Becoming Whole

"Meditation is painful in the beginning but it bestows immortal bliss and supreme joy in the end."- Swami Sivananda

Watching Oprah's interview with David Arquette yesterday was interesting. If you follow this sort of thing, (and these days the "news" usually reports celebrity breakups as if it were actually newsworthy so you can't help but know these things.), David and his beautiful celebrity wife Courtney Cox Arquette, were separated a few months back causing David to spiral out of control very publicly. Tabloid photos of him leaving night clubs extremely intoxicated or hearing parts of radio interviews where he sounds terrible and shares very personal and private stories about his marriage were becoming commonplace.
Yesterday on Oprah his sister Patricia revealed that she and Courtney staged an intervention for him that he gladly and willingly accepted since he now knows he was screaming out in pain and asking for help for quite sometime.

It was revealed that the Arquette's had grown up in a very unstable life. Living in a commune and having actor/poet parents. There was alcohol, drugs, drama and abuse in their household. David became the perfect child. Sweet, kind, funny. The sisters described him as being the perfect little boy but they said, not even a perfect kid could make everything in their house all better. But of course he could not. Then he married and became a father and was now defined by this new role. Now I am a father and a husband, I will play it perfectly. But still not having dealt with the pain of childhood of course he soon began to unravel and his family broke apart. Thus beginning his public downward spiral.

I was fascinated by his story and was moved by his honesty and his obvious heartfelt and authentic wish to now be who he really is, a whole person. I to struggled to be a good girl for my parents. Doing "my part" was all I could do to control our out of control lives. Be sweet, be good, be pretty, be smart. I tried my best but inevitably failed to keep my family together. Fear, embarrassment, confusion, anger, resentment were shoved down beneath the surface of the smiling, happy good girl I was. I became a wife and mother very early on and FINALLY found what I had always wanted. Control over my own life. I was still a good daughter, now adding to it good wife, good mother, good friend, perfect household. I was so busy being all of these things I didn't realize that I still wasn't being myself. I would live a life of unrequited self love for quite some time to come.

The time, as it tends to do, went by very quickly and I found myself still young with almost grown children. As I have said before my role went from from manager to consultant right before my very eyes. It was quiet for the first time in my life. And in the stillness I began to notice things I never did in the noise I surrounded myself in. Things came to the surface that I didn't even know were down there! The road to being a whole, real person is not easy. When you live the life of the "good child" you don't feel worthy. A lot of women I know even justify sitting down during the day. Most women, even if they have some free time, wont use it to sit down and read a book or have a cup of tea or do some meditation. Most women will justify sitting down only if they are on the computer or have a load of laundry to fold in front of them. Sitting down is a decadent luxury. I urge everyone, men and women, to sit in quiet everyday. It is not easy! Your mind will wander, you will start to jump up remembering a million things you just HAVE to do. You will start to notice things you may not like. About yourself or others in your life. Being honest with yourself is not always easy but to be who you are truly meant to be needs honesty. Ain't no way around that. Release control, you don't have it anyway. I am fortunate beyond measure that I have a great partner who is understanding and learning all of these new facets of life with me not against me. Coming to this place is a journey two people can't always get to together. Everyone at some point starts to feel the shift. And you either open your heart and embrace it, or you start putting walls up and shutting it out one way or another.
So if you are starting to feel the shift, you are not alone. There are great books out there to help guide you through these uncharted waters. The one I just recently read and LOVE is Elizabeth Lesser's book Broken Open, how difficult times help us grow. I highly recommend it. I am excited for the future, a whole person lives a much richer life than running around just trying to be "good" all the time. David ended the interview showing us voyeurs into his new whole life. Not surprisingly yoga and meditation is a part of his daily life. He said it gets a little lonely sometimes but he is figuring it all out. Sometimes life is lonely. Can you sit quietly in the silence or do you need to fill it up with noise? Its how you handle things, not what happens to you that makes the difference.