why we do what we do.....

whole lives have been dedicated to attempting to understand the inner working of the human mind and psyche. grey matter endeavoring to understand itself. spirit tries to grasp substance, and substance strives to enclose spirit in a box. no matter how much we think we know, there will always be more unknown than known. even the size of our over-inflated human egos is infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things. yet we can't seem to stop trying to comprehend matters too large for our brains to contain.

i'm in the business of building homes with and for low income families. i'm passionate about this, because from the time my first child was born, i knew, on a very deep, gut level, the importance of having a place where we belong. we need the stability and safety and comfort of an inviolate space. we all need it, but children need it most of all. when i first learned of Habitat for Humanity, i thought, 'have these folks ever got this RIGHT!' nothing breaks the cycle of poverty, and gives long-term financial and emotional security as well as home ownership can. i understood that in my bones long before i knew the statistics and the success stories that are now part of my daily work. and it's done with dignity, and the support of the community. a Habitat homeowner works hard for that home, and pays for it, just like anyone else who buys a home. there's a redeeming dignity in that, and healing and validation in the support of a community making this possible.

before i'd ever heard of Habitat i bought a run-down old country church in a small northern alberta town and spent 15 years making improvements on it. my 2 youngest kids and i began with a dingy single level, in an uninsulated shell with most of the windows broken and boarded over, only cold running water to a toilet standing in the corner, and almost no electrical wiring. a decade and a half later, this was a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 story super-insulated country cottage with varnished wood floors and drywall replacing the shiplap interior finishing. it had had a full electrical and plumbing upgrade, and lots of energy efficient windows, including dormers upstairs under the bright blue galvanized metal roof. it was bright and warm and very comfortable, with a fully modern kitchen. there were even towel warmers in both bathrooms. the lot had also been transformed, with uncounted hours of back-breaking labor, loads of topsoil and manure, straw and sand - from a wasteland of gravel and clay gumbo waist high in weeds, to a bountiful, orderly place of flowers, lawn, vegetables & berries, fruit and shade trees and a greenhouse. there was a little gravel lined 'creek bed' with marsh plants under it, and a bridge over it leading to a tree shaded firepit for summer evening gatherings, just beyond the garage. the house's cedar siding that was cracked and patched and hadn't seen paint in more years than i'd been alive was repaired with matching siding salvaged from a nearby deconstruction and painted a warm pale yellow, with white trim. Against the bright blue of the metal roof that creamy yellow was stunning. the second floor deck that wrapped around the steeple provided an upstairs fire exit down stairs to the garden. it was a heavenly place to watch the sun come up on a summer's morn, or watch it go down on a summer's eve. there was a double clothesline up there as well, off one end of the deck to a former telephone pole installed on the other side of the garden. i loved using that clothesline. everything was 25 feet off the ground, so clothes never got dirty or obstructed use of the yard and garden, and the smell.... i can't think of a smell i like better than bed sheets dried on an outdoor clothesline. funny how something so down-to-earth can make you feel so good it's almost decadent. this upper deck, and its support posts and side rails, i stained a gorgeous color, called 'wild raspberry'. i think i chose it as much for the name as for the color. it was a pinky purply shining brightness that smiled 'hello, welcome back!' every time i returned home. against the winter snows, it almost glowed. the run-down old derelict, abandoned building i paid $3500 for and was ridiculed for buying, i sold those 15 years later, within a couple of weeks of listing, for $80,000. that doesn't seem like much in some parts of the world, but in a little northern alberta town, at that time, it was a lot of money for a house.

i first read about Habitat for Humanity in a magazine, sitting comfortably in that beautiful home, surrounded by the work of my own hands, and i told myself "one day, this is what i'm going to do - i'm going to help Habitat or someone like them, help people who don't have the means or the skills or the help they need to do it, to own a home."

i don't know why difficulties make some work harder and want to make the world a better place, while others can't seem to find much motivation for anything. i don't know why some of us can't seem to stop dreaming and planning and hoping for more, while others have no hope, and no energy to expend. building foundations under dreams is, after all, very hard work. i don't know why i was so driven to make a dumpy, run-down little church into something exceptional, just to provide a home for my kids. why couldn't i have bought the mediocre bungalow that was for sale across the street from it, taken out a mortgage, and been satisfied with the status quo? why isn't it even in me to give more than a passing thought to doing that?

what is it, exactly, that drives me? to be the only person in my family with college / university education. to be the only one who wants to see the world. the only one who feels an obligation to leave things better than i find them. is this some need to prove myself to a family who marginalized me and made me a scapegoat? what do i think i need to 'show' them? or is it about them at all?

Room

i've just finished reading 'Room' by...... About a young woman who is kidnapped and held captive for 7 years in a shed in a her captor's back yard. She has a child, who is 5 when they manage to escape. my daughter, Raven commented, coincidentally, just before i read 'Room', on men who isolate their spouses and children - comment made in reference to her father, who dropped the 3 of us- her elder brother, her and me, pretty much to fend for ourselves in a cabin on the banks of the Yukon River then went off to live his wilderness adventurer fantasy. i hadn't thought of it in quite this way before. then i read 'Room', and was astonished at how deeply the story affected me. and, though the isolation in our case was somewhat voluntary (mostly because i hadn't enough sense or self respect to NOT agree to go along with it) there are many parallels. we were entirely dependent on him for everything. it was quickly established that i had no 'right' to ask for anything more than very minimal basics. (we're talking fetch the water from a creek in a bucket, heat the water for laundry on a wood stove after you've chopped the firewood yourself and wash the clothes by hand minimal basics.) a bag each of flour, rice and dry beans and a rack of dried salmon you caught, cleaned and salted yourself to make meals from minimal basics. a pole nailed to two trees to hang your butt over in -50 Celsius and call that an outhouse minimal basics. i didn't earn any money, so i wasn't entitled to have any to spend. i'm a good cook, because life in the Yukon bush taught me to make do with very little. i don't need a recipe to make bread or biscuits or pancakes or muffins.... or most anything really. and to this day, i really hate to see good food wasted or thrown away. it was so cold in that cabin sometimes, that we wore our parkas and snow boots inside all day. knobs of frost nearly an inch thick formed on the heads of nails driven into the INSIDES of the log walls. and he was there sporadically, working and eating in town, taking periodic adventure jaunts up the river. eventually, i'd had enough. i walked out, 5 miles overland through the mosquito infested, up and down thickly forested hills with no road or trail on a very hot August day, carrying a 2 1/2 year old child and a backpack, 5 months pregnant. i'd miscarried that spring, and half expected another miscarriage to result from the trip out.

another appointment with my counselor. early in the process, he had me do a collage. he called it a 'burden collage'. he said, you're carrying a lot of stuff around with you. "i want you to just go through magazines, and cut out any picture that makes you pause, or say, 'aha!' or anything that invokes strong feelings. then stick it all on a piece of paper. there are no limitations as to size or color or how things are arranged. you will find what needs to be there, and they will go where they need to go on the page. this isn't a work of art; it's an emotional exercise. don't make it beautiful, don't get too involved in, or attached to the final product."

so i ended up with a full sized sheet of red bristol board covered with bits of glossy paper. there were a lot of photos, but there were even more words. i knew i was supposed to use images. he said images, and not words, but i couldn't leave the words alone. they jumped out at me and demanded to be included. for instance, the word 'home' appeared 14 times. and when i couldn't find the words to make the phrase, i cut images of women into the letters that form the phrase, 'who do you think you are?'

nothing was insignificant to him, as he looked over my collage. even the number of times something occurred was important. so, not only is the word 'home' and its meaning of high importance, but in eastern numerology, a number like 14 (the number of times the word 'home' appeared in my collage) would have its 2 separate numerals added, to make 5. he explained to me that this means that 5 is a very important number to me. then he asked me why 5 was important. i didn't know. he led me through some examination of that, and we found there are many fives in my history.

i am one of 5 children

i have 5 children. this wasn't apparent to me until, after asking how many children i have (4), he then asked "any still births or miscarriages?" yes. one miscarriage early in the second trimester

i have owned or shared ownership of 5 homes

each of my (3) marriages / commonlaw relationships lasted 5 years

i don't seem to be able to maintain a full-time job for more than 5 years unless the job has major scope for evolving / advancement / change. the only thing i've done for longer is teach violin, which has been part time over 30 years - a constantly evolving and changing thing. even my current job, which i love, was entered into from the beginning with a '5 year plan' already begun in my mind. even as i was pulling it all together and getting the job, i was aware, on some level, that i expected to be doing something else in 5 years.

this 'importance of 5' seems a bit weird and hokey to me, as i know nothing about numerology, and it seems completely without any rational connection, but, despite my desire for things to be rational, something about the subject makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.

there is, he told me, significance in the location of each image on the page. the sheet of paper all these pictures and words are stuck to is like a map. everyone uses the same place on the page for childhood/developmental concepts, for issues related to personal growth, for past, present and for future. it has to do with the part of our brains that these things are connected to. he said he has tried to consciously make a collage that doesn't do this, and even when he thinks he's placing things contrary to where he thinks they should go, the final result falls in place with the pattern. sometimes a collage will need to be rotated to see this, but it's always there, in the correct position, relative to the rest of the page.

the number of words, of actual text, is also significant. words showing up in a picture collage are not uncommon. what is unusual about my collage is the sheer number of words. each word, i'm told, represents a story. this collage, then is indicative of many, many stories that need to be told. many things that need to be said. journaling is one way to tell them, to say them. so he then asked me to write one story - just free association, no attempt to write great literature - using every word i had pasted on my collage.

then, when i had the collage and the 3 pages of single spaced text it took to include all the collage words in one free-flow monologue, he told me, " now we're going to cut them up. i want you to cut the collage into pieces that show how some are related to each other." we then spent some time discussing the groupings, and how i felt about them.

then he said, now i want you to sort these according to how you feel about them. one pile for good things you want to keep, one pile for things you need to let go, and a third for things that need to be worked on. he kept the things that needed to be let go and the things that needed to be worked on in his office, and told me to take the good things home with me.

at the next session, he had me pick the first (most important) thing to let go of. we talked about it, then he sent me to the beautiful stone fireplace in the room he uses, to burn it. it was terrifying. i began to cry, and had to blow my nose. when i asked for a garbage to throw away the tissues i'd used for this, he said. "we're not going to throw them out. they're not garbage. we're going to burn them too. there's something very powerful about burning your tears along with the things you're letting go. this honors your pain. validates it. it was very hard to get some of those bits to burn. in the course of doing it, the room filled with smoke and i had to re- light some of them numerous times. this too, he told me, was significant. after i left that day, i felt extremely uncomfortable, to the point of nausea - as if i was coated with the smoke from the burning. very unclean. all i could think of was getting home, throwing the clothes i wore in the washing machine, and having a very thorough shower. and i wasn't comfortable until i had done it. this too, he told me the next week, was significant.

let's be realistic

the year in review. having just read the new year's resolution post, i'm reminded that i should be:

writing about emotional things - not stuffing them. so maybe i'll try the journal idea Rob, my counselor suggested. i'm afraid of it. in the past, journaling has made me depressed. but i've been depressed for a year now - can it be much worse? maybe done in moderation it will help.

getting a divorce - the papers are in my files. is this why i'm avoiding cleaning up my home office area? just going near it gives me a feeling of hopelessness and failure. i will set up the new location and resolve to work there a bit each morning or evening.

making time to play - it's summer, and i have a water dog and a kayak who seldom see the water. nuff said. just DO it.