The Knowing
How to quiet the mind, listen to the heart and do the hard thing
We were lying in bed, the king-sized mattress a vast ocean between us, each clinging to our side of the bed like a raft. Husband and wife on separate lifeboats. The air was thick with what was unspoken.
He broke the silence. “Sometimes I find you…inaccessible.”
It was an unusual word for him. My shoulders tensed. My ego sprang into a defensive crouch. I think of my ego as a warrior, fiercely protective of me but often guarding against the very thing I need to hear. My first thought was, “Well, if I’ve been inaccessible, it’s because of you…because of all the things….”
But I didn’t say aloud that unfinished sentence: “…all the things you did or didn’t do.” I let his words soak into my pores. I felt the truth of what he said. I had been inaccessible, especially in these last months—years—of our marriage. I had been withholding a great deal. I had been in hiding. And yes, inaccessible, in ways I hadn’t even realized myself until I had begun poking holes in my ego’s armor.
And the great sadness was that he had been withholding, too. We had both been afraid to be that vulnerable, to turn our skin inside out and show all of us to each other.
I felt a yearning for what could have been.
But it was too late. Two weeks earlier I told my husband of 33 years I wanted a divorce. It had not come out of the blue. We had been on our separate islands for a long time and I had already begun my voyage to a destination as-yet unseen and unknown.
By the time he spoke those words, I was quite a distance from him and our marriage. I saw the white flag he had raised, like a warring ship ready to lay down its arms. It blew in the breeze, and I watched it get smaller and smaller as my own ship sailed further away.
Following the breadcrumbs
It's not quite true that my destination was “unseen and unknown.” For a long time, I had been seeing clues, squiggly little lines on a map leading me out of my marriage and to another life for myself. But I had ignored those directional signals. I stuck to the well-trodden path we had made together over the decades. I stayed hidden—inaccessible—in the the safety of the familiar: what I held in the palm of my hand rather the possible emptiness of that unknown destination.
When you stand at the threshold of a deeper understanding of yourself and your life, I believe the universe sends clues you can’t ignore, like breadcrumbs on a trail.
The first breadcrumb: Hawaii’s Big Island
The first breadcrumb I followed was a yoga therapy retreat I attended on the Big Island of Hawaii in March 2022, led by the wise and gifted teacher Michelle Andrie of Ageless Move More, who leads yoga retreats all over the world, including her home island in the town of Puako.
Yoga therapy looks at a person as a whole being, what Michelle calls the energy body: your mental, emotional, thinking, physical and soulful self all at the same time. As she writes in her book, Heal.Thy Low Back, yoga therapy can release pain and tension by accessing the emotions that sit deep in our bodies and cause physical pain. During that week I began to release decades of pent-up anger, resentment and control using massage balls to access pain points long buried. I learned to calm my mind and soothe my soul. The women gathered ranged in age from our 20s to our 80s. We laughed, we cried. For each of us, there was a sense of discovering ourselves anew.
In an ocean cleanse towards the end of the week, in the beautiful waters of the Pacific Ocean, we each shared our greatest challenge and life purpose. When it was my turn, I stood hand-in-hand in a circle with these other amazing women, our eyes locked on one another. I said: “My greatest challenge is a fear of failure and fear of disappointing myself and others. My greatest purpose is to believe in myself fully and unconditionally.” I dipped myself into the water, my tears mixing with the salty ocean.
On the night we arrived, Michelle led us in a meditation. Then she asked us to close our eyes and state the word that came to us when we held our hand to our hearts. “Connection,” I said. Connecting to others had always been one of my greatest values. What I understood less, then, was the difficulty I had in connecting to myself. On the last night, we gathered for the same exercise.
Now my word was “Believe.”
The second breadcrumb: Finding my Bigger Yes
Not long after I returned home from Hawaii, the second breadcrumb appeared, in the form of an email from Laura McKowen, author, teacher and writer of the beautiful Substack Love Story. She was writing about a six-week course she was teaching starting in April called The Bigger Yes, an invitation to “help you identify, own and devote yourself to the life you really want.”
A confession: I am a junkie of self-awareness courses. I had taken many different courses and program since my thirties. But this seemed like divine timing. I felt ready to plumb the depths of myself in a way I never had before. My time in Hawaii had awakened something. I knew I needed this course to keep that something awake.
In that withholding that had come to define our relationship, I didn’t share this with my then husband. He was about to take off on a solo road trip across country. I was looking forward to the time alone in the house to devote myself to whatever Bigger Yes emerged.
And I went deep. There was no way to enter this course with Laura, as honest and vulnerable with us as she asked us to be, and not confront yourself at your core. In an exercise the second week with the theme of Truth, we were asked to write our life story from birth to the present in third person. The second part of that assignment struck me at my core. She asked us to re-read that narrative and consider: What do you not want to be part of your life story when you reach the end of your life?
Two things were crystal clear:
I did not want to stay in this unhappy marriage.
I wanted to pour everything I had into my love of creative writing, particularly fiction.
Once I faced that truth, there was no looking away. Finally, the reckoning was here.
The rising tide of truth
By the time my ex-husband was due back home, the Knowing was rising up within me. This was the biggest breadcrumb. It was the whole damn loaf. But acting on it would break everything apart. I thought of the collateral damage—not least of all, my mother, whose cognitive lapses were becoming more pronounced, a decline I witnessed every day because she lived with us.
A three decades-long marriage is a mighty citadel. It would take all my strength to face my husband, to tell him my truth, to ask for what I needed, to express what I most desired. Perhaps the fortress would hold. Or maybe, it would crumble to the ground.
So, dear reader, I will ask you the same question: What do you not want to be part of your life story when you reach the end of your life?
Please share in the comments below!
And now, this week’s songs for three braided parts of my life (perhaps yours, too?):
Divorce:
A few songs were on repeat the spring of my Knowing; this was one of them. Joy’s voice and lyrics touched the tender center of my yearning: Mondays aren't always bright/Some days, you lose thе fight/But life can be beautiful if you let it be/Tomorrow keeps taunting you/With all kinds of mystery/It's a blank page for your poetry/If you let it be
Dementia: Allison Russell, Brandi Carlisle, “You’re Not Alone.”
In the progression of dementia, the child eventually becomes the parent. Now my mother is my child and every time I do one of the simple tasks for her that she can no longer do for herself, I think: my mother taught me well. She is not alone on this journey and neither am I: In the cradle of the circle/All the ones that came before you/Well, their strength is yours now/You're not alone
Destiny: India Arie’s “Worthy”
That fear of failure and of disappointing others I mentioned above? India Arie’s song is the balm to that inner critic. It puts her right to sleep: Baby girl, worthy woman/Every one of us is worthy/Worthy of love/Worthy of life/Worthy of saying no when something don't feel right/This is a song for you/For all the ups and downs that life will put you through
Please share your answer: What do you not want to be part of your life story when you reach the end of your life?
Amy - this was beautiful and resonate for me. My husband and I are in marriage counseling for the first time (literally, our first session was just last week)- in an effort to bridge that gap between us. I often don't feel seen/understood and there's a lot to unpack. Perhaps I am not looking at all the ways I am inaccessible. Definitely food for thought! Thanks for sharing this.
I, too, had enormous awakenings in the Bigger Yes course. My answer to the question: what do you not want to be part of your life story when you reach the end of your life? Inhibition. I don't want to restrain my creative thoughts or my feelings. I want to share them and not shrink/hide.