The year of everything

There are those years where eternity is crammed into just 365 days.

Life on fast forward. One giant event after another. A year where you land in a completely different space than when you started...figuratively and literally.

With a shiny new decade about to begin...

(the energy is palpable, isn't it? It's electric. It's sparking. I can see it, thundering behind a wooden door that can barely contain it. The brightness seeping out the cracks at the bottom, and all around. It's about to burst!)

...I am reflecting on how completely my end and beginning of 2019 were. Everything I learned can be summed up in three words:

I AM CAPABLE.

This spring, and just a few posts back, I published one titled burn. Where I talked about precipice, and how I had only felt on the verge like that just one other time. When suddenly I knew my life was about to take a redirect, and change, entire. I was right once again. A couple months later my dream day job came knocking, and the opportunity presented itself to become a homeowner for the first time. Needles to say, both transformed the current state of my world.

I get to enter this new decade with so much new:

As a working mom
As a mom with a preschooler
Without friendships I didn't expect
With friendships I didn't expect
In a brand new living space that feels like heaven
As a homeowner
Without the same car
Without my old furniture
Without fighting legally for my son
Without anxiety and PTSD...or at least with hardly any left...
With true in-my-bones and in-my-soul contentment
With a changed body, one that no longer experiences the beauty of breastfeeding, but now belongs to me, altered just for me
As an associate artist with one of my favorite theatre companies
Side passion projections about to be announced, and come to fruition
With giant dreams
With a limitless sky
With new optimism
Strengthened by knowledge
Senses buzzing once more

I have so much god damn gratitude. I couldn't wrap my head around what that meant for so long. Trauma left me longing for just the bare minimum. If I learned to want just the bare minimum, wasn't that...sad? Devastating? Didn't that shrink me, my dreams, all I once hoped for and strived towards?

No. It simply means appreciating the little moments along the way up, through the journey of my rising. The small parts build the foundation. Tiny miracles are always around, in the form of coincidence, of chance encounters, of omens. Looking back, even through the destruction there was beauty.

Only I steer this ship. I am finding I have loved every part of my life that led me here, and I will continue to. Was it always there? Whispering to me all along? The undercurrent of energy saying this was all meant to be...unfolding exactly as it should...?

I've never related more to the tale of The Phoenix as I have this year. This was the year I earned my wings. I proudly stepped into the ancestral line of warrior women that have paved the way before me, and will come after me. Confidently, and unapologetically.

This was my time to become...and I finally became.

For over two years, my senses dulled. I could only see black. Now, I'm rushing toward the light, for I've finally broken...into blossom...


"Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would break into blossom."

A Blessing by James Wright 


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Nowhere to go.

"Grief is just love with nowhere to go." 

I've stumbled upon the perfect quote, and I'm thinking of it throughout the day. I ping-pong between moments of rest, and being seized with sadness. For a minute I think I'm going to be okay, and then my heartbreak is debilitating. 

I can't help but feel this is a monstrous waste. A rash, hurried, angry waste. The depths of what this is are unbearable. I do not want this. I do not want this for me. I do not want this for him. I do not want this for our boy. 

My boy no longer lives under the same roof as his mother and father. 

He will never see us kiss. 
He will never bound into our bed, waking us up early on a Christmas morning. 
He will never sit between us on the couch, watching a Disney movie. 
He will not take another family vacation. 
He will not be given a sibling from the two of us. 
He will never hear us tell the other, "I love you." 
He will not remember how hard it got for the two of us, but also how much love was there. 

All time is happening at once. We are speaking our wedding vows, we are watching our son be born, we are divorcing. Divorcing. And what can I do? What was I to do when I was being taunted with the word, divorce, for over a year? What was I to do, but beg and plead and nearly lose my dignity in the process? Don't leave me. What could I do, if I alone was willing to walk through the fires, to the ends of the earth, to fix anything and everything that came our way? 

What if what came our way damaged me emotionally, mentally, and physically in the process? My appetite vanished, my anxiety mounted, and I questioned my self worth. My worth. To feel unworthy is a scary spot to be. 

But what if I still I wanted to fight for us? What happens when one won't stop fighting, and the other won't start? What's to be done when you're desperate to draw someone out of communication shut-down, and they aren't a willing participant? What do you do when you ask for help for him, for you, for your baby, and nobody answers your cries? 

What if, despite it all, you don't want it to end? 

To end without a fight is such a devastating shame. In these moments, where I can't catch my breath, I am sinking. My love with nowhere to go is suffocating. So abrupt. 

I longed to talk about the depths of motherhood. But depth became off limits. Wasn't this just a season of life? Weren't we just getting back to dates? Planning our first getaway early next year for just the two of us? We had just begun. Barely at three years of marriage. I couldn't even have three, and I would have given every single one I had left. I am forever altered by this. 

How could so much be taken from me? This is a low, low grief. 


And when I see him...how will I ever look at him and not see my husband? I will miss him forever. I will love him for always. I move forward off-kilter, housing something broken inside. 

It is gone. It is all gone. 

Maybe this was never mine to keep. This is not the first time my heart has been shattered by my Great Love. The one who left me behind once for eight months. From that I barely recovered. Here we go again. 

My Great Love who talked of our future up until the moment our lives exploded. My Great Love who tried to leave me so many times. It was inevitable. How many times must I be left, or told I'm going to be left, before I believe it, and act on it as well? How many more days can I stay, scared? Physically, mentally, and emotionally declining? Scared of an anger that my Great Love came with, and one that seems to be amplified by life with me. 

Yet my heart still screams: Stop this! Stop all of this! End it now! Fight for this! This is can't be how our story ends! Don't run away! Look ahead! This shattered life is not for us!

Grief is just love with nowhere to go. I've been broken, but my love stayed intact. 

Thank goodness for our son. Our beautiful, magical son. He is a bit of what was, of what I believe should still be, and all the reason in the world to press on. The brightest spot in my life. The boy who I'm said to love too much. To me, there will never be any such thing as too much. 

Thank god for my capacity to love, and my role as his mother. 

This tiny boy has saved my life. 

Three Times the Charm.

I've been proposed to three times.  That's right.  By three different men.  At three different times in my life, the man I was in a relationship with got down on one knee (or not) and asked me to be his wife.  That means I've had three different wedding dresses.  Three different rings.  Is your mind blown yet?

I've been a little more open in talking about my past relationships in this blog with my last post, and now this one.  The older I get, the more authentically I live.  As in, I just want to be, surround myself with, and seek out the real.  I crave it.  I've also realized there is no such thing as pretending big experiences didn't happen.  Burying it is not sustainable, and you can only pretend to forget, or deny.  And why should you want to? That's the big one.  Everything that happens to you, the good and the bad, is your story.  It makes you who you are.  It alters you, it informs you, and you grow from it.  

This isn't to say I feel my life or my past is anybody's business I don't want it to be. And I've learned that I don't owe an explanation to anyone.  Boom! Power back! But there are some things I'm willing to share.  I've done my work to clear out, heal, and I'd like to give it to you as I approach my wedding day. 

Have you seen the movie, Mr. Nobody? There are three timelines in which he makes a choice, propelling him down a path.  Each one is very different.  In each one there is a different wife.  There are variations on each path, as well.  If you don't chose, everything is possible.  But there's no such thing as not choosing anything, because even nothing is something.  In the end the lesson is that there is no wrong choice.  There are just choices (I've blogged about this concept before).  But there are also some things that simply do seem to be part of our destiny.  

We decide what to do in any given situation based on what we know at the time.  How much life experience we have behind us, how we perceive the world, the type of personality we are, who we are genetically, who we think we should be, etc.  

There is no wrong choice. 

The first time a boyfriend got down on a knee, he had no ring.  He was nervous.  He was shaking.  He was on his way to work at the bookstore.  He took the ring I was wearing (a birthday present from my parents) and moved it to my ring finger, saying to wear it there for now.  He went to work.  I was on my way somewhere, stopped at the train tracks when I called my mom to tell her I was engaged.  Silence, followed by, "Oh."  She wasn't happy about it.  Later, we bought our engagement rings and my wedding band. I bought a wedding dress.  We had a downpayment on a reception center.  He called it off.  I thought I would die.  I survived.  It was back on.  We were going to elope.  It was called off again.  It blurs from here, the cycle of on then off.  It was a long time ago.  It was juvenile.  It wasn't real.  It wasn't to be.  It turned out fine. 

The second time I was proposed to, he had a ring.  He'd picked it on his own.  It was enormous.  Gorgeous.  I don't even want to tell you what it cost.  It was a planned proposal.  It was Halloween.  I remember what I was wearing.  I'm not going to tell you all of the details, because they are mine.  I married him.  We eloped.  Little planning is required for eloping.  No way will I share that day with you.  It's mine, all mine.  We were married for six years.  It was real.  It wasn't to be.  I thought I would die.  It turned out fine.  Except when it wasn't.  And then it was fine again, and then it wasn't.  It blurs from here, the cycle of fine, then not.  It wasn't that long ago.  It wasn't juvenile.  

The third time I was proposed to, he had a ring.  We picked it out together.  It's absolutely perfect.  I look down at my left hand now, and with this one there is no sense of playing house, being unprepared, or wearing a symbol of defiance for my parents' sake.  There is no underlying question when I see my ring deep down (so deep) that maybe this ring is too extravagant, and not quite me.  Gone is the most secret of feelings that I tried to deny and never, ever wanted.  The feeling that getting married was what I thought I was supposed to do at that time.  That the ring felt off, because it represented being trapped in the wrong choice.  

The third time feels like the only time.  The real time.  The conscious choice.  The choice I make as a healthy adult who's been through it.  The self-aware choice to embark on a marriage and a life with this person, at this time, knowing what I know now.  Knowing who I am, and what my strengths and faults are in a relationship. Knowing my deal breakers.  Knowing what it feels like to be loved by good guys and not so good guys.  Knowing what I'm looking for.  Now when I look down at this ring, I see the symbol of what fits me, literally and emotionally.  I'm reminded that I was brave as hell and survived the worst of the worst.  I fought! I refused to settle! By god, there is such a thing as finding the love of your life!

There is no wrong choice.  And boy, this is very much my choice.

And I'm so deeply in love with this choice.

This time, I am freed.  I'm empowered.  I'm enhanced.  Whole, home, real.  

xo

Deena Marie 

I left my world...

Poetry is the most magical, comforting, teacher I have.  Through words that bleed emotion I learn who I am, and that even when I am positive I am the only person to go through such trials and tribulations and that no one else could possibly have a life like mine, I learn that I'm not.  And that is everything.  I can crack open, and let my emotions bleed along with the words when I'm not yet ready or able to use my own. 


I left my world
to be with you
I had to escape
without telling anyone.

I know I left broken hearts
and I suffered for that
but nothing compares
with the suffering of being away
from you.

Today everything is happiness.

Being with you
in different cities
where nobody knows us
and forget our
boring
locked
past.

Walk in the woods
enjoying the sun
the rain
the wind
and the snow.

Today everything is happiness.

-Axel Marazzi


Tweet me: @DeenaMarie
Instagram: deena_marie
Facebook: TheDeenaShow

Follow the omens

Do you believe in omens? Signs from the universe?

Every few years I read "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho.  I remember my first time through, years ago.  I wondered what all the talk of omens meant.  I sure wanted to believe that I could somehow follow a trail of omens to my destiny.  But how would I do it? Would these omens be something I would need to learn to conjure up?  Attract like "The Secret"? Whatever that means.  Why wasn't I lucky enough to have signs popping up around me, to show me I was on the right path? Or...could it be I wasn't quite understanding the concept?

Years later (and a whole bunch of books, life experience and new knowledge later) I got it.  It's not as literal as I originally thought.  You have to tune in.  You have to become aware.  You have to notice.  You can't brush them off.  They are there.  They are every bit as magical.

Deepak Chopra talks a lot about something similar, called syncrodestiny.  The coincidences of the universe.

"When a coincidence arises, don’t ignore it. Ask yourself, What is the message here? What is the significance of this? You don’t need to go digging for the answers. Ask the question, and the answers will emerge. They may arrive as a sudden insight, a spontaneous creative experience, or they may be something very different. Perhaps you will meet a person who is somehow related to the coincidence that occurred. An encounter, a relationship, a chance meeting, a situation, a circumstance will immediately give you a clue to its meaning. “Oh, so that’s what it was all about!”

The key is to pay attention and inquire.

I wanted neon signs with my name and and arrow signs, but if we're searching for something of that magnitude we don't see the our real guideposts.  

I have tuned in.  I have opened up.  I am listening.  I am slowing down and noticing.  In doing so over many months, I can tell you that we've got a great relationship, the universe and I.  She leaves me love notes to both teach and confirm what I know.  And she reminds me when I forget.  If we let the universe show us the way every day, we can't possibly go wrong.  

It is true that the greatest things we'll ever learn are love, self respect, that we are exactly enough just as we are, and that the greatest pilgrimage we'll ever make is within our own body.

Last year (my dark and dismal year) I started to take notice of peacocks.  Peacocks everywhere I looked.  On tv, online, on merchandise, painted on walls, in real life.  It got strange.  Really strange.  Okay, I thought.  I'm listening.  I wonder what they're trying to tell me? I looked up the symbolism of a peacock, and wouldn't you know it.  Renewal.  Resurrection.  A phoenix.  Spirituality.  AWAKENING.  And if you know me or follow me here then you'd know just how much that pertained to what I went through and how I'd describe the most trying and life changing year I'd ever had.  

One day last summer I was outside on a run, and out of nowhere on the sidewalk was this (just when I needed it more than you could know):

Something else happened that was so obvious.  So blatant.  I couldn't not see it as a sign.  It has to do with a name, but I'm keeping this one to myself.  

The one that really makes our jaws drop, happened right after my Grandpa died.  I was leaving Southern Utah a day after the funeral and on the way out my Grandma asked me if I wanted to take a box of candles.  My sweetheart loves candles so I said okay.  I took the big brown box and we put it in the car.  It smelled of my childhood home.  I brought it inside and it sat on the kitchen counter for a few days.  We all discussed my grandma.  At their age and after being partners for so long it can by typical for the other to pass shortly after losing their spouse.  We all wondered, would this happen with my Grandma? 

I had given them new nicknames and for the last few months I would refer to them as Tiny Brown or Little Brown and Mr. Shuffles when I would talk about them with my sweetheart or parents. One day, my sweetheart and I are sitting at the kitchen table and we can't believe we haven't noticed what the candle box says:

If you ask me, it doesn't get any more personal than that.  Her nickname.  And a message that her life is far from over.  

Two weeks ago I found this on the ground:

And today on a wall that was blank yesterday was:

For awhile I've been entertaining some thought about what I've jokingly called to my close friends and family, "quitting the biz".  Am I serious? Do I really want to give up acting? Kind of.  Hang on, let me explain.  I will never quit, but I do want more in my life.  I have too many other parts left waiting to be fueled.  And boy, they are hungry.  I'm suddenly craving adding more in and being okay with taking time away from.  But I also know how important it is to go with the flow.  To be open.  To have a plan but to be adaptable.  To follow the omens.  

The omens have shown me in huge and surprising ways that it's not meant for me to be announcing my "quitting" anytime soon.  From three theatres contacting me for various things at once, to my dream project that had only been a fantasy all but two weeks ago, to being recognized (as an actress) when I was in a place trying to get the ball rolling for the next new adventure in my life.  

And last but not least, a friend who had no idea I felt this way wrote me a message telling me he'd had a dream I wanted to quit and he was sent from the future telling me I wasn't supposed to.  

And then there is the number.  After my grandpa died I slipped back into a bad way...for a few days.  That's all I allowed myself.  I decided I needed to live.  I needed to go forward.  I needed to go on.  If I didn't, my sadness would eat me alive.  I would be gone.  So suddenly I did.  

And I have been okay.  I have been better than okay.  

As the year ended and the new one began, everything finally feels aligned! Things are right.  Things are in place.  Things are clear.  And during this time I started seeing a number.  The same number, everywhere.  Even more than the peacock.  It was starting to drive me crazy because I couldn't figure out what it meant.  Long story short this number is associated with a God of Healing.  My healing has been happening as I've been seeing this number everywhere.  

I've seen it less the more progress I made.

Now, I do find that a scientific truth about the world we live in is more magical to me than any religious story.  The amazements we can prove in discovering our own universe is far bigger and exciting to me than an organized religion with a god.  However, I believe that all religion is true.  What is your truth, is your truth.  What is my truth is my truth.  What his or hers is his or hers, etc.  We have no idea what each others journeys are about.  Who is anyone to tell another their truth is right or wrong? 

"If there's only one nation in the sky, shouldn't all passports be valid for it? - Yann Martel 

One thing I like about getting older is the need to explain yourself to others goes away.  You can finally just put it all out there and know that it is what you offer, and that it is enough. 

But despite anything that may be proven (as of right now), there are still things that can't be explained.  The omens being one.  

Could I have read too much into these? Could coincidence be just that and nothing more? Maybe.  Sure.  But I am going to choose to believe in taking notice.  In following my omens.  If it helps me to get to my final destination with a little more comfort, so be it.  

I'll see you at the end and I'll be able to tell you I have indeed enjoyed the journey.  

"We are all just walking each other home" - Ram Dass

This is the one of several joint blog / shared topics with JayC Stoddard.  It's amazing how our blogs on the same subject are so different, so similar, and so complimentary to the other persons.  Every time.  Coincidence? You be the judge: JAYC STODDARD his blog is brilliant, you should follow it :) 

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My life in pictures 

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