by Jane Weiss
At the same time, I felt a warm, tender, emerging love and respect for this child-self whose experiences also taught me to be strong, courageous, creative, sensitive to others, and able to cope with multiple realities.
Within two years, I unearthed, reconstructed, and resolved enough of my childhood to believe that there weren’t going to be any more shocks. I saw myself stand with arms outstretched, enveloped in a circle of light and surrounded by pieces of broken shell—my former self-beliefs shattered, and my true self revealed. I was ready to move on.
Even though I understood why I had evolved as I had, I was unaware of and unprepared for the hard work ahead: undoing primal belief patterns that kept recreating the same conflict-avoidance and victim role issues in relationships, and regaining my power, so that I could hear my inner voice, free of unwanted influences. This new information helped me to understand more about why and how I enabled, responded to, and tolerated abusive relationships for so long—first in my marriage, and then with my children, following my separation from their father.
Bonnie supported me throughout the entire ordeal with her uncanny sensitivity, wisdom, curiosity, and caring. A question she held was: Is my choice to be lesbian based on this early sexual experience? I didn’t know how to answer this question, but found several resources which acknowledged that being abused by men has influenced some women to relate sexually and emotionally to women rather than men. However, no one becomes a lesbian solely because she was abused by a man. After all, many heterosexual women were abused by men, and they continue to choose men as their mates and sexual partners. If abuse were the determining factor in sexual orientation, the lesbian population would be far greater than it is now!
Birthday Letter From Bonny to Jane
Bonnie had been out of town for a few days when I received this letter from her to commemorate my birthday:
22 November 1992
Dearly Beloved,
Here I sit in Atlanta, Georgia, on a beautiful fall day, as your fifty-third birthday is being celebrated with friends in Chanhassen, Minnesota. I am hundreds of miles away from the love of my life. (That’s you, my Jane, my magnificent life partner). We now have ten-and-a-half years of togetherness behind us. Can you believe it’s been that long since we first moved into our apartment? When we couldn’t bear being separated on a Monday morning after isolating ourselves all weekend? How can my workaday world have become this—having me so far away from you on such a special day?
When was the last time I sought refuge from the chaos of my career and jumbled aspirations—refuge in quiet moments fully dedicated to feeling and describing your meaning to me? When did I last say, “I love you more than life itself”—a frightening thought to me? When did I tell you how many hundreds, thousands of times your essence, softness, beauty, insights, energy, giving, roll over me as tidal waves in times of contemplation, as well as in times of joyfulness?
Have I ever said how much more of me I would love to give to you, and how inadequate I often feel at my inability to do so? Do you know I have never loved another deeply enough to want to change the very core of me, until you? Do you also know I pray for your patience with and understanding of my change process as I learn how to be more for you?
Can you feel my embarrassment when I selfishly judge your actions in a disrespectful way? I’m not very good yet at putting words on my own shame and asking for your forgiveness. But I keep working on developing that degree of honesty and vulnerability—for my own integrity, and for the dignity and respect with which you deserve to live and be loved.
Do you know that beautiful thoughts of you and these things I’m speaking touch such deep chords in me, that tears are flowing? How much I want to be “perfection” for you—to lovingly nurture your growth, to soften your pain, to give without expectation, to release you as your wants/needs indicate, to trust that we’ll be together as long as we’ve both intended.
My fear of facing a day without you is paralyzing. How do I walk into that fear to let it go? To love you in freedom, rather than in tyranny of fear of loss? How do we give each other this gift of freedom?
After ten years, I’m awed at how much in love with you I am. To feel a rush of excitement just thinking about finding your face at the airport—and feeling your touch, and lips. I need your closeness every day. Awaking with the realization that you’re lying beside me is the highlight of every morning. And drifting away each night in the warmth of your arms is a luxury beyond any riches. What will our next ten, twenty, forty years bring? Just as I would have given anything in our first year to be able to see us at five or ten years, now in our tenth year, I want to see us at forty! The question is no longer, “Can we make it?” Rather, it’s, “How long is this heaven-on-earth to be mine?” I have been caressed by the love of God through your love. Will I be content to have known it? How can I experience it evermore deeply?
What of the future? Our past is a cherished treasure, our future an exciting potential. I will commit to you a lifetime of loving, and of striving to do it ever better. I commit a search for self-insight and honesty that I may love you evermore freely and unrestrained by fear. I will continue my spiritual search for a life of less illusion and greater truth. I will endeavor to put joy in every day, and to bring joy wherever I’m able. I will seek to learn more humility, and to experience with clarity the God within.
For you, me, us, my dear one, because I love you. I honestly love you.
- Bonnie
What an incredible affirmation of our love! I thought back to the synchronicity of our destined meeting at a time when I longed for love, yearned for a recognized “place” in the work world, and was searching intensely for the God within. In our short time together, we had been limitless in our abilities to accomplish what we wanted, and had been catalysts for each other’s growth. Bonnie enlivened me, replenished me, helped me remember who I was, and freed me to love myself and the God within us both.
Continuing to Create
The home Bonnie and I had lived in together for ten years sat at the highest point of our suburban neighborhood. Its bold position symbolized where we were in our journey—not wanting to hide our lifestyle, while aspiring to fit into society for our children’s sake. Neighbors on all four sides had become friends with whom we shared special events, like graduation open houses, holiday gatherings, birthdays, and eventually weddings. Over the years in this home, we had decorated every room to suit us, added yearly to the landscaping, and recently finished a portion of the lower level for Erin to entertain her high school friends with more privacy. It was about that time we began to entertain glimpses of a different lifestyle.
Adding impetus to this notion, my work life at Walker had become extremely stressful, as the result of a change in management responsibilities. Instead of overseeing operations for all Walker-owned and managed senior housing, I was now required to oversee housing and nursing homes in my newly assigned region, the West Coast. My span of responsibility had expanded from one hundred employees to about eight hundred. Crises around unannounced government regulatory inspections of our nursing homes were common. Unions, rare in senior housing, were an obstinate third party complicating nursing home employee management issues.
My typical workweek was West Coast (primarily California) travel from Monday through Thursday, meetings at Walker’s Minneapolis headquarters on Friday, and completing reports in my office on Sunday. With only one full day at home, much of the house and yard work became Bonnie’s responsibility—and she also had a demanding work position, let alone primary care for Erin, who now was sixteen. So we began talking about and imagining exterior maintenance-free townhome living. And my dream was to have that home on a lake.
One late winter Saturday morning, as we were sitting in our dinette reading the Chanhassen weekly paper, I noticed an obscure four-line classified ad for a town home on a lake. “Eden Prairie: Twin townhome 1-level living, 3-4BR walkout to scenic lake. Two lots remain.”
I looked up
from the paper to see that Bonnie, scanning the same item, was excited, too. “Bonnie, this seems like an answer to our prayer. Shouldn’t we check it out now, with only two lots left?”
Her response was, “Here we go!”
Within the next hour, we had called and connected with Arnold, a veteran salesperson for a well-established builder. He requested we come to his office, located in a nearby model home, one of two models offered on the remote site described in the ad. First, he suggested we tour both models, which had vaulted ceilings, large nearly floor-to-ceiling windows, an open, spacious great room floor plan, and oak floors, cabinets and woodwork. Bonnie and I were guarded in our excitement, afraid that either model would be well beyond our financial reach.
We continued our tour and drove with Arnold to a small lake surrounded by single-family homes on one-third of its perimeter, and marshland on the remaining. Although the secluded townhome area was cleared and had the lots identified with markers, only the first twin home was actually under construction. The fifty-to eighty-foot distance between the rear home sites and the lake was densely covered with tall marsh weeds and black willow trees. The front of the homes would face a private road and a steep hillside abundant with oak and maple trees. Arnold stressed the importance of acting quickly if we wanted to secure a prime lot, as he had several parties interested in building on these sites. We briefly discussed a price range for the smaller model, which we preferred anyway, and told him we’d get back to him as soon as possible.
Over the next two days, we learned from our previous realtor what we could garner from the sale of our current home, decided how much more we could pay towards a mortgage from our executive-level salaries, and discussed with Erin the possibility of a move to Eden Prairie for her senior year of high school. It would be a push financially, and Erin only reluctantly acquiesced, even with a car from her mother as an enticement for her to commute to her current high school. But we determined to move ahead.
As was typical for us when we set our minds on a clear goal, we moved with lightning speed to sign purchase and sale agreements with both realtors. Our Chanhassen home sold two weeks after it was on the market in June, with a stipulation that we would move out in September, three months before our new town home would be finished. This arrangement meant Erin, Bonnie, and I had to live in a rental town home for three months, with most of our furniture and household goods in storage.
Despite our initial frustration about having to move twice in three months, the period turned out to be a welcomed respite from home responsibilities, and allowed us to focus on building our dream home with its myriad building decisions—a gut-wrenching process filled with extremes ranging from blissful highs to seemingly insurmountable contractor-issue lows.
We finally made the move into our Eden Prairie lakeside town home in mid-December 1995, nearly fourteen years into our partnership. Neither of us had ever lived in such luxurious, ample space. Nor had we been so delighted with the world outside our doors. We cut a narrow path through the thick marsh weeds to access our little lake, where we cross-county skied in the winter, and canoed and kayaked in the summer. We planted wildflowers in the marsh in the spring, erected a multiple-feeder station to attract a variety of bird species, and set up a spotting telescope on the four-season porch to watch the woodchuck antics, great blue heron fishers, and a wide array of migrating waterfowl.
At this point, our eight children were spread from California to New York, with four of them in Minneapolis. We often entertained, combining as many of our adult children and spouses as their travel and time permitted. Our interior home space—with a large island in the middle of an expansive kitchen and dinette, and family and living rooms all contiguous for gracious entertaining—made family holiday and birthday gatherings easy to manage.
By March of 1996, just four months after our move, it was clear that the years of stress from working and traveling for Walker had taken its toll. I found myself beyond feeling frightened about meeting performance goals; I was physically and emotionally exhausted. One Thursday evening, after returning to Minnesota from a particularly difficult week dealing with a California nursing home survey team, Bonnie suggested we have dinner at the Black Forest Inn—a place we still reserved for deep conversations. Over a glass of wine, she tenderly shared that she was profoundly disturbed about how I seemed like a walking shell, that my soul didn’t seem to inhabit my body, and that she wanted me to consider leaving Walker before I became physically ill.
I had occasionally entertained the idea of just walking away from this demanding position, but didn’t want to appear as if I couldn’t handle the job. Besides, I knew I didn’t have the energy to look for another position, much less manage the learning curve when I found one. But that night, my beloved partner Bonnie was proposing that I resign in order to take time to regain my physical and spiritual health, so that I could begin a new job search.
I said to her: “Don’t say that again, unless you really mean it.” She made the offer again, and I gratefully and tearfully accepted.
From my journal on March 7:
I never knew at the beginning of my adulthood that I would be a business person, rather than a nurse. I never knew that I would learn to love facts, figures, schedules, as well as the joy of helping a fledgling or struggling senior-living community find its way through courage and persistence towards its goals. I never knew that I would attain a place of importance within a large organization. And I never knew at the beginning of my adult journey that I deserved to be free enough to leave the security of institutions—marriage and Walker—to find my path, my purpose.
Thank you, beloved God, beloved partner, beloved angels.
I tendered my resignation on March 12, and worked my last day on April 11, 1996. During this period, I felt lifted up and acknowledged by everyone who interfaced with me at Walker. At a party held in my honor, I was invited by the senior management team to come back if and whenever I wanted. I knew I would miss them all.
From my journal April 12:
Today is my first day of freedom! I have showered, had breakfast, communed with a pair of egrets on the marsh, and prayed thanks. For most of my lifetime, I have asked journey directions from others. It’s time to know even more clearly what my own voice sounds like. To hear others, but to listen to myself, my soul. Let me remember this, even when I am in the pocket of my journey and can feel only terror.
I diligently set my sights to find the best way for me to hear my inner voice, which I assumed would lead me into my life’s work and purpose, and that most likely finding this work would happen by fall, at the latest. During the spring and summer months, I explored daily writing rituals, hands-on healing techniques, meditation, and dream interpretation.
Interspersed with esoteric work, I pragmatically put our house in order by cleaning and putting finishing touches on our décor, planned and presented with Bonnie a high-school graduation party for Erin, and held several social gatherings for family and friends with whom we had long wanted to spend time.
By fall, five months into my hiatus, I had written copiously, and sensed I had connected with my inner thoughts in ways I had never been able to before. However, I was becoming panicky that time was slipping away, and there was nothing on my work radar screen that resembled my vision. During the summer, I had turned down three offers for contract work, doing the same type of work I had just left behind. Each time I was approached and offered this contract work, I froze, afraid to accept the job, for fear I’d become mired in work that was not aligned with my life’s purpose.
I began to seriously doubt my process. Had I been misusing this precious gift of time on inner work? Should I have been out networking instead?
I was impatiently expecting a breakthrough to achieve something that I had envisioned and materialized from my inner work. “As above, so below,” I counseled myself. I became acutely aware of a disconnection between my ability to trust in Higher Power to manifest through me, and my patience to all
ow it to come in its own time. I was frightened that I was not able to read or interpret the signals and messages I was receiving from the spiritual realm. I believed that if I couldn’t trust this inner voice, then I would succumb once more to listening to others’ voices for guidance and direction in my life. How could I ever achieve my vision, my life’s purpose?
By late fall, the disappointment of having tried so hard to do the right thing, the childlike, naïve anticipation of prayer answered in the manner, form, and timeline I envisioned, along with the fear that I didn’t know what to do next, resulted in a paralyzing depression. I stopped my daily spiritual practices, withdrew from contact with all but my family, and denied the terror I was feeling by burying myself in holiday preparations.
Nearly a year after my work resignation I finally reached a place of surrender so that my life could evolve within the timeframe and manner it needed to. In this period, I wrote in my journal:
Am aware of imminent deep change in me, and, while I welcome it, it also scares me. Today in the park under my special tree, I laid facedown on the ground. In the arms of my Mother Earth, I could allow deep sobs to well up and out of me. I felt myself surrender my ego and self-strivings. I must continue to let go. I am at the end of this part of the “me” that I have constructed.
Later that spring in 1997, I became involved in starting a new consulting business. A friend, who was an intuitive counselor, and I were in discussions about how to bring spiritual principles into the workplace. Although we did not materialize the business, it did establish a momentum, an opening within me, which by June resulted in a contract with Walker to provide consulting services for strategic planning for their community health division.