Fond Memories of Infidelity and Divorce. Wait. What? Are you high?

He may not look big here, but if you saw the size of the tire you would shiver a little.  The totem meaning is at the end of the post.  It’s a must read.  But read these words first, please…

 

Is it possible to look back on the discovery of infidelity and the process of getting a divorce with fondness? Somehow, it is. It’s taken a bit to unravel the how, but the feeling of fondness for that time in my life is genuine. It’s real. It no longer upends me to take a glance back in time.

Weird, though, right?

The other day the Tall Dude found my old camera. He pulled out the chip and we loaded the pictures into the computer. They were taken one month after The Pocket Call. The Dudes were dressed up in their Halloween costumes – a desert soldier for the Tall Dude and Dracula for the Little Dude – posing in the home my former spouse and I purchased just a few weeks earlier, the morning after The Pocket Call. The home we would grow old in together. Because “everybody was happy”.

There were pictures of the haunted house pumpkin we carved, and The Dudes playing on the hillside in the backyard. Spooky photos from their first trick or treating adventure in Marin. Just a few days before he would return home. And the s…tuff would hit the fan. I didn’t know you all yet as it was a few weeks before His Giant Mistake was created at 3AM in my Mom’s living room.  That was the most touching realization.  At a time when I felt abandoned, I was about to be embraced by thousands of magical kittens.

I smiled from my heart as we looked at the pictures. The Dudes marveled at how young they looked, which I found hilarious. Not one of us felt sad. Although back then I sure did. And scared. And floored that my spouse could lie to me on such a grand and overwhelming scale. And certain that I would never be able to look at these pictures again and not dissolve into tears at the loss of our family and shake from the anger of being betrayed.

There’s nothing fun about the realization that your spouse is living a double life, having a physical and emotional affair, and is totally fine with lying about it so he can have his ‘Nanny’ (me) and his Mistress.

But what is fun…stick with me… is the idea that I created that reality so that I could see how freaking strong I am. How I can make really good choices. And learn from really bad ones. How feeling sad and angry gives me the opportunity to feel happy and stoked. How fear is an illusion. It only has power if I give it power.  

Fear is the optimist’s anticipation.

That outrageous collision of events – moving across the country, buying a home, hearing my former spouse chat it up with his mistress, whirling around and seeing NOTHING familiar, feeling so disoriented – sped up my evolution as a human being.

Yup, we’re STILL evolving.

I had been toying with being a more spiritually alive human during our marriage. The conscious breathing classes, that magical fire walk on a mountaintop in Charlottesville, Virginia, beginning to work with the energy of the animals as guides, all inspired by meeting Melissa. Each time I dabbled in that vat of magic I felt so ALIVE. High, actually. Buzzed. Super-charged. Brimming over with energy and love and knowing and so very centered. So sure of the next right step to take. Or at least, I felt safe enough to take bold steps.

The Pocket Call pulled the world out from underneath me, leaving me floating in space. I looked to the moon to stabilize me, like keeping an eye on the horizon when at sea so your stomach doesn’t heave. That crisis event brought out the very best in me. I feel that’s why I look back on that time with fondness, for the way The Dudes and I handled such unexpected upheaval and personal betrayal with a great deal of courage and optimism. As a result we were blessed with an abundance of love and support and adventures. We worked hard as a team and got rewarded handsomely by the Universe.

Now that the crisis is over, leaving behind relatively small speed bumps by comparison, I’m getting a little sidetracked. Spiritually a little lazy. Little things, like hitting the elliptical instead of the trails, have quieted Nature’s cheers for my next move. I don’t see her clues as easily. Bigger things, like responding to my former spouse’s request for modification of support, have lowered my vibrational energy, because I allowed it.

That can have game-changing consequences, and not in any good way.

The Fall Equinox and September’s new moon held hands last night, like Nature’s version of a power couple. The Brange of Planet Earth. Earlier in the day I FINALLY finished gathering all the legal documents and got them attached to all the right forms and stapled them JUST so and drove to the courthouse to file them.

I pulled into a parking space, gathered up the various packets of paper and swung open the car door. With one leg out I pulled my gaze up from the pavement to the eye balls – all eight of them – of a HUGE spider that was staring right back at me. He (She?) had spun a web off the tire of the truck parked next to my car.

My spontaneous reaction?

A massive gasp and smile, as if I unexpectedly ran into my best friend. If I just leaned over 18 inches I could have planted a kiss on that arachnid. I’m going with it being a male; he was ripped. Large legs, sizable body, some stripes to show off his fashionable nature. This is Marin. I’m surprised he wasn’t wearing either leather loafers or cycling shoes.

His head was so big it looked like he was wearing a helmet.

At the time of The Pocket Call I feared spiders. Had I experienced this encounter several years back when I was a card carrying arachnophobe I would have been passed out on the pavement covered in the contents of my own stomach.

Upon moving to Bolinas I discovered they have always been cheering me on. They’ve been waiting for me to realize that I was born to write.   Once I stopped fearing them, and killing them, (You do remember the tarantula, don’t you?) I no longer feared that I wasn’t worthy of being a writer. I embraced the opportunity. I stopped questioning my talents. I exhaled and said, This is who I am.

He came to see me, that not-little, eight-legged furball who is the keeper of the primordial alphabet. He came to remind me that in order to realize my potential I have to get back to focusing on my vibrational energy. I need to get back to being playful. And fully present in the moment, entirely conscious.  I need to bring the me of then along with the me of now to be who I have always aimed to be.  

Now that wouldn’t seem like such a hard thing to pull off after having pulled off being present and witchy before for long stretches of time, but I get tricked by the 3D so easily. I get sucked into the daily nonsense, like making the poor choice to ring the doorbell at my former spouse’s house when dropping off a baseball bag to tell him that I would prefer he not leave The Dudes home alone while running an errand. A simple request, right? Turned into the 57th time we’ve proven to each other that we cannot communicate effectively. I’m not going to judge why. I’m simply going to stop engaging. Nothing is ever gained. And I am so much more peaceful and happy when I don’t engage.

Why?

I don’t dig his energy. I’ll leave it at that. Bon voyage.

But what I mostly don’t dig is what I allow to happen with MY energy when I’m in his presence or dealing with things like court proceedings regarding our divorce.

The Magician (Yes, we still make time to see each other – lately for hikes to swim in Bass Lake.) encouraged me to release any emotional attachment to the task of responding to his motion to modify support. That was a simple suggestion that transformed how I proceeded, making a complex (for me) task fairly reasonable to execute. Then he encouraged me to step up onto my platform of helping people heal from infidelity and divorce by coming out. He encouraged me to see my role beyond writing HGM.  To weave together the skills from my past with the knowledge gained in recent months and inspire others to make magic.

 

Mr. Ellen DeGeneres has injected a tremendous amount of play into my life.  His daily routine of sketching on the ferry ride to his office and then ‘playing’ all day in a career with which he is smitten, and returning to his art for his journey home is such an inspiration.  He works his butt off.  But to him it’s all play.  He has his priorities perched in the proper places.  He makes each day special by tending to his passions.  By feeling worthy of taking time to celebrate his talents, celebrate life, and get silly.  

 

 

He’s really good at getting silly.

That’s really good for his vibrational energy. He hasn’t explored playing with vibrational energy…yet. In some strange way that has inspired me to wake up from my 3D slumber. To get back to my witchy self.

Tis the season!

So last night as the Fall Equinox and the new moon debuted to my standing ovation, I took stock of where I’ve been and made a commitment to where I need to go next. And how I’m going to get there.

First, I need to stoke the fires of optimism, anticipation, and fearlessness. Next, I need to call upon my Observer Self. Let her know she isn’t forgotten and give her permission to wield a megaphone if necessary. Then I need to gather up all the morsels of wisdom, lessons learned and epiphanies like a pile of fallen leaves and carry them with me on this next part of my journey.

I’m coming out, kittens. I can’t stop infidelity, but I can affect how we respond to it. By speaking up and showing up I can do my part to inspire people to spin magic out of the ugliness of infidelity and divorce. Ultimately, showing people how their own creations are perfect, especially the parts that look so ugly.

On November 8th we will gather in San Francisco at a.Muse (of course) Gallery to explore spinning magic, benching the Ego, remaining centered in the midst of chaos, creating beautiful boundaries, feeling safe being vulnerable and developing an eye for leading a more intuitively guided life.

You may be dealing with infidelity, divorce or both or simply want to live a more playfully present and optimistic life filled with magic. I’m confident that we can create a shift and make a huge impact on each other in just a few hours.

Details will be posted first on Facebook, so please visit and do some liking.  I’d like to keep it to 15-20 kittens so we can all participate deeply.  I guarantee you will walk out the door and spin magic.  Or your money back.  For real.  (Working out a reasonable fee, tossing in a personal gift from me, and creating a foundation for charitable contributions.  …all of the sudden I feel so grown up…)

We’ve been waiting for this moment for so long. Finally, we get to be together.  I am beside myself…to make room for all the buzzy, shimmering feelings of anticipation.

The timing couldn’t be more perfect.

A kitten sent me this without knowing what I was pondering last night under a blanket of fog, my skin wet with drops of ocean rain:

“With the powerful combination of Equinox 0º Libra and New Moon 1º Libra, we can use this opportunity to empower our intentions, dreams, and projects to reach the highest manifestation possible.  Libra is an ally to focus our intentions for peace, unity of all consciousness, and unconditional love. 

“Enlist this Equinox/New Moon portal with honoring and ceremony, at the least a private review of where you have been and where you now want to head.  Present your open heart and your intentions to the invisible world, so it may align and serve the divine manifestation that you are.” (Pat Liles, ThePowerPath.com)

Her timing was perfect, too.

In order to bring it fully on November 8th and every day, I must be tapped in to Nature, centered with an open, vulnerable heart, and firing on all cylinders intuitively. So that is where my focus will be with the support of the Fall Equinox and the new moon.

Set intentions, kittens. Feel the thrill of being fully present. Believe that you can spin magic, right here, right now. Know that you are fully in charge of your creation, your daily reality on the planet.  Come be with me on the 8th.    

I promise you that eventually, not far off in the future, you will look back on this time with fondness while marveling at all the magic that swirls around you.

Love yourself,

Cleo

Please join us on Facebook and Follow me on Twitter.  Staying connected makes this journey so much more exciting.  Thank you. 

 

From linsdomain.com: 

A spider totem teaches you balance — 
between past and future, physical and spirit, male and female.
She is strength and gentleness combined.
She awakens creative sensibilities
and reminds you that the past is always interwoven with the future.

Spiders are the keepers of the primordial alphabet
and can teach you how to write creatively. 
Her body is shaped like the number 8 and she has 8 legs, 
which is symbol of infinite possibilities of creation.
Her 8 legs represent the 4 winds of change and the 4 directions of the medicine wheel.

Spider’s message is that you are an infinite being who will continue
to weave patterns of life and living throughout time.
Do not fail to see the eternal plan of creation.

Those who weave magic with the written word usually have this totem.

Remarkable.