Out of the Corner

by Jennifer Grey

if we’re lucky we have many mothers. They can come into our lives at any time, but their influence can particularly permeate and imprint our early years.

I was mothered by others as well. Children are so porous. In those early developmental years, our connections with people can significantly contribute to how we will forevermore define ourselves.

I had this inner watchdog, my parents’ opinions and rules. Their approach to everything was my lifeline. I assumed that if I played by their rules, nothing bad could happen

She would eventually have a sense of her true value and purpose that no one—no man, parent, or outside force—would be able to take away from her. One day she would finally own and know, really know, how amazing it is to be her. Exactly as she is, in every perfectly deeply imperfect way, inside and out.

Acting is the ability to live truthfully under given imaginary circumstances.”

“You can’t do anything to make yourself happy, but you can stop doing the things that make you unhappy.”

It’s counterintuitive to encourage this natural letting-go process, resulting in their independence. The painful irony: if you do your job well, they will leave you.

Joseph Campbell says that to follow your bliss, “You have to recognize your own depth.”

Women have an uncanny ability to adapt to please others, to refrain from privileging themselves out of fear of what might ensue.

Once you’ve identified that special someone, it’s implied, as stated in the vows mutually taken, that you’re supposed to stay together until you die. But considering how long we’re now living, it’s borderline ludicrous to imagine that two separate human beings will grow and change at exactly the same rate in exactly the same directions, like synchronized swimmers or conjoined twin cherries…so their compatibility is as robust and true as their desire to be able to hang on to the end.

Just because it’s a great marriage doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a great marriage for the rest of your life. It took me a long time, but when I finally surrendered to the nagging feeling that something in me was in fact dying, there was nothing I could do or could even imagine doing to save myself, unless I let it all go.

Marrying Clark gave me the opportunity to experience what it is to start a family of my own. Because of him, I got to become a mother to a child who is now a woman, an experience that has far exceeded my wildest dreams. Clark and I were together for twenty years, married for nineteen, and are partners in raising our incredible daughter. Pretty extraordinary for two people who had been rolling solo for the first thirty-eight and forty years of our lives, respectively. The good news is our marriage was something we both had needed to let go of. We knew that it had served its purpose. The three of us will always be a family.

My thoughts exactly!!!

And I have become willing to tell the truth in the second half of my life like I never had before. There’s an exhilarating relief in my willingness to face my fear of the unknown.

Am I living my best life? Is this current iteration of who I am the fullest version of myself, or am I tethered unconsciously to my fear of the unknown, to a life or a self that has run its course? Is there a small voice that asks, Is there any call I would regret not heeding if I dared to break out of the familiar? Is there more pleasure, more vibrancy, more truth? More creativity? Might there be more ease and grace on the other side of surrender if I had the faith of someone who knew that life was unfolding for my highest good?

What if the story you inherited, or have been telling by rote for years, is not the whole story? Or even a true story? How might your retelling change the way you see your life, yourself, your loved ones? What if the “worst things” ended up being some of the most transformative things, necessary to launch you into your next rendering?