Where We Head When We Heal

Prism Women ©2002
Tucked in dark corners to collect dust
What are prisms but broken glass?

Yet strung gleaming, spinning in the light?
    Sun-dancers
    Diamond-catchers
    Rainbow-throwers.
Every shining cut casts the spectrum,
Each twirl offers a rainbow dance.

Then our gray days spin wonder.
Each polished cut hordes our light
To toss, teasing with every turn.

The trick to being a prism is to face the light,
Polish all the cuts,
Then let the magic happen.


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This may be kind of short tonight.  It's strange when the old ways no longer work. I have allowed my heart to be completely accessible for the first time in my life, having saved some part of it to come out again when  I thought I would be safe at last.  Turns out that I was mistaken, and that my heart was even less safe with him.  And with having every corner of my life vulnerable, this particular misstep on my part has taken a toll.

We can, as I said, reach a wall and feel there is nothing left.  And I don't know that I can find a way to keep my home. And I really have no idea how I will make a living at all, and the disability application process is appallingly slow--I've been through it twice before. I worked my way off it twice before. Not this time.

I think that this is where it is all so hard. I've reached the end of my back's getting better.  And losing my home ... I can't even talk about that fear.  And losing the career that I worked so  hard to create, the career that my central nervous system could handle for so long.  At this time of life, it is hard to create another. To have no retirement. To have no health insurance within the next three months. Possibly to lose one's home.

This, my friends, is why this man's desertion, his betrayal hurts to the core and has had such an impact.  It was the hope he created that is the hardest to lose. No hope is better than false hope. I was foolish; he was worse. But it's the timing of the thing, that has made it so very hard. It's done; he's gone. Faster than he arrived he's done. And I have to get on with this life.

Then I thought about my friends, my "laundry eagles" who are hovering around me now, closing ranks. The flock is here. They call; they send notes. They let me know I am better than any man who would betray and leave me. They tell me all the things to make me remember I'm whole. We talk about Christmas and children and chocolate. We laugh about nothing at all. They make me remember to shine, these women. All by myself, to shine.

The strength of their love begins to sink in. They tell me he's stupid to leave, that he's weak and he's blind if he cannot see he's left the best woman behind. And I smile. These are not things that I say to myself, they are things I find hard to believe. They tell me I'll find a way to fly, to earn my own way, to do anything I want. My friends think I will soar. They think that I am better than I ever believe of myself.

That's what women do, when the men feed and just leave. We close ranks. We lift one another up, put her on a pedestal and unabashedly worship while she heals. I turned 50 in 2002, and it was a difficult year... among difficult years. One of my friends, when she read this poem said, "Well, that's the thing Jetty. You have so many cuts, you are the brightest prism of the bunch." Lucky me ... or maybe I am. Too soon to feel that just yet.

My women friends are busy polishing just now. This newest cut is so sharp and so new, they are busy polishing the sides, smoothing the edge so that I stop cutting myself in all this pain. They won't let me go back into hiding, I'm afraid. They keep drawing me out, reminding me that I will always have a home, or perhaps I'll have twelve and just move from place to place. The Gypsy Jet, they call her. I offer to take my tambourine. We laugh and for moments at a time, I forget the ache, and just be.

And here is this heart of mine, that he so carefully drew out, looked at from every direction, kissed, held, promised to cherish for life... and kicked to the side of the road. Here it is. And now I have written about putting it away. Tying the whole mess up in a box and throwing in a closet. I did that with the horrors for years, the ones I have only hinted at yet. I did it before, like an artist. I could reduce a memory to a bit of tissue and stuff it where I could not see or feel or hear or taste the pain, where it was dead to me. I am an expert at stuffing the pain.  And that's what I'd done with this man before, this love of my life. I stuck him far away so I barely remembered his name. And here I am again, ready to put it all away.

Only now I don't know how.

I have lost the ability to hide. I have lost the knack with turning the phrase to make what is poison palatable. I think to put all those parts back in a box would kill something more precious still. He woke up all this love in me, all this sparkling faith that life could be good.  He said he wanted just to make it so I would not have to worry, so that I could get up every day and CHOOSE to write or to paint, without having to worry about keeping my home. Such a pretty wish from him. Yes. There is bitterness here... but there's something else I've not named.

Perhaps the only way I can salvage my soul from the damage is to keep that sparkling heart. I loved without conditions, without artifice. For once in my life I did not hold back, I did not pretend, I lived in each moment with him.

The cut that he made is so deep in this newly revealed heart, this child's soul who finally came out to dance. He cut her; I bleed. But the women work on just the same. She is not doing too well, but I think... I think perhaps ... she has a name to me, a child in me, the part I would let no one see. I think I must let her stay here.

Little Rita has come out at last. The quiet, somber, big-eyed child who sat up with the dying,
who turned on her brother when he did his worst,  and simply asked him, "WHY?" So he ran.
who dropped the knife, choosing not to attack her attacker,
who closed her sister's eyes.

This child came out for this man who is gone. She slipped her hand in his, one sunny afternoon, certain of his love, of his honesty, certain that this man was her home. She had waited for him to come back; and he did. Never once did she think he would leave ... again. And this tiny child, with the strength of the mighty has, for the first time in my life, been walking through my life with me for six weeks. Since the first time he was here, when she came out only twice, she's appeared only when I needed strength to walk with grace through times when I had none to give. She would come. But mostly she stayed in the shadows, rarely daring to come out just to breathe. I have loved having her out. She does different things with paint. She takes no crap from him or anyone at all. Rita dances without moving at all.

And now she's been ripped open again.

But something's changed; I tried to start putting her back into that box, to that cold, gray place, she shouted me down. She clung to my dress. She begged me to stay with the lights. I told her I didn't want her to hurt any more, that we just can't take the pain, but she made me turn and look.

"LOOK AT THE LIGHTS!" My little girl screamed and I turned and I saw and I cried.

Paige, Martha, Judy, Andrea, Laura, Sue, Linda, Sue G., Nancy, Ann, Gail, Martha L.,

Came the Dozen, Dancing
Twirling, laughing, throwing rainbows every where...
skipping toward us
with tea and with cookies,
with puff quilts and stories,
with hairbrushes and pillows,
coming toward us with nothing but love.

I think I need Rita with me now. I think I need to not stuff one single thing anywhere at all. For the first time in my life, there are no secrets left.

And I am terrified.
And I am heart-broken.
And I am weary to beneath my core.
I am revealed.
I cannot allow his abandonment to cover this newest light.
The women will polish,
But we are finally whole.
No matter what the pain ahead, or loss.
No matter where we make our home,
The women will help us heal.
 ... and we will dance rainbows at last.