Happy Birthday My Seat on the Beach

Four years ago today, I started the blog: My Seat on the Beach. It was a cathartic exercise in helping me to work through the angst and and anxiety of divorce. On Valentine's Day of 2008 my divorce was finalized. We used a mediator to guide us through the California divorce process which dictates that communal property (anything gained during the marriage) must be split 50/50.

The best resolution we could reach involved a 50/50 split of our belongings--which included my ex receiving half of my retirement fund, and my paying him alimony for a limited number of years. Had we litigated, I would have been required to pay more alimony and, most likely, for his lifetime.

Starting this blog helped me maintain my emotional and spiritual equilibrium during the early post-divorce years. I disciplined myself to write a blog each week for that first year during which I learned to rest in the comforting, protective arms of God/dess,  and to commune with nature and my creative spirit.

Some of my favorite blog pieces are from the first year--especially my first blog, Hail to Pippi, an ode to my earliest heroine Pippi Longstocking. myseatonthebeach.blogspot.com/2008/07/hail-to-pippi.html I didn't know it then but that first blog post helped set the tone for my divorce recovery. Life is an adventurous journey and I want to face it fearlessly, just like Pippilotta Delicatessa Windowshade Mackrelmint Ephraimsdaughter Longstocking,

Happy Independence Day!

Letter to Myself

                                                                                 

This is a letter I wrote to myself on New Year's Eve, 2007                      


Dear YaYa:

I am sitting here looking at an envelope that holds my divorce papers, signed by Chaz, waiting my perusal and signatures. I received them this past Friday, December 28, but I just don’t want to deal

with the next tsunami of sorrow I expect when I read them, so I am putting it off for a few more days. I’d rather start the new year signing them than end this year reviewing them. One seems to have more of a promise of “possibilities” than the other.

Possibilities. I know they are hard to imagine. I can see you squinting for them in the distance; all you can make out is the mirage of your marriage…in ashes.


I just want to tell you that wherever you are in this process, it is okay.

                               It’s a zig-fu**ing-zag process:

                  

                                                                                   

It’s a roller coaster ride…
It’s a nightmare…
It’s anxiety-provoking…
It’s depression inducing…
It’s an opportunity to let go…
It’s an opportunity to turn it over…
It’s an electric prod…
It’s tears and nausea…
It’s recriminations…
It’s a dull ache…It’s a pit in the stomach…a knot in the throat…

It’s an opportunity to let yourself off the hook…
It’s a chance to get off life’s merry-go-round…
It’s a chance to rediscover your real rhythm and pace…
It’s a chance to learn to trust on a whole new level…
It’s a time for self-forgiveness…
It’s a time to accept the truth: you don’t know a fu**ing thing and you can’t control a fu**ing thing and we all will die…
It’s an opportunity to heal at a deeper level…
It’s an opportunity to experience Spirit’s grace.

Please do not pressure yourself to move through this at any prescribed pace. It just doesn’t work that way. You know that from other healing work you have done…and now you are learning it again…on a whole new plane.

All year, you slid between the heat of your anger and frozenness, waking up startled from nightmares of amputated limbs. But, somewhere, in an unnamed place, I am sensing a thawing. You will be all right.     

   My biggest hope is that you will reconnect with your creative self and allow her unfettered expression. Right now she is hidden, bound and gagged. But she will rise again.                                                           
Alas, you must give yourself all the time you need to heal. You will know, in a real organic kind of way, what you need and how to take care of yourself. In the meantime, rest on the prayers and well wishes of those who love you.

Happy New Year.
Love, YaYa