Dec 12, 2023Liked by Thoedore Lowry of Story Paths
My dear friend Theodore, what a wild and wonderful journey,pilgrimage, within! Such deep and powerful questions!
I finally have created the space to begin...
My pilgrimage began when I was a child, I did not have a place I felt I belonged, always an outsider due to the continuous criticism by mother and no stories or guidance and the receiver of father’s rage at life, his scapegoat. I was told they picked up the wrong kid at the hospital. I was seeking a foundation both internal and external, though I didn’t have language for it. Raised Catholic at a time in the 1960’s when its foundation changed with the Sunday School teachers playing songs like Imagine every week. I could not wait to leave home in a good way but that didn’t happen, i kinda ran away at 20. Got drunk a lot. No destination.
More education, then destination, something where i had more opportunities than being the bookkeeper my mother was and wanted me to be... yet had little confidence in myself to continue to explore math and astronomy without the support of my family... wanting to expand yet mental limitations...
wall Street... experience of a lifetime... seeing the underbelly of the economy that drives all things today. The story based on false premises... which I discovered in deep analysis. Obsession, numbers i could understand. I loved it until I saw I could not influence change with laws limiting this change to shift to including environmental impact, those ling term costs ignored... limitations. Then asked to do what I morally could not... I saw where that future trajectory would lead to... angry at this knowing, taken on this great responsibility as mine, there has to be another way!
So I physically left, not knowing where I was going... seeking a better way to live... awakened to the connection with the all of life. How do I live? What do i do? Where do i belong? I am responsible for the world i saw around me... big box stores taken over mom and pop across the country... i believed this was a better future? Really? Devastated by seeing the choices in investments had on the country. Ugly... I answer the call of a dream and follow the black seal to Hawai’i. A completely different world. Met Kei and began living a life not driven by money but sovereignty. Life’s pace the complete opposite. Simple life. Catching our meal from the ocean or planting our food. Or gathering what we needed.,Slllloooowwww doooowwwwn. Lateral thinking, whole picture thinking and doing. I belong but don’t belong. I did belong with him. A great adventure much wisdom and story passed on. Then he passed on. Journey into social world, where do i belong without him? Then isolation from being not well, birthing creativity within, finding my way into authorship, painting, creating, elderess, cohesion. Belonging because I am alive. Healing trauma. Home to self now that both parents left the planet. Seeking true love, where I am seen and heard and finding not in one person but a few gems of people along the way.
Sacred to me? Relationship... how I relate to myself, nature, others, is love at the center?
Dec 12, 2023Liked by Thoedore Lowry of Story Paths
The current journey I am on is who is my tribe? Who is my community? What is home? Many have passed on or moved or went down roads I was not willing to go on or turned out to be frenemies....
Loke I'm moved by this. I'm seeing a journey from beginnings with unstable ground, as yet unable to express a yearning for a truer life, yet I'm hearing this yearning was there from the beginning. Your gifts brought you into a field of life that could/should be a generative part of society. I'm reminded of young men and women who want to be protectors and so join the military, but this calling is so often twisted. Economy too has always been part of human culture, as have those with aptitude for this field. Yet your ethics told you that this current system is too corrupt to change, and that you would be changed instead.
So you found yourself, finally, on the land, with the ocean and rivers. Back where humans started, where we belong, with a man still in touch with those old ways. Being in direct relation with life, spirit, food, land.
Then losing the one who brought you into that relation, and struggling to find what is still yours even without him. Though still learning, still grounding, you're stepping into being an eldress (I see it!). And wondering who are your people, your home... these same questions from so many years ago, now seasoned with age.
That sounds like a rich question to walk with, Sally. It sounds like a generative question that may bring many insights, some of which I hope you'll share :)
My dear friend Theodore, what a wild and wonderful journey,pilgrimage, within! Such deep and powerful questions!
I finally have created the space to begin...
My pilgrimage began when I was a child, I did not have a place I felt I belonged, always an outsider due to the continuous criticism by mother and no stories or guidance and the receiver of father’s rage at life, his scapegoat. I was told they picked up the wrong kid at the hospital. I was seeking a foundation both internal and external, though I didn’t have language for it. Raised Catholic at a time in the 1960’s when its foundation changed with the Sunday School teachers playing songs like Imagine every week. I could not wait to leave home in a good way but that didn’t happen, i kinda ran away at 20. Got drunk a lot. No destination.
More education, then destination, something where i had more opportunities than being the bookkeeper my mother was and wanted me to be... yet had little confidence in myself to continue to explore math and astronomy without the support of my family... wanting to expand yet mental limitations...
wall Street... experience of a lifetime... seeing the underbelly of the economy that drives all things today. The story based on false premises... which I discovered in deep analysis. Obsession, numbers i could understand. I loved it until I saw I could not influence change with laws limiting this change to shift to including environmental impact, those ling term costs ignored... limitations. Then asked to do what I morally could not... I saw where that future trajectory would lead to... angry at this knowing, taken on this great responsibility as mine, there has to be another way!
So I physically left, not knowing where I was going... seeking a better way to live... awakened to the connection with the all of life. How do I live? What do i do? Where do i belong? I am responsible for the world i saw around me... big box stores taken over mom and pop across the country... i believed this was a better future? Really? Devastated by seeing the choices in investments had on the country. Ugly... I answer the call of a dream and follow the black seal to Hawai’i. A completely different world. Met Kei and began living a life not driven by money but sovereignty. Life’s pace the complete opposite. Simple life. Catching our meal from the ocean or planting our food. Or gathering what we needed.,Slllloooowwww doooowwwwn. Lateral thinking, whole picture thinking and doing. I belong but don’t belong. I did belong with him. A great adventure much wisdom and story passed on. Then he passed on. Journey into social world, where do i belong without him? Then isolation from being not well, birthing creativity within, finding my way into authorship, painting, creating, elderess, cohesion. Belonging because I am alive. Healing trauma. Home to self now that both parents left the planet. Seeking true love, where I am seen and heard and finding not in one person but a few gems of people along the way.
Sacred to me? Relationship... how I relate to myself, nature, others, is love at the center?
The current journey I am on is who is my tribe? Who is my community? What is home? Many have passed on or moved or went down roads I was not willing to go on or turned out to be frenemies....
Loke I'm moved by this. I'm seeing a journey from beginnings with unstable ground, as yet unable to express a yearning for a truer life, yet I'm hearing this yearning was there from the beginning. Your gifts brought you into a field of life that could/should be a generative part of society. I'm reminded of young men and women who want to be protectors and so join the military, but this calling is so often twisted. Economy too has always been part of human culture, as have those with aptitude for this field. Yet your ethics told you that this current system is too corrupt to change, and that you would be changed instead.
So you found yourself, finally, on the land, with the ocean and rivers. Back where humans started, where we belong, with a man still in touch with those old ways. Being in direct relation with life, spirit, food, land.
Then losing the one who brought you into that relation, and struggling to find what is still yours even without him. Though still learning, still grounding, you're stepping into being an eldress (I see it!). And wondering who are your people, your home... these same questions from so many years ago, now seasoned with age.
Great questions - the one that keeps asking to be considered is ‘what is sacred’ and I am not sure ‘yet’
That sounds like a rich question to walk with, Sally. It sounds like a generative question that may bring many insights, some of which I hope you'll share :)