Learning to Accept Love

(This one’s for you, Nancy! So good to see you yesterday!)

I make no secret of the fact that I’m still learning, still growing, at the young age of 70. I share these things so anyone who chances upon my irregular outflowing of words will know they don’t struggle alone.

Yesterday a group of friends had an afternoon luncheon for me–a group who have become special to me in their acceptance of my goofy-ass self, all people who either did work or work now with MAARC, the Maryville Alcoa Animal Rescue Center, where I volunteered for most of the three years I’ve lived here in East Tennessee.

I don’t expect these things. I know so much of that is a product of the still-present shadow of the Lies In my Bones, words and actions that were spoken into the first sixty years of my life harm and disapproval. First my parents, then my now ex-husband.

I can’t know why others needed to make me feel like shite, I could never see into their heads or hearts enough to know what drove that. Or what made them up the attack when I tried to stand up for myself, something they liked even less than the person I was/am.

I lost myself in those relationships, and other similar ones, the empathy in me working overtime to try to make them feel happy and accepted while they tried to drive me down, criticize me, demean me. I became alive mostly to try to Make Them Feel Happier. But what if they didn’t WANT to be happier? Who knows, maybe feeling like everyone else is out to get them gave them a sense of purpose.

I can’t know.

My ease of happiness and joy in this often difficult to understand world seemed to be a reason to make a real effort to quench that in me–maybe to be miserable with them? I mean, we could bandy about psychological terms and speak of the varied states of mental health, but what would that help? They weren’t willing to seek out help, at least not enough to be fully honest, or take responsibility for their own (insert poop emoji here).

And silly, poor-boundaried me, I just wanted to infect them with the joy of the small things, the lifting gift of finding that joy.

But at my own expense.

In the three years I’ve spent here in East Tennessee, not only have I been introduced to, as one friend said, HUMIDITY, (boy howdy!) but also so many welcoming, loving, truly accepting friends.

There have been two groups that have been especially welcoming–the shelter volunteers, and the crafty group at the senior center. I’ve learned so much about animal rescue! And I’ve had so many cats and kittens to love over the time I worked there, not to mention the cat I adopted from there that got my whole volunteer gig started.

I’m a chat-er. Full of words that need out. (also Boy Howdy! lol) Plus I love meeting new people. These things were valuable for shelter open houses, and meeting other craft and quilting lovers. These things that were “an embarrassment” to some of the people in my past.

And though I may not speak to the very person who got me to Tennessee in the first place, his family welcomed me and I still consider them friends.

This place became my own Smoky Mountain Adventure after that person and I realized we were unsuitable as partners–and apparently not even great as friends after the parting.

I have an amazing therapist who has hung in there with me through the death of my mother, the death of my sister, and the death of my marriage, then the death of my next relationship. Fortunately she helps guide me through the living parts of my life as well, since there’s still quite a bit of that going on. She has always encouraged me to see the next thing going forward, to see my life as a series of adventures that may or may not turn out as I hope. So once I was here in Tennessee and had found my oasis, my nest, my perch of a #smallnottinyhouse, her wisdom helped me view the loss of the relationship as an open invitation to “What’s next?” To learn to see the future as an opportunity for new things, new places, new people.

I’ve embraced it.

But now it’s time to say goodbye to this nest of a #smallnottinyhouse that I got to make my own, my very own! And to the people who have populated this adventure and become so dear, so cherished to me. My yoga teacher, the quilt shop owner, the crafty bunch, the shelter bunch, and all the associated people I’ve come to know and appreciate.

That’s been hard–the goodbyes. I hate crying, even though it’s so necessary to our health! But that’s part of the parting, the grieving.

The good part about this grieving, this goodbye-ing? The frozen me who shut down in order to protect herself from hurt (by the way, it didn’t work) has been thawing over these past years, allowing me to actually take in the caring and the love and the acceptance of those who say they will miss me! I can feel it now, where once I wouldn’t have been able to.

It’s a gift and a curse, as beloved television detective Monk says. It’s a gift to be able to know that I am actually loved! People who should have loved me in the past but who took out their own disappointments on me taught me that “love” could be simply a word not backed up by action. For me? If you don’t feel, you don’t hurt (but you do). So feeling, actually experiencing the sensation of being loved where the action is part of it, it’s a gift. But the parting, the pain, feels like a curse–because I cry. I mourn. I feel.

I write in order to share that there’s this freckle on the left butt-cheek of the universe who struggles, who hurts, who cries, who laughs, who works the bejesus out of healing–so you know you aren’t the only one.

This very thing is why I’m finally back working on my memoir. I want it to show what a messy journey life can be, and what an adventure too! That we can heal, we can feel, and it’s all good.

Thanks for listening to me babble.

You’re loved, you’re held, you’re safe, and you’re cherished. That’s what I want for you, just as I needed that a billion years ago in my childhood. Now I tell myself those things as I try to be the mama to myself I needed all those years ago. I know now that mine wasn’t capable of giving that because of her own brokenness.

The next adventure is heading back to Portland Oregon so I can torment my children from up close since they’re all on the West Coast.

Let the next adventure begin!