Saying “good-bye.”

Opening Statement:  As a family, our efforts to continue to include you as family, reach out on behalf of your well being, and to enjoy what remains of you were met with hostility, disdain, disrespect, hatred, malice, use and abuse.

Body of Information:  While we understand that your actions are probably beyond your control, we found that we could no longer abide them or continue to put ourselves in harm’s way.

Bringing it All Together:  While we all continue to wish you well, and enjoy memories of the short time you were sober and not using, we’ve left you behind and will not look back.

My Gift of Love…

Statistics bear out the fact that my history of several marriages is not uncommon; however, my last marriage, at the age of 45, took me by surprise, as I believed that I would never marry again.The man that I married was precious beyond comparison. He loved me with all of his strength, devoting inordinate amounts of energy to our life together. The six years we spent together were the only drug-free years of his life, since his teen hood.

I loved him with all of my strength too. When he left me because he had returned to a life of using, it nearly killed me. The loss was too great. For two years afterward, I maintained contact, to make sure he was okay…surviving at least; always yearning in my heart for him to decide to recover from his departure and want “us” again.

Two years after he left me, I finally surrendered him and “us” to Spirit. Several weeks later, he asked me to relocate, and take a job near him. I didn’t think that I could do it, but my heart is what it is, and I believed that surrendering to Spirit allowed this to happen.

Leaving a metropolitan area that I had known for twenty years as my home, I moved my border collie and me to a remote mountain area, a thousand miles away, where all of the traditions of love, marriage, commitment, companionship and friendship that have heretofore shaped my life underwent radical reconstruction. My husband and I live near in geographical proximity to one another, see each other frequently, have morning coffee together, have brief conversations, sometimes longer, camp together, hike together, work together, ride horses together, play with our border collies together, sometimes even make love together…but do not live together.

I’ve accepted his current lifestyle, circumstances and choices even though they are not in harmony with mine. I’ve never asked him to change anything about himself. If I don’t love him as he is for who he is and what he’s become, then I don’t love him. Of course, I want the best for him, but how do I know what his Spiritual Path is? It’s not up to me to determine his path. I’m extremely grateful that our paths allow us to walk side by side, sometimes.

In the past, I could never have imagined such an unorthodox or non-traditional relationship; but in my view, by surrendering to Spirit…letting go, I’ve enlarged my views and concepts of what love is and what love is not. I don’t believe that love judges or criticizes though it’s often called upon to reflect and to offer perspective. I believe that love finds the strength to believe in and see the perfection, no matter what.

Surrendered, I love this man that I took as my mate, eight years ago. His strength, his weakness, his love, his searching, his confusion, his abilities, his inabilities, his peace, his turmoil, all of him…I just love him as he is for who he is, who he was, and who he is yet to become. I love me too; for all the same reasons.

This is my gift of love.