“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.”

― Katharine Hepburn

I’ll put a pin in going back to school. There are better mothers than me with the perseverance to raise children by themselves while they actively improve their own lives by returning to school. Would that I had the fortitude! I imagine they have a massive support system in place – family, friends, maybe even husbands. I realized that even when I asked my husband for his help very directly, he was unable – or unwilling – to step up. That played out by me continuing to do all the things plus studying until 1-2 in the morning, then waking up at 5:30 to start the process all over again!

There’s a video my son took. He and his sister were playing in the apartment… while I was passed out, face-down on the floor! Yeah, that happened often during that semester! I was now a homeschooling, stay at home momma doing everything for my family except bringing home a check.

But I digress, this was supposed to be a quick synopsis of the past few years. Major events.

My marriage was circling the drain, I was very unhappy and was trying to fix it. Alone, of course. I gave him the space he seemed to want, I stopped asking him to help, I basicly stopped talking to him altogether.

I can’t seem to write this without expressing my deep suffering over my relationship with my husband.

Meditation saved me in a way I didn’t think possible. When I didn’t meditate, it was like the banks on the shores of my emotional and turbulent lake would threaten to give way and drown not only me but my entire family in the process.

And so I meditated.

I went to Ananda on Sundays whenever I could. These people became so dear to me. They opened my eyes to a new perspective. One I have yet to fully grasp. I fell in love with all of them! Sometimes I would come back home (coming home was like coming down from someplace wondrous and magical and having to face the dark dreary reality) and the children were starving! Sometimes he had made food for himself and not them. Sometimes he said that they didn’t tell him they were hungry! This irked me, but I also used it as an opportunity to practice letting go. They weren’t actually starving, and they were so used to me providing basic necessities it didn’t occur to them that they had another parent whose job it was to do the same. Obviously, it didn’t occur to him either.

Let me pause here. There’s a feeling I get right in my throat when I know I am right. I have been greatly wronged and in spite of my best intentions, in spite of the great amounts of time and energy to do the right thing as I see it, I am still being wronged. But that doesn’t leave room for change. It doesn’t leave room for healing. I am getting in my own way. My Ego is raging loudly trying to hold on. That doesn’t serve me. Maybe I was right, maybe I was wrong, likely a little of both, but I was trying to find balance, trying to save this marriage. I needed help. I can’t continue with this story now…

To be continued…