Cartwheeling through Life: Trapped - for how long? Choices

Thank you, Brian Thornburg, for posting this song: Bruce Springsteen's Trapped Paris '85

For years I've been "wearing the same old chains" - I remember exactly where I was when I sat and let this song sink in and heal. I was in the apartment I shared with my boyfriend of three years. Few knew we were a couple, and fewer that we were living together. I felt felt "trapped" financially, and emotionally. Most of my ever-accepting family knew, and my grandfather used to tease me because he liked to send cards and notes to me through the mail, even though he lived in the next town, and I saw him fairly often, but the only address he had for me was a P.O. Box. He said he'd go to the post office and peek in that box and never see me. Ironically, he probably drove by, or within about 30 feet of my place of residence nearly everyday. He loved going down to "The Point" at the end of Stonington Borough as often as possible.

I was not happy but could not imagine living on my own again (financially) or moving back to my parents (again). So, I settled on a place with a friend of a friend and that was a disaster, but somehow, the opportunity to live with a good friend helped me move forward. My next relationship eventually had me feeling like this song was going to be my anthem for the rest of my life. I felt infinitely more "Trapped" fifteen years later, only this time I had no job, still had not finished my four year degree, and had a young child to raise. Still, I was reminded that "the truth will set me free / And ... someday I will find the key" by my older brother, who is also a huge Springsteen fan.

"Well, it seems like I've been playing your game way too long" - so finally, I quit. I just recently quit letting someone whose opinion I do not respect, control any aspect of my future. I finally realized I was still trapped "And it seems the game I've played has made [ME] strong."

I've been teaching "my eyes to see, beyond these walls in front of me" and this week, not only did I finally walk out of there again, this time I took my child with me. Now we are on a journey forward, and wonderful things began happening for both of us. We are both becoming:

"Tougher than the Rest" (the next song that played automatically this am).

"Well it's Saturday night..." and I took the lyrics deeply and fully in my heart, even though their heart is still in a mess, it is healing... and I now know, while my ex may have "Left somebody's heart in a mess," they are still "looking for love" and I am "tougher than the rest[! and]... I learned you get what you can get" ... [I am] "rough enough for love" and I make sure my kid knows every single day: "Honey I'm tougher than the rest... the road is dark / it's a thin, thin line / But I want you to know I'll walk it for you any time..."

The next song that played as I was writing this this morning was "Waitin' On a Sunny Day" - and guess what? It is!!

and the ABCs are coming "Anyway"

Because... it is a Beautiful day and I am

Choosing happiness and

Discipline with a Dose of audacity

"Ever-present choices" and the sanctity of Experience in Endless Practice by Mark Nepo

Focusing on the good that lies ahead
"Gift of wakeful effort allows us to find our way back to what is heartening and affirming." p. 30

Health, Happiness and strength

I am grateful for this gorgeous day and our willingness to seize it!

Jon Kabat-Zinn reads Derek Walcott’s LOVE AFTER LOVE

Knowledge and ability to search for and obtain exactly what we need

LOVE AFTER LOVE: The time will come when,

with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself,

to the stranger who has loved you

all your life,

whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

Most of my journals have been purge, and scrapbooks are being pulled apart

Now is the start of New life

"Our resilience is the mystical breath that thaws us and brings us back to life." p. 31

"... Paradox of life is a fire that warms us; one kept going by the stoires and

Questions we add to it." p 30 Endless Practice

Rather than contain our feelings we can absorb them the way the earth absorbs and feeding the Roots of heart and soul with the water of our experience a quiet irrigation.