Below my signature line of my email I have the quote: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” It is from the poem The Summer Day by the renowned poet Mary Oliver.
Mary Oliver’s poetry spoke to me long before I came out as a lesbian. There was something about her observations of the natural world in her beloved Cape Cod that drew me in. Yet, it was her one line jewels of wisdom that kept me sustained. When I read her poems as an out queer woman, I knew that she understood me and this journey. She was family after all.
Mary suffered trauma as a child and so did I. Like many people who live through abusive and/or chaotic childhoods, and many people in our later in life community, I intellectually understood what happened was not my fault. Emotionally, it was another story. I have spent my life being “good.” After a brief period of rebelliousness in my late teens and early twenties, I tucked all of who I was neatly away. Making the safe choice of marriage and family. Believing that motherhood would fix me.
Motherhood Helped Me Feel Love But I Still I Was Settling
It did and it didn’t. It helped me feel the depths of my soul’s love for the first time. It did not make me feel whole or loveable. I married a man who was emotionally unavailable our entire marriage. He loved our children and did the best he could with our relationship. I am more intense and intellectually driven than he is and I would not settle for what we had. He did and was happy. I desperately wanted to feel loved and adored.
Like many women, I came out as gay and I felt enormous guilt and shame. I screwed myself in the divorce due to this and left my marriage with far less than I deserved after twenty-seven years. Frightened that I would lose the love and approval of my children, I gave far more than I should in the first several years after the divorce. Letting my children pommel me with their disapproval of some of the choices I made. I know now it was because these four humans loved me and I was worried that if I didn’t continue to be “good” I would lose that love.
Coming Out Later in Life Changed Everything
A few years after I came out, I started to work with other women coming out later in life. I grew up in the trenches of suffering and then became an expert in caring for people who were in turmoil. I worked in hospitals and hospices for ten years prior to my coming out. I became an ordained minister, chaplain, and grief counselor.
Suffering did not scare me, it was my normal as a young girl and the indecision and loneliness of my marriage continued to play out a very familiar scenario. Not the same kind of suffering, but restlessness and a feeling of not belonging.
The Choice to Live My Precious Life Opened My Eyes to Life Beyond Coming Out
Then I began to live my one wild and precious life with abandon. I stopped needing the approval of my children and I found such joy in my new community. I realized the thing that I was most afraid of was actually the key to my happiness. The key to ending my suffering.
You do not have to be good
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
I met, fell in love and I married my wife, Tonda. She loves me like everyone deserves to be loved. I began to fall in love with myself. My queerness which I so long denied actually was bringing me into a new world of joy and contentment. Taking a term from the hospice world, the terminal restlessness was gone.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
I had made a career out of being able to sit in others’ discomfort. To hold the hand of the dying and to be with their families. To be with people making the choice to come out, to change their lives significantly, often navigating some of the very things I had navigated as well. I understood their grief, shame and guilt and have tried to be of service as best I could.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
I am Fully Ready to Live Beyond the Suffering & Pain of the Past
Over the last year, I have realized that I no longer want to sit in sadness. I believe it is because I am no longer sad. The world has moved on in the last six years and so I have too. I have the joy of being in a committed loving relationship, of owning a beautiful home, and creating a successful business that has worked with hundreds of women. I have friends and a community. I have my children too. I am beyond content.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Ready to Enjoy & Love Your Life as a Queer Person? Let’s Talk!
So as I enter the last stage of my working life I want to work with LGBTQIA+ people who are finding their joy. Who are and have done the hard work of acceptance of self and have let go of the need for the approval of others. They know who they are ready to find more joy, peace, happiness and contentment in life.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
The world offers itself to your imagination,
Calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
Over and over announcing your place
In the family of things.
More Things Coming Your Way — What Living Beyond Coming Out is All About
The name of my company is Coming Out & Beyond – my blog and podcast have explored the coming out part, I am now ready to talk about the happiness of beyond. I can help you find the joy of beyond as an LGBTQIA+ or straight person. I now know what I will do with my life. I want to live in joy and help others do that too. I can help YOU do that.
So I will ask you the same question the sage poet Mary Oliver asked me, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
You can also check out Mary’s Facebook Group Here