I love Steve, my husband, and as I mentioned the other day, I am a 6 out of 10 on the scale. The other day I wrote about my being a 7 out of 10 on the "family" scale so the 7 is a given standard. The other 3 is my independent pilgrim self. So I have taken off another one on the scale out of these questions up above.
The whole notion of marriage and our society's definition of what it is supposed to look like feels like a foreign concept to me. I just don't get it. Help me out here.
I have now been married 23 and a half years, and I have been with Steve for over 26 years. We got married after I spent a summer up in Montana cooking at a yoga retreat center called Feathered Pipe Ranch. Two weeks after we got married in December 1986, we moved out to Boulder from Cincinnati. We decided to make big changes in our lives all together and at one time. I resisted getting married. I didn't understand why it was necessary. Couldn't we just do everything we wanted to do without that box around us?
What tipped me over the edge was listening to a dear (at the time) friend who basically berated me for not being willing to get married. I remember talking with her from the phone outside the kitchen of the Ranch, and her just telling me, "You just have to make up your mind. It's not fair to Steve. Either you get married, or you split up. You just don't get to stay with him without getting married any longer. You're at that point."
Damn. I listened to her. I let her create an either/or for me, and out of that narrowing, two dimensional analysis of my choices, I listened to her. I gave up what was true for me. I gave up what was churning inside to make it an either/or. I bought in to her paradigm. I made it an either/or too. I didn't want to not be with Steve. I really loved him, and certainly wanted to be with him. That was not the issue. So if I wanted to be with him, then that must mean that I have to get married to him as well.
I came out of my belly and into the socially acceptable status of being engaged, getting married, and moving to a new place with my new husband. It's how I received support and love and being accepted all at the same time. Problem was that it was all external.
I have done the socially acceptable thing for 23 and a half years. I have had 4 children and stayed at home to raise them. I have stayed in one place rather than travel and move around like my soul yearns to do. There's a caveat here. While we stayed in this general area, I couldn't just stay in one house. The bedouin in me had to pick up my tent and move around. We have lived in 5 different houses. A child born in each of our first 4 homes, and now this is the one where we all grow up together and move out. My first child is half out of the house and on his own at this point. This is the nest from which my children fly.
I want to fly too.
I also don't want to not be with Steve. Let me phrase that in the positive. I want to be with Steve, AND I want to fly. Actually, I want to walk. I want to walk the Celtic Camino. Not just as a once in a lifetime experience, but as my life. I want to walk, and come home, be a part of my family, and my relationship with Steve, and walk again. This doesn't make sense at all. I feel so crazy, and selfish, for even wanting it, much less writing it in clear view right here. I keep hearing the word "walkabout" in my mind. So I just looked it up in Wikipedia. It is the Aboriginal practice of practice of the young males to undergo a journey during adolescence and live in the wilderness for a period as long as six months.
In this practice they would trace the paths, or "songlines", that their people's ceremonials ancestors took, and imitate, in a fashion, their heroic deeds. Merriam-Webster, however, defines the noun as a 1908 coinage that refers primarily to "a short period of wandering bush life engaged in by an Australian aborigine as an occasional interruption of regular work", with the only mention of "spiritual journey" coming in a usage example from a latter-day travel writer. To white employers, this urge to depart without notice (and reappear just as suddenly) was seen as something inherent in the aboriginal nature, but the reasons may be more mundane: workers who wanted or needed to attend a ceremony or visit relatives did not accept employers' control over such matters (especially since permission was generally hard to get). (Wikipedia)Let's broaden the definition from adolescent males to include menopausal women!
Going walkabout is a practice; it is a spiritual journey. They would "trace the paths, or songlines" of their ancestors. That is what the Camino feels like to me - a songline. I love that image of it. I can also appreciate that there is an urge to depart - and return - without notice.
How can we include walkabout into our western lives, and in to our marriages, and how do we do without it having to mean that there is anything wrong? What if it is just a part of our lives for those of us who want it?
How can I go walkabout AND have my marriage and my relationship with Steve include this? How can I trust Steve and my marriage to support this in me?
How can I live true to my soul's song and go walkabout on the Celtic Camino? How can I not reduce it to either/or, and create from BOTH/AND? How can I create from my belly, from the feminine, and create what is true and right for me, and in doing so, trust and know that if it is in my highest good, that it is in the highest good of all - even Steve and my kids' highest good, even in my relationship with Steve, with my children, with my family.
How can I not split off from myself? How can I nurture the connection within myself and within my belly to hold the choices and decisions that I make? How can I not split off the rich choices into reduced and thin either/or choices? How do I step into the unknown and accept that there are no guarantees no matter what choices I make? How do I take full responsibility for my choices?
I get to go walk with a dear friend right now, so I leave you with these questions.
Suseya!
Sahara
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