I think what I have accomplished with this memoir is little short of a miracle. And I don’t mean the fact that I finally completed the thing and put it out there after fourteen years (though that in itself was quite something!). I mean the fact that I was able to discover through the writing it out – the reason d´etre – the why of it all.
Why did I have to experience what I did? That was my question since the age of 17. Not, “To be, or not to be…” or even why be… But why did these things have to happen to me? Did God hate me or something? Was I a bad person in a past life? Was I being punished? Etc. etc.
Would you believe – and yes, I know you’re dying to believe, as I was, that there is some kind of reasoning behind events – even if you deny it – for don’t we all wish to live in a rational universe? Because even The Jabberwocky makes sense – just listen to how Leslie Howard recites it in Pimpernel Smith – great movie (1941) in which he pokes fun at the Nazis. (Which may have been the reason they shot his plane down in 1943.)
What I Did was, I took my early life and made it into a narrative. A story. There had been some painful events to live through, and therefore they were equally painful to recall. Yet, as I worked through each draft, the person I was in my early life became less and less me and more of a character in the story. And the more I became a character, the more I became an observer. I think this quality, this becoming an observer in one’s own life, is probably the most important gift we can give ourselves on the path to becoming conscious of ourselves as a soul living in a body.
Why would a Soul, part of the Divine, want to experience pain unless it was to know itself better? Know more thoroughly all the aspects of life? Especially when those aspects of life lead it back to a deeper soul consciousness. I think that in order to come to any kind of resolution about the events in our lives, on some level we have to be okay with what happened. I’m not even saying we have to be healed already – just okay with what is, or what was. We need to have achieved an understanding, and certainly a forgiveness, in order to keep the glass as clear and unclouded as possible, looking at our previous selves with the detachment of an observer.
When I first began telling my story, I had no idea what the outcome would be. What sort of deductions I would make, what conclusions I would come to. And that was okay, because all I needed to do in the beginning was get the facts out. Write down what happened. This wasn’t enough of course, but it took many years even to do that. Meanwhile, the wheels were turning. Another set of wheels turned as well, asking the question I had asked all those years ago. The question of why?
That I found an answer was partly because I was looking, and partly because I was ready to hear it, and partly because there was something I could do with it now. The answer came because I could make something of it now. I could use it, and use it for good, and communicate it to others with this new skill of writing that I was developing.
And now I want to shout it from the rooftops! There is a reason why everything happens. Look to your soul. Look to your soul for answers. It is there we will always find the answers we seek!
Answers are always there, hovering in corners, behind doorways, hidden in drawers we haven’t fully examined yet. Just as the saying goes, When the student is ready, the teacher appears, so it must be that when the seeker is ready, the answer appears. The answer is also a teacher.
A memoir by itself cannot solve anything. A memoir will usually turn out to be whatever the intention of the author wanted it to be. I didn’t describe my intention as the desire for illumination. But when I began attending writing workshops and memoir classes, I did think of blueprints. As an artist doing architectural renderings I was familiar with blueprints. What, I wondered in mid-life, was the blueprint of my soul?
So, I retraced my steps. And I found a reason why things might have had to happen the way that they did. A reason why my soul might have chosen those particular experiences. I found the click where all the pieces suddenly made sense. I had to go into the shadows and the dark places, and shine a soul light. And that was when I was able to make something beautiful out of those steps. Once I realized where all those steps led to, there was nothing not beautiful about them.
Going deeper into the shadows was where the healing took place.
Looking back, what seems miraculous also seems what was destined to happen. For as I became more myself, more of who I truly am, I became One with my Destiny. And yet the whole thing still appears miraculous to me, that I was eventually able to put all the clues together, find a rationale, and such a perfect title – The Nancy Who Drew.
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