Retreat #9: Sorrow
As I enter this retreat, I feel like I’m plucked out of my earthly existence and set before a judge. My life choices are brought up, one by one, paraded before the court. I’m called to the defendant’s stand to account for each one. I am the judge, the jury and the defendant. My behaviors and activities are placed in a balance and found lacking. Sentencing is delayed, and I’m given a sharp warning to claim my true guidelines for living. I am reminded that I’m on this earth for a purpose; my life will remain unfulfilled if I continue to kowtow to the expectations of my culture, my religious upbringing or individuals in my life. If I keep living from a need for approval, I will further diminish my Soul. A whirlpool of grief sucks me under. It surprises me. I feel like I’m drowning. I go under, come up and gulp air, go under again.
I grieve the ways in which I haven’t been true to myself…the ways in which I’ve sold out to convention…the omissions I’ve committed, making me dishonest in my life with my husband and sons. Alone on the farm, I throw my head back and keen to the sky. My wails stir up the wind and call in the clouds.
The major betrayal involves turning my back on myself as a writer. My first public step in that disloyalty was choosing marriage over writing. I believed that I couldn’t be a married writer. Or a writer-wife. I believed that I had to give up my Soul in order to marry. The depressions that have marked my adult life were invitations to re-unite with my Soul, to engage in what brings life and energy to me. With the recognition that I can no longer separate my soul-passion from my personal life, I witness the unraveling of my marriage.
It’s been happening for a long time—this unraveling. For most of my marriage, I saw it. In the beginning, what I did was pick up my knitting needles and stitch, purl, stitch, purl, drop a stitch, to hold my marriage together. I darned and mended, re-knitting whatever unraveled. I smiled, said sorry, glossed over my needs. I followed wherever my husband went. I supported, soothed, shored up and scraped by. In the process, I got short-shrift. Over time, I tired of knitting and put my needles away. My marriage fell into disrepair, kinked yarn lying at my feet.
I go to the labyrinth mown into the grass behind Bill and Dorothy’s house. As I follow the great circles, their ever-tightening spiral takes me deep into myself and my situation. What does my life have to be like in order to be congruent with who I am? What will it mean if I allow my creative work to define the parameters of my days?
I reach the center of the labyrinth. I settle myself on the stump, facing the birdbath shining white in the midst of golden flowers. When I get home, I need to be truthful with my husband, let him know where my process is taking me, what life asks of me. He deserves an opportunity to discern how and if he can fit into that. Will he want to get to know this new Peggy who is less accommodating, less focused on him? Will I be able to claim my space, hold my position, put my creative work at the center of my life if I stay in the marriage?
Two butterflies with pieces missing from their wings land on the marigolds before my feet. They stay there, sucking nectar. Their torn wings tremble, and I think of my husband and me. We’ve hurt each other without meaning to. Together we’ve fashioned a careful and cautious marriage. What will happen when I ask us to renegotiate our relationship?
I take my time in the center of the labyrinth, then walk the reverse of the spiral at a slow pace, returning to the outer world. I pause at the end. A large dragonfly appears, hovering in front of my face. Touching its head to my forehead, right between my eyes, it stays there for an instant. When it leaves, I feel that I’ve been blessed in some way. I step out, leaving the labyrinth.