ultrasound results

In keeping with the pregnancy metaphor, the results of the ultrasound are in. It's pretty late in my metaphorical pregnancy, considering that I am in my 8th month, due in 30 days, but up until now I was not sure of the gender of that baby. Now I know. As predicted by my friend's prophetic dream, it's a little American baby boy. He is aptly named after my middle name Frances, which is derived from St. Francis of Assissi. Since we are not talking about a literal baby but a new life for myself, his name is not Francis, nor Francesco, but San Francisco.

30 days from now I will be starting a new life - in San Francisco. I love Portland and I will miss all of my beautiful friends there, but San Francisco it is. The news came in on Sunday, right in time for the chocolate workshop. Within the last 2 months I have really been finding my passion. Since translating for David Wolfe I have been doing a lot of soul-searching to find what exactly it is I want to do with my future, and I kept coming back to chocolate.

Chocolate is sacred. I can easily spend a 2 hour workshop talking about chocolate while whipping up samples. The first chocolate workshop I did here in Germany I did with zero preparation, no notes, no concept, and found that I was completely in my zen place. I love chocolate alchemy. And just when I found my passion and my superhero name, Chocolate Rainbow Warrior, I was also given my superhero assignment: Sacred Chocolate in San Francisco.

So, that's the metaphorical baby that's been growing inside of me. I am excited to meet it and see what this new life is going to look like. I know so little yet but I can't wait to nurture and grow my passion and love. Only 30 days until birth!

roots & branches

"I am not interested in raw foods," the lady who owns the local health food store told me. I had invited her to my chocolate workshop. "It's too difficult, you know? There are so many nutrients and minerals that you can only get if you cook the food. It's too much work to find all the necessary supplements to make up for eating food raw."

There are people you can reason with, and those you can't. She seemed to be of the latter sort, so I simply replied: "I don't just do raw foods, I also do superfoods and-" She interrupted me: "oh, that's just some crazy American thing, we don't need any of that over here."

There are many things I love about Germany: obviously and first of all my family and friends, German culture. I love the energy of places that have been around for ages and have seen centuries, even millennia of human history. I love the revival of medieval culture, mythology, art. I am happy about the level of environmental consciousness as opposed to the lack thereof in the US. I appreciate the preservation of ancient ways of living, a more sustainable infrastructure, etc...

Basically, I love German roots. My family roots, my cultural roots, and Germany's historical roots. There is a fundamentally different energy in places that have roots. I feel like places have memory, like the energy of historical events lingers and gives those places a depth that makes you feel grounded and connected to the past. I love that about medieval events held at medieval castles, castle grounds that have hosted human drama, wars, weddings, deaths, births, love - all that is human life -for generation after generation.

Germany's roots run deeper, stronger, and richer than those of the hodgepodge culture of the US. But there is a flip side. Germany is so deeply rooted that it has difficulty branching out. It does not like stretching into new realms, trying out new things. Germans are more set in their ways. While the US lacks a certain groundedness, change is far more easily accepted. It is no wonder the hippy movement started in the US. And to this day, California, the West Coast, the US is known for new ideas, new developments, new movements.

And that is why I am moving back to the US. No, I am not an American patriot, I do not stand behind US politics of invasion and dominion, environmental degradation, and whatnot. But neither do I agree with everything the German government does, and above all, politics are fairly irrelevant to my choice of home. I live and breathe an alternative way of life that is so far removed from the sphere of "normal" politics and society that it matters little wether I live my life on the margins of the German or American society.

I am coming up on having spent a full year in Germany. I had to go back to my roots after the ground erupted beneath me in what seemed like my personal Armageddon. I survived and realized my divorce was not the end of the world, quite the opposite, it was the earthquake that was breaking the ground for a new life. I am in my 8th month of metaphorical pregnancy, carrying this new life and mission within me. It's been kicking quite a bit and many of you have had the chance to touch and feel what is about to be birthed.

The time is coming to shift from my focus on my roots to an exploration of my branches. I am ready to branch out, stretch myself high into the sky, and try out new things. In order to do that I am moving to the country that is more supportive of my branches. That does not mean I am cutting my roots. But I am ready to test how strong my roots are and let them support me as I branch out further and higher, reaching to the sky, as ambitious as a sequoia.

advent and pregnancy

This summer I was told by a psychic that I was going to be pregnant soon. My startled and alarmed look made him laugh and he immediately added "metaphorically speaking, of course!" Phew. A month later I got a letter from an old friend, telling me she had had a prophetic dream in which I gave birth to an American baby boy. She was certain that the baby was American, and she also interpreted the dream figuratively. The month after that I had another friend talk to me about pregnancy in a spiritual sense and in Berlin I was told once again that I was pregnant.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the season of Advent - the season of waiting. And I realized that am indeed pregnant - metaphorically speaking - and have been for several months. I am spending a lot of time in retrospection of the crazy year I have had. Eight months ago, at the rainbow gathering, I had conceived the hope of a new life. The process of liberation from my abusive past had begun and I felt the beginnings of a new reality growing inside of me.

The dark night of the soul was starting to change into the dawn. I could see the light and even though I was still stumbling around in the semi-dark, I knew I was headed toward it, no matter how often I kept tripping and falling along the way. In Berlin I got a good look at the light I am going to live in. I also entered into my metaphorical third trimester and I really started to feel big and pregnant.

These last couple of months of literal pregnancy are daunting. It is no different with metaphorical pregnancy. I feel hindered in living my daily life because I am so full of expectations. It is hard to be in the here and now if all you want is to be in the there and then. I could spend all doing things mothers-to-be spend their days doing, like decorating baby rooms and going shopping and whatnot...

And I am annoyed with not being fully in the light yet. I know this not the dark night of the soul anymore. The dark night is over. This is the time of morning when the sun has already risen but the shades are still drawn and I drifted back to sleep - probably because I am so big and pregnant that I don't want to get out of bed. It is a time of semi-darkness, full of odd and senseless dreams, often confused and disturbed. Truth and reality penetrate into my sleeping mind but are distorted into blurry and often troublesome visions.

I want to draw the shades and let the light stream in, but the lattices are a tightly woven web of tensions within my family, dark emotions of guilt, depression, feelings of worthlessness, a parasitical consciousness that resents being sent out my body, and a daily uncertainty of the future. Each lattice seems to hold the others in place and sometimes I feel that if I could just pull one loose, the whole thing would come apart and the sun's rays would caress my face with eternal bliss.

If metaphorical pregnancies progress just like physical ones, my due date is in a little over a month. I often wish for that baby to come early, but I am not going to induce. I am going to have a natural birth. Oh God, I hope that baby is not going to be late! And yes, I am afraid of the birthing pains of moving once again, starting my life all over again - from scratch, but I know that it is all worth it, for soon I will give birth to my beautiful, precious new life.

a year of food and emotions

I am drinking an odd super-drink concoction, looking out of my window at a gorgeous sunny November day and am commemorating the 1-year anniversary of the worst week of my life. It is very hard to believe that it has only been a year, it seems to me that ages have passed, a lifetime. I sit in silence, glance at the mirror, see my reflection, and smile. The name Annika comes from the Hebrew word for grace, and I feel that I have been aptly named. I love my name, and unlike a year ago, I am also beginning to love myself again.

I never know where to begin and always want to start with Adam and Eve - or in my case, Kim and Hanna, my parents - which is why I am writing The Gypsika Journals (www.gypsika.com). The past year will certainly be a major part of the 3rd Volume "Metamorphis of a Mystic". It tells of the spiritual transformation that started taking place when I dived into raw foods, cold turkey - or cold cucumber, for that matter. It tells of newfound hope and joy and a complete paradigm shift. But it also tells of the realization that I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which manifested itself through panic attacks, depression, anxiety, and even hallucinations.

In Summer of 2008 - after 6 months of an intense physical, emotional, and spiritual detoxification on a 100% raw food diet -there came a day that my husband referred to henceforth as "the day it died". It took me more than half a year to understand what that "it" was, and it will take several chapters of The Gypsika Journals to fully explain. What matters most, however, is how that day changed my life forever. "The day it died" my husband's mental health declined and he went through cycles of mania and depression coupled with loosing his sense of reality as well as various other expressions of psychosis.

Unaware of what had happened, I began living in an emotional hell. I listened to ramblings about how we were going to completely reshape and change our future and got dragged into the depths of hopelessness, all the while dealing with the symptoms of PTSD. I started to doubt my own sanity and considered checking myself into a mental hospital at various times, despite my aversion to school medicine, especially psychiatry. I could not understand what was happening and the more erratic his behavior became, the more I lost my own sense of reality and began clinging to him in my despair.

I became increasingly dependent on him. And he grew more and more abusive although I did not see it at that time. He went through days of crying uncontrollably and then blaming me for his suffering. Next he'd apologize and promise a brilliant future for us both. As the weeks passed he grew more and more cruel towards me. But he immediately denied saying hurtful things and uttering spiteful accusations. I had become so disconnected from myself, I didn't trust my own perception and memory anymore. I believed that I really was the awful person he was telling me I was.

By late summer of last year I was hating myself, thinking I was a terrible wife, an accident of nature, a burden to mankind, and should have never been born. I became more and more withdrawn, spent less time with friends, and lived with one purpose only: to try and reduce the anger outbreaks of my husband and somehow ease his suffering and please him. In September he came close to beating me. Then he told me that he was being abusive toward me in order to get me to leave him because then he could be rid of me and blame ME for leaving. After a while he broke down crying, apologized, and told me he did not want this to happen but that I needed to leave for a while so he could "heal". He sent me to Germany to stay with my parents "in order to save our marriage."

On September 11th 2008, exactly seven years after the collapse of the twin towers and with them an era of American history, my world collapsed as I was cast out of my own home. I arrived in Germany an emotional wreck, inwardly flinched when spoken to, rarely slept at night and spent half my days crying. But I kept in touch with my husband, through email and I even called him a few times. The worse I felt, the more I clung to our relationship and wanted to save our marriage. But day after day he grew colder towards me and once told me he had "earned the right" to be with other women. I was heartbroken and felt like some cast-aside mail order bride that had been rejected as "not good enough" for the market. Eventually I booked a flight back to the US for mid-October even though he wanted me to stay away.

During that time I started combating the pain with every distraction I could think of, including a return to cooked foods, primarily Nutella bread. I gained a few pounds and my husband told if I lost weight he'd "do anything" for me. I struggled to eat healthy and actually managed to keep some sort of balance between Nutella bread and other cooked foods and a massive amount of dandelion and other wild green juices. I managed to shed a few extra pounds and proudly returned to the US after he had said he was willing to try and "work things out".

The next few weeks were pure hell and I got to experience the man I had once thought of as warm and loving as my living nightmare. At one point I spent an entire night screaming in pain, clawing at the bedpost until my hands were sore and my arms cramped up, exhausting myself to the point where I literally could not get out of bed for several days. I crawled to the bathroom and didn't have enough strength to procure any food while he left me in that state and went out to party. During that time, a year ago, I did not think I would ever find happiness in life again, nor did I feel like there was any reason to keep on living. It was only the burden of guilt, the thought of how my suicide would torment my family, that kept me alive during those days.

Then a friend recommended a book on verbal abuse, and although I saw no correlation to my own situation, I decided to read it, having always been an avid reader interested in psychology. Somewhere around the first week of November a bomb exploded in my mind as I came to understand abuse. It was as if someone had turned on all the lights at once and I was stung by their blinding brightness. I could have beat any stoner in a contest of sitting on a couch staring at nothing for hours. I neither slept nor ate for two days while devouring one book after another on the subject of abuse.

And then came that week exactly a year ago where I put him to the test. Once I stood up to him and refused to accept a false accusation a new dangerous flickering entered into his eyes. As soon as his fist swung toward my face I knew it was way past time to leave. I immediately started playing submissive on the outside and I believe that is what saved me from getting beaten. But inside of me everything was starting to change.

I started to eat again, but since the two of us had gotten into raw foods together, I couldn't bear the thought of eating those foods anymore. I only realized it months later, but from that time on my diet consisted primarily of the foods he hated: arugula, goat cheese, green-tea soy ice cream, licorice, sweet potato chips, and ridiculous amounts of sushi. I literally ate nothing else until we flew to a gig in Portland, Oregon together.

We had lived in Portland for 5 years and I reconnected with my past, which was a powerful healing experience. Recently I had had people in Florida tell me that I was a shy, withdrawn, quiet person that was very hard to get to know. My friends in Portland thought I was joking since they all knew me as the exact opposite. We went out to all of our favorite restaurants from years past and I subconsciously used those foods to rebel against my husband.

We filed for divorce in December and I flew to Germany with my cat and two suitcases and nothing else to my name. He had spent all of our savings prior and kept almost everything of financial worth. I hardly cared anymore, I just wanted to get away. I decided I needed a break from dealing with trauma and emotional pain and was going to enjoy christmas as much as possible. So I consciously chose foods that would suppress my memory and my emotions. And of course I was in the perfect place, as Germany is cookie and baked-good Nirvana during christmas time.

My mom cooked for me and graciously adapted to making vegetarian food, often even vegan. In the beginning of 2009 I moderated my diet and ate a lot of traditional cooked German dishes, but less sugar and more raw foods. And the memories came. One after another I was bombarded by scenes from my past, abuse situations I had "forgotten" and for the next months I was cleaning house emotionally, spending a lot of time crying and being revisited by memories I did not I know I had.

By spring I was sick of dealing with so much pain all the time and tried to accelerate the process by going on a juice fast. I was flooded with emotions, especially depression. My family was very unhappy about the idea of a juice fast, often commenting on how I was too skinny even though I had gained more than 10 pounds. While I was still dealing with emotional issues from the abuse and divorce, I was now also faced with disapproval from my family. Since Germany had had a particularly harsh winter there were no wild greens yet and the cost buying everything at grocery stores was unsustainable. To my family's delight and my dismay I had to break the fast sooner than I had planned.

Late spring and early summer was yo-yo time. I'd go whole stretches of eating all raw foods again and started feeling great while processing more memories. Eventually the feelings of guilt for not eating my mom's cooked meals started to accumulate again. I felt isolated and frustrated and sensed a growing disconnection from my family. My mom is an excellent cook and soon the smells of dishes from my childhood would get to me. I've never been able to do the part raw part cooked thing. Once I'd have "just a little bit" of the cheese-covered potato casserole and "a tiny slice" of cake for dessert, "cheating" on being vegan "just that one time", I found myself back in the kitchen an hour later getting seconds, thirds, and Nutella bread to top it all off.

By summer I had managed to be all raw again during the week and eat cooked food with my family on the weekends. I noticed a tremendous difference in the way I felt, sinking into depression with great regularity by monday, feeling good again toward the end of the week, and getting worse again over the weekend. I had a flare-up of Candida, a systemic problem I thought I had more or less conquered by now. I remembered all of those passionate raw foodists in Florida who advocated an 80% fruit diet and spent most of the summer eating the 80-10-10 diet. Naturally, the Candida problem got worse and so did my mental health - or lack thereof.

I am incredibly grateful for what happened next. I was constantly on the lookout for raw food events in Germany but since I had not been able to find work, finances were always an issue. I found the Wurzelkongress in Berlin and asked if I could come as a volunteer translator. I was told that there was a translator already, but that they could use a second translator and I was in! Years of abuse had run down my self-esteem and coupled with an emotionally unbalancing fruitarian diet I started panicking, thinking I wasn't good enough as a translator. But once I heard the speaker was David Wolfe, I gained a new sense of determination, and started reading his books in English and in German to prepare myself.

I had turned 30 in May and my dad gave me and my brother a very special birthday present: a trip to the US! In August we flew to Portland, Oregon, where I had lived for 5 years, and then down to the bay area in California. I very consciously planned the trip to help me process memories. I spent time with the two other band member of my ex-husband and I used to have. Now it was just the three of us - and my brother (who was called by my ex-husband's name by accident more than once). I also went to the place where I had gotten married 9 years prior, a place I had not been to since the wedding. And I decided I was going to incorporate food as part of the emotional processing. So I ate at every restaurant that had special meaning to me, favorite places of my ex-husband's, the place we ate at right after our wedding, etc. It was memory processing in overdrive, exactly what I had been hoping for.

When I came back to Germany in September I was certain of two things: I was going to move back to the US, I had felt home the moment I stepped out on the street in Portland. Also, I knew that I was done with cooked food. I transitioned back into an all raw diet more slowly this time. I knew now that the 80-10-10 had had a disastrous effect on my health and started eliminating sugars from my diet, including fruit, in order to cleanse from Candida. I started eating Maca and Cacao over the summer and now added more superfoods and anti-Candida foods and supplements. By October 1st I had transitioned into a 100% raw and superfood diet and felt terrific about it.

The Wurzelkongress in October was amazing and accelerated my emotional cleansing journey by helping me release many false negative thoughts about myself. I came back feeling better than I have had in a decade, both physically and emotionally. I have been slowly adding more superfoods to my diet and am noticing changes almost on a daily basis. I started to realize in October that my vision had improved. I didn't really acknowledge it at first since I have never had eye problems, never needed glasses. But I went from having good eyes to having fantastic eye-sight. I don't know how many times I have asked myself if the fall foliage has always been this colorful and why the grass is so much greener than it has ever been before. I am still not used to this change and continue to be amazed at the sharpness of objects and the clarity of things.

I am also still releasing emotions and detoxifying from mercury fillings that I had removed recently by a dentist who was not careful about it. Mercury is also one of many factors in chronic Candida. At this point I am experimenting with different foods and superfoods, finding the balance between getting plenty of nourishment but not detoxifying too quickly. A year ago I suffered from muscle weakness so severe that I could barely walk. Only a few months ago I needed a minimum of 10 hours of sleep per night. At this point I am pretty much back to normal and I am having to remind myself to be patient and gracious with myself for not having returned to the level of fitness I once had.

Last year I would have estimated my age to be somewhere in the 50s if I hadn't known my birthday. Now I am starting to feel my age again, but am getting glimpses of feeling even younger. I am sleeping less again, sometimes even less than the 8-9 hours I have needed since I was a teenager. I also have more mental clarity and focus most of the time. I am impatient about really getting into shape again, being able to exercise and hike and do all of the things I love, but I am thankful that I have come this far in just one year. And most of all I have gained something I thought I'd never have again a year ago: unbelievable gratefulness and a very strong desire to get out there and LIVE!

The best day ever when everything goes wrong

So I am going to do something totally out of character today. I realize I haven't blogged in quite some time and there are many reasons for that. One is that I am such a Germanly organized person that I want my blog do be perfectly chronological and feel guilty writing new without being caught up first. I am being reminded a lot these days that I am living in the here and now so I am taking the plunge and posting a blog NOW. It's an education in freedom from convention and a character building exercise for me. Which actually fits the very theme of this post :-)

If you've been on my facebook you've seen a number of best ever photos, posts, smiles, etc. from the supercharge I got from the Wurzelkongress in Berlin. I most definitely had the best time ever at the event and came home ecstatic and inspired. But I know how supercharging at a festival or event goes, you come back and you crash. I was wondering how this post-partum was going to compare to a "normal" non-superfood event post-partum experience.

First of all the high dragged on and on. I got to spend Monday night with a lovely new friend, slept in, talked most of the day away, just totally hitting it off. When I finally left and went to my cousin's house I was really wiped out but so amped that I had trouble sleeping. The next morning it was quite the culture shop to sit around a breakfast table with unhealthy overweight family members, even young children showing early signs of the typical civilization diseases. I sat in front of a bowl of weeds I had collected in the garden as well as half an avocado while the table was filled with white bread, nutella, butter, cheese, and tons of different kind of meats. Eating breakfast was sort of like a reality warp and it took a while for me to adjust to the concept that these items on the table were considered food staples.

That afternoon we went to the forest together and visited the largest accumulation of ancient sacred burial mounts in Europe. Apparently the site is placed on a ley line and I remembered translating David Wolfe saying that reishi mushrooms are typically found on ley lines. I entertained the thought of finding both reishi and chaga with enthusiasm and prayed for both to happen. I figured I might as well ground myself and started running barefoot up and down the mounts and found a birch polyspore within minutes, then a reishi, and finally two birch trees with chaga mushrooms!

I left my cousin's house physically exhausted but emotionally and mentally energized. My family met my enthusiasm somewhat reservedly, as I had expected, but the next day I got to share my first wild-harvested chaga supersmoothie with Joerg, whom I met in Berlin. I felt like the magic would never end. While the feeling of manic ecstasy started to subside I continued to feel confident that a real change had occurred and I would be able to hold onto the positivity that had been rising within me.

Today came the ultimate test. Today I was faced with the question whether it was possible to maintain a "best day ever" attitude while everything went wrong. I woke up yesterday with an intense craving for maca dipped brazil nuts and bought some nuts right away and dug right in. They tasted somewhat "off" and as I kept chomping on them I kept thinking they were contaminated with some kind of mold or something. I felt a little queazy in the afternoon but attributed it to other factors (such as getting my period). At night I made myself a raw soup and joined my family eating cooked food at the table, feeling a little frustrated about the tension and disapproval energy always accompanying me eating differently than my family.

In my frustration I started craving comfort foods and reached for the brazil nuts. I knew it for a mistake before I was done eating. I had an adverse reaction almost immediately but forced myself to ignore it. Not even an hour later I started feeling really sick, as if I had contracted food poisoning. Within the next hour I was violently throwing up and kept thinking about the nuts every time I hit a wave of nausea. It took a lot of discipline to not berate myself for ignoring my intuition and to cycle into a thought pattern of self-condemnation. "This too shall pass" I repeated over and over again for the following hours of a miserable night.

This morning I woke up feeling totally spent and manifesting cold symptoms. I knew I had crashed my immune system and was careful to treat it gently today with healing foods but relaxing on detoxification. The disadvantage of having an extreme personality is, of course, trying to get extremely healthy extremely fast, which in turn ends up being unhealthy. But what can be more healing than laughter, I thought, and decided to laugh at my own silliness. In the afternoon I had a rough negative energy encounter with my family that made me sad and challenged me to practice forgiveness and not accepting feelings of guilt. Then I drove to the place where my brother goes to University and enjoyed the drive there, thinking I was going to have the best day ever after all.

Little did I know that the real test was yet to come. On the drive home I struggled to stay alert due to the cold and detox symptoms and the weakening of my system that was still going on from last night's ordeal. I decided to listen to best day ever lectures to keep my brain moving and my motivation up. At one point I was reaching for my water when I should have taken a freeway exit and breezed right past it. In trying to get back I ended up getting lost and ran into a traffic jam. Next I sat in traffic for a good long time until I finally had a chance to take the next freeway exit where I hoped to get directions.

I was so busy reading signs when I got off the freeway that I didn't notice the radar trap. Apparently I have earned my first speeding ticket today. The little demon on my shoulder started yelling all kinds of obscenities at me, about my failure and stupidity, but the angel on the other side won the yelling match and had me laughing at the absurdity of the fact that I had just had the most expensive photograph ever taken of me. Hilarious that I should be leaving a lovely stressed out portrait of myself floating around the German bureaucratically system before I head off to the States.

When I finally got directions and found my way back on the freeway I got into the worst traffic jam ever. What should have been an hour drive dragged into a three hour long stop-and-go ordeal. Then my bliss of having freed myself of all of my menstrual symptoms through raw foods turned into horror as I realized that once again I had forgotten about being on my period. I know, TMI, let it suffice it was not a pretty incident and I was stuck in 4 lanes of traffic with no way to get to a bathroom. I reminded myself that the only reason I got into this predicament is that I am no longer suffering from menstrual pain and that that was an incredible blessing. Then I thought about writing about this on my blog and how my American friends would get all freaked out because in the US we just don't talk about bodily functions so openly. And soon enough I was back to laughing again.

I finally got home after half an eternity and told myself that this way I was given the wonderful chance of learning so much about amazing new health strategies and discoveries on the drive. Oh, how I was looking forward to a hot shower. I jumped in, cranked up the water, and for the first time ever the water heater in our house gave out and there was no hot water. I washed in cold water, explained to my mom why I came home so late, and decided this would make for one of the best blog posts ever. I decided I would go to bed having had the best day ever. And just as I was ready to log off and lay down I got the most uplifting phone call, and believe it or not, logged off feeling like this was the best day ever!

If love is

If love is an ocean
let me drown in its depth
If love is a river
let me be swept by its currents
If love is like thunder
let me go deaf by its roaring
If love is like lightning
let me grow blind by its brightness

If love is a fire
let me be singed
no, burned alive,
through flesh and skin
through bone and heart

If love is a mystery
let me ponder
let me wonder
for all eternity

If love is
let me be

From heaven to hell and a glimpse of a higher heaven still

My stay in heaven didn't last. I knew it wouldn't, but I only expected to come back to earth, not to hell. I was on a gigantic slide, rushing me from heaven straight past earth and dumping me into hell with a painful thud. My own personal hell. I slid past a fallen world when I went to the dentist to get my crappy mercury fillings replaced and had one complication after another - anesthetics not working, mercury having entered the nerve canal, a filling penetrating into my gums, a tool slipping and slicing open my gums, a bleeding gash on my tongue - but still I kept on sliding.

I tried so hard to hold on to the bliss of rainbow land, to the healing I had experienced. And in some ways I did. I never lost fretted about my ex-husband again, and I never lost hope, having had a new hope set before me so recently. But I became severely depressed. The more I tried to share my newfound hope and my discoveries in the area of healing, the more I met with opposition. Tension between me and my family grew as they felt more and more uncomfortable - maybe even threatened - by my exploits into areas outside of the realm of evangelical christianity.

I started to feel torn between going on to become who I am meant to be and going back to who my folks would have liked me to be. To be fair, they do want what is best for me, only they believe my happiness to lie in the opposite direction of where I regularity glimpse it. As the tension grew I entered into a no-man's-land, hovering in the space between what was and what is to be without truly being at all. I longed equally for days gone by and a future I envisioned daily. I was in waiting and growing desperately impatient to live again.

Since I couldn't live in my future of choice yet -a writer, speaker, and healer - I sought to escape the excruciating tension by trying to conform to my family's idea of my happiness - a secure, "normal" life. I started eating "normal" again and immediately felt the effects of suppressed emotions and less energy. Although I felt more lethargic, I also didn't experience pain as intensely anymore and became addicted to this slightly anesthetic way of living. I also stopped seeking out energy healing modes, ceased doing yoga, etc. In essence, I was becoming quite "normal" and was starting to fit in better again.

But inside I felt like I was descending further and further on my slide from heaven to hell. I began to realize that this was a non-stop trip that did not include the exit Normal Life. I tried to struggle back up, but was as successful as a child walking up a slide in socks. At best I managed a few steps up before bruising my knees and falling flat on my tummy. Each time I reached out into my future, meeting with alternative healers or refusing to eat something I knew was making me miserable, I was either met by taunting remarks, shaking heads, or a silent onslaught of disapproval energy.

Right around that time my therapist started asking questions about my family and my living situation. As I described some of my struggles trying to fit in and avoiding disapproval she was very disturbed. We started talking about my upbringing (that's what therapists DO after all, isn't it?) and I realized that there were patterns and issues I had never dealt with that had actually set me up for an abusive relationship.

At first I was only getting more miserable. It seems like a contradiction to be living with your family while trying to work through your issues growing up. I started thinking of ways of moving out, but of course I didn't know how to manage financially. But then it seemed like the perfect opportunity opened up. I was invited to volunteer at a raw food event held less than 1 1/2 hours away. The event itself was awesome and encouraging, it got me excited about healthy eating again and encouraged me about the future.

And then I was offered a job. Not just any job. The perfect job. Or so it seemed. The raw foods event was held at an all organic natural healing retreat center and they were looking for someone to run the kitchen! I talked to the current kitchen manager and we hit it off. She started talking as if I already had the job. I stayed an extra day to try out working in the kitchen. I was confident and excited - until I talked to the retreat manager. She met me with a critical attitude, emphasizing how much responsibility the position encompassed. The more she talked, the more nervous I grew.

At the end of my interview I was a nervous wreck. One of the raw food event speakers took me out to the woods to eat a raw wild dinner consisting of wild herbs, mushrooms, and berries. Then we practiced Qi Gong together and talked around our camp fire. I was starting to feel confident again and went to bed fairly relaxed. The next morning I spent some time in meditation and felt prepared to start "my new job". And then everything went wrong. I didn't know where things were or went and was afraid to ask. A couple of professional cooks came to join the team and I got the impression that they did not particularly like me.

By the end of the day I had broken a couple of dishes, put the produce away wrong, turned the oven too high, couldn't figure out how to use the machines, cut the veggies wrong, and left with a new record of screwing up every 10 minutes or so. Naturally I got an email a few days later saying that I "lacked competence for the position". Awesome. Not that I would have done anything different in their place. I would have thought a total moron was applying for a position that was way over her head.

That was the moment I felt my bum thud unto the ground at the end of the slide. Final destination: hell. Source of condemnation: self. Thankfully I took a couple of looks around, got back on my feet, and decided I wasn't going to stay here. And thus began my journey upwards with the eventual glimpse of a higher heaven still.

And that glimpse came through meeting someone. A male someone. A male someone I connected with on several levels. In many ways he was the kind of guy I would want to be with. When I met him, I thought he lived on a whole different plain and would never even notice me in my lowliness. I was very wrong.

He took an interest in me. I was just coming back around, feeling OK about myself, but definitely a long ways from thinking someone as successful and well-respected as this particular someone could possibly take an interest in someone like me. We hung out as friends. Just friends. Of course. A hug here. A neck-rub there. A number of smiles. A larger number of things in common. A very long massage.

And that's where it ended. It could have gone further and there's no point in denying that part of me desperately wanted it to. But another - wiser - part of me told me that I was neither ready nor was he the right one for me. We were going to make great friends, just friends, but nothing more. He asked why I didn't want to take this further. I told him something along the lines of not being centered and not wanting to loose myself by opening myself further to him. I was trembling inside, taking a stand for myself and telling him "no". I thought I knew how badly wrong saying "no" to a man could go. After all, I had spent nearly a decade with a man who would not take "no" for an answer no matter how much discomfort and pain he'd cause me.

But he was not like my ex-husband. He nodded and accepted my "no" and respected me and my boundaries. I was so geared up to fight and defend my position that I was caught off guard. Next I expected him to terminate our friendship, since it was obviously not going to be taken any further and my ex-husband had convinced that all men were the same, only interested in the same old thing. I was wrong again. We spent more time together in which he was always careful to respect me and my boundaries while enjoying and strengthening our friendship.

Eventually it came time to part since he didn't live nearby. We parted as friends. As good friends with no further expectations. As good friends who would continue to share a connection and who would always share the secret of what could have been, what almost had been. A secret that made us both smile knowing smiles, knowing that we would continue to be very good long distance just-friends.

My encounter with this just-friend tore through the veil hiding a higher heaven behind the one I had already tasted. A heaven in which I could fully except myself as desirable, as beautiful, as attractive, as exciting, as sexy. My just-friend was starting to convince me of all of these truths and then some. His touch, though a just-friend touch, made me want to be me with all my heart, made me want to live in my body and nowhere else. I knew I had to gain that acceptance of self from myself rather than borrowing it from someone else, but my just-friend's temporary loan held the promise of my future - living in a higher heaven still.

soap bubbles

each new prospect of the future is a soap bubble, shining in a thousand brilliant colors, beckoning all my hopes and dreams to climb aboard. As if not knowing it is going to each and every time, I cast my soul into this beauty. And for a moment it soars, sheltered in the womb of the bubble. But it ends as it must. A burst, a rush of cold air penetrating, a bruised soul bereft of shelter tumbling to the ground amidst a shower of dull sticky soap droplets.

A week in my own heaven

I knew now that Hippydan's heaven was not mine. As well that it shouldn't be. It only took another week to find my own and I got to stay there longer than a weekend. Someday I know I shall actually take up residence there.

First I got a visit from one of my traveling hippy friends. I love playing tourist guide and enjoyed showing him where I grew up, taking him to places tourists never get to see. We celebrated easter together, dyed easter eggs German style, with onion peel, tumeric, red beet, and stingy nettles for paint, herbs for designs.

The saturday before easter we went to the old Lutheran church in my hometown. The service started at 11pm and we all entered the church in silence, in the dark. Instead of a sermon the service consisted of bible passages being read, starting in Genesis 1:1 leading up to the resurrection. Between bible readings we sang traditional church songs and spoke parts of the liturgy.

Once the readings got close to the resurrection story a small orchestra began playing. The sound of a violin moaned through the dark cavern of the church, joined by a cello and other classical instruments. As the music rose to become more cheerful a candle was lit on the altar and from there the light was passed from candle to candle, everyone igniting the candles they received when they walked into church. We sat in the balcony and watched the darkness flee beneath us, step by step, one flickering candle after another. The orchestra played lighter music until finally the resurrection was proclaimed, every candle flame danced and bathed the church in light and warmth, and a joyful tune boomed through the ancient cathedral.

As people started turning to their neighbors, proclaiming "he is risen" - "he is risen indeed" I felt part of something old and great, a tradition passed down through millennia, a hope celebrated by countless multitudes, thousands of whom had spoken the same words within these same medieval church walls hundreds of years ago. When we stepped outside we were given a freshly baked sweet roll each, baked with yeast since lent was now officially over. An easter bonfire was roaring on the lawn, casting its flickering shadows upon the church tower.

Sunday's celebration was as beautiful as easter should be. Even nature contributed by sending white and pink showers of fruit tree blossoms and sun rays warm enough for us to enjoy our feast outdoors. We ate a rich meal of German delicacies and mom baked challah. After delicious food, lots of laughter, and dessert, Jared, my brother TJ, and I jumped in the car to drive to the Belgium border where the German national rainbow gathering took place.

I didn't know what to expect but I certainly never imagined the gathering would be so different from an American gathering and come to mean something to important to me. Through the rainbow rideshare board we had arranged to pick up another traveling brother half way to the gathering but were in for a surprise when we found out that he and Jared had a close mutual friend Jared wasn't headed for the gathering but to stay with some Jesus Freaks in Koeln and apparently this mutual friend was going to be there as well. When we dropped Jared off, we were invited to stay for pancakes and left all smiles and hugs.

The gathering was in a deep valley right next to a tumbling mountain stream in the Eiffel mountains. I expected the gathering to be much smaller than the US nationals, but I was surprised to find only about 200 rainbows camped together. We arrived just in time for dinner food circle and as we turned the corner into the main circle a couple hundred smiling hippy heads turned towards us and called out collectively "welcome home". I must have grinned like a complete idiot for hours. After dinner we set up our new tent - "this tent isn't for camping," Jared had said, "it's more like staying in an outdoor 5 star hotel!" - and huddled around the fire.

There was only one main circle, one bliss pit, and one community kitchen. I couldn't possibly have kept track of how often I was asked what American gatherings were like. Someone even suggested I'd offer a seminar about American rainbow family since I was soon turning into the gathering's token story teller. Even though I missed the immense diversity of the US nationals, the freedom to roam for hours and find new camps with different themes all day long, I really came to appreciate the German rainbow gathering style.

Within no time I found myself in the kitchen helping out and once even running the show. Fittingly for Germans the gathering was much better organized than what I have grown used to. After the third "food circle" call that was passed on throughout the forest everyone gathered in main meadow, formed a circle and started holding hands. Someone then chose one of the rainbow community songs and we all sang together, then ohmed in unison, rose our hands to the sky, gave thanks, and sat in a circle. I quickly came to love this new rainbow liturgy.

What was curiously absent were the drums. There were some, here and there, but the entire time I was there no real drum circle ever formed. It was mostly singing but I loved that. German family has its own rainbow songbook and every night there'd be singing around the bliss pit. The tipi usually turned into a worship tent with a blend of reggae music, bhajan singing, and random worship songs. On the second night I was sitting around the fire while a group of musicians were playing reggae tunes I didn't know.

But then, all of a sudden, I started to recognized the chords and the words and my heart skipped a beat: Shimshai! Now back in bible college I lived in an affordable apartment surrounded by neighbors of questionable sanity. One neighbor with horn glasses thicker than a bullet proof window and a somewhat retarded grin came over to my place one night and handed me a home burned CD -"from the Essenes, cause you guys would like it, you would fit in, you know?" - then left again, grinning. I took the CD and said I'd listen to it, mainly to be rid of him.

I never would have thought that CD would become my absolute favorite. Beautiful reggae worship tunes that hinted at the presence of God even when I was in the depth of the dark night of the soul and didn't think there was a God. I loved that CD more than any CD I had ever had. For that reason it was in my favorite CD folder, which ended up getting stolen when the bus was broken into in 2006. I never talked to that neighbor about the CD again - he disappeared from the neighborhood somehow - nor did I ever find out what the artist was called. It was only since I came to Germany again last year that I found him online and downloaded his music.

I had never once met another person who knew Shimshai. Even on the drive to the gathering I was thinking about how awesome it would be to meet someone in Germany who knew Shimshai, that way we'd have something in common. And now this group of musicians started playing Shimshai. I dropped my bliss ware on the spot, jumped up, and joined the growing crowd of dancing, smiling, worshipping, loving hippies and lost myself in worship like I hadn't since my Jesus Freak days, more than a decade ago. If I had died and gone to heaven that instant it would have taken me a while to know the difference.

Every night from then on I got to bask in the presence of God so deeply I sometimes found tears running down my cheek, happy tears. When was the last time I cried for joy, not out of pain? I honestly couldn't remember. It had been such a long time that I had completely forgotten what it felt like to be content, to feel perfectly loved, unconditionally. One night I rested on the straw bales in the tipi, my bare feet stretched towards the fire, my heart beating happily to the bhajan singing, when a stranger stuck his feet right next to me. I didn't think long before grabbing them and giving him a foot massage and after a long while we started talking, then leaning against each other, then snuggling, and before I knew it I was clutched in a tight embrace, my feet tingling with the heat of the dancing flames, my heart keeping time with the drums, my face permanently fixed into a smile.

Since I was in rainbow land I had complete trust that my new friend respected me, that he would not take advantage of me, would not push me or manipulate me into anything I did not want. What a redemptive experience. And what irony that I would now enjoy the safety and trust that was always missing in my marriage.It was a perfect night. I wanted it to last forever and lost sense of all time. When I finally felt ready to go sleep the sun was probably close to coming up again. I snuggled into my sleeping bag with a smile, fell asleep with a smile, and woke up the next more, still smiling.

The next day my brother and I went for a hike, then rested in a secluded spot by the river on our way back. In a moss covered alcove I stumbled upon a meditation wheel laid out on the ground, designed with stones and pine cones and other forest treasures. As I stood there admiring the art work, another rainbow brother came down the trail to the river. He asked if I was meditating, I told him I was just going for a walk. "Let's meditate together, shall we?" he asked and reached for my hands. And for the next fragment of eternity I stood there, feeling the pulse of his warm soft hands, listening to the laughing tumble of the creek, feeling the breeze caress my face, smelling the fresh young spring growth all around me. I have never stood so long without shifting, without wanting to be somewhere else, just enjoying being, feeling contentment.

Another aspect I came to appreciate about German rainbow family were the seminars. After every lunch food circle anyone who wanted to offer a seminar or workshop walked around announcing where and when to gather. On my last day someone offered a workshop on transforming emotions. He was going to teach methods for dealing with anger, grief, and other emotions that are generally difficult to cope with. Just what I needed, so I joined the group. By the time everyone who was interested was gathered together, it turned out to be nearly half the gathering. The seminar leader decided to split the group and have a naturopath lead one half.

There were 2 non-German speakers for whom I provided simultaneous translation into English. One of them wanted to be in the naturopath's group, so I went along. What I didn't know was that she wasn't going to teach a seminar on how to transform emotions, instead she was offering a sample healing session. We gathered in a circle and performed some relaxation and energy gathering exercises. She explained that she was going to be working with energy and was going to call each of us into the middle of the circle, one by one, and then work with whatever emotion came up.

When it was my turn I was rather anxious, expecting pain and fear to come up and dreading what kind of meltdown I would have and how much I was going to suffer experiencing these emotions, even if the result was a release. We had introduced ourselves earlier, so the naturopath knew of my divorce and my emotional struggle. But as I stood in front of her with everyone else circled around me I didn't feel the rush of pain and fear I had expected. Instead I felt an increasing lightness. "There's something coming up, can you feel it already?" she asked. "I feel light," I said. "Yes, but there's more," she continued, "let's speed this up and make it physical." And then she laughed. Softly, looking at me expectantly, and suddenly I felt like laughing, too. "Let it out," she said, "come on now, it's coming up, I can feel it, now let it out!"

Yes, it came, I felt it, and it pushed it's way out, and with no thought of preserving dignity I yelled, I laughed, a hollered, I jumped in the air, swinging my arms wildly, whirling in circles, feeling light, feeling good. I head talk all over camp about "some crazy chic laughing and screaming all throughout the woods" all afternoon and even the next morning. I don't know how long it lasted, but I finally collapsed into hugging the naturopath and she whispered: "more often! let it out more often!" I nodded and knew what she meant. I got so tied up planning to live in the future, that I forgot to live now. I thought so often about having fun once this pain is dealt with that I forgot I was also alive right now.

I practically floated through the rest of the gathering and even for another week after I came home. I had definitely been to my own heaven. And I took something precious with me from the emotional healing. Even after my feet landed back on planet earth, I remained free of a burden I had been carrying. Prior to that healing circle I'd spend hours having imaginary arguments with Dan, brooding over the way he used to treat me, having trouble sleeping and being haunted by nightmares. That all stopped the moment I stepped into the healing circle. It took me weeks to even notice that I hadn't had a single dream since the gathering, that I hadn't been brooding, and that I would go days without Dan entered my thoughts at all. And that truly was a gift from heaven.

Hippydan's Heaven

I've been having a very intense self-discovery journey for the last few weeks and it has been so overwhelming, that I haven't written anything about it since it started. I've finally gotten around to writing the post I promised on facebook about my weekend in Hippydan's heaven.

The journey started when my brother asked if I wanted to go to a convention in Frankfurt with him. He has a friend who works at the Frankfurt Convention Center which how we ended up with special tickets to the International Music Convention. The tickets allowed us to go a day before it opened to the general public and my brother's friend gave us a private tour of the press area, the VIP area, the offices etc. Next we went all over the convention and tried one instrument after another, many of them expensive high quality instruments from all over the world. We listened to several groups playing here and there between music booths and watched a few bands.

The convention is the largest in the world with 6 or 7 large exhibition halls. I kept imagining Dan there. I can't really think of an event he would have rather attended than VIP day at the world's largest music convention. I felt little pangs of sadness because a couple of times I was so entranced by all the sounds around me that I thought I was there with Dan. My mind transported me back to happy times of Dan and I playing instruments together, enjoying life, before our relationship turned into a nightmare. Once or twice I turned towards my brother, for a split second thinking he was Dan, thinking how awesome it was that the two of us got to experience this together, feeling excited about how much Dan was enjoying himself.

Most of time I, though, I felt excitement for myself, that I was able to take part in the world of music again and actually enjoy music, unlike I had in recent years. I wished Dan could see me, see, that I never actually hated music even though I kept saying I did, but that it was our unhappy relationship and the different way he and I experienced music that was giving me a hard time. I was proud of myself for picking up instruments I didn't know how to play without succumbing to the fear of criticism. When we were together I didn't want to learn new instruments because I felt defeated in advance. Dan was always a faster learner than I and an impatient teacher. Now I felt free to mess around at my own pace, in my own way, producing terrible sounds, and having fun.

I enjoyed being free to roam without the pressure of placing Dan's interests over mine. I passed by the bagpipes without even stopping and grinned. If Dan had been there, I would have been stuck at the bagpipe booth, bored out of my mind. I played a giant flute, tried getting a sound out of an oboe, tormented other visitors by "playing" a trumpet, ran up and down the length of huge marimba sets, and banged on tie-dyed skinned drums and random percussion instruments. Later in the day I met a group of Americans who were stoked to find me as a translator. They cheered and raised their glasses for a toast when they heard I was recently divorced. "Good for you" and "well done" they shouted and I laughed heartily; I'd never expected to be listening to a whole group of strangers shouting in celebration over my divorce. Heads turned everywhere to find out what was up with the Americans but the collection of empty and half empty beer mugs seemed explanation enough to our German audience.

When I left the convention I felt like I had recovered a piece of myself, the part of me that has a genuine interest in music. I had lost that part in my relationship with Dan. It had been drowned by his obsession with music and gotten lost the moment I gave up on trying to force my interest into matching Dan's fascination. It is true that Dan would have enjoyed the convention a hundred times more than I did. He would have been in heaven, and while I had a good time, I realized I would always enjoy visiting Hippydan's heaven much more than I thought I would. But it was not my heaven.

The next day I visited another part of Hippydan's heaven, the medieval market at "my" castle, the Ronneburg, close to my hometown. Memories of Dan and I playing on the castle grounds rushed through me. When a medieval bagpipe band performed Douce Dame Jouliet, Spielmann's Tanz, Skudrinka, Platerspiel, and so many other songs Dan and I had played together over the years, a wave of tears rushed to my eyes. This should have been us playing the newly built stage on the castle grounds. It should have been us climbing the re-opened tower, sampling dried organic fruits together, and picking out amazing homemade incense. Dan would have so loved it there and I would have been so proud to show him around "my" castle once again.

But that moment of sadness passed and I felt stronger afterwards. I sat down to watch the band play, humming along with tunes I knew so well, noting how they interpreted certain parts differently, munching on fruit and breathing in the long forgotten scents a medieval market mixing with the musk of the ancient fortress. This, too, was a part of me. I felt that a part of me was at home here. I was wrong in thinking I hated medieval faires. I only hated how Dan experienced then and how I felt I had to experience them, too, I hated needing to make a living off of them. And most of all I hated being a part of Dan drawing energy from the crowds to fill his ego with their applause and admiration. I realized that I would enjoy participating in the medieval scene again, even entertaining people again, so long as I did not get sucked into the dependency connection Dan would always establish with his audience.

I smiled when I realized that the pain of missing Dan was giving way to my own joy at being here. This was not my heaven, but it was a part of me nonetheless, and I enjoyed being here. At one point I met one of the staff members of the castle. She had heard that I played music at Renaissance Faires in the US and invited me to join their inner circle anytime, after hours, at any event. I wasn't actively looking for an "in", but the thought of getting involved with the medieval scene and hanging around a bonfire within the castle grounds had crossed my mind. The atmosphere on the Ronneburg touched me deep inside, the mixture of ancient buildings and the memories those walls held gave a depth to the festivities that made them seem so meaningful, so pregnant with history and heritage. Not only had I found another piece of myself, I had also been welcomed into a new tribe.

As if those 2 events were not enough, I spent sunday in yet another part of Hippydan's heaven, and again I recovered a part of myself. The Irish band I joined last month had its first performance. We were going to play at a Christian event, something similar to a Billy Graham Tent Revival. The church we were supposed to play at is the church Dan and I used to attend whenever we were in Germany. The songs we were playing were almost all cover tunes from The Crossing, a Christian celtic band that used to be Dan's favorite band. When Dan and I met Dan was learning one Crossing song after another and once we started playing music together we became somewhat of an unofficial Crossing cover band.

And now I was playing Crossing songs once again, with an all new group, performing at a church I have known since I was young. My emotions were a tangle of confusion, especially since I had not performed music since Dan and I separated. Only weeks ago I had sworn I'd never perform music again. At least I was going to be in the background, I thought, but as soon as we started setting up we received a phone call from the bassist and singer saying his train was running very late and he would miss the gig. All eyes turned on me when the band leader expressed his concern that no one in the band was as familiar with the Crossing songs as the missing bass player - except the newcomer, Annika.

The bassist is one of the main vocalists of the band so I agreed to take over his part and sing. People must have thought I was stoned, I kept smiling, and smiling, and smiling. It was such a powerfully redemptive experience, not only was I performing again without the energy pull from the audience, without financial pressure, but I was liberated to sing when before I had always been worried about hitting bad notes. We were flooded with compliments later, but my favorite part was telling people that, no, we did not have a CDs, and no, they could not give us money for our music but they could support my friends, The Crossing, by buying their CDs. I even stayed throughout the evangelistic service without having panic triggers. I felt I had reached a new level of tolerance and reconciliation with both, this kind of Christian context, and the experience of performing in a band. I had reconciled a third part of myself to myself.

As I reflected on this weekend I kept thinking of it as "the weekend in Hippydan's heaven". I had tried to live in Hippydan's heaven before and tried to make it my heaven. The constant pressure to be more like him and less like myself had turned Hippydan's heaven into my purgatory, purging me of whatever joy I had had. Now I had stepped back into that place, knowing full well that it had never been and could never be my heaven, but also that it was no longer my hell. The parts of my soul I had lost were freed from purgatory, freed to melt into me again and give me wholeness in this life.

Nam Sa

Nam Sa

How am I both?
The raging fire
of passion and longing
The quenching torrent
of peace and of rest

I am the storm
that tears the branches
I am the breeze
that tickles the leaves
I am the ocean
that carves out wild caverns
I am the rain drops
that wet autumn sheathes

I am love's anguish
I am hope's pain
A world torn asunder
With infinite strain

As light is to darkness
As sun is to moon
Eternally separate
Of ether both hewn

Of ether both hewn
Created in oneness
The sun as our brother
Our sister the moon

I'm slave to the muse
And I'm freed by her love
Held hostage by longing
Free soaring in peace

Nam Sa, I am that
Eternally One
Forever existing
In opposites one

I have been
I will be
I am
That

spring and I

I am still searching for work, but got pretty good news from the unemployment office. Until I have work I will have my health insurance paid for as well as getting a couple hundred Euros a month. It'll help pay for gas and all the little expenses that accrue. A much needed relief and I am excited!

Spring peeked around the corner just long enough for me to get a nice picture together. The next day it retreated again and yesterday I though there was something wrong with my eyes since every field and tree outside was white, covered in snow with huge flakes falling from the sky until noon.

equinox

I sort of dropped off the face of blogger world. I didn't really mean to but went through a rough few days. I tried my hand at a teaching job for kids which was a complete disaster. I've never been much of a kids person and my brave attempt to conquer my fear by taking over an English class of 7 ten year old boys was definitely the wrong approach. I just stood there shaking when I realized that the material I had prepared for class was old news to them and they were bored out of their mind since they already knew everything I was trying to teach. I knew exactly what I wanted to say in order to get them to stop fussing and getting unruly, but when I opened my mouth nothing came out, instead liquid tried coming out of my eyes. Complete disaster.

I came home and cried for two hours then quit the job I hadn't even officially started. The next few days I spent looking for work while feeling very depressed. The weekend brought some relief as I got to go to a spring equinox bonfire. It was like a breath of fresh air, lots of alternative open-minded folks sitting around a fire singing spiritual songs. I brought my penny whistle and tried to find a song the guitar player and I both knew, but with little success. We wrote wishes for the new season on pieces of paper, wrapped them around rosemary twigs and through them in the fire. It felt like a little island of rainbow in the midst of my mundane depression.

Day 20-22 Modification

The juice fast has been by far more intense so far than I had imagined. I realized that there are so many more psychological issues that need dealing with and it's made the fast extremely emotional for me. Spring is still taking its sweet time and the cost of juicing has become such an immense problem that it adds to my stress level.

Thus I decided this was not the right time for an extended juice fast. Fall would be a good time in Germany with plenty of organic apples littering the ground and greens still growing all over the place. I also feel like I have been detoxing too fast and because of the greatly reduced amount of calories loosing weight too quickly. I've felt weak almost the entire time and cold and overwhelmed by detox episodes. I believe I need to slow it down a notch and grant my body more leniency and time for its healing.

On day 20 I ate some grapes because I was ravenous and couldn't get any juice. The house I am living at is being renovated and there were days without water and other amenities which made this whole project extremely difficult. On day 21 I chose to eat fruit and continue the season of lent with juices and whole fruit fasting.

Today I am on day 23 and feeling pretty good about juicing and eating whole fruits. It made life so much less complicated, being able to grab a piece of fruit wherever I go rather than having to juice first. I plan to see the juice and whole fruit feast through until easter and then resume a raw food diet. It will give me just enough time to get my body used to "normal" raw foods in order to have a big raw food feast and party for my 30th birthday on May 1st.

I am hoping by fall I will have released quite a bit of emotional baggage and will be able to enjoy the bounty of autumn crops in form of another juice feast.

Day 19 - Band practice

It's been a long weekend, two long days of language seminars and then band practice right afterwards. I felt like I was reaching my limits, but I am proud for what I accomplished. I played in an Irish band tonight, played penny whistle again, even songs that I used to play with Dan. They did not trigger me at all, I actually enjoyed myself. I am starting to understand that music itself wasn't the trigger for my misery, it was playing music with Dan. I enjoyed the fact that we just played music, did not have to think about long introductions to songs, present ourselves on stage, make a big time show out of everything.

We just played the songs. It's what I always wanted but Dan was unable to do. For him the stage was a medium to present himself, to gain admiration, to interact intensely with the audience. I could never stand that, I wanted to connect primarily or even solely on a musical level, not through stories and talk, talk, talk, just through sharing the artistically arranged vibrations of sound. I even had fantasies of going to Ren Faires again, to festivals, to be back in the music scene. And that after making "I am not a musician, I am a writer" my mantra of the last year or so. I still am more of a writer than a musician, but I am happy to announce that I can comfortably be both, somewhat of a hobby musician, and a passionate writer.

Day 18 - Seminar

Oh so tired, so crampy, and so unmotivated to go to the language seminar I am signed up for this weekend. I had little spurts of energy throughout the day like when I drove to the music store to buy myself a penny whistle. I played all throughout lunch break since I didn't feel like going to lunch with everyone else and watching them eat while I drip my carrot juice. I enjoyed playing the whistle far more than I thought I would. Less than a month ago I said I'd never play music again, that it was a traumatic trigger and I hated it, and here I am spending my break playing music.

Day 17 - that time of the month

For the past 2 days I didn't consume any greens, for financial reasons. I checked outside and nothing was harvestable yet, so I figured I could go a few days without greens and then drink extra amounts of green juice once the weeds are growing. Wrong! I started my period today, out of all days it had to be right after me going off greens. Last month I experienced a first since puberty: no cramps at all. I attribute that to the wheatgrass juice and greens I was consuming regularly during that time.

No such luck this time around. I felt terrible and crampy all day, so bad I was even tempted to take pain medication. I didn't, but I definitely suffered. To add insult to misery out of all days the construction workers renovating my parent's house chose this day to turn off the main water supply without giving us any advance warning. I woke up with my period and found that there was not a drop of water to be had anywhere in the house. I managed some kind of hygiene with bottled sparkling water but fled the house to go to my aunts as soon as I had the chance.

Day 17 - Dentist

I barely slept last night. I am so scared of dentists and I had an appointment today. I looked at myself in the mirror at the dentist's and scared myself. I looked absolutely awful. My eyes were all puffy from crying yesterday and I looked like I hadn't slept in a week. My hair was a mess and I looked all around terrified.

I found out that almost all of my fillings are bad and need to be replaced. I had thought as much, the dentist I used to go to in Portland was horrible. It was the only one the insurance would cover but as a result I ended up with lots of amalgam in my mouth and shoddy dental work.

I can only hope getting those toxic fillings out of my mouth is going to help my mood, but I am SCARED.

Day 16 - triggered

I am just feeling tired and depressed today. I keep hearing things will look up, but I am not feeling it today. I had the talk about how much the juicing is costing with my mom again today and I started looking for work in the afternoon. That being a major emotional trigger I went down the panic road in my head of having no money, the depression road of being broke, of not being able to afford the things that are most important to me. And I started to experience existential anxiety even though at this point there is no reason for any kind of fear. I don't have any bills, still, I felt panicky with worry over money.

As I looked for job listings online I experienced the second emotional trigger and added depression and self-doubt to my anxiety. Not only was a riddled with panicky fear, I started thinking one negative thing after another about myself, how no one would hire my anyways, nobody wants me, I can't do anything, I am incapable, etc, etc, etc...

My mom found me crying on my bed as I melted down emotionally. I cried for a while, knowing that the thoughts were irrational but also accepting that my body is dealing with past crises through these triggers.

Day 15 - Singing to the weeds

We were out of fruit again today and my mom breached the subject of food costs. It is as I suspected. She is more than willing to pay for my food right now while I am looking for work and getting my health back in order, but since she doesn’t believe in the benefits of juice fasting, she doesn’t want to keep paying extra for the juicing ingredients. She mentioned again that I don’t look good, that she doesn’t think the fast is making me any healthier.

Her suggestion was to end the fast and start eating solid foods again. I know I still have some detoxing to do and am not ready to start eating again. I checked my weight this morning and realized that I have lost 6 pounds since I started 2 weeks ago. I know where my ideal weight lies from experience and doing the math, an average weight loss of 3 pounds a week we put me exactly at my ideal weight at the end of the fast.

I may not be able to afford buying enough juicing ingredients to meet my daily calorie needs, but I can afford to reduce my calorie intake as long as my weight loss does not exceed the current rate. Besides, I took a walk today and discovered the first dandelion leaves as well as baby stingy nettle plants. The greens are coming!

So I am shifting gears a little and switching to mostly the master cleanse lemonade. I’ll mix raw honey and stevia as sweetener to minimize sugar intake. That way I can wait for the wild greens to grow so that I will only have to pay for fruit and veggies.

Maybe I should go out there and sing to the greens. After all, houseplants grow better in the presence of classical music. I wonder if bad notes would harm the plants though? As long as bad notes don’t have the opposite effect, I think singing to the weeds is a great idea. Not to mention the entertainment value for the neighbors!

Day 14 - feast costs

I had a really hard time going to sleep last night, no idea why. I felt all weird, I think it was must from the reduced calorie fast. I made myself some orange juice in the morning and as soon as I drank a glass I felt so much better. After a second glass I felt almost cheery, motivated to get on the computer and write, to clean my room. I guess cutting calories and especially sugars is going to really tough to maintain. I am just afraid of mixing the master cleanse drink with honey or maple syrup because of the high amount of sugar. I am also dependent on whatever fruit is in the house. I have a little bit of savings left from christmas presents.

Hm, what to do? Right now I am pinning all my hopes on the greens outside growing soon, soon, soon! I am also still waiting on the unemployment office to give me a new appointment, couldn’t go to the first one because I was laid up with my back. Wavering between hope and depression today. If only there were endless supply of fruits and veggies growing here somewhere. Well, this ain’t Florida, it’s Germany in winter.

Day 13 - Garlic and depression

My family started complaining about me using too much garlic. I have been using it as a vaginal suppository against Candida, but I have also been blending and straining cloves or garlic and drinking the juice. Urgh. My tummy protested last night, too, not to mention the whole house now stinks like garlic. I am just so desperate to get rid of the Candida. It itches and drives me crazy, not to mention that depression is one of Candida's symptoms. I am tried of being tired and depressed.

Still, I have to stop the excessive garlic. Today I tried drinking only vegetables juices in order to cut the Candida's sugar supply instead. Not getting any of the calories I usually get through fruit juices left me feeling very lethargic. The constant juicing is turning out to be pretty expensive, as my mom let me know. I already spent some of my christmas gift money on groceries and I don't have much left.

I think since i can still afford to shed a few pounds I will have to simply cut down on calories. Lemons are cheap, so I can revert to the master cleanse drink. I am expecting it will leave me feeling rather drained from lack of calories, but it might also expedite the cleansing reaction. In a few weeks spring should provide me with wild greens which will cut down on spending money on greens from the supermarket. The greens turn out to be the most expensive part anyways. Fruit is not as spendy, and carrots are dirt cheap, although as a result I am so very over the taste of carrot juice.

I'll see how far I can go with calorie reduction. I did feel cold all day and by afternoon I was hit by depression so bad I ended up lying on the couch staring into space. I haven't experienced depression so debilitating in a while. I hope it passes soon and the greens start growing soon.

Day 12 - Over

I woke up to my back feeling pretty normal, phew. I am thinking yesterday was the worst of it. I had some memories come up, was able to write them down and get them out, process them in conversations as well as in my dreams. I had this beautiful realization that it is OVER! I am in Germany and nothing can happen to me anymore. Never again will I experience his fist raised to my face, wondering if this is the day it is going to make impact with my body rather than a piece of furniture or the thick air between him and me. I am safe here. It is over.

I feel exhausted but relieved. My Candida has flared up over the last few days. I've been drinking broth here and there because I was going crazy at the thought of drinking something hearty tasting. I didn't think about there possibly being yeast in the broth. It's an all organic natural mix, but still, if there's yeast in it that might explain the Candida. I'll also reduce my oil intake, see if the 80-10-10 people are right in saying that Candida can only feed on fruit sugars if we ingest too much fat. I am really tired of dealing with Candida, it seems like such an endless struggle.

Day 11 - dark memories

I definitely think my back is healing slowly because of the emotional stress I am experiencing.

I was thinking about what Dan wrote again.

"you are deleted from my life permanently....
don't you ever contact me again. don't you ever threaten me again. i will only delete anything i see from you without reading it. as i said before, if you need somthing legle from me, you can contact [my lawyer]. you are no longer any kind of friend, acquaintance, or anything of the sort. you are just no longer.

feel free to twist this and post it on your blog, like the fucking child you are."

I can't say that I was really hurt by his words, but I was shocked. I can't even imagine how much hatred he harbors against me, how it is possible to live with so much hatred inside. I don't mind being "deleted" from his life or no longer being "any kind of friend", because he's been trying to delete me for over half a year now and he has treated me more like an enemy than a friend. If anything, it would be relief to not have to correspond at all anymore.

But on some subconscious level the image of Dan angry and full of hatred haunted me. I had trouble falling asleep and was wakened by a nightmare in which I relived a most threatening scene of Dan's anger. It was back in November when I had already understood that my marriage was in truth an abusive relationship and that I had assumed the role of abuse victim. It was shortly after I finished reading Patricia Evans' "The Verbally Abusive Man - Can He Change?"

The most helpful advice was to understand that an abusive person is not being rational while he is bringing accusations and insults against his victim. The victim usually tries to convince the perpetrator that he's got his facts wrong, that she really didn't do what he said she did, that she didn't mean what he said she meant etc. But since the abuser is not in a rational state of mind engaging him rationally doesn't bring any improvement. He will divert to a new accusation or insult thus avoiding engaging rationally with the abused.

Psychologist Patricia Evans tells abuse victims to resist the temptation to engage the abuser rationally. Instead the victim should tell the abuser "stop" and try to get him to understand that she will not engage him on his level. Ideally the abuser will stop and ask himself what just happened which can lead to a fruitful and rational discussion. But in the worst case scenario the abuser will grow increasingly angry at his victim's refusal to play his game. In that case the victim needs to use caution since her abuser might turn more abusive and violent. He is not willing to face the situation honestly and look at his own actions. She will need to find ways to protect herself until she is able to escape.

That day in November I tested Patricia Evans' suggested response to abuse. My bicycle was broken and I asked Dan to help me fix it but he snapped at me saying I should have paid attention when my dad repaired bikes when I was a young. I would know how to handle the situation if I had learned as a child. He insisted since it was my failure to learn I had to deal with the situation alone now.

Disheartened by determined I turned to YouTube for help while Dan worked on building a kitchen shelf. Dan came into the house to grab a tool and I asked him his opinion. He grudgingly gave me advice and I set out to my task. I was doing pretty good until I hit a problem I realized Dan knew how to handle. I walked up to him working on the shelf and asked him for help. He was upset at being interrupted but dedicated a couple of minutes to help me out of my dilemma.

A long while later I was stuck having to identify the right tool. I had looked through Dan's toolbox but I was still unsure. I took the tools in question behind the house where Dan was still working on the shelf. I waited until he was done sawing something and then asked which was the tool I needed.

He threw what he was holding in his hand on the ground and starting yelling at me, how dare I interrupt him again, had he not told me I needed to deal with this myself, why could I not leave him alone, why did I have to ask stupid questions all the time, why did I insist on pushing him over the edge, on and on and on.

I went into the house to call a friend who I thought might be able to answer my question. Before I even reached the phone Dan stormed into the house and continued yelling at me, insulting me, cussing me out. I recognized so many of the phrases listed as typical for verbal abusers in the book I had just read, "why do I keep pushing and pushing?", "what the hell is your problem anyways?", "why can't you ever figure anything out on your own?", "why don't you know this or that?".

I straightened up, looked Dan in the face and said: "I am not going to listen to you yell at me anymore. I am going for a walk now."

"Oh no, you are NOT" he screamed.

"I don't need to listen to this, Dan," I said. "I have a right to leave the house right now."

"YOU..." he hissed with trembling voice and blocked the door.

"Dan, please let me through the door. I want to go outside now."

"NO," he seethed, "you are not going anywhere."

I tried to slip past him but he grabbed me hard by both wrists, slammed the door shut behind him and pushed me up against the wall. He held me pinned with the back to the wall, my wrists above my head, squeezed tight. Then he lowered his face so that his mouth was right in front of my eyes and yelled:

"I am going to teach you what you are putting me through. Are you feeling frustrated, yes, yes? Well, you NEED to feel frustrated because that is how you make me feel and I am going to teach you a lesson now."

He continued yelling in my face until I was able to speak into a break and told him to let me go. As impossible as I thought it was, he grew even angrier and said with a shaking voice,

"YOU deserve this. I really feel like smashing in your face right now"

He let go of one of my aching wrists, balled his hand into a fist and swung it towards my face. In a split second I considered my escape options. The window was close by and I wondered if I had the strength to kick the screen out and jump out in time. His fist came to a rest right before my eyes, he uttered another threat and raised his fist again.

Images flashed through my mind of me lying in the apartment beat up, being taken to a hospital. I started shaking with fear. I glanced over at the window again. I wasn't sure if I'd make it, and I was worried of what would happen if I did. Would he follow me? Would he let the cat out, or ever worse, would he do something to harm the cat? He was still uttering threats but lowered his fist, clenched my other wrist hard and gave me a push against the wall and said something along of the lines of how noble he was and how thankful I ought to be for him not beating me to a pulp. He ran from the house, took the car, and drove off who knows whereto.

As soon as he left the house I slumped together and knew for a fact that I was dealing with the kind of verbal abuser who could easily turn physically abusive, that blocking his attacks would serve no good. From then on I tried to play his game as best as I could in order to protect myself and my cat before I had the chance to actually move out. I was walking on egg shells all day long, every day.

Although I got away with no injuries but a couple of sore wrists I did not leave the incident psychologically unscathed. It took a while before I found the courage to tell someone about what happened. When I did and I brought this one dark memory out into the light it opened a door. I had finally allowed myself to acknowledge the relationship I was in for what it really was, a verbally abusive relationship. Over the next weeks my brain released numerous suppressed memories.

There was the time Dan punched a hole into our wall, the time he raised his wrist but diverted to throwing the couch across the apartment instead of hitting me, the many times he drove off in a rage, left me standing behind crying, and many a incident of him raising his hand in threat of beating me, always telling me I should be grateful that he didn't, convincing me that other men would not be able to control themselves as well as he did in the face of such a horrible person as me, that I was very lucky to be married to him.

I had never told anyone about the scenes that took place in our home behind closed doors. I refused to believe them myself. And now the memories came pouring out of the dark crevices of my mind, haunting me. When I came to Germany and I was no longer confronted by an angry Dan on a regular basis the memories started to recede. Until last night. The anger and hatred in Dan's words opened up the door to dark memories again.

Day 10 - do you see me?

Today has been a day of processing. Not food, of course, but thoughts.

Once I got over the shock of the last email I received I thought about what it said in depth. It was titled "deleted" and started out with the line:

"Just found out that you posted my pain and suffering on a blog... never before would i have ever thought you would sink so low."

I knew what was meant by the "pain and suffering" but I talked to a few friends and several were confused. They had been following my blog and couldn't recall me posting anything that was about Dan's pain. I told them he was referring to the fact that I posted the insults he had expressed towards me on my blog. "I know, but what is the "pain and suffering" you wrote about?" one friend asked again.

I shook my head and laughed, because it so clearly illustrated the confusion I had been living with. Since June last year the main thing Dan talked about was "his pain." It became a phrase of such familiarity that I almost felt like I was living with two people, with Dan, and with another person called "his pain." I have no doubt that he is experiencing a lot of pain, I have seen him suffer. But the question is one of definition, what is his pain and what is not?

The facts are: I need information, Dan did not give it me, my dad left a message for Dan saying (politely!) that we would have to hire a lawyer if Dan was not going to be more cooperative, Dan posted a litany of insults against me. Those insults are what he is now referring to as his "pain and suffering."

The irony is inescapable. First I suffer difficulties from his lack of cooperation as well as a few insults, next he writes hateful things meant to hurt me. Yet there is no mention of MY suffering as a results, rather the accusation that I have not guarded his pain and exposed it to the world.

The reason I was not surprised to hear him refer to his hateful utterances as his "pain and suffering" is that it is reflective of a pattern that I have only recently come to understand. When I got offended as the result of an argument and I expressed my hurt feelings Dan would usually say he was sorry my feeling were hurt. However, he often neglected to apologize for saying or doing hurtful things to me, would only say he felt sorry that I was hurt, without taking responsibility for him being the one who insulted or hurt me.

When I fished for an acknowledgment that he had been mean towards me he would sometimes see the wrong he had done and genuinely apology, but other times he would grow angry again. In those cases he would berate me for holding things against him, for trying to make him feel guilty. And then, without fail, he would start talking about his pain, how much it hurt him that I would "not let up" and keep "getting on his case" when all I wanted to hear was "I am sorry I called you #$#(), I didn't mean it" or something like that.

In earlier years I held to the idea "don't let the sun go down on your anger" but in more recent years I abandoned my commitment to resolving fights before we went to sleep because it would often take long before Dan would apologize and agree that things were resolved and thus we would end up getting less hours of sleep that night. I felt sacrificing an hour of two of sleep was well worth resolving our marital issues, but Dan would spend the next day moody and angry at me for "robbing him" of his sleep. I realized it was a loose-loose situation, if we went to sleep angry with each other we'd wake up angry, but if I tried to resolve things at night I would wake up relieved only to experience his anger anew the next day.

I The other situation we often found ourselves in was me apologizing for a toothpaste cap incident or whatever stood at the beginning of Dan's anger towards me but me being afraid to ask him to apologize for the things he had said or done in his rage against me. I would end up living with the feeling that the issue was never really resolved, since only I had tried to make amends. But I had come to fear his anger, I started walking on eggshells.

At one point I mentioned to Dan that he was intimidating when he was angry and he said he had noticed I was afraid of him. I felt a lurch of hope at him mentioning my fear, hoping we'd be able to talk about what was causing my fear and how we could better work through our issues. Instead he said: "do you have any idea how that makes me feel? My wife being afraid of me? You can't even imagine how much you are hurting me by that!" He continued to talk about how offended he was at my being afraid of his anger. I felt guilty, and I felt even more scared, knowing how hurt he was now, I feared him growing angry over my fear of his anger.

It was only recently that I came to understand the hopeless cycle of guilt, fear, hurt, and anger I found myself in. When I tried to express my feeling, say that I was hurt, Dan would not try to understand where I was coming from in an effort to make changes that would relieve my negative feelings. Instead he would take offense at me not being content, feeling accused of being a failure as a husband who is supposed to make his wife happy. He'd feel hurt at the supposed accusation. Then he'd feel that since this conversation was causing him grief, I must be attacking him. Then he'd grow defensive and in a heartbeat aggressive. My attempts to discuss my feelings and hopes with him would end up with him in a rage and me in fear.

I believe this is what happened a couple of days again. Dan grew angry probably at me "bugging" him, needing things from him, not "leaving him alone". He became aggressive and hateful. Rather than ducking and apologizing the way I used to, I handed things over to my dad who gave Dan a clear ultimatum. Dan felt threatened by my dad, hurt at being attacked, and resorted to anger and hatred towards me. He, however, does not see his words as expressions of anger and hatred. He does not look at the other end of his speech, does not see that he was causing "pain and suffering" by his words, only looked at himself and saw his own dark emotions.

In other words, he only sees himself, he doesn't see me.

Day 9 - guilt free

My back got worse again in the middle of the night and I woke up in pain. By morning it was as bad as it had been when it first went out. I suspect the reason was emotional stress.

It wasn't so much that I was hurt by the insults hurled at me, but I was shocked at how much hatred Dan holds against me. I didn't think he was capable of so much hatred, especially hatred towards someone he promised eternal love to. Even in the midst of our separation and divorce I refrained from insulting him and from hurting him, expressing my anger elsewhere. And I defended him against those who got on Dan's case for breaking his promises towards me.

And yet Dan continued his tirades against me, bestowed me with further insults, accused me of trying to harm him. At first I realized that I automatically felt guilty, just like I had for years, always believing that I did something wrong, again, and hurt poor Dan, that I was the one to blame, I had done something terrible. My mind had been trained well to immediately assume responsibility and guilt for every problem.

I remember a few years back when Dan lost his temper over something much like the proverbial toothpaste cap, and hurled insults at me, then ran from the house, took the car, and didn't come back for a couple of hours. While he was gone I mulled over the insults he had directed at me and the things he had said to hurt me. When he came back I apologized for my "toothpaste cap" offense and meekly hoped for an apology for the mean things he had said to me. Instead he told me he'd accept my apology, but he couldn't understand why I always had to do things that "drive me over the edge".

I tried to explain, to apologize again, begged him to believe me that I didn't mean to, I honestly didn't realize he wanted it done differently, etc. He said he'd forgive me and went on to do something else. I gathered up courage and asked him if he was sorry for the mean things he had said to me. "Of course, don't you know I didn't mean them?" I told him I would appreciate it if he actually apologized. He did, but with anger in his voice.

And thus the argument was resolved and peace had returned to our home. Or had it? He had made a big deal out of me "always" doing various petty things that made him angry, "never" learning better, not caring about him enough to understand how much they bothered him. I let the past few years of marriage pass before my eyes and thought about our apologies and the way we made it up to one another after a fight. As I allowed myself to think about it honestly, I was shocked to realize that in some 90% or more of all of our fights I was the one who made amends and apologized.

At one point I tried to bring this up, not when we were fighting, but when things were peaceful between us. He told me I was wrong, he apologized more often than I did, but I did far more things to hurt him than he ever did to hurt me. I felt miserable. I doubted my own sanity. I felt crushed, defeated, like a bad person, a failure as a wife. But a part of me revolted against the judgement and I started keeping track of every argument over the next few months and how it was resolved and my initial estimate of 90% of all apologies coming from me did indeed prove wrong. Almost ALL of the fights were resolved by me apologizing first.

I started to realize that there was something seriously wrong in our relationship. All attempts to talk to Dan about it ended with him communicating to me in one way or another that there was indeed a problem, and the problem was ME. I lived in guilt and self-condemnation, but eventually my oppressed spirit rebelled. I started writing. I wrote arguments down, I kept track of situations, I kept track of the past, and I gained more confidence in my own judgement as I looked back at the notes when Dan told me it wasn't the way I remembered, and I read black on white that my memory had been faithful to me afterall.

Now I know that my memory works just fine but that i have allowed it to be overwritten by Dan's re-interpretation of what really happened. And I know that I am not a bad person, that I am not any of the mean things i have been called over the past years. And most of all, I recognize and affirm that I am not responsible of his pain, his anger, his hatred. Of course I have done things to hurt him, as has every human being in a relationship to another human being. But I can say with integrity and joy that I have never, despite my painful experiences, done or said anything to purposely hurt him.

And thus I am choosing today to cleanse my mind from guilt that is not mine to bear. I know I have the power to say "no" when someone is trying to dump guilt on me. I now that the mistakes I have made have already been forgiven and I walk and live in that forgiveness. And I know that I must never again accept guilt for the things I am not guilty of. What precious freedom lies in that, what delivering truth.