Becoming Fierce and Becoming Soft

 “There are responses which originate from joy. Intuition can also mean an instant recognition of a truth, sensing that you are doing the right thing in making a choice or decision even if it is not the immediately obvious option, or an experience of knowing the probable outcome just as it is beginning to unfold."

~Sylvia Clare

I have found myself often questioning what it means to be a woman in this day and age.  And how to portray an image of 'woman' to my daughters...

My struggle...
How to act with integrity, but live with abandon,
how to balance the need for inner actualization and clarity of mind versus the need to be a part of a social stream and ensconced in technology and our fast paced culture,
how to fall in love but not be duped by desire,
how to trust without being naive,
how to be fierce but also to be soft.
How to follow my heart but also listen to my head...

For many years, since my divorce, many of my friends and colleagues have come to me seeking solace.  I was blessed in that my struggle with my crumbled marriage and my reaction to the unraveling of it became a harbinger for many who needed a shoulder to cry upon, someone to listen without judgment, advice from friend who held dear the secrets of their relationships.

I have spent many years in denial of the beauty of myself as a woman.  Whether it be from my turbulent childhood,  or from my disgrace as I floundered and failed in a relationship in which I was so vested, or both, I am not sure.  Maybe it was simply humility? What I do know is I could not look myself in the eye and say 'nice' things about me.  I could critically stare for hours, commenting on my stubborn streak, my weakness when it comes to saying 'no',  my nature to juggle too much and grow easily frustrated, my difficulty with dealing with conflict,  my thighs with their little dimples or the stripes I wear on my abdomen as a reminder of two pregnancies...

It seemed I preached to so many of you about acceptance and truly I was far off from that place myself.... despite the calm demeanor I often presented.  The image so many saw was not the me I felt. 

But slowly, in the past year,  I've begun to know a place of peace.  I still find an occasional sluggish resistance in myself, but I know the glory of being a woman who is learning to accept the situation and walk away from the people and events when they do not reflect the calm I seek.

Most recently, I saw myself through the eyes of a young girl, a student of mine in one of my English classes.  She bestowed upon me one of the sweetest gifts. Along with potted gerbera daisies was  a note which was so kind and considerate that it made me feel like the most powerful and amazing woman.  It lifted me up.  I want to share this note. And thank that young lady who made such an impression upon me with her generous words.  She has shown me that woman who I was hoping I was and have begun to believe I am. 

I can only hope my daughters see this one day also and that they don't doubt themselves they way I have....and I hope that if you don't see yourself as a beautiful and amazing woman, that someone can help lift you up.  And if you do see yourself this way, lift someone else up.... be their light.

                  Ms. Charleson,
                    I would like to thank you for everything you've done.
          I love how you can walk into the classroom with a great big
          smile on your face even when you're having a bad day.  I love
          when you sing while we're working and don't care who hears.
          In addition, I admire how open you are with us students and
          trust us enough to include us in your personal life.  You tell us
          about your hard times as a kid and how you are now a thriving,
          single mom and hardworking teacher, but also a beautiful and
          confident and strong woman, and I have the ultimate respect for
          that.  Overall I would just like to say thank you for all you've done
          for improving my life in such a great way.
                   Yours truly,
             --------------------------



Driving Into the Direction of my Fear

I slept in this morning until  7 am.  I woke to a slight patter of rain against a window and the cat meowing at the same, with a strong desire to be with me in my warm bed.  Initially I felt a creeping fear that I had missed something important.  What day is it? My mind searched.  Saturday.  You finished your final last night and you're 'free' until the summer semester begins. 

Immediately, I mentally sifted through my responsibilities for the day.  The Junior High semi-formal tonight means a trip to Wal Mart to buy the supplies. My kitchen ceiling is still baring its guts and needs attention. When do I pickup the girls?  I need to rearrange the schedule so they can go with their Daddy to their cousin's first birthday.  Pay the bills. Pack for Washington.  Get my roster and playbook ready for the modified coach to cover my game next Friday while I'm away... and on and on...  Some days the list is so overwhelming I wonder why I chose to assume so many responsibilities.  But I remember the joy I receive from each facet, each niche in which I am blessed to assume a role, so that my doubts are usually swept quickly aside.

 If the sun were shining my plan was to wake and scrape the porch of last year's paint to prep it, but as it wasn't I decided I would enjoy a cup of coffee before heading to Potsdam to volunteer my time with the construction of the Building Blocks Day Care.  Now, you may think scraping a porch (or putting up sheetrock) to be dull work, but I would tell you there is little more satisfying than that to me.  It is a job with a quick reward.  It is a thing of peace to see to the repair of it with my own hands and hard work.  The cracking, splitting and peeling paint scraped raw then repainted and gleaming a bright white.  My mind falls to solitude at times when my hands are busiest.  That in itself is is a blessing.  My mind races like a NASCAR driver.  Putting it in idle, letting it rest, whether through manual labor or meditation, is a part of my calm.

Finding my calm has been and continues to be a daily goal. The pace at which we live our lives is so hurried, we sweep aside the basic moments which are often the sweetest and those meant to be most appreciated.  We rush to and from activities, living with time as a master.  I would leave the control of that pressing second hand whenever possible to be more in tune with the moment.  I find that amidst the daily events my mind is often filled with a noise, an awful static that accumulates.  It must be released for me to feel capable of continuing on my path.

And this is one of the reasons why, over my spring vacation, I went on a solo vacation which led me on a loop which I drove from Denver through Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, then back into Denver.

Many people wondered why I chose to do such a thing.  I myself, a week before the trip, awoke from a deep sleep in the middle of the night, feeling suffocated.  I sat up, searching my mind for the answer to my sudden alert state.  It was fear.  I felt the fear of the unknown.  Of setting upon a journey, however short in duration, in which I would be a lone traveler. 

What if...
what if...
what if...

I allowed the 'what ifs' to consume me for a few moments.  Then I put them aside, knowing this isolation was integral to me.  It was what I needed.  I wanted to feel the wide open space of a sky, and feel both intensely small within the scope of life but also supremely connected to it.  I wanted to be like Thoreau.  I wanted to go to a place and live intentionally, but  not into the woods, into the wide open places in the west.  But I would pause here because we should all read Thoreau now and again:

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.... I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

This entry must come to a close because I must rise to greet the day.  But I hope to return to my story of travel another day.

Namaste.           

Letter to my father, whom I've never met

Today I was given an address.  It could very well be my biological father's.  After 35 years of wavering, I decided to  look for him, with that hope that maybe, he was wondering about me.  Thanks to my mother and aunt who worked to find his address. 

For all the women who wonder about the father they have never known, I put a copy here for you to read.  I hope you too find peace within, whether or not you decide to make contact with a parent you've never met.  

Feel free to find me on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/april.charleson with concerns, comments, or just someone to listen.

March 18, 2013

Dear Michael,                                                                                   

I have written the first sentence of this letter about twenty times and erased it.  I find that I don’t know how to start.  While this may not seem unusual to you, as an English teacher and Literature major at University, there has never been a time when I have been at a loss for words like I am now.

I am with hope that you are indeed the correct Michael.  If so, you are my biological father.  I have thought about you, what you look like, how you act, the sound of your voice and so much more, more times than I could count.  I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to the man who my mom says I resemble, the man whose DNA partly I carry. 
So, I suppose I will tell you about myself.

I am now 35 years old and have begun a new stage in my life.  I have a Bachelor’s in English with a literature concentration from Plattsburgh State University and a Master’s in Teaching from the State University of Potsdam.  Having taught English for the past 12 years and still teaching in the same district, I am now enrolled in classes at Canisius to become an administrator.  I will graduate in about a year with another master’s degree and hopefully the opportunity to continue my career working in education.  Eventually I plan on transitioning to politics, specifically I would like to work with foreign countries, especially in developing literacies.

I would like to think of myself as an activist, a humanitarian, with a philanthropy that is aligned closely with men such as Mandela, Ghandi, and Kofi Annan.  I am also an autodidact and I will never settle for what I know now when I can be better.  I believe in compassion and understanding, listening before speaking, and the good of the whole over the self.

I have two darling daughters, Madeline and Elizabeth.  Your granddaughters.  They read well above level and they are interested in global issues as much as the Disney channel and jumping on the furniture.  They are in gymnastics and dance classes, summer soccer lessons, and go to Science and Swim camp.  They are well rounded and absolutely engaging kids.  I can’t imagine not having them in my life. 

I have been divorced for five years.  My ex-husband is a very good father and loves the girls as much as I do.  We have a good relationship and understand the importance of presenting a united front for our daughters.  We share custody, which I agreed to because I never had a proper father figure in my life and I wanted that so badly for them.  It makes me happy that he is a good father to them.

I wish I could tell you all the things that are inside my heart, not just the types of things that I might put on a resume, but I do not know you.  Unfortunately. 

I hope that over the years that you have thought about me, too.  That you have imagined what kind of woman I became.  That you wondered about me and maybe even worried.  I hope that you understand that I don’t blame you.  I am not that kind of person.  I believe that everything happens for a reason.  I don’t want anything from you other than perhaps a reply.  And maybe, someday, you and I could come face to face.  Maybe we could shake hands.  Maybe I could look into your eyes and see something of myself.  That is as far as I can see for us at the moment.
I could never forgive myself if I did not try to make contact with you.  We are both growing older and eventually we will die.  I could not face myself if I let time slip away and never made an effort to know you.  If you decide not to respond, then at the very least I know I tried my best.

Namaste,

April

Separate Ways: Realizing My Husband and I are Incompatible

The year is 2007.  The year of my best worst moment.  I am on the brink of 30 and, by all appearances, I have everything a woman could desire.  My husband and I have two darling daughters daughters, both under the age of three, fantastic jobs (both as English teachers in a junior high school, in neighboring districts), we have two lap dogs and a newly opened antique business run out of the attached carriage house. We live in a lovely original 1878 Victorian home which he and I, with the help of family, restored.  My husband even built a picket fence around the back yard the previous summer so yes, I even had a picket fence.  It is the type of life that I grew up hearing about in story books, watching in sitcoms.  I should be happy.  My husband loves me.  My daughters love me.  My family loves me.  I have a new double sink in the bathroom.  My husband built me a half bath upstairs.  He wants me to be happy.  I want me to be happy. 

But instead of happiness, I feel a heavy weight filling me.  I feel a need to purge.  I do not understand why.  I just feel wrong.  My life feels wrong.  It is May and soon I will celebrate my birthday with my sisters in Montreal listening to my favorite author, Maya Angelou, speak. 

It is evening and my husband and I settle into bed.  I begin to weep quietly.  It is silent except for the sound of my weeping.  I tell him that there is something wrong with me.  I don't know what it is.  I need him to help me.  But he doesn't know what's wrong (how could he? I don't even know).  What I needed he could not give me.  He was incapable. 

Less than one month later our marriage begins to crumble.

I am going to tell a story in a moment because I need you to understand that I loved my husband.  I know he loved me. I loved the home that we had built together.  But it was not meant to be.  I spent countless nights alternating between tears and blame: myself, him, my family, the men that abandoned me in my childhood. 

But the writing I do now, today, is not about blame.  It is about acceptance.  With acceptance comes forgiveness and healing. 

Here is a story that I created to explain how my husband and I eventually had to follow our separate paths:

Once upon a time there was a handsome young man.  He was newly heartbroken and, deciding to leave his village  for the first time (going against his mother in the process), he wandered into the woods.   After some time he came upon a young woman, bathing in a clear stream.  Although she was not nude, the sight of her was one in which he was immediately enthralled, having never seen a woman bath before.  He was captivated and waited for the woman to complete her ministrations.  It was not long and she emerged, dripping, and basked in the sun upon a rock, feeling the divine light replenishing her soul. 

Slowly, so not to startle her, he approached the bathing beauty.  After a brief conversation, he offered to show her his home and the land that had been in his family for generations.  Although the woman had never been to the village, she had heard many stories about it and was intrigued.  She reluctantly agreed to leave her water world and took the young man's hand.

It was not long before the young man asked the maiden to marry him.  Having been seduced by the village life, the merriment, the exotic places and people, she agreed, not realizing how she would in the process, sacrifice her home and her self-love.

After many years of making a home for herself and her husband, the woman felt there was something missing and asked the man if they could not go fishing, for dinner had been beef, pig and chicken, of which she had tired and desired something more of her previous diet.

The man, seeing an opportunity to spend an afternoon with his wife, whom he adored, in an activity that he relished, did not deny her such a small token.  They took the small boat out to the broad river.  There were many fish to be caught and the wife and husband lost sight of the shore in their delight of the pusuit.  Unfortunately, a storm had begun to roll in, and upon seeing this, the man cried out that they must immediately begin to row ashore, otherwise all would be lost.

For the woman, although all the fish she could possibly ever want lay at her feet in the small boat, and the man she most desired (and with all her heart loved) was alongside her, fearing only for her safety in his demand to return to the village.... she had finally returned to her water home. Despite the dark clouds and the misty spray on her face, she felt no fear. 

She responded, "Husband, must we go now?  The clouds are still far off.  It has been so pleasant a journey.  I wish not to return to the village so soon."

Her husband was aghast that she would consider remaining and began to row the boat in the direction of the shore as he spoke,  "My love, it grows dark and the storm threatens us.  Why would you not return with me to the shore and our home?"  

The woman, with her heart aching ,said, "My love, I can not return with you to our home.  Although you have caught for me all the trout, bass and perch  a woman could desire, I am not satisfied.  We have not yet found the whale."

The husband cried, "But there are no whales in these waters!"

The maiden responded, "Yes, husband, I know."

My intention today was to tell about how I found the book I was in the process of writing when my marriage began to crumble. I stopped writing at page 52 because I could not continue dredging up emotions of the past when I was burdened by the emotion of the then present.  I wanted to share in my joy that today, for the first time in 6 years, I had the ability to return to that book and pick it up.  I am healing.  I am becoming whole.

I reread parts of the book. 

The first page tells about my husband and how much he loved me, so much in fact that he wrote pages about me.  Sweet, endearing pages that were filled with his love.  He gave those to me over six years ago.  I wanted to write this today to explain that, while our parting was heartache, it was meant to be.  It had to be.  I have accepted this.

But why?

Because I was in search of a whale.  I still am.