Letting Go of Myths

For some it’s as easy as...well...letting go.  It’s a concise decision followed by concise action.  Not to say there are not ramifications or consequences—but what’s done is done for some.  For others, like me, letting go is a process.  I’m a “last woman standing” kind of girl.  I am forever, trying to fix or salvage or amend a situation.  The phrase “pried from my cold dead hands” is probably pretty appropriate for me.  

Recently, a relationship I’d had for more than half my life was dealt a final blow from which there will never be recovery.  The usual agony at the end of something was followed by an enlightenment I felt compelled to share.  My MO is to over analyze and over think something until every syllable uttered, every word written has been deconstructed, and I am sufficiently satisfied that whatever transpired was my fault  and that I must do better to ensure it never happens again.  However, this ending was decidedly different and, although bitterly sad,  one I hope to learn from.   When the last nail was pounded on that coffin lid, I felt horrible, confused, and heartbroken that it had come to this.  As the familiar threads of self-doubt and blame began to well up inside of me, two things happened. 

First, I realized that this relationship needed to end.  It hadn’t been healthy for a really really long time and that despite my best efforts, it wasn’t going to ever be healthy again.  Sometimes things break and aren’t fixable.  Sometimes people lie and aren’t sorry.  Sometimes we do the best we can and it’s just not enough.  Once I was able to see that, it didn’t take a huge leap to  get to the second thing: I had written a mythology around her that I became invested in over time—once I became a believer in the myth, I had to protect it.  So no matter how egregious the wrong committed, the myth always provided a reason to forgive.  This was no light bulb moment.  It was a harsh, cockroaches-will-scurry-from-the-blinding-light-of-reality, wake up call. This person hadn’t been a friend to me in a very long time.  This person hadn’t honored her word or promises.  She had failed me more often than I care to recall.  None of that makes her a bad person.  She did the best with what she had, but I failed to see it.   Once I realized that, I didn’t need to invest in the mythology any longer.  People weren’t going to judge me.  I hadn’t failed at being a friend.  I had only failed myself by putting someone else—and the myth—ahead of my own well-being.

Letting go for me was an arduous and painful process.  Perhaps because I invest so much of myself into those I love, the letting go felt like losing pieces of me.  I have learned through this most recent agonizing excisement that sometimes letting go isn’t always a loss. Sometimes letting go allows us to shed the myths and stand tall and unfettered in our own true selves.  

Welcoming a New Year

I’m sitting in my father’s living room watching the sun rise in Southern California.  The sky is a perfect blue, without a cloud in sight.  The light is bright.  The palm tree in the front yard (because it is California after all) stands still, tall and a crisp green.  I hear nothing except the occasional sound of the dog’s collar as she snores and shifts in her sleep at the foot of my father’s bed.  This is my New Year.

To be fair, I’m slated to fly home in five days.  My patient is doing well.  He will be able to shower on his own today and tonight he’ll be left alone to heat his own dinner in the microwave while I meet friends for dinner.  All the exhaustion and stress - of sleeping with one ear open, checking on him every few hours around the clock, caring for him without being too invasive -- is a welcomed outcome given the alternative of not having him here.   

My girlfriend asked me last night what my resolutions are for 2015.  The list started rolling of all the goals I have: these last twenty five pounds need to go, completing a 5K, two books published, a steady source of income, connect with friends more, but really one resolution will cover it all.  I want to be present.

These last few weeks, really, this last year, has showed me how important being present in the right now is to a happy life.  Two years ago, as my world began to change exponentially, a dear friend told me to ask myself everyday, ‘what do I want today?’  It was a foreign practice for a caregiver like myself. I thought it seemed too selfish to move through a day asking myself that question. But my friend is smart.  I trust her.  So did it as faithfully as I could.    

Some days the answers were profound, some days they were silly.  They led me across the world three times last year, into a new relationship that continues to surprise me in the best ways.  Ultimately by asking that question daily, I learned to know myself better.  And to be present in the now.  The last couple of weeks I’ve held my breath, prayed and watched my father fight to live.  Not for yesterday.  Not for tomorrow.  For right now.  So for 2015 I will hone my practice of being present.  When I’m present I am more joyful, more connected, more alive.  What more could I resolve to be than that? 

Place Within Our Stories by Bev Prescott and Penelope Grey

The first time Bev Prescott caught my attention as a writer was through her amazing blog http://bevprescott.com/blog.html.  Taken with her forthright, thoughtful and honest worldview, I immediately read and loved her first novel and wait patiently for each new novel to emerge.  In the meantime, I eagerly anticipate her blog posts and I’ll confess I stalk her a little on Facebook too.  Bev loves Maine and New England, a place I’ve only dreamed of visiting.  I feel like an invited guest to what I like to call “her corner of the world”.  Bev’s novels, My Soldier Too, Step Into the Wind and Blowback, are well-crafted, riveting tales that plant the reader squarely in Bev’s beloved New England. You smell, hear, feel and touch that world with every page.  Bev recently asked me to join her in a conversation about place and how it factors into our work.  How exciting for me to be able to have this conversation with a woman whose work I so admire!  Learn more about Bev Prescott by reading her fabulous blog or visiting her website. And of course, if you haven’t read her books, do so!

http://bevprescott.com/home.html

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_nr_n_1?rh=n%3A10173%2Ck%3Abev+prescott&keywords=bev+prescott&ie=UTF8&qid=1415540964&rnid=2941120011.

Our chat is below.  Our respective initials mark our questions and responses to each other. 

BP:  One of the things that I love about your writing is the sense of place that you bring to your stories.  For example, in your novels “Infinity’s Song” and “Caught and Kept,” Whidbey Island in Puget Sound felt like a distinct character with its own part to play.  Did you intend for it to take on such a prominent role?  Or, did your love of the island simply color the story with its presence? 

PG: That was intentional.  I do, indeed, love Whidbey the Puget Sound.  They are the only places outside of Southern England that my heart feels at peace and I wanted the reader to feel that. http://bevprescott.com/home.html

For instance, in your “My Soldier Too” Boston was so vivid.  I could see the streets and the neighborhoods which had defined Isabella’s world as much as the people.  I felt as if in “Step Into the Wind” Alex was shaped not just by circumstance and emotional history, but by the place she grew up.    Maine, the town and the camp drove part of your story line, but it also wrapped around the reader and whispered in their ear.  So same question for you.  Intentional or just effusive love?

We are both women who found wild corners of the world but we came from vastly different places. What was it about Maine that seduced you away from your Midwestern roots?  How is the culture and life in Maine different or the same?  Can you ever see going back? 

BP:  It was definitely intentional.  The setting for those stories was as deliberate and important as the drafting of the characters.  Like your love of Whidbey, mine for New England runs deep.  I know that this “wild corner of the world” is where I’m meant to be.  I think place also drives the culture of the people who live there.  By having place take a prominent role in our stories, I think we help shape our characters more fully as well.

I ended up in New England by chance.  When I joined the military after high school, I was stationed at a base in upstate New York.  My pals and I used to spend a lot of time hiking in the Adirondacks and taking the ferry over to Burlington, VT.  I absolutely fell head over heels in love with the Northeast, New England in particular.  It’s almost as if all the cells in my body aligned with the rhythm of the place.  I also met my spouse in Burlington, VT.  Our first date was to climb Mt. Washington in New Hampshire.  She’s a New Englander through and through.  As for Maine, it’s my favorite of all the New England states.  I love the independence of Mainers, the rocky shoreline, the food, the North Woods, the rugged culture etc.  I could go on and on. 

The culture in Maine is very different from where I grew up in the Midwest.  It would be tough to explain fully in a short blog.  I don’t ever see myself going back to the Midwest.  In fact, I’ve said before that the only reason that I would no longer live in New England is if New England ceased to exist.  This is my home, and I hope that circumstance will always let that be the case.

I loved your questions and want to know your answers with respect to Whidbey and the Pacific Northwest.  Do you envision writing any stories in a different setting?  If so, how would you go about capturing the essence of that place like you’ve done so beautifully with the Pacific Northwest?  Also, please tell us more about your connection to Southern England.

PG: Your connection to New England and Maine are very similar to mine with the Pacific Northwest and Whidbey.  I grew up in Southern California with freeways, subdivisions, pavement and shopping malls. The most “natural” memories I have are of the beach.  When I was a student in the U.K. I had friends in Southern England I visited often.  Between the rugged coastline of the north where I was in school and the gentle moors of the south, Britain captured my heart immediately.  I had never seen so much green.  I learned to smell and sense the weather shifts (something I do still) and see life in all things around me.  It’s as if my feet had finally touched earth.  In Caught and Kept Dani tells Kai about arriving to the island and knowing instantly Whidbey was where she was meant to be.  That story is true and it’s mine.  Twelve years after leaving England I stepped off a ferry boat and felt that connection again.  It was immediate, unexpected and profound.  Being on an island is unique and special.  We joke that we have to be especially nice because we all, literally, depend on one another.  My new adventure to Portland is teaching me that the Pacific Northwest lifestyle is alive and well off the island too.  It is one of nicest cities (in every way) I’ve ever experienced.

I want to write about London and England but need to let my recent trips settle inside of me.  Bill Bryson’s, Notes From A Small Island chronicled his experience in England through a distinctly American lens.  I would like to bring a bit of that to a few of my stories but with more of the feminine voice.  The Midwest is also in my background.  My dad was a farm boy from Southern Illinois and I have a few fleeting memories of a couple of summers on my Aunt’s farm.  I visited again recently and it touched me deeply.  There is a rural cultural from which we are becoming disconnected in this country and that is sad.  Place is more than setting to me.  Like you, it shapes, informs and drives our characters, as it has the both of us.

Having said all of this, my current work in progress intentionally has very little sense of a specific place. I wanted and needed this story to be all about the connections and journeys of this group of women.  It has been extremely challenging to write from this perspective and root characters in only relationships and emotion without engaging too much in the external world in which they live.  Can you ever imagine writing a story that is “internal” and not dependent on place?  Do you think characters can become “place” in lieu of environment? If so, how do you think you would approach or tell that kind of tale?

BP: That’s a tough question, and my hat is off to you for trying.  I’m not sure I could write a story that is internal and not dependent on place.   I think of place like the roots of tree.  The roots ground the story and give it context.  That said, my next novel will take place in a dystopian future that has been dramatically altered because of climate change.  So, that place will be something I’ll have to create from scratch based on the predictions by scientists of how our planet will change.  But, the story will still be grounded in “place” in that it will be about how things look now versus in a very different future.  I’m excited for the challenge.  I’ve been reading lots about climate change.  Things like how it occurs naturally, how humans are changing the equation and scientific predictions for the future.  Taking a step back and thinking about my writing, I suspect “place” will always be a character. 

Your next story sounds really interesting.  Would you mind giving us a few more details?  I’m a big fan of your writing and look forward to your next book.  I’m one of those readers who will read everything that you write.

PG: I am so looking forward to reading your next book and seeing how you create place out of a dystopian future.  How fun to create completely from imagination (and good research too)!  My next book is an ode to the unique world of women.  From menses to childbirth, weight gain and weight loss, our shapes and sizes, disease and trauma, our bodies are the vessels that carry us through this life.  No woman I know is untouched by her relationship with her body.  With that as my “place”, along with a group of women I hope everyone will enjoy, I am exploring new love, rekindling love, and the unique love that female friendships bring to our lives.