripping noise, of tape coming all undone, could be heard.
Bear in mind I was in my early twenties and still harbored all the pains an agonies of being a ridiculed teenager. I looked around me, and then I started to laugh. Because at that moment I realized how utterly ridiculous self-consciousness was. As though we don't all have days where our hair doesn't cooperate, spinach is caught in our teeth, we get toothpaste all over ourselves and don't realize it until after arriving at work.. you know. Life is totally ridiculous. So I was taping up my hems, who cares?! However, next time I'll use duct tape.
I remember when this happened, I was so impressed with my enlightened attitude, and yet, between then and now there have been hundreds of incidents of self-consciousness. We don't learn everything in one day, and most things we don't even learn just once.
This October, I am grateful for:
When it was time to return home, I came back by bus, and she came along with me on an excursion to Boston, where we then parted ways at the bus station. Somewhere on the bus ride home, I realized that buried in my bag was a gently wrapped and tied package, containing the blue dress with the piping. I was so touched, and forever after it called it my "goddess dress".
I was at that age where the thing to do was to wear dresses, long or short, with the biggest boots possible. I had my own clomper-stomper Doc Martens (though all my friends were wearing John Fluevogs). One day I was planning a trip to the library to do some photocopying, and I wanted to wear the dress, but it was too long and I hadn't gotten around to pinning it up so my mother could hem it for me. I decided to improvise, and I grabbed a roll of masking tape , folded up my fake hem, and taped it. This would have held for quite some time, if I didn't have a slight itch inside my left leg that day, and I raised my booted right foot to scratch it. The boot came down in the tape and, in the hush of the library, a very loud ripping noise, of tape coming all undone, could be heard.
Bear in mind I was in my early twenties and still harbored all the pains an agonies of being a ridiculed teenager. I looked around me, and then I started to laugh. Because at that moment I realized how utterly ridiculous self-consciousness was. As though we don't all have days where our hair doesn't cooperate, spinach is caught in our teeth, we get toothpaste all over ourselves and don't realize it until after arriving at work.. you know. Life is totally ridiculous. So I was taping up my hems, who cares?! However, next time I'll use duct tape.
I remember when this happened, I was so impressed with my enlightened attitude, and yet, between then and now there have been hundreds of incidents of self-consciousness. We don't learn everything in one day, and most things we don't even learn just once.
This October, I am grateful for:
- The opportunity to learn, again, a bunch of the things I knew and had forgotten
- My goddess sisters in Goddess Circle
- My naturopath
- That I live in a free country
- Unicorns
