Yesterday I decided to reread an old book I had. The book is titled Medicine Woman and I first read it in 2007. That was a time in my life when I still thought everything in my marriage was working and my family was still together. I didn’t really know my family had any problems but I had gone to a counselor because, for reasons I didn’t understand, I was depressed. My counselor had recommended this book because I am a doctor, alternative in my practice and she thought it might help me connect to myself and my craft We thought this might be the problem.
Learning to Trust the Journey
The book is great and at the time, it did help me connect with a part of myself. Maybe my journey began there. I don’t know. Maybe it was the way the book showed me pieces of myself in the writer and her teacher that allowed me to see the dysfunction in my family, eventually stop sugarcoating the verbal abuse of my husband and to leave the picture of the happy family I had always wanted. That was 9 years ago.
The book had been tucked away in one of the many boxes that have moved with me to the several places I have lived since I started on this path. When I opened the book, I found two papers folded in its pages and took them out to see what they said. I could tell from the handwriting that they were notes I had written and did not remember so I read them again out of curiosity. On the first sheet, it said, “The truths you know about yourself might not be true.” I didn’t really understand that and told myself it was something to think about.
The second note was longer. It talked about the reason people don’t heal. I thought I must have written this idea because it would interest me as a doctor so I reread I now. It said that people don’t heal when the cause of the illness is still hurting them. The note went on to explain that while this is often obvious in the case of physical or external causes of illness, it is hard to see when the cause of the illness is due to internal or psychological forces that hurt us. Then the note went on to say that even though many of us do recognize the importance of psychological work and spend a tremendous amount of energy to break free of these internal messages that attack us, we still don’t heal if we carry hope attached to an outcome
This hope keeps us tethered to the situation. Is it possible that hope, the one thing saved from Pandora’s box in the myth when the ills of the earth were released, could actually be dangerous? A disturbing thought but I had to admit there is some truth to it.
In my own life, I have seen how hope has kept me attached to destructive situations. There were many times in my journey to free myself from abuse that I have been lured back by the hope of everything working out this time only to take everyone through the pain of having it fall apart again. I have struggled with hope many times.
In moments after these disasters, I have even tried to put out the flame of hope and cursed it for springing eternal, I have even tried walling off the flame of hope but then I would fall into despair which I couldn’t tolerate and I scrambled to take down the wall and rejoice in the flame and end up back where I started. Hope is heralded as a good thing so why did it lead me back into unhealthy situations and repeated pain?
Learning to Trust Myself
Along the journey, I realized that what I had been calling hope was really false hope. The Merriam-Webster definition of hope is to want something to happen. This hope for me has often been to just create the same old situations that I hope will magically work this time. So often our hopes are for things familiar, sweetened with things we really do want to be intertwined with things we are told we should want so these hopes look good and feel comfortable.
I have hoped for my ex to realize and apologize for the ways he has hurt me and I have hoped that our family would be back together. In my mind, the problems would be solved with counseling, a trip to the ocean, and prayer. All of which I have tried and all of which I think are good but ultimately, I was just trying to recreate what didn’t work. Obviously, this kind of hope is dangerous magic for someone in recovery from years, perhaps a lifetime of unhealthy situations. If hope is to wish that something will happen, I realized I needed to hope more carefully.
So, what do I hope for now? Nine years down the road I have learned a lot about myself, what really is good for me, and what I want to invite into my life. I was able to give up any hopes or longing to rekindle my marriage a few years ago (yes it took that long). My youngest child is now 21 so even that has changed. I have done a lot of work on codependency issues and will continue in this growth.
As I go further on this journey, I realize I don’t really know what the future should look like. I want to be careful to not reopen wounds that are starting to heal and still I don’t want to be so afraid of making a mistake that I don’t move forward. So what do I do I hope for now.
For me, it is safe to hope for love, peace, and abundance but I resist the temptation to imagine what that looks like. I am still learning about myself and what is good for me. There is a danger the details can still lead me back to false hopes. Now I am learning to be the sculptor that moves forward with chiseling while letting the stone reveal what it should look like. I am learning to be patient and open at the same time. I am seeing that this is a journey of discovery.
I look around me now at the life I have created in the past 9 years. It is very different than I first imagined when I started on this path. I had hopes then as wide-ranging as buying a house with rooms for my children and their children to living in a hilltop yurt overlooking the California Coast. I do not know what the future looks like and I will let it present itself. Right now, I live alone with my dog who is wonderful. I do live on a hill but we overlook a river from an apartment in Portland where I began and where we recently had snow. I am not surrounded by family. I could feel like a complete failure when I look at this because it is not at all what I hoped for but then I see that I am surrounded by flowing water, light now that the storm has cleared, and friends.
Good friends who helped me dig out after the storm. I do not have the old dreams that I hoped for so desperately. Maybe this is part of what was meant by the note that what I think is true about myself might not be true. My life is in many ways so much different than I ever thought it would be and I am OK. I have something better. I have regained myself and am learning more about who I am each day. I have grown so much in the past 9 years. I can now stand in the what is. It is with this hope, grounded in what is here today that I will move forward on this journey. I do not know where it will lead but I will not follow false hopes. I will not waste time or energy on that. I need my energy for moving forward.
When I look further into the definition of hope I see that it has an archaic meaning, a meaning we don’t often use now but maybe this is the meaning that was at the heart of the myth about Pandora’s box. The archaic meaning of hope is trust. The evils and troubles of life escaped to plague humans and she managed to close the box in time to save hope/trust. I am finding that where the journey leads is so much more amazing than I would have been able to or allowed myself to wish for. I am learning to trust the journey and trust myself. That is the hope I hold onto.