His Room

I cleaned your room today.
Evidence of tortured teenage paradox
strewn across the floor.
Baseball cards, skateboard magazines,
and candy bar wrappers among
empty beer bottles and photos of a girl give
evidence of the man struggling to emerge.
Tucked in rumpled linens, an empty cigarette pack
concealing what you didn't want me to know.
I knew this day would come.
Mothers aren't ignorant of such things.
How do you think you got here in the first place?

Mag 212

© K. Lynette Erwin, 2014

I Don't Want to Be in Your Play Anymore

People who know me know that I love the theater. I've been an actress since I was old enough to stand in front of the television and mimic the singers, dancers, and actresses who caught my fancy on all of the variety shows and movie musicals that were so popular in the 1960s. I was in my first live stage production at the age of nine and by the time I started high school, I'd been a part of so many plays and musical productions that I couldn't count them all. I love drama and I always have--on the stage, that is.

Unfortunately I also grew up with a lot of drama that wasn't always played out on the stage. It was Shakespeare who said that "All the world's a stage and all men and women merely players...", and he was correct. We all have to deal with a certain amount of offstage drama, but that doesn't mean that we have to create it nor must we be willing participants in the drama that someone else creates. The problem is that when we grow up in the drama, it's all we know. We don't realize that we don't have to live with it or that it's even harmful to us not only emotionally and mentally, but physically as well. We literally become addicted to it like a drug, which in fact, it is a drug, or at least it causes a chemical reaction in our bodies and gives us a rush like a drug. The natural hormone that it creates and feeds on is adrenalin, also known as the "fight or flight" hormone, and it's that chemical rush that causes our addiction to drama.

It wasn't until a few years ago after I had a major gallbladder attack and I had to have my very sick gallbladder removed, that I learned that stress and/or "drama" is a major contributor to gallbladder disease. It

was then that I made the decision that when the surgeon cut the diseased organ out, I was going to excise the drama from my life at the same time. I literally said "no" to all the people--family, friends, acquaintances, co-workers, people on Facebook, etc.-- who were addicted to drama and who not only created it, but who tried to suck me into it. Not only did I stop participating in other people's drama, I quit creating my own and sucking others in. At first it was hard. Like any addiction, you go through a period of withdrawal that literally leaves you feeling sick, empty, and bored, so to counteract the boredom and fill my life with something where the drama once was, I decided to write the book that I always wanted to write. After writing and publishing two books, I concentrated on losing the weight that the drama-induced stress caused. Pretty soon I found that not only did it get easier and easier to stay out of the drama, it also got easier to identify people who were addicted to drama and who were seeking to suck me into it. And once identified, it was easy for me to tell them that I didn't want to be a part of it and to go away.

Yes, I made a few enemies when I walked off their stages in the middle of a scene, but I actually found a whole lot more friends in the process--friends whose plays are much more fun to be in and who enjoy taking the stage and then standing back and giving the stage to me for a while. If life must be a theater, at least I have a choice of whose play I want to be in.

Has it really been over two years since I darkened this place?

It has been a while, I know, but life has a way of moving on and moving in so quickly that it's often difficult to keep up with all the things you were so dedicated to before. Such is the case for me. Since my last post, I've had emergency surgery (my poor gallbladder decided to give up the ghost), written and published my second novel, started my own publishing company with my partner, Steph, visited my oldest daughter in France, saw her graduate Phi Beta Kappa from college, sent my son off to the army, been diagnosed with borderline diabetes, and lost nearly 100 pounds. I've packed a lot of living into the last two years, and as packed with accomplishments as they have been, the greatest accomplishment has been my weight loss.

Today I made a video that traces my weight loss journey. How did I do it? I used common sense and started eating the way nature intended human beings to eat--cut out refined and processed sugars, cut out processed foods, and went back to natural, healthy, whole foods and plenty of low impact exercise. No gimmicks, no special diets, no pills, no surgery, and no expensive gym memberships. Watch the video and see my results. I'm pretty proud of me.

On meddling in other people's lives

Some of life's lessons are the hardest lessons. For whatever reason, I messed up and it has cost me a lifelong friendship. I must now confess that it was my need to fix my friend's life that contributed to this end, and I truly regret that.

I'm reminded of Jane Austen's Emma. I have never really liked that story, and even after reading the book and seeing the film several times, the character of Emma always irked me, and made me angry. Now I know why, for when I looked at Emma, I was seeing a reflection of myself and I didn't like what I saw. (I feel that it is no coincidence that I watched the film, yet again, with my daughter, Lauren, this weekend.)  So now that I've seen my ugly face starring back at me through Emma's mirror, I must take action and do something to fix myself, for a change.

I found a website that addresses the need to fix and found some helpful information. (I'm posting the link HERE just in case some other "chronic fixers" might be interested in seeing it.) Here are some of the things that stood out for me.

My need to fix is driven by the following:

1. Compulsively driven behavior to rescue or help another person, place or thing to be the way you believe it "should be.''
2. Inability to accept people, places or things the way they are and the chronic attempt at changing them even if they are unchangeable.
3. Drive to feel "needed'' or "wanted'' which leads you to become overly involved and responsible in your relationships with persons, places and things.
4. Result of a pattern of getting approval and recognition from others for "helping'' in the past with the belief that this is the only way you can have meaning in life.

 The negative effects of my need to fix are:

1. Run the risk of becoming a caretaker to many with few people giving you the healthy emotional support you need to be a fully functioning and coping human.
2. Experience people moving away from you if they no longer desire "to be fixed'' by your advice, solutions or insights.
 3. Will hand out a lot of "I owe yous'' to those you fix in hope they will be there for you when you need them, unfortunately forgetting that your only worth to them has been the fixing you perform and they will not "come through'' the way you hope they will in your time of need.
4. Might be the one who does all the work in a relationship and, once you "stop the work,'' the relationship will die since you are no longer working at fixing it.
 5. Might have successfully used everyone else's problems to divert your attention from yourself, the only one you have greatest odds of fixing because you can have control and change yourself best.

I'm going to spend a lot of time in deep introspection in order to address this problem. I'm also going to seek to cultivate friendships with persons who are less needy and who will be more available to support me in my own personal growth and character.  I also need to find the balance between compassion and meddling and learn the difference between the two. But most of all, I'm going to work on that pesky little guy named "ego", and put him back in his proper place. 

Thankfully Emma had many redeeming qualities - loyalty, compassion, generosity - to name a few, so in the end, it turned out well for her, for she was able to see the err of her ways and cultivate those qualities that made people fall in love with her in the first place. I will do the same, and only hope that one day my old friend can find it in his heart to forgive me.

Love is not love unless it is unconditional

I've discovered, in the last several years, that the reason we come into life is to learn lessons, and that every one of life's lessons is about relationships to myself and others, or put simply, about love.

I learned very early in this life that a lot of what we human beings label as love is either very co-dependent or conditional, and that we have mirrored that kind of love in our religions and beliefs about God. Christianity (along with most religions),  teaches us that God's love is very conditional: We must bring just the right sacrifice into the temple or he'll not only reject our sacrifice, but us too. And if we keep messing up and don't get it right, we get cast into the outer darkness while God and his teacher's pets (the ones who gave the right answer to the question "Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?"),  get to have a party in heaven.

Ah! I get it! So love is about pleasing! (The light bulb moment.) I get it - I go to God with a contrite heart and confess to him what a dirty, filthy, worm I am and that I don't deserve to be loved and then I ask Jesus into my heart and get covered up in Jesus' blood so that I can deserve God's love and now God doesn't know it's me but he's really looking at Jesus and...wait a minute. If I get covered up in Jesus' blood and God only sees Jesus, then he's not really loving me, is he? And since Jesus is God, then really God is only loving a reflection of himself. Then God must be a narcissist.

And this is the model that we use as the primary measurement for love in Western society. Little wonder we're so fucked up.  This is the reason why parents can't love their children without placing unfair and unrealistic expectations upon them. (Do it my way or risk my disappointment. Marry the right person or risk my disappointment. Choose the profession that I want for you or risk my disappointment. Don't make mistakes, get divorced, lose your job, be gay, or in any way disgrace this family or risk my rejection.) This is the reason children grow up feeling like they're total fuck-ups and can't do anything to please their parents or gain their love and approval. This is the reason we pass that hurt, anger, and disappointment into our own relationships with our friends, neighbors, spouses, children, and throughout the entire world. It is this model of love (which is really not love at all), that is the cause of all war, hunger, and greed, for it is rooted in fear - fear of not getting our needs met, fear of being unrecognized, and ultimately the fear of being cast into the outer darkness or the fear of rejection.

At the tender age of thirty-nine I decided that I'd had about all of this kind of love I could take and I set out on a different journey. I set out to find real love.  It took me about three years of intense deprogramming, and consistently receiving a lavish dose of real, unconditional, love on a daily basis before I began to realize that what I had always thought was, and experienced as love, wasn't love at all, but was a sick, fearful, narcissistic kind of love that was only using me to get its own needs fulfilled. And once I tasted real love, I could never go back to the cheap, conditional, imitation stuff. And when the threats of rejection from my family and friends came along (because I was no longer playing by their rules), it made it so much easier for me to turn to them and say, "Sorry guys, I really do love you, but I've found something much better. I no longer need what you have to offer," and I turned and walked away.

For nearly ten years, now, I have known and experienced real love. I'm not saying that it has always made my life easier. In fact, in many ways it has made my life more challenging, for to accept and live real love, one must completely ignore what the rest of the world not only offers but most often imposes as love. And I find that I must often remind myself, in moments of weakness, that what they're trying to impose on me is not real but a cheap imitation (like imitation cheese - yuk!).  It's worth it, though, because in knowing real love I have cast out the fear of rejection and because I no longer know fear, I am no longer enslaved to others' expectations and I am free - free to love them in a way that they never knew how to love me...unconditionally.

Living beyond fear

 

 

 

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

 

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

 

It is our light, not our darkness,

That most frightens us.

 

We ask ourselves, who am I

To be brilliant, gorgeous,

Talented and fabulous?

 

Actually, who are you not to be?

 

You are a child of God.

 

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

 

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking

So that other people

Won’t feel insecure around you.

 

We were born to make manifest

The glory of God that is within us.

 

It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.

 

And as we let our light shine,

We unconsciously give other people

Permission to do the same.

 

As we are liberated from our own fear,

Our presence automatically liberates others.

 

 by Marianne Williamson

On living in the past

 

 

 History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside. -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Operation Clean Sweep

Over the last several weeks I have been confronted with some attitudes, beliefs, and ideas that have crept into my life over the years that I realize have not been serving me well and need to be swept from my life before I can be open and receptive to the wonderful things that the universe has waiting for me. As I've been meditating they're being revealed to me one by one, so that I may confront them and clean them from my life.

1. Unworthiness - I've been taught to believe through religion, society, and the system that unless I play by their rules and believe the "right" things, do the "right" things, and live my life according to their dictates, dogmas, and doctrines that I am unworthy of prosperity and success. That is a lie from the pits of hell, and I will no longer buy into it.

2. Fear - As Steph has so beautifully put it: The opposite of love is not hate, it is fear. Am I operating out of love or fear? Today, and every day I will choose to operate out of love.

3. Naivete - Deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment. I was raised in a rather mysogenistic environment under the idea that women were to be protected and sheltered from the world by their husbands. After I was divorced I wasn't prepared to meet the world around me and live in it on my own, therefore I have been rather naieve about life and the difficulties that it can and does present. I am a kind and loving spirit, and I have operated under the illusion that everyone else is the same. I've had to learn the hard way that this simply isn't so, that there are people around every corner who will pretend to be your friend and then turn around and stab you in the back. I must remain as innocent as a dove and sly as a fox.

4. Greed - This one was really a hard one for me, for I don't want to admit that I have slipped into its icy grip. But here I am. It's really easy to do in our society. You're told by the media and everyone around you that you're just not worthy or successful if you can't keep up with the latest trends in fashion, technology, homes, cars, etc. Living with financial struggle for the last ten years has taught me some valuable lessons about what is necessary and what is not. I have learned that the love of famiy and friends far exceeds anything else to which I could aspire, and that all the "toys" that are deemed necessary simply are not. I will learn to be frugal, yet generous, and I will display gratitude for everything that I have been given.

There are probably others, but these four seem to be the ones that have risen to the top and for now, are the ones that need my most immediate attention. So here I am with a broom and a dustpan ready to clean them out, so that my channels will be open and receptive for all the wonderful bounty that the universe has in store for me!

Difining, Critical & Pivotal: The road less traveled

I'm home today recovering from this intestinal flu, so I thought it might be interesting to do this meme that Steph created from a section of one of Dr. Phil's books. These are going to take some real thought!


10 Defining Moments:
In every person's life, there have been moments, both positive and negative, that have defined and redefined who you are. Those events entered your consciousness with such power that they changed the very core of who and what you thought you were. A part of you was changed by those events, and caused you to define yourself, to some degree by your experience of that event.

1. Growing up in a devoutly religious, evangelical Christian home - Although in many respects this was extremely positive for me, as it forced me to develop a keen spiritual awareness and a deep sense of morality as well as solid spiritual foundations, it had many negative affects upon my self-esteem, my life choices, and my sense of who I really was/am.

2. Discovering my musical talent as a child - From the time I was a small child I can't remember a day when I didn't love music, when it wasn't a part of my life and who I was. I have always believed that it was directly connected to my purpose in this life.

3. My first trip to Europe - When I graduated from high school, I went on a musical tour of Europe with a choir of young people from Oklahoma. We visited the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. It expanded my horizons and awakened me to the understanding that people are people no matter their language or customs, no matter what religion they do or don't follow, and no matter where they call home.

4. Going to College - This was another horizon-expanding time in my life when I learned that the world was a much larger and more complicated place than I had been taught to believe. I began to learn that life was not defined in simple black & white terms. I met people who had different life experiences and who challenged my narrow beliefs of what life was about. The most influential and defining course I took was Western Civilization in which I studied the history and literature of Europe from the Medieval period to the modern age. Studying the development of the Catholic Church, the Crusades, and the Reformation began my questioning of the Christian beliefs that I had been taught from infancy, and led to the eventual rejection of those beliefs years later. Education is the key to everything.

5. Studying and experiencing the music of Mozart - Some will probably laugh when they read this and some of my family members, (if they read this), will continue to worry that I have fallen off of the deep end, but from the time I was a small child, the music of Mozart has touched a place in me that I cannot even name. Every time that I have heard, studied, sung and/or experienced Mozart's music, something deep inside of me glows. As a young voice student, the music of Mozart spoke to me and there was a sense of familiarity about it that I couldn't explain. It has remained a constant force throughout my entire life.

6. Living in several different areas of the country - After I was married we moved to Louisville, KY where we lived for a few months before moving to Cincinnati, and then back again to Kentucky. After my husband graduated from seminary, we moved to Florida and lived on both coasts, for a period of time. My three children were born in St. Petersburg, Florida. Then we moved to Montana where we spent three years in the Billings area and Billings proper. Living in various parts of the country, again, expanded my horizons even further--meeting new people, gaining new cultural experiences, opening me up to new and different ideas and beliefs.

7. Being a mother - The experience of motherhood has been one of the most fulfilling, yet terrifying experiences of my life, but through it I have found in me a deep well of wisdom and a loving, caring, compassionate nurturing aspect of my personality that would otherwise not have been developed.

8. Getting a computer and being hooked up on the internet - Talk about your horizon expanding experiences! All of a sudden the entire world was open to me. I could talk to people all over the world! I could comb the web for more information about Mozart or any other subject that I wanted. I could travel the entire span of the globe in a matter of seconds, see pictures, watch videos, hear music that I'd never heard, go places I'd never been, hear languages spoken that I didn't even know existed. It was probably one of the single most important and defining events of my life.

9. Questioning the religious teachings of my youth - As my world expanded, so did my worldview and the old doctrines and dogmas no longer fit my vision and/or concept of my expanding universe and/or god. As painful as it was, I began to separate from the conservative Christian teachings with which I had been raised and in which I was nurtured for my entire life.

10. My divorce - For the first time in my life, I was free to make my own choices, to live my life as I saw fit, and free of the ties that held me back. I had lived my entire life for someone else. I made choices to please others. I said and did all the right things so that everyone else would be happy. Finally I did something for me, for my own personal well-being.


7 Critical Choices:
There are a surprisingly small number of choices that rise to the level of life-changing ones. Critical choices are those that have changed your life, positively or negatively, and are major factors in determining who and what you will become. They are the choices that have affected your life up to today, and have set you on a path.

1. Choosing to marry instead of pursuing a career in music - This choice defined the direction of my life for nearly twenty years and eventually brought me into such despair that after 18 years, I nearly committed suicide. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of my children coming home from school and finding me dead on the floor. I had come to a place in my life where I felt I was good for no one, but I believed that my children were better off with a broken mother than a dead one.

2. Marrying into the ministry - This is one of the choices I made to please others. I did this out of the desperate need for my parents' approval. They were so proud of my missionary brother but always criticized my desires to be a singer/actress as vain and ungodly. I thought if I became a minister's wife that they would be as proud of me as they were my brother.

3. The decision to go to graduate school - When my children were all old enough to be in school on a full time basis, I decided that I wanted to go back to school and get a master's degree in vocal performance and pedagogy. I ran up against the resistance of my husband and the church where he was pastor. It was the beginning of the end of our marriage.

4. Asking for a divorce - I was the one who wanted the divorce despite the fact that no one, not even my family supported me. I had no money, no lawyer, nothing to my name to speak of, but I was at the brink of such desperation that I would have done anything to get out of that marriage. I didn't care at that point where I went. I just wanted out.

5. Falling in love with and living in an open relationship with Steph - Some call this choice courageous, others rebellious, and yet others sinful, but it was one of the best choices of my entire life.

6. Gaining custody of my three children and raising them with my same-sex partner - Talk about a bold choice! A former Southern Baptist minister's wife moves back to her home town in Oklahoma with her lesbian partner and then gets custody of her three children and defiantly raises them in the same town where she grew up and where her parents were active and well-known members of the community! I don't know if that was stupidity or guts.

7. Choosing to be featured in Mozartballs thus coming out about my beliefs in reincarnation and about who I was in a past life - As if things weren't complicated enough by the fact that I left my husband for a woman, left my Christian beliefs altogether, but then I came out about my beliefs of who I was in a previous life. It's a choice I will never regret, however, for the making of the documentary turned out to be a vision quest, a spiritual journey the likes of which I will probably never experience again.

5 Pivotal People:
These are the people who have left indelible impressions on your concept of self, and therefore, the life you live. They may be family members, friends or co-workers, and their influences can be either positive or negative. They are people who can determine whether you live consistently with your authentic self, or instead live a counterfeit life controlled by a fictional self that has crowded out who you really are.

1. My parents - for good or for ill, they tried to mold me into the person they thought I should be.
2. Mary Beth Treat - my sixth grade teacher who saw more potential in me than anyone else.
3. Steve Maison - my high school vocal music teacher who encouraged me to follow my dreams.
4. My brother, Monte, who still loves me despite his fear of the direction in which my life has taken me.
5. Steph, who is the love of my life, my twin soul, and who handed me the keys to unlock my cage.

Our deepest fear

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? ~ Marianne Williamson

The futility of regret

There is no value in grief or regret because regret is always talking about the past, and you have no power there. You can't vibrate in your past. You are doing all of your vibrating in your now. So whenever you are feeling regret or grief, you've vibrated out of the range of your Inner Being and you feel the emptiness of it. ~ Abe

Freedom is my choice

True freedom and the end of suffering is living in such a way as if you had completely chosen whatever you feel or experience at this moment. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Opening up a vein

I've been hold up writing all weekend and it has been a really fulfilling as well as emotional process. Steph says to really write well one has to "open up a vein" and write from one's own experiences, both good and bad. Write what you know. Write what is in your heart. I learned this weekend that writing can sometimes be like weeks of therapy rolled into one session. Painful & exhausting.

Honor your soul

If your spirit is not present where you are, and you feel intuitively called elsewhere, you must hearken to your inner voice. I am not encouraging you to be irresponsible and run away from things you need to do. I am encouraging you to be responsive to your spirit. It is not responsible to engage in activities that affront your soul. Honor your soul by being where you belong.

~ Alan Cohen

Judgement: Letting go of the past

Basic Card Symbols

Angel, trumpets, graves with people rising from them, often water or an ocean.

Basic Tarot Story

As the Fool leaves the garden of the Sun, he feels that he is near the end of his journey, ready to take a final step. But something is keeping him from doing this, holding him back. He gazes up, hoping to find guidance from the Sun; instead he sees above him a fiery angel, beautiful and terrible.

"You are right," the Angelic figure confirms, "you have only one last step on your journey, one final step to completion. But you cannot take that step until you lay your past to rest." The Fool is perturbed. "Lay it to rest? I thought I'd left it behind, all of it," he says. "There is no way to do that," The Angel observes. "Each step wears down the shoe just a bit, and so shapes the next step you take, and the next and the next. Your past is always under your feet. You cannot hide from it, run from it, or rid yourself of it. But you can call it up, and come to terms with it. Are you willing to do that?"

The Angel hands the Fool a small trumpet. The Fool is hesitant, but he knows that this is a final decision. Either to go forward, or stay where he is. He blows, and the trumpet's song echoes across the sky, its vibrations seeming to crack open the Earth. From under the Fool's feet, memories rise. Images of his innocent youth, challenges, loves, failures, losses, success, disillusionment and wisdom.

For the first time, he does not try to leave them, ignore or forget them, but accepts them. They are, he sees, nothing to fear. They happened, but they are gone now. He, alone, carries them into the present. With that understanding, the memories vanish. Though they remain in his mind, they no longer have any power over him. He is free of them, reborn, and wholly in the present.

Basic Tarot Meaning

With Fire as its ruling element (or Pluto as its ruling planet), Judgement is about rebirth, resurrection. The idea of Judgement day is that the dead rise, their sins are forgiven, and they move onto heaven. The Judgement card is similar, it asks for the resurrection to summon the past, forgive it, and let it go. There are wounds from the past that we never let heal, sins we've committed that we refuse to forgive, bad habits we haven't the courage to lose. Judgement advises us to finally face these, recognize that the past is past, and put them to rest, absolutely and irrevocably. This is also a card of healing, quite literally from an accident or illness, as well as a card signaling great transformation, renewal, change.



Judgement is often a hard card to read; it usually signals just a big change, one that involves leaving something old completely behind and stepping into something completely new. Like closing the door on an old job, and opening the door to a new and very different career. But it's also about making a final decision, to take that plunge into the new career, to forgive your family, to leave an abusive spouse, to make a new life. To heal and renew. It's a very hard card to read, in part because it deals with very hard and final decisions. And it means facing something that most Querents don't want to face. You can't hide any longer, this card says, all the dead have risen and are out in the open. Face what you have to face; make that decision. Change.

From Aeclectic Tarot