From Despair to Depth

What’s your story? And where are you in your life’s story?

I’m at the joining point of many threads — and for years I despaired of ever getting to a point where I felt at peace and at purpose. You know those prayers or intentions where you declare that you want to be of service to others? Well, for too many years I felt that I was the one who needed the help, the service, the guidance, the understanding that I wanted ideally to share with others.

You see, like many, I grew up entirely dominated by the desires and whims of my father, a sad man who pushed his own trauma out onto his family. My lifeline, when I was a young woman, was my faith. I got my nourishment from the nuns who taught in my schools; I even entered the convent at 19 until I left to go to graduate school in — what else?--- Theology!

It was there where things fell apart. Finally escaped from a traumatic homelife, I began to experience the corruption, control-domination, and sexual abuse in the man-made hierarchies of the faith that had kept me alive. It devastated me. My eyes were opened to a wide world where so many people suffered through no fault of their own. Good God? Take a look around — hard to understand how a good God would allow such suffering and injustice.

I left my doctoral work in theology, heart sick and feeling spiritually abandoned. My inner life felt bereft, even though I made a career in working to heal and eradicate violence against women and children. But in that world, anger and burn-out was rampant among the workers. Almost everyone I knew had to take antidepressants just to do their jobs. How do people survive? How to do good work for justice — for the long haul?

My health suffered. Yet through those years I kept my practice of 20 minutes a day of meditation, or quiet time, even though I often felt like it was just a waste of time, cuz how do you pray to something you want to believe in, but can’t? I figured that even if it were a waste of time, it was better than junk television — or another meeting!

Little by little, I found direction. I read a million books from wise teachers, and tried many, many practices. Now, I don’t know if there is a God like in the ideas I was taught, but I do know that there is something within humans that yearns to unite the deepest self with that which is the largest and most loving energy that we can imagine. If we listen for it, if we pay attention to it.

Over the last few years I’ve written all of what I learned in how to listen to that, how to pay attention to that aspect of life, plus I’ve also discovered that doing so deeply matters, that it is the way to create a world worth living in. It is a way to live that supports and energizes the work we do to thrive against the forces that want to shrink our lives and steal our freedom — the freedom of thought and freedom of action.

I’m now in the midst of launching this heart-felt, life-earned writing! My book is finished and available, and in a couple of days I’ll be giving you all the information of what it’s about and how to get it. Sneak peeks: look me up on amazon!