We human beings have a pattern of limning our lives, our stories, with anniversary. Rituals of return and remembrance and reflection – meaning molded by and told in the language of time, beginnings, endings, transitions, journeys, seasons and spirals, cycles and circles, birth and death and rebirth. And anniversary seems to be an idea that encompasses and embraces all of that meaning-making and feeling.
Anniversaries are powerful and meaningful memorials.
And so it is for me. I learned a lot about anniversaries, about how they mark grief and joy and loss and invite reflection on awakening and change, in the last year.
May 23rd marked the first anniversary of my (our) divorce. Anniversary usually brings to mind wedding days, yes, not divorce days … but anniversary can mark any day of significance. And this day is significant of a new era in my life, clearly demarcated new boundaries and the erasing of other boundaries.
Many things I haven’t shared – my sense has been that it was best to cover them with grace, and so it remains. And too, it wasn’t all only my story – this marriage and this divorce and all the attendant anniversaries and meanings and feelings, were a shared experience. Windows and mirrors into my own heart and wounds and flaws – I can choose that for myself, but (when) have I the liberty to choose it for another? Liberty only within boundaries of grace.
But this memory feels right to share …
May 23rd one year ago was a cloudy day – and a coldly formal, somber courtroom too, the air itself seeming as gray as the day outside. After the long wait between the filing and the crisp, detached pronouncement from the judge, the fifteen minutes of the hearing seemed abrupt and anticlimactic. A few words was all it took …
But isn’t that the way it has often been, a few words – so many of our social structures, our plans, our hopes, our feelings, our relationships, made of stories, and all it takes is a few words to create or uncreate or recreate the story, to weave or unweave or reweave the meanings.
But you know, it isn’t words that are most memorable from that day. It isn’t words. It’s the man who wiped tears from his eyes when I answered ‘yes’ to the question of whether I believed the marriage was irretrievably broken, and when the judge pronounced the marriage dissolved … From I pronounce you man and wife to I pronounce you no longer man and wife …
The judge’s words weren’t the hard thing though there was something surreal present. In my heart was peace but with the peace the pang of pain for the open pain of the man at the other courtroom table – the one who was now my ex-husband.
Later, someone texted me – congratulations … I think? And no, the last thing I felt was celebratory. I felt solemn, a deep sigh cleaving the marrow of my soul. It was a funeral moment, not a party moment. A time of death, death of marriage – or the official time of death, anyway. Death – and yes, a beginning.
I walked down the courthouse steps, feeling freshly, vulnerably born into a wholly different life, same feet but a different path, taking steps into the mist of a brave new world, unknown waters to navigate. Like inhabiting new skin, a new way of being in my skin, uncharted self to learn …
One year on, I’ve navigated those waters, inhabited that new skin, learned more about that uncharted self. It’s been a powerful, beautiful, confounding, challenging year … both glorious and inglorious, messy and marvelous.
I’m grateful for the grace between my ex-husband and I, the spirit that makes it possible for us to co-parent in peace. That we can make decisions together for the kids, that we can share meals and holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, together. That we can do acts of kindness and service for another. That we can share friendly conversation, communicate and compromise. That the kids have this witness and this security. It’s like a transformed relationship, love in a different form – and perhaps a healthier, more right form for us!
And for me, a love informed by respectful compassion, informed by the indelible image and understanding left imprinted on my soul from that courtroom.
And my relationship with myself is continuously new, perhaps more informed than ever by that same compassion and respect – although I have certainly struggled with grace and patience with myself and my singlehood/sole financial responsibility/work-life-school-parenting-community involvement balance/efficient time management (yes, that’s a mouthful, and yes, I am busier and wear more hats than I ever fathomed I would) learning curve! But you know what? I am a perseverer and a persister … and I’ve persevered and persisted, and learned my power.
Oh, I’ve learned my power … and I’ve become more comfortable with my power. Comfortable wearing it, comfortable with it as my new skin, part of my new natural self and way of being in this world, in my life as it is now. I’ve gained a pride – (hopefully) not ego-pride, but the pride of confident authenticity, bold assertiveness, mindful acceptance of gifts graced to me by Spirit, and a deeper willingness to be evermore generous in my service and presence.
And as for the uncharted self? That new way of being in my skin, exploring new ways of being, throwing off old ways of being like graveclothes, shifting, evolving, moving beyond fixed forms of identity or sexuality or gender conceptualization. (These stories are for another time perhaps – but a simple clarification is, I no longer use the word gay to describe my sexuality, but queer – because its wide meaning encompasses much more of the nuances and texture of my sexuality and the undefinable fluidity I am increasingly comfortable with).
First redefining, then undefining, flowing toward being comfortable with no longer needing so many definitions, but being awake with my own is-ness as it is in whatever moment. Being less attached, whether that is to ideas, self-definitions, life plans, or relationships.
It’s such a human thing to need and want definition and naming in order to apply meaning and understanding – and uncharted, uncomfortable territory to move beyond that, where Love itself is the meaning and the truth and the way.
But for now, on this anniversary of my divorce, I celebrate rebirth and awakening and remember with respect the death that first had to be.
**************************
As has been my habit, this post was long … But change is coming! My plan move toward shorter reflections or seed-thought pieces, more in line with what I actually have time to produce/post in this season of life – and maybe I could post more often than every 3 months or so 😉
My hope is simplification and revival!
