My Life Disaster: Waking Up the Spirit the Hard Way

May 15, 2025

Purple Galaxy

Today this blog makes a huge pivot. From dolls to spiritual pain, work and growth. I can't explain exactly how right now dear reader but writing about dolls has led me to this place where I feel ready to even take a look inside myself and see what the state of things is in there. I've been spiritually and emotionally frozen for the past 5 or so years, maybe longer, and the scariest thing to me has been facing what has been happening in my own heart and soul. I've been a stranger to myself, by choice, out of fear.

What have I been so afraid of finding? That is a very good question, and one that I have been asking myself all the while I've been trudging through this barren, frozen tundra that I've created all on my own to keep me from going home. And the truth is that, like Dorothy, I've had the power to go home all along, I just needed to wake up. It does feel like I've woken up reader, and I can pinpoint the moment when my soul awoke.

It was that night 5 years ago in the garage in the old house, he came inside from the basement or the bar or wherever he had been, drunk and angry as he so often was. It was late, the kids were asleep. I was stoned and using my laptop (my lifeline) to escape my real life by playing video games, and I would do anything, solitaire, take a personality quiz, watch tv or YouTube, play the Sims, hundreds of other little time management games that I can't even remember, anything to keep me out of that house, out of my life. And I was in the garage because we were both smokers but didn't smoke in the house, and that way I could be right there if the kids needed me, so it was all perfect. I had to be out in the garage so I could smoke, and out there I could also get high and play on my computer and really escape the whole of my reality. During the day the kids were at school or in their rooms on their electronics. When he was home, and a lot of the time I truly had no idea where he was, if he wasn't sleeping one off in the queen size bed I hadn't slept in in years, he was in the basement smoking cigarettes and drinking and playing his music incredibly loud at all hours and we just had to get used to it. We got used to trying to sleep through it. Anything was better than going down there and asking him to turn it down, if anything asking him to turn it down would only result in getting screamed at and the volume being increased dramatically out of spite. I had learned better years ago and God forbid I would send one of my kids down there to ask him. That was the emotional equivalent of throwing them off a bridge as I drove by, no way.

I learned later that as young as they were (my daughter 12 and my son 10) they were hiding in their rooms filled with the dread of the basement door opening, filled with the fear of the footsteps coming down the hall, fear of their bedroom door flying open and some loud angry command or criticism being shouted at them, fear of him getting in their face with his red drunken angry eyes and really letting go of his anger on them, their existence was just like mine. My fear when I gave birth to them that one day he would do it to them too, had already come to fruition without me even allowing myself to fully realize it.

But by this point, my whole existence was emotional pain, and I was blind to everything else, didn't remember anything else. I had forgotten life was supposed to be happy. I truly believed that if I stayed with this man and kept turning the other cheek to him, eventually he would soften, as he got older he would calm down, people said both of my grandfathers calmed down when they got older and they were kind of like this from what I could gather, my uncle sounded a little like this but he was getting sweeter in his old age, something's got to give and at some point his conscience will kick in and he'll realize how much he's really hurting everyone who loves him and making us hate to even be near him, right? And in the darkest times my thoughts, he smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish, drives drunk all the time, I know he smokes crack and does crystal meth, the chances of him dying before I do or, hell, even just dropping dead have got to be pretty darn good right? Right?

Crab Nebula

I'm sure you see the sickness of this twisted hope just reading the above. The very idea sounds so ridiculous on paper it's ludicrous to me now that anyone could really ever convince themself of that. And how sick and full of pain that mind and heart would have to be to receive solace from the thought of their spouse dying just because it would make the pain stop is mind boggling isn't it? But that's exactly what state I was in reader. I was completely committed to staying where I was and I clung to that small shred of hope that he would change like it was the only thing floating in a vast sea with no other sign of life for 13 years.

Until that night. I didn't know that it was a night different from any other, nothing else sticks out about it as special in my memory. I think it was a Sunday. But that night when he burst in on me in my only slightly safe place, the garage, he was angrier than usual I think I remember. Maybe he wasn't any different, maybe I was different. I was sick, I hadn't been able to work in almost a year. I have fibromyalgia and I had been going through a lot of joint and muscle pain; I was also very physically weak and exhausted like I can't tell you but mostly my heart was sick. Literally. After I left him, I landed in the hospital within a little over a year because I literally couldn't get up to walk to the bathroom. An EKG revealed that I had 3 leaking heart valves, and a consultation with a cardiologist revealed an almost blown aorta. I had to have open heart surgery as soon as possible to replace the valves and the aorta. My surgeon told me I was born with a heart valve defect that had been deteriorating over my entire lifetime, and once he opened me up, it was much worse in there than it had looked on the imaging they had originally done of my heart. I wouldn't have made it very much longer without that surgery. I was very lucky I had made it that long.

Anyway, on that night in the garage, I heard the cruelty in his voice, I felt the will coming from him that wanted my pain, wanted me to be hurt and devastated inside. I do understand that people are like this because they are hurt inside and they don't know how to feel better themselves. But when you feel that malevolence coming at you so pointedly, so focused, so intently, burning with white hot malice, and from the person you have signed up to spend the rest of your life with? A lifetime of this?

That night, I realized that for years before I had been in a primitive survival mode and I was coiled to act. I felt the snap inside, I felt something in me finally, and with 100% certainty, stand up and with no fear or doubt say with a voice that boomed through my body and soul but had no sound "We're leaving." and I knew without any wobbling or questioning, with no need to think it over, that this dysfunctional situation was done. I watched him rant and rave and take every box of Xmas decorations I had brought from my mother's house when we moved in, some beautiful glass ornaments that had been passed down in my family since the 1940's probably, and throw and destroy them, I let him rage and tantrum and scream and call me every name in the book. I didn't argue or try pointlessly to stop him like I normally would have. All that he did now were like the actions of a petulant child to me. And then when he was done, when he left the room and I heard the basement door slam and I knew it was safe, I stood up and walked out of that garage and I was done with him. He was not going to be in my life anymore. I was scared but my decision did not waver for one second in my heart or mind. We left our home and most of mine and the kids' possessions and never went back to that house.

It's taken me all this time, but I am climbing back into the seat of my soul now. And my soul feels ready. My soul is not scared, it knows just what to do. I have a lot of work to do inside, and I'm very excited to start. Everything in my life has brought me here to do this work, and so far, this part of the path has been incredibly healing.

Lotus Blossom

The spiritual side of my life has only been revealed to me slowly over the past year or so. After the kids and I left, I had no money, so we came to my childhood home to live with my mother, who had been suffering terrible grief and loneliness for the year before because of the death of my father. He died in July of 2019, the day after my birthday. We left on Father's Day in 2020; not to be nasty, my ex had to work all day and would be out of the house, so it was safe to move us and a few of our things out, also it was a Sunday and the angels on earth helping us move had the day off. To me now those dates almost can't be coincidental, my father my greatest spiritual teacher and support in this life, left this earth the day after my birthday, and then I left the man who my father would have abhorred had he known how he was treating his daughter and grandchildren while he was alive on Father's Day the very next year. Now I feel that it was my gift to my father, our leaving on Father's Day. Or his gift to me, all I know is that day and the resoluteness of that decision was a great gift.

Once we were out and school started up at the kids' new school (my old alma mater) it was like they took a big breath and relaxed. I felt like a failure as a mom because they had experienced abuse already in their lives, my job was to protect them, and I hadn't kept it away from them. I worried about their physical safety and spent a lot of my time worrying about their emotional health. They had both asked me to leave their father before I did, that's how bad it had gotten. I have never heard of a kid asking their mother to leave their own father, but it happened to me, so it must have happened before on this big globe. The only reason it could happen, I believe, is because he had left the kids to me always, and never bonded or built any kind of relationship with them, aside from unleashing anger on them or drunken pats on the head and pityingly spare "I love you"s. There was nothing really binding them to him. But they were scared of him.

When we came here, I was still full of pain, and it took me a while to feel safe. For a while I felt a swell of fear every time I heard a car drive by with loud music playing (he always pulled into the driveway at the old house with music blaring) thinking it was him, I pulled the curtains closed tight every night so no one could look in, I locked the house early and any unidentified sound after dark made me jump a mile, the kids too saw his car drive by supposedly all the time. But in the end neither the kids nor I have seen him again to this day. Now I'm working on repairing all the damage from the relationship I had with him. I'm there for our children to help them heal, I let them know that they deserved better, they deserved a loving and attentive father. They were perfect, beautiful loving children who deserved a father who delighted in them, who saw them for the blessings they are. I own that I let them down too, especially in those last years before we left, I'm human, and I'm in a much better place now and always trying to do a better job but no matter what happens I'll always be here, loving them and lifting them up. I will never not be here, for as long as I'm living.

I've come a long way since then, as I said it's only been slowly over the past year that I've been spiritually and mentally opening and receiving the positivity and energy of God, the Universe, however you conceptualize it, it's all correct to me. First of all, I think my body had to heal from the open-heart surgery and that really took me 2 years. 2 years not to feel incredibly fragile and breakable, for my strength to return and to be able to breathe regularly again. That was physical, and certainly not helped by my mental state. But I've accepted that for me, I can't rush things, I have to let them unfold naturally. Things happen in their time. The universe has unlimited bounty; you will never exhaust it of the new things it has to show you, but it's none of your business when they arrive.

Something I've always wanted to be able to do is meditate. I abandoned my Irish Catholic upbringing as soon as I could reason and called myself an agnostic, but in truth I was more like an atheist who believed in Santa on Xmas eve. I wished to believe, if there was some great deep knowledge out there, I wanted to know it, I have always felt that. As a young adult I read philosophy, books by the Dalai Lama and translations and discussions of ancient Hindu and Buddhist texts, I read the Christian Bible (New Testament only, I can't do all the begats), a few new age books by psychics, some physics (quantum mechanics, the idea that there are multiple universes and dimensions), there were some ideas that resonated with me (in the holy texts for sure), some that felt like a lot of hokum, but nothing that felt life-changing.

Over this past year though I've felt like I was becoming more openminded, not ruling out the existence of God or spirit, largely because I could feel so strongly and undeniably around me the spirit of my father. But also feeling more compassion in my heart for those closest to me, finding more patience in my heart where once there was annoyance. It's hard to describe in words here, but I could feel that my vibration had slowed way down. I had slowed down, in a very good way. It was all related to my surgery, to the years of emotional suffering and abuse, to the pain of losing my father, to my own seesawing health and brush with mortality, all the physical pain of recovery, everything I had experienced so pointedly and packed so tightly into those 5 years, had done something fundamental to my very core.

I read a book called "The Untethered Soul" by Micheal Singer, after seeing him on a podcast. I was extremely spiritually ready for this book. I was not far into it when I could feel the spirit energy Michael was talking about in my body, truthfully I had felt it when he spoke on the podcast I saw. It feels like Xmas morning energy, its ecstatic, its inspiration, its love and safety and joy. I tried meditating, not for the first time, but I had never been able to quiet my mind before. This time, I tried the way Micheal described in his book without putting any pressure on myself. This time, I just let my mind run. I didn't expend any effort on telling my mind to shut up, or on listening to what it was saying. I just asked, "who is hearing this voice?" I wasn't sure who I was asking, I didn't know who exactly was doing the asking, I didn't really expect anything. I just kept asking, and I kept visualizing falling back into space, but it wasn't scary. I just kept imagining letting go of the words and falling back into empty space over and over and concentrating on the words "Relax", "Open" and "Release", I slowed and focused on my breathing. If I lost the thread, I didn't feel a shred of shame or failure on my part, I just went back to breathing, relaxing and imagining my heart as a big metal valve that was opening wider and wider, and eventually blasting through it came the white light from the universe, the joy, the inspiration, the ecstatic energy of spirit, love, and it filled me up.

I knew this energy; it was my birthright as Micheal said in his book. I felt respect for myself again. The being inside me that received this energy was no low being, no mere piece of human garbage deserving of derision and scorn, willing to be someone's emotional punching bag or dumping ground, no quiet little girl to be always ignored and never asked her opinion because she's the youngest. All the hurts of my life, it wasn't that they were healed, it was that I could see that I could heal the pain inside myself if I did the work. I myself have a powerful spirit. Just like every other person on this earth. We all have the power to heal ourselves and shine that light out into humanity and onto the world. But first we have to wake up.

Supernova