Often I have heard of the importance of being or walking in The Flow. I have felt the flow many times and stepped to aligned myself to it. It did not always feel comfortable or easy. When I was a young mother, married to an abusive man, it seemed that I needed to align myself to my then husband's wishes and expectations in order to be in the flow to avoid the abuse. Hard as I would try it seemed I could not align myself to him. I was always missing the mark and paying a heavy price.
After years of struggle and many years of therapy, I learned that I needed to stand up, hold my ground, do what I felt was right and not respond with shame and guilt to his temper tantrums. When he realized that I would no longer bend to his fantasy of what a wife should be he filed for divorce. I felt waves of shame as divorce was shameful in my family of origin. I felt abandoned, betrayed and cheated out of 20 years of my life devoted to putting him through college, medical school and a surgery residency while raising four children. He was now a surgeon making huge amounts of money and able to take me to court multiple times to lower his support requirements.
I could no longer make the payments on the house I had worked nights to be able to buy some five years before. Feeling desperate when there were no rental units suitable for moving my children and I into that fit my budget, I went back to my lawyer. He said it would cost me a minimum of another $10,000 to go back to court to fight for more support. He suggested that I should allow my husband to have custody of the children for a time while I went to college to get a degree so I could better support the children myself.
Hadn't I spent the previous twenty years working hard to support the dreams of this man to be a doctor for "the benefit of the family" as he told me repeatedly. I raised the children alone, while he was in school full time. I worked nights at the hospital, while my children slept and then slept just three or four hours during the day incrementally before going back to work again. All the while dreading the return of my husband from his obsession with becoming a surgeon which I knew was for him merely about being wealthy, prestigious and powerful. His return meant being abused again.
I had started therapy in hopes of learning how to be a better wife for surely it was all my fault that he was displeased with me. My therapist was a woman. She was such a gift in my life. I came to see myself through my own eyes, a totally new perspective for me. I remember after the divorce was final waking one morning with the sun shining through the bedroom window as I had never seen it before. It was warm, bright, glittering on the dust and so alive as was I. I was glad to have survived and suddenly aware of having lived twenty years hoping not to awaken in the morning.
I got my education. I got a job making enough to support myself and my children. I got my children back. I was devoted to raising my children and staying afloat in the corporate world of men. I felt like I was in the flow then. I was however totally disconnected from any ability to interact with other adults beyond a working relationship. I had been disconnected from myself as a woman, a sacred being of light and love. All that was feminine had been the source of pain and suffering. I had to suppress the divine feminine within me to survive.
Now at sixty-six I have spent years discovering myself, my innate beauty, my connection to the divine, my belonging and finally my unique gifts. It is that uniqueness and connection that provides for Walking in The Flow. This is the ability to move and act in harmony with nature, to take our place as divine creations of Mother Earth.
