offering anything more than the product line to close the deal. Now, I wasn’t that gorgeous -- just young and vulnerable and therefore “fair game.” But I had had enough stuff happen in my life by then to know that I wasn’t going to “take any bull shit.” And I didn’t.
Two amazing things happened during this time of achieving economic solvency. One is that I began to like myself more than I ever had before. I’d made my way through some very rough times and I was still standing. Life had given me some tough blows and I had withstood them on my own and without help from anyone. After all, I was an orphan. My sisters weren’t able to help me. They were going through tough times too. I stood alone.
I was terrified on a daily basis and woke up each morning with terrible knots in my stomach. Would this be the day when no one would buy anything and my ruse would be discovered? They would find out I was all bluster and couldn’t really sell after all. But by the time I’d put my darling boys to bed, I had made it through another day on my own. Something my mother had never felt she could ever do, I was doing every day.
I would take inventory at the end of each day. Had I fed my children good, nutritious food? Did they have clean clothes, a clean bed to sleep in, and did we have a roof over our heads? Were the children cared for properly each day while I was at work?
If the answers to all those questions -- just for that day -- were yes then I was okay. I had to trust that tomorrow would take care of itself. I couldn’t afford to worry that far in advance. I’d fold one more load of laundry, then fall into bed and sleep through another night.
The other amazing thing is that I was finding time to ponder questions about life as all the rules I’d been taught were dissolving. I had no family to turn to, no elders to answer these questions. I knew I was going to have to find the answers on my own.
I was certain my parents had all died without ever knowing why they had been alive. My parents certainly had developed a philosophy of life, but it hadn’t served any of them well. I thought of all the times I had asked my stepmother for her best advice and she had lovingly shared all she knew about how to be a good wife and a good person. Yet cancer had cut her down in her prime also. It appeared that her philosophy of life hadn’t served her well. Where could I find the answers to how to live a good life in a way that would not leave me open to wanting to die young as all my parents had done?
That became my quest. I picked up a simple book on astrology that seemed to fall into my hands at a book store. I devoured every word and finally felt there was something that could give me a modicum of meaning to this mess called life. As I read the chapter on my sun sign, I began to see that here was something that could tell me more about who I was. Learning about Virgos was telling me about myself.
The most amazing contribution to my awakening came from a woman living upstairs in my neighbor’s home. Shortly after I moved in, I discovered that she had just finished taking astrology classes; she handed me her books to read. She also did my chart and patiently explained all she saw there. Here was a woman who lived the life of a free spirit who did not ask permission. She simply did what made the most sense to her. Her parents lived nearby and she loved them dearly, but they did not guide her. She guided herself. The voice within was the one she answered. This simply amazed me. For me, she was an inspiration who breathed life into my soul and spirit.
Chapter 11
A Woman’s Search for Meaning
I am a grandmother for the first time. It is amazing what feelings and emotions are arising within me since Zack and my daughter-in-law, Monica had their baby girl, Jane.
How sad, how sweet, and how wonderful it is to take a female form. And yet, this is what this little girl has chosen. As I wandered through the early years of my adult life, I felt totally at the mercy of my hormonal urges. I believe, as young women our bodies betray us more often than they aid us. I can only pray that sweet baby Jane will have more wisdom than I possessed as I wandered through those years.
Back then, I was a single Mom, a homeowner and a breadwinner but I didn’t want to do it alone. Even though I was successful in all I was doing, I felt a failure because I was alone.
I wanted a relationship. It was the mid 70’s and though many women were claiming their independence in every way they could -- I wanted to have someone want me, love me, and complete me. That was the dream world I was living in back then. So, I found a fellow who was also divorced and had kids the same age as Zack and Todd.
He wasn’t a bad person, and was actually quite nice to his sons and mine. I just didn’t love him enough to want to try to make a relationship work. But I mostly didn’t love him because I still didn’t know how to love me enough to want the very best for myself. I was compromising in order to not be alone. After a particularly rancorous weekend, I asked him to leave. Being alone seemed better than dealing with someone else’s problems as well as my own.
I decided to see a therapist who I’d learned about through NOW. She was a brilliant woman who was a political refugee from South Africa who had fought Apartheid and been imprisoned. She was strong, clear, and wise. Life had taught her many lessons. She was just the kind of woman I needed to help me see -- even if it was only ever so slightly -- who I was in my own right. She had survived so much. I needed someone like her in my life now.
My therapist first helped me forgive myself for all the guilt around my parents’ deaths. I learned that all children feel some sort of guilt when their parents die. I’d held the belief deep inside me that if I had only known more, I could have done something -- anything --and they might have lived.
She also suggested I read a book entitled Man’s Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. She thought it might help me with the fears of my childhood that still haunted me regarding the extermination of six million people, most of them Jewish, like myself. I didn’t think I could survive such a terrible ordeal if it were to ever happen again.
Frankl was a holocaust survivor. He had a transcendent experience in a camp that helped him see that there was a way to survive anything at any time. He was able to connect with his wife in spirit as she was dying. He hadn’t been with her in years, but he knew in that moment that she was fine and in a heavenly realm filled with Light. After the war he founded a new branch of psychology that incorporated what he had learned in the camps. He had found a way to survive.
Man’s Search for Meaning showed me that even in humanity’s darkest hour, a connection was possible. Whatever this connection was, it could comfort us no matter how difficult life might be.
This book set me on a quest. I would have to know what he had learned. I didn’t know how I would do that. Even though I felt that something was caring for me as I was muddling along in my new life, I didn’t know how to call it to me and directly communicate with it. I just felt that it was there.
As I began this quest to find this something that could comfort me, I was hired away from the advertising specialty company by a typesetting company that wanted a manager for an art supplies department. It was a fun move, but not very profitable, so I decided it was time to earn more money. I went to a women’s organization in Cleveland to see if they could find work for me. To my surprise, they sent me to a Savings and Loan that was looking for someone to head a new marketing division. Here I was, with no degree, continuing to land on my feet in a business world where I really had no clue what the heck I was saying or doing! The S&L set me up in a branch office to begin outreach programs to build individual savings accounts.
My first day on the job, I was examining my new desk and I felt a button on the inside leg of the desk. I pressed it. In minutes, the bank was surrounded by police. They had their guns drawn. I’d set off the alarm. I was too embarrassed to let anyone know what I had done. I sat there in silence as the building was checked and the staff was quizzed. Why hadn’t anyone explained to me what that button was for? Why hadn’t I realized