I don’t know about you, but when I look back over my life I tend to focus on all of the mistakes I made and the painful events that I view as spectacular failures, epic breakups, or horrific personal decisions that cost me dearly. There were job losses and career changes, and the deaths of various relationships, through literal death or figurative dismemberment:  being dissed and un-membered.  While I certainly contributed to many of my personal catastrophes, (except the literal deaths), there were plenty of times when I fell victim to some very catty office women and other mean girls and boys. Even when it seemed to me that I’d done everything possible to make things work, the mean people were simply not having it and would not play fair.  Raspberries.  I’d move on, burn the bridges, or bandage my wounds and stagger out through the smoke as they giggled or cursed or shook their fists behind me.

I chastise myself about entire decades being lost and ruined (in my mind) because of some very poor choices, mine and others’, and when I look back this way my life looks something like a junkyard highway: the flat tires and wreckage of jobs and careers and relationships that ended badly.

But it occurred to me the other day in a conversation with my spouse, that concurrent with many of these painful events were extraordinary moments of creative or compassionate excellence, which I managed to pull off despite what those in power over me did to try to stop, sabotage, or silence me.  I got to wondering what THAT trail might look like, if I glanced back and connected the dots of those exceptional moments and focused on those instead. These points of light illuminate a parallel path; it just wasn’t the path I thought I was supposed to be on. This was not a road less travelled, because clearly I was doing several things at once, but these events illuminate a different journey altogether: a road less often remembered.

For example, while I was the lowest paid staff member at a domestic violence (DV) support agency, I wrote a play called Rule of Thumb based on the true stories of our clients, at their request.  I did this to help get the word out to other women about what domestic violence was really all about: power and control.  I spent months writing, researching, directing and rehearsing the show. When I presented it and offered it as a fundraiser for the DV agency, the president of the board stood up in the audience after the show and questioned the integrity of my work, right there in front of our clients, whose stories were being told anonymously. There were over 100 people in the audience, including my mother and many revered members of the community. It was unbelievable to me that she would try to humiliate me and shame me for this important and unpaid work. Yet despite this response from someone who should have known better, my show went on tour and received glowing reviews and comments from audience members from around the state, many of whom thanked me personally for helping to change their lives. The “reward” for this work was not money or the respect of the agency for which I had worked, in fact the agency collapsed and closed its doors. The reward was that these stories were given a voice, that lives were touched and changed, and in the process I started my own non-profit theatre and toured my show around the western half of the state for four years.  Was it painful?  Yes.  Was it worth it?  Absolutely.

Other examples:  my drama therapy work with women in prison at the pre-release program in Steilacoom.  I was working for the Girl Scouts in a program for girls whose moms were in prison.  At one point I was working with the moms to help prepare them for the upcoming holiday party.  I devised an activity to evoke a spirit of generosity.  During this activity, women from two different gangs got up and hugged each other.  Not a dry eye in the room.  But despite this my boss was annoyed with me because I wasn’t following the Girl Scout playbook, and they hired someone else for the job. The woman who coordinated with the GS at the women’s correctional facility in Purdy met with me before I left town and gave me such a glowing verbal review that it felt like she had turned on the sun.  So that happened.

My next job was at a forensic state hospital in Texas.  Hard work made harder by a coworker who was constantly trying to sabotage me.  I stayed ten weeks instead of twelve, and my patients were sad when I told them I had to leave.  I got a rap-poem blessing from one, tears from another, and a fist against the wall from the woman everyone feared.  When they heard the thud, doctors and therapists flew out of their offices thinking she had decked me, but she hadn’t, she was just sad.  My coworker tried unsuccessfully to prevent me from getting my credential in drama therapy, but I was so exhausted that I gave it up for some time after that.  But those women at the hospital with Borderline Personality Disorder?   I got them dancing together instead of trying to kill each other.  Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.  They were beautiful.

At a volunteer job during the summer some women on our committee refused to discuss my ideas, and later in the fall one of them snottily refused to answer a question I’d asked for clarification. That was pretty rude.  A month later they went behind my back and cut my creative presentation from a special program we’d been working on. I’d been volunteering with them several hours a week for the better part of a year, so cutting me out was mean-spirited and deliberate. But this wasn’t the significant event of the day.

Although this particular sting was less egregious than others I had experienced, it bothered me a lot because I thought these people were “friends”, and I hold friends to a higher ethical standard than I do bosses, teachers, or co-workers. When I let them know I was upset, one of them told me to “get over it” for the sake of our friendship, AND that she would never discuss her actions with me. That part made me laugh. No. I don’t have and can’t keep “friends” who treat me like that, even if I do “get over it” and forgive them. A relationship is not functional if you can’t clear the air to maintain it, or if both people are not valued enough to be heard. There’s simply no place for a friendship like that to exist. So that’s just sad. Their timing was also tacky and mean, because they told me they had cut me from the program on the day I had another performance going on. So they chose to knock me down when I was flying high.  Why was I flying high?  Because that was the day that I co-directed and hosted an online, international, audience-participation reading of my adaptation of A Christmas Carol, with readers and musicians from Romania to California. We had audience members join us from around the world.  It was  spectacular and heart healing, magical and fun. THAT’s what happened that day.

When I look back now, I notice that throughout my life there were numerous of these “memorable” events which took place at almost the exact same time: while earning my Master’s degree I broke up with my fiancé, but I got standing ovations for an original play I wrote, two nights in a row, and was politely mobbed by the audience. When I took a break from the drama therapy work after I left Texas, I went back to directing theatre because a show was put into my hands by a fellow director. Later still I was scapegoated at a university when what I thought was going to be my “dream job” turned into a nightmare, but that’s exactly when I reconnected with the man of my dreams, and the sweetest part of my life. Then I lost my wonderful mom six months short of our amazing wedding.

More lights on the alternative path:
2014: I lost one of my long-term and favorite gigs as a massage therapist, doing chair massage for quilters at their retreats, because one of the retreat coordinators didn’t like me. I really loved this particular job and I adored my clients.  But I found out that I had been cut while I was on vacation in Assisi Italy, where I felt absolutely enfolded in love and blessings.

1978: When I designed a creative drama activity for kids as part of my college work at UW, my teacher scoffed at my idea in class in front of all my peers, and the sorority girls giggled. Despite this humiliation, when I led the activity with the children, a shy six year old girl who seldom volunteered for anything came over to me afterwards, and told me it was the most fun she’d ever had in that class.

1992: I coordinated the first AIDS walk in Tacoma, which raised money for 5 different agencies. My position was later cut, but the event was a big success.  That same year, in the same town, I put together a playwright’s festival. We had plays blind juried in, and mine was one of the six chosen.  So that was cool.  This event was also a success, despite the man who fought me every inch of the way because he wanted the festival to be all about him instead of all of the other artists involved.

2005: My colleague Beth and I got some very bad news when we were at a DV conference in San Diego. We were having dinner at a Mexican restaurant when the call came in. The life of the DV agency we worked for depended entirely upon us getting our big VAWA grant renewed, but we didn’t get it, which meant the agency would close. Beth put down her cell phone and told me the news. We looked at each other in stunned silence, and that’s when the Mariachi band showed up at our table and played Ciolito Lindo for us. We clicked our marguerite glasses together and had a good laugh.

I forgave my dad in 1996 after he hadn’t spoken to me in 8 years.  We’d had a difficult relationship.  I went to California that January and did a forgiveness ceremony on his doorstep at 6 in the morning, prayed, left him a note and a basket of goodies, and then felt enormously freed. Six months later he reconciled with me and spoke to me 3 times a week from then until the day he died, two years later.

As I look back now at the timing of these events, really at the brighter moments instead of the dreadful ones, it’s like looking back at a trail of starlight or solar lamps dotting the landscape behind me.

Maybe I wasn’t lost after all.

 

No life can escape being blown about
By the winds of change and chance
And though you never know all the steps
You must learn to join the dance
You must learn to join the dance

So how can you see what your life is worth
Or where your value lies?
You can never see through the eyes of man
You must look at your life, Look at your life
Look at your life through heaven’s eyes

(Excerpt from the song Through Heaven’s Eyes, by Stephen Schwartz, from Prince of Egypt)