Remembering to Fly: My biggest lesson of 2022

And when the universe puts you exactly where you're supposed to be...

I have been so grateful to those of you who regularly read my newsletter posts. I know that I have been MIA for awhile. It has been a challenging time where I learned that my partner of four years was cheating on me when the girl he was seeing me reached out and we both learned about each other and the truth of the double-timing.

Hurt, angry, sad, heartbroken, betrayed, with all the tangles and webs of lies were all as horrific as you would imagine.

Coupled with my own previous journey, there was—of course—yet more grief to grappled with and my PTSD brain/body responded by going into overdrive, hyper-vigilance, pumping cortisol through my veins at alarming rates.

(If you haven’t experienced this before, the best way I can describe it is when you are on an adrenaline and caffeine high. Even during times when your body is supposed to rest, to sleep, you feel like you just drank a triple shot of espresso and almost got into a car accident. You are trying to calm yourself down, but to little avail.)

But what I want to share with you now is not that story but the beauty and blessings that came from it.

I always hesitate to perpetuate that normal bullshit that we hear so often that “Everything happens for a reason.” I think it’s trite and a platitude and doesn’t mean much. How can I? I do not believe that it was supposed to happen that my brother and father blew their brains out. That’s fucked up.

But I do think that there are ways in which God in all of Her glory and the abundance of goodness and energy in the universe transforms shitstorms, the crap piles of life, into amazing blessings for us. The Creator and the Universe can respond to truth and good energy and love and make amazing things from the shit.

That I do believe.

And I want to share a story of how I experienced this:

I moved to Minnesota to serve as the Director of Composition for a year long position, grateful for the opportunity for a promotion, a raise, an opportunity to work with graduate students. I did this with the full support of my life partner and reassurance that I would frequently come home to my home base (our home of Charlotte).

A few weeks into my time there, his tone changed, communication was limited, and there was a lot of cruel things said.

A very long story short: I ended the relationship for good in late October.

One of the first few days of September I received a message from a girl—we’ll call her Monica—and she wanted to know if she was safe in regards to my former partner, to date. I was blown away, as it was a mere few days after we had ended the relationship.

We agreed to talk because we both had questions. I called her. And we both learned that their communication began when I was still en route to moving to MN and casual dating occurred soon thereafter.

Obviously, we were both upset. Confused. Angry. Hurt. She was distraught to have caused me such pain. I have reassured her again and again that she has nothing to feel badly or guilty about. She did everything right. She too was a victim—though I hate to use that word. But she also was used, lied to, just as I was.

I still recall though most vividly through a haze of shock and disbelief that on that first phone call with her that she reassured me that I was worth more than this treatment and and better than him and that I was in her words: “You’re about to fly.”

Remember that, the fly part. That’s key.

We have since become good friends, confidants and and support to each other through processing all that has happened and all the lies. Compared timelines and photos. We have helped each other.

Of course I ended the relationship when I realized that there were lies entangled in lies and no accountability from my ex that he did anything wrong, when I had all the proof to show otherwise.

But the blessing, the coolest part of this, is that I got a friend from this. I took a step back and had some space, and realized the self-centered and narcissistic tendencies of my ex, the emotional abuse, manipulation and gas-lighting. I regained my footing and I am sitting up straighter and learning to accept better treatment.

I learned to fly.

When I returned to North Carolina to pick up my stuff, I met Monica. We took a picture together, talked and spent time together. At that point, from hours upon hours of conversation, I felt that I knew her. We had been friends for weeks, but had never met.

The part that amuses me so greatly about this is—I truly believe that my ex believed that we would turn on each other. That we would fight over him. We instead turned to each other.

We took a selfie together and I gained freedom from someone who has trauma, insecurity, selfishness and needs to heal in ways himself but—I know see—simply tried to project it all outward. I say all of this not with anger or resentment, but forgiveness and sadness for him.

My new friend, Monica gave me a bracelet and engraved on it was the phrase: “You’re going to fly.”

It was not until most recently that I slowly realized the significance of the flying metaphor. It has appeared in my life elsewhere and often.

My beloved mother—who I have written about before—frequently told me: “fly baby fly.” She struggled so with my leaving home and southwestern NY state, whether that was to college or to getting married or to Indonesia or to Ohio or to North Carolina.

This was not normal empty nest syndrome but it brought forth within her deep panic, feelings of abandonment, loneliness and depression because of her own issues. She struggled so much when I went on to do things.

I know she wanted me to do them, but it was deeply painful and incredibly difficult for her to do so.

Still, she would often tell me: “fly baby, fly!” She wrote it in cards when I graduate from high school and when I got married and when she wrote notes to me in a book she gifted me, “Pearls of Wisdom from a Mother to a Daughter.”

This was such a re-occurring trope for us that when she died and I gave a short speech in tribute to her. I explained to the visitors that she would say that to me. I ended the speech by saying, “All I want to say now is: “Fly Mama Fly!”

The metaphor of flying resurfaced again. From another woman. To reassure me. To comfort me. To sustain me and empower me.

Why did Monica use the fly metaphor? I am not sure. I need to ask her.

But I do not believe that it was accidental. Meant to happen? I don’t believe that we were both meant to endure lies and betrayal. I don’t believe we were supposed to be mistreated in this way.

But I do believe that I was looked out for. My mother’s energy and spirit. God. The Universe. I believe I was meant to find the truth.

The reason for my transition to living and working at St. Cloud, Minnesota, ended up as very, very different than what I thought it was going to be. I know that I was pulled from there and transplanted there for reasons that I did not fully understand at the time. I did not yet grasp the full picture.

But I am grateful.

Sometimes we do not get what we thought that we wanted so and it is the very best thing for us.

I will also say this—

There is something very beautiful about the power of women to support and encourage one another. There is power and potential in women when we rally and build up each other in ways that men often do not do, many cannot do and—quite frankly, as the case with my ex—are intimidated and frightened by the ways in which women will push back and stick up for each others in ways that cause men to stagger. And are deeply rattled by.

It is not lost by me that his web of lies continued after being caught in desperate attempts to pit us against each other.

But men never not worth fighting over (especially ones that lie, cheat, manipulate and try to evade accountability).

The pervasive message that women ought to stick up for them or by them, regardless, that we ought to turn on and blame each other representative of a deeply patriarchal and misogynistic culture.

It is glaring obvious to me that his family members tried to get me to stay, to condone his behavior, and, when asking that they call him out, refused despite their own beliefs that such behavior is unethical and unacceptable.

It is also not lost on me that when I would not swallow such behavior easily that the blame turned to me. Women are often women’s harshest critics, actively and joyfully participating in blaming the victim, the fucked up double victimization that occurs in blaming rape victims.

This is all done in a desperate pursuit of feeling that they have purpose and roles in a patriarchal culture that bombards us with beliefs that we need men—husbands and sons and partners—in order to be valid. To have a purpose to exist.

No wonder my ex never liked his ex wife’s supportive friends or my best friends who would advocate that I deserved better.

The older I grow the more that I realize that women are forces. We are goddamned cheetahs—read Glennon Doyle’s book, Untamed.

Men know that. They are intimidated by that.

As Elizabeth Gilbert wrote: “I spent years trying to get from one man support/things that I could only ever get from a group of women.”

I have learned a great deal. I have distance and space from emotional abuse and I am healing.

Now, as we start 2023, I take with me a greater sense of self esteem and self worth. I take with me a deep devoted appreciation for women. For my girlfriends. And a renewed sense of my cheetah-like capabilities.

You all, too, have them. Don’t forget that or make yourself small like I did.

Most cautiously, don’t listen to the women who have also forgotten that. Protect your energies. Who builds you up. How certain people make you feel when you’re around them. Even when—or perhaps, especially if—they love you and you love them.

Love inevitably involves vulnerability and it’s scary.

But to carry on a message that seems to be the revolving and not evolving mantra of my life—

“You all too are going to fly.”

Here’s to 2023 and new beginnings.