Sacred Life Sunday: You Raise Me Up...

She was 12 years older than me, a recovering alcoholic with a long span of hell behind her. Foul-mouthed and fat. Crusty, outspoken, strong. She smoked like a haystack. She had skin the shade of coffee with a wrinkle or scar that marked all the passages of her life. She always wore bright colors, all the tones of the earth. Orange, green, brown, deep red and plum.

I was in the thick of what would be a very long climb out of the abyss. Lost and confused with this life, not knowing why I was here or why I should remain here. Knowing I didn't really want to be here but believing suicide was wrong, one day followed another with that drip-drip-drip stagnancy that can drive a person insane. I'm not good with dates but she came into my life sometime in the early 1990s.

When I would complain, she would say, "you are where you are because you choose to be there". At first I thought she was terribly unsympathetic and harsh. How could she possibly believe that I would choose to be so miserable?

It took a few years for me to realize the gift (and the exhortation) she gave me was powerful. It changed my life from one track to another. It was the proverbial four-way stop. It was the radical idea that I/we always have choices. It was the radical idea that we own our own existences. We are not cogs in a cultural wheel or products of social custom. Naturally those things influence us but they don't define us. Life is a series of choices, one thing or another. Sometimes both or all in a new configuration. Sometimes, as Neitzsche said, when something is tottering, we give it a final shove and move on to something entirely new and different.

That simple. We always choose. We are always choosing. Big choices and little choices.

I wrote a yellow post-it note and put it on my refrigerator. "You get to choose."

There was one on my bathroom mirror as well. "CHOICE!"

This might seem rather odd to those who have come along in the generation or two after mine. My generation of women were taught to be compliant and deferential. The idea of choosing what we would do, be or have was outside our reality. We were chastised to never be haughty or demanding. We existed to serve. The idea that we could design our lives as we saw fit was revolutionary. Our job as women was to serve men and serve children. The first wave of modern feminism which took place during my late teens allowed that we could then join another type of servitude ~ to an employer instead of family. The essential message didn't change in substance, only in the packaging.

The practice of learning to make choices was frightening as hell in the beginning. I thought the earth would shatter, the heavens would open and mass destruction would occur at the very notion that I would make a choice that someone else might not like.

Oh, my God! I'd be disliked, culled from the herd, rejected, sent into oblivion. I would cease to exist!

And, in fact, that did happen. I've written here previously about it, the time spent in complete isolation from any adequate support systems or friendships. And, yes, it was hell. It was also a transition. Without that, I wouldn't be where I am now.

It's been a long, hard road, this journey to finding likeminded others, women and men who are not afraid to make their own choices, chart the course of their own lives, make decisions that suit who they are instead of who they were conditioned to believe they should be. I'm only beginning to get comfortable in my own new skin.

It goes on, this learning and experimenting. These days though, I wouldn't have it any other way. I love the idea that I make choices, that I am responsible for those choices and that I have the internal strength to deal with the consequences.

This wouldn't have happened without that unusual friend who shattered my world and guided me in picking up the pieces.


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