universe

Open Thank You Letter to the Dixie Chicks

/ autumncircles / 4 Comments

Natalie Maines.

Emily Robison.

Martie Maguire.

Three women I have never met yet who were instrumental in my survival during some dark days in my marriage and life.  Their voices and words from three albums in particular – Wide Open Spaces, Fly, Home – were on constant repeat mode in my iPod with my headphones plastered to my ears for nearly a year or longer back in late 2002 and all of 2003.

IMHO, Marriage is a journey with two people who at the base of their relationship love each other in such a profound way as to commit to share the rest of their lives together.  Sometimes the journey takes the couple to exotic locations where their minds and bodies become like intensely familiar entities who have been connected long before they met in this life.  Other times, the road darkens and couples get separated and lost in a dense jungle of terrifying emotion and doubt.  Mostly, I have discovered, the path is more like a hike up a favorite mountain trail – a bit rocky and steep at points but with long stretches of open terrain where we simply walk together holding hands, and now, leading our family.

It was during one of our trips to what seemed like the deepest part of the Congo where even breathing was difficult that I discovered the Dixie Chicks.  I had not previously listened to them, but heard a song on the radio and knew they understood what I was feeling.  So I bought the CDs in quick succession and played them over and over again alternately weeping, singing at the top of my lungs alone in the car, and dancing with my children in the living room.

It was as if their music was sent to me specifically at that time as an outlet for all of the unexplainable emotions my heart was breaking from.  They let me sing with them even though I had no idea how to join in a harmony or even match their melody.  When I sang with the Dixie Chicks, I was singing pure emotion and it was perfect.

I was reminded of this time in my life when I recently rediscovered my long forgotten, battery impaired iPod.

I was also sent others in this sisterhood who were not abstract voices purchased at the music store, but real women who had been to similar jungles, loved and survived their own harrowing trips and clung to my side, holding me up until I once again believed I could stand on my own.

I am still married and am grateful for it. I love my husband and am so glad we both decided to come out of the jungles together to proceed on our trek through some wondrous countryside that we might have missed had we given up.

I am, also, grateful for all of these women, their voices, and my ability to join them in this life.  I continue to meet more amazing women who share my joys, struggles and general love of the whole spectacular rave.

‘Cuz some days you gotta dance…

Another Day

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It was another day of fighting the urge to join the negative voices and beliefs.

Imagine you knew a person who spent over a decade working in jobs she didn’t necessarily like or have a connection with as far as alignment with her life’s purpose. Then imagine that she finally searched deep within to find the resolve that she deserved to be happy the way her soul had intended when it picked this life. Once she began to believe that, she found small ways to live that. Those small ways began to build and grow into larger life altering changes to keep herself in synch with her true nature.

Finally this person took a leap of faith and changed from a job to a career – risking financial ruin and marital emotional breakdown. Her faith was strong and although finances and relationships were challenging, she stayed the course and all played out to survivable results. Basic financial needs continued to be met and the marriage came out stronger for having weathered the commitment.

After beginning to relax into this new faith-filled and faith-received life style, this person developed a new level of confidence and trust in the universe. She began to believe that it truly is all or nothing. She realized and began living that it couldn’t be that the universe coordinated one event to the exception of another. All that happened was exactly what was supposed to happen.

All that happens is exactly what is supposed to happen.

Then, changes she did not pray for and seek spiritual guidance to achieve began to occur. The career she had begun putting more faith in than the life purpose came under dire threat. The reality that the career may shift, morph, alter or down right go away was beginning to become clearer and clearer. This caused her to be afraid, very afraid, of what might happen to her. Again, it was more of a fear of losing what she had come to perceive as what her purpose was.

Then, thank goodness, the universe continued to reveal exactly what it is supposed to reveal.

This person heard her best friend tell a story about her life purpose without having any idea it that it was actually reminding our heroine of her own.

You see, years ago, before she lost the belief that it was okay to express what was in you heart even if it sounded hokey, this person would tell anyone who listened what she believed she could achieve in this life with the gifts and talents she had been given. It wasn’t ever fame and fortune, although that is what most of her friends wanted. It wasn’t ever high exaltation and ultimate praise, which is what was expected for those on her chosen path.

It was simply to touch another’s heart and help them experience this life with some sort of connection with another just like them – human.

Today, although it is painful to look at the reality that the career I have tried to develop over the last two years may revise itself into something I have no idea about, at the end of the day, I have to remember that the career isn’t my life’s purpose. Writing this blog isn’t my life’s purpose. Even raising my children isn’t my life’s purpose. They are all simply things I do in this life.

My life’s purpose is simply to share this universe with the other parts of my self and honor our connection by remembering peace in every step.

If I can remember that, I will not have to struggle with anything that happens.

A little about me

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Clearly Autumn Circles is a pseudonym. My real name is Kathleen and I live in the North Texas region. But Autumn Circles does describe me at my core. It is also from a haiku written about me, by me.

Why the need on only my second post to tell you who I am? Two-fold: to hold myself accountable for the work I disseminate into the universe and not totally hide behind a pseudonym to freely write what I want.

I love to write. I am constantly writing. Sometimes it is pen to paper or words filling the air in an intimate dialog. But the most common way is with a keyboard into the very sterile digital world of my personal computer. And there it stays. On rare occasions have I shaken off the sheep’s garment to let my wolf roam wild and free.

My aspirations of publication have peaked and waned over the years, and finally, finally I got tired of waiting for the right time to devote to getting traditionally published. Hence, my entrance into the world of blogs.

I know there are millions of us out there typing our way into someone else’s internet connection and I am simply glad to be among the crowd.

Wolves are an endangered species and quite often misunderstood.

This is my way of expanding the pack and dispelling the myths I hold over myself.

If someone else reads it and relates – yeah! If no one else ever stumbles across it, at least I know I howled at the moon while I still had a voice.

Peace.