Breaking Promises

Dear Starlight, 

I woke up thinking of "breaking cycles." 

I woke up to the sound of rain, a sound I had missed without knowing I had missed it.

I woke up rested after a string of restless nights.

"Can you believe it's Sunday? Can you believe the life you've lived between last Sunday morning and this Sunday morning? Can you believe tomorrow, you are setting off for a writing residency that you only discovered this week? Can you believe you are having dinner in Maine tomorrow with people you only met last weekend? Can you believe that all of these invitations from others only came after you first accepted your heart's invitation to make space on your calendar for them to arrive? Some part of me asked my other selves. 

Change takes its own time. What can suddenly feel like a cascade of aligned opportunities is actually the result of a steady series of adjustments. It could be what David Whyte titled a breakthrough last weekend or what my coach also called a breakthrough last week.

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When I was a child, I didn't know "who I was" or "what I wanted to be" when I grew up. I only knew I desperately didn't want to be a child, particularly not a child in my home. I looked ahead to a horizon where I could escape my family and grow out of my small body. My dream was to be free, to be safe, (and to wear the types of clothing I liked, which tended towards flamboyant colors and patterns). 

Books were my earliest safe home. They were places I could enter while simultaneously shutting the real world out. I became a bookworm and devoured every Nancy Drew in third grade, quickly followed by all Roald Dahls. I would ride my heavy yellow banana seat bike to the library like the mailman, constantly returning books and picking up books in a heavy satchel. Alongside the BFG, I read Emily by Lucy Maud Montgomery, who is also the author of Anne of Green Gables. I may be one of the only few young girls who didn't love Anne of Green Gables, but I loved capital LOVED the Emily series. I read my way through the basement floor of our public library, otherwise known as the young reader's section. I would read just to read, sometimes rereading the same book three times. For a while, I read the most giant books I could find, 'Gone with the Wind' 'Clan of the Cave Bear' and 'Dune' just because I loved being hundreds of pages into a book with hundreds of pages left to go. Eventually, the librarian ushered my adolescent self to the second floor, which was the adult section, as I had finished the books in the basement. Initially, this was a great excitement filled with a twang of the risque. What words would I find in "adult pages"? I have a clear memory of standing in front of the blond wood shelves holding new flashy adult fiction covers. I remember feeling uncertain about what books to choose and randomly taking a few from the shelf. This was the beginning of great disappointment in literature. I couldn't trust all adult books to be titillating like much of the young adult fiction I had read. Suddenly, books were thick and dull. 

Of course, that's not true, but what was true was that the librarians on the adult floor did not know how to guide me to tasty books. The drought didn't last long, as once I was in High School, I found my way again through Kerouac, Tom Robbins, Sylvia Plath, and many others. 

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Last year, I decided to reread Emily, as I couldn't remember the story in the slightest. All I could remember was my cultish love for the series. I remembered a fuzzy feeling of the stories being "witchy," which, of course, I was secretly obsessed with and equally terrified of being raised under the wrath and rod of Christian Fundamentalism. 

Reading Emily late at night as a middle aged woman was like reading a biography of myself. Emily was my alias. Who she was was who I am. An 'I' that I couldn't have recognized when I read the books before I could boast I was two digit years old. An 'I' that was not witchy but intuitive, (same thing). An I that quivers in the majesty of nature. An I that has no patience for injustice. An I that is madly curious and self-determined. An I that wants to write odes to beauty.

Additionally, the landscape that Emily inhabited was similar to my own, an island floating in the salty Atlantic North. 

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This year, I determined to take time off of work, something I have not done in five years. 

It was excruciatingly difficult for me to trust in "my deservingness" of time away from Place Corps. It was excruciatingly difficult for me to trust that Place Corps would be safe without my constant oversight.  It was excruciatingly difficult for me to trust that I would be safe and supported in this decision. But contrary to how I felt, I acted with self trust and put the PTO on the calendar.

I did not know where or what I would do initially; I only knew I wanted space, solitude, and an opportunity to write. I decided to go to Prince Edward Island, where Emily, the character, was born and lived. 

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Five years ago, just before launching Place Corps, I took myself on a two week self-directed residency on a train across the country. The night before I was leaving, my mother called me. She quickly and fiercely stabbed me in the gut. 

"I need to tell you that you are being incredibly selfish to be taking this trip alone. I am worried about you leaving behind your husband and child. You could have and should be taking them with you. I just feel, as your mother, that I must tell you this for your own good."

Nothing of that sentiment was for my own good. 

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Last week, in conversation with my coach, I shared a visible pattern I have been enacting in all my endeavors as an adult that is not aligned with how I want to truly be. She said this looks like something called a sacred vow. Some promise we have made as a child to someone or something with power over us. "I promise to do……so that I can have…" and the work is to uncover the vow or promise and say it and then break it. Like a witch. 

When I was a child, I didn't know who I was or what I wanted to be; I only wanted to escape. Escape from my home, from the confines of my small body, from a life that didn't feel it fit me. Books were my refuge—Emily, in particular, was a reflection of the authenticity I craved. She was intuitive, fiercely independent–what others called rebellious, and connected to the natural world and herself in ways I, too, wished to be. I couldn't have known then that she was a mirror for parts of myself I had yet to name and claim.

Now, as I prepare for this trip to Prince Edward Island, the landscape of Emily's world, I realize I am not just going to a place but back to a version of myself I left behind. The vow I made to 'be good for others' has shaped many of my choices, confining me as I sought freedom. It has taken a lifetime, but I am ready to break that vow and reclaim my own story.

I did this work last week. 

Only days after revoking my sacred vow, I sat listening to David Whyte describe how "the promise you made became imprisonment over the spontaneity of your life." He said, "How to break a promise: Make a place of prayer, say what you needed to say all along, let the words go…"

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I broke a promise to my mother to be good for her. 

I said what I needed to say all along.

Tomorrow, I am going north, to Prince Edward Island, to a writing residency called the "Hideout."

My mother offered her support for my trip.

Breakthroughs happen.

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May you accept the invitation of our own heart calling you.