answers you so desperately seek are not outside you—and never were. They are the only place they can be—inside. And your broken heart is the perfect crack through which you can begin to draw them out. You’ll start asking big, new questions—questions you’ve never considered. And you’ll start listening. At first, the voice will seem small and you may not know exactly what you’re hearing or who’s speaking to whom. But you if you persist, you and your loving wise voice will build a relationship that overflows with trust and love. Then one day, the strangest thing will happen. You will find yourself once more on your knees, but this time you will have fallen to the ground with tears of gratitude for the crisis that taught you how to live.
Janet Conner, author of Writing Down Your Soul, Soul Vows, Find Your Soul’s Purpose and more
It is 10:30 p.m. on a clear, cool Saturday night in spring 2003. I sit on the sofa in the family room at my parents’ house, folding warm clothes fresh out of the dryer. With the television blaring and the aroma of “Spring Delight” laundry freshener hovering in the air, I look at Dennis, who has fallen asleep in the recliner. He has been on alert since early this morning. Today is the day.
One by one I carefully fold pink blankets, yellow bibs, and light green burp cloths and place them into neatly arranged rows beside me on the sofa cushion. I look toward the laundry basket to make sure I have folded everything, and notice one light pink onesie laying on the rug beside my feet. These days leaning, walking, bending, getting up, and simply moving my belly around in the world is an effort. Long gone are the days of the cute basketball belly; my midsection has morphed into “globe” status. Before gravity gets the best of me, I lean to the side and quickly grab the onesie. I sit back on the sofa and, with arms outstretched, I hold the onesie in front of me. It can’t be more than 10 inches long. With my head slightly tilted, I quietly look at the onesie and imagine the delicate life that will soon fill in all the empty spaces. For months, I’ve felt her move around inside the darkness of me slowly making her way into my world. “Who is she?” I wonder. I fold this last piece of clothing and place it in the bag for the hospital. Although I smile to myself, the wonder and excitement I feel is once again eclipsed by a slight trepidation. I’m not new to this. I have traveled this path once before. I know her arrival will be painful in more ways than one.
I know the unfathomable pain of bearing down to push a baby out of my body. I know the blanketed feelings of exhilaration and relief that come as soon as I release the baby and the pain entrenched in every muscle in my uterus. I know that, with the arrival of my new love, I will once again be thrust into the wanting of mothering; wanting full participation that will inevitably be interrupted due to financial responsibilities and work commitments. I also know that, as I relish the magic in the fleeting moments spent caring for her, it won’t last, or at least not in the way I want it to.
Six years prior and with a completely different mindset, I had returned to California from my volunteer assignment in Honduras with the Peace Corps. I needed to do something, as in attend graduate school or get a full-time job. Upon my return, a good friend told me about the teacher shortage in California and that, because I am bilingual, I would be a good candidate for a teaching position. At that time, if you held a bachelor’s degree, you could apply for work as an elementary teacher while attending school to obtain a teaching certification. I took my friend’s suggestion and submitted my resume to the Santa Ana Unified School District on a Wednesday morning. Two days later, on Friday afternoon, I was employed as a first-grade bilingual teacher.
The quickness with which I was hired by the district led me to falsely believe this would always be the case; that as a job seeker I would be received well whenever I applied for work. I could not have been more wrong. This would turn out to be the first and last time that my resume and I would be accepted with such eager enthusiasm.
Throughout my first years as a teacher, I thoroughly enjoyed the engaged curiosity of my students, the creative aspects of instruction and the professional encouragement I received from the principal and my coworkers. At the close of the first semester of my second year of teaching, the students were reading, writing, and speaking English better than when they began the school year. I beamed with joy over the progress the students made throughout the year. The students could feel the pride I felt for them, not solely because of their improved test scores, but because of their continual effort. They worked hard, and they could see the results of their efforts as it reflected in their reading, writing, and speaking abilities.
However, despite moments such as this, I knew teaching wasn’t something I would do for the rest of my life. Although I made notable progress in my first years of teaching, and was a well-regarded employee in previous professional positions, a restlessness lingered. Something was missing. Normally, I accept work positions that are a good fit as far as typical qualifications are concerned. However, no matter how well I carried out my work responsibilities, there continued to be an unnamable element missing; an internal longing that failed to subside, even in the best of professional situations. I knew I wasn’t meant to stay here, nor would this be the last time I would feel this way.
It was near the end of my second year of teaching when I decided I had had enough of living and working in Orange County. As a black woman in Orange County, I felt invisible. Considering I’d lived in the OC off and on for almost ten years and had not been asked out on one date, enough was enough. It didn’t take much for me to decide to relocate to the City of Angels—Los Angeles.
With so much diversity roaming about in LA, there is something, someplace, and someone for everybody. The only catch is, for all the good scenery, museums, weather, dating choices, and dance clubs, you pay dearly in the cost of living. I finished up my second year of teaching in Santa Ana and welcomed summer with a newly rented apartment in Los Angeles. Within a few weeks, I was hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District to continue as a first-grade bilingual teacher in the fall.
Living in LA afforded lots of opportunities for me to spend time with friends and meet new people. In keeping with my “someone for everybody in LA” perspective, that summer I was introduced to the man who would become the father of my three children, the man I would later marry, and the man with whom I would be compelled, through a series of unprecedented dire financial circumstances, to develop and usher in a new foundation for personal growth.
With his hands tucked away in his jeans pockets, he stood tall and quietly on the sidewalk and watched patiently as his childhood friend led my girlfriend and me over to meet him. The party was over and the outside late-night scene had just begun. This was the part of the night when final attempts were made and the excitement of the last romantic possibility was heightened. The three of us made our way through the crowd and stopped in front of him.
From the moment I was introduced to him, I felt an immediate return to love. I was drawn to him in a way that remained unknown. I felt as if I had known him all of my life. In his presence, I was intrigued, interested, and filled with the lightness of swirling butterflies. In the days and weeks that followed our introduction, I wanted to know everything about him. My head was trying to catch up to what was already known by my heart. Whenever we sat a dinner table together, walked through a park, watched the waves at the beach, laughed at silly personal stories, danced to our favorite Reggae music or simply lingered within the tenderness of each other, he attended to my every need with such endearing immediacy that I knew I was already loved.
At the time, the deeper aspects of our connection eluded me. I wasn’t able to fully articulate what it was that so intensely drew me to him and him to me. What I have come to understand is we draw unto ourselves the very people, situations, and circumstances in which we share similar energetic vibrations and subconscious patterns. Of the millions of inhabitants of the LA dating scene, I managed to meet the one man with whom I would not only share an intense enduring love, but who would also mirror
