It would have been comfortable to stay in my small, isolated life. I had crafted it for maximal comfort, minimal human interaction, and few opportunities to experience the edges of my abilities or the edges of my comfort zone. I was well into recovery at this point, about a year or so in, and I had found a comfortable rhythm of waking and sleeping, activity and rest.

But there was a heaviness in me, and the feeling that from here, from age 35, life wasn’t going to get any better.

No better than this mediocrity, peaceful as it was.

My heart was yearning for more. That ache for connection, expansion, to share my gifts grew to the point I could no longer ignore or deny it. I started “daring greatly“ and being more vulnerable in my relationship- risking by sharing poems that touched me, by striving for more authenticity and openness. Our differences became starkly apparent when I was more open about my internal world, and he couldn’t meet me there.

The security of my relationship fell away, my comfort crumbled, to my surprise I found that I was not without shelter.

During this tumultuous time, by joyful chance or synchronicity, when I traveled from frigid Michigan to visit a friend in California, I happened to be staying near Spirit Rock, and I happened to be able to attend a morning meditation gathering, and there, the speaker happened to share this poem, The Journey, by one of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, which sang my experience:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voice behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life that you could save.

Here was shelter amidst the storm of uncertainty. As I continued to allow my heart to lead, I found the work of Martin Shaw, mythologist, mystic, and bard. From him I learned that far back in mythic traditions, stories would be passed to daughters like a swan-feathered cloak to shelter her though life’s storms and trials. Of course I had developed anxiety, depression, disordered eating, abusive exercise habits.

Of course I had settled for a life that didn’t ask much of me.

I had entered the wilds of womanhood with little protection, with only the obviously flimsy and deteriorating story of separation for a map.

Of course I had turned away from The Call so many times in my life. Again and again I chose comfort over shelter. I knew I was ill-prepared to cope with all the discomforts that come with a heart-led life. Those comforts never led to fulfillment or satisfaction, just allowed me to get by, feel safe, and kept me alive.

Through the recovery process I grew my heart, my self-compassion, my ability to sit with and hold difficult emotions, to feel them deeply and honestly, let them have their way with me. I learned to care for myself with attention and kindness rather than self-medicating and numbing out. With these skills in my Girl Survival Kit, I finally say yes to the call of a life of greater amplitude, and for me, shelter is enough.