Special Guest Author: Magdalen Bowyer
It was almost 3 o’clock and the sun had broken through for the occasion. A perfect day for marrying the man of my dreams. Everyone in the cabin was dressed and ready. I turned to see my father examining me. “Do you really want to go through with this?” he asked. The question was completely unexpected and surprising. But even more surprising was an errant voice in my head that wanted to reply, “Actually, Dad, I’ve changed my mind. It’s been fun, but let’s get outta here!” That voice shocked me but was quickly suppressed. This was not the time for a dramatic change of heart. “Yes, Dad, I’m ready,” I said, smiling.
That was many years ago. A marriage to my dream guy. We intended to grow old together and had he lived, we’d be celebrating our 30th anniversary this summer. But he died in a car accident a month short of our fourth anniversary.
His death marked a turning point in my life and set me on a trajectory I could never have imagined. This is what I know: I’ve had a lifetime of learning in relationships and every goodbye has stretched me into the woman I’ve become. Relationships are deeply connected to our wellness as women. Some of us will learn to transform and sustain one relationship over a lifetime. Others will learn through more than one relationship, more than one marriage. If a marriage ends, it doesn’t spell failure. It may even be a kind of success. You’d probably rather not hear this now, but I feel it’s essential you understand that you are about to test and challenge all that you’ve been taught about love, relationships and marriage. In the process, you will face what it means for you, who you think you are and who you want to be.
In my own life I’ve learned that women haven’t had the mentors we need to connect with our own feminine power. Yet it is this vital connection that determines our wellness, which is the foundation upon which we build our relationships and our lives. And at the heart of this vital connection is learning how to develop a level of self-responsibility.
A year before my first marriage, I graduated from high school and was chosen by my classmates to give the valedictory speech. When I read that speech now, I’m curious about the certainty I held about my life’s purpose. The basic plot of my life was to have love find me and then I could rest, knowing I would be cared for. It was a fantasy of passivity. My journey would end and begin at the altar. But that was not to be. Little did I know then I would be challenged over and over again to rewrite the script of my life until I became aware of a crucial fact: I would have to be the author of my own story. And until I was, love would never find me for long.
False notions of love teach us that when we find it in another person we’ll be in constant bliss. The larger narratives in my life had led me to believe that when the right man found me, I would be relieved of the worries of day-to-day maintenance. Then I would be free to turn my attention to my intellectual and artistic abilities. The relief I felt on my first wedding day was momentarily overshadowed by the question my father asked me because that question hinted at something, a longing I was suppressing. I wanted to be independent and free. But it was a longing I quelled. I let myself be pulled into marriage before I had fully claimed myself because I feared that without a man, I’d be isolated and insecure.
Where did this misapprehension come from? From the family and the society in which I was raised. It’s a loving culture, but it’s a very masculine one, oriented around the woman as caregiver, and the man as provider, decision-maker and usually, the focus of attention. The woman is expected to be nurturing, self-less and ready to serve.
It’s helpful to see the context of our own social conditioning. We can then understand where we’ve come from and choose where we want to be. At the age of 38, after three marriages and finding myself the mother of two sons, I realized I could no longer place pleasing others above my own self-development. I had to take a stand. And here’s the great irony: I now know that in doing so, in caring for myself, I was actually stepping into my capacity to care for the whole world.
The practice of love takes time. That’s a challenge in our society as we are supported and trained in the distracting process of accumulation, which tells us if we get all the right things (partner, lifestyle, etc.) we’ll be happy. In contrast, love as a process starts with oneself. It demands we ask ourselves big questions about who we are, what we want, and what we have to contribute. Aristotle had a wonderful word for destiny. He called it entelechy, the magnetic force that draws us into our life’s purpose.
More often than not, females are taught how to give the basic care that is part of the practice of love: how to show empathy and how to listen. Not often enough are we taught to be honest with ourselves about our deepest passions. Listening is more than hearing others; listening is also hearing our inner voice.
As a young woman, I didn’t know how to distinguish my passion for the love of a man from my own life’s potential. I didn’t know how to follow and trust my enthusiasm. Yet whenever a marriage ended, I would decide to go back to school in some way. I see now that this hunger for scholarship was the way I deepened my relationship to myself. I was committed to understanding my entelechy. But I can’t help thinking the process would have been less painful had I listened to the voice of my soul at an earlier age.
The path to love is about embracing ourselves before we embrace someone else. We’re not taught this as females. As children, we’re taught to find our first love in the ‘other’. As a consequence, if we should not find this ideal relationship outside of ourselves, we may be hopelessly distracted from creating a flourishing life. In a way, we lose the roadmap to the self. And our most basic self is love.
Love is the work of the world. As Dr. Humberto Maturana teaches, it expands intelligence and empowers creativity. He writes, “love returns autonomy and, as it returns autonomy, it returns responsibility and the experience of freedom.” I liberated myself when I faced the disparity between what I desired and what I was choosing. “Passion doesn’t fade. It must be suppressed,” says Deepak Chopra. “We are enticed back into passion when we admit to having desires.”
Bell Hooks teaches that the female search for love is what life should be all about because demanding the ‘other’ be our ‘everything’ is a faulty assertion. Love is everything. And she defines love as “the foundation on which we build the house of our dreams.” “It’s a house with many rooms,” she says. “Relationships are part of the house, but they are not everything and never could be.”
Love is a force as real as gravity. And it leads us into the awareness that we are the source of all that we long for - we have the power to foster limitless creativity. This is the time for us to stand with and for each other. We’re all learners. And the learning begins in relationship to ourselves. For without self-love, we are not yet ready to know the love of others.
Magdalen Bowyer
MA, RPC, CEC is a Narrative Therapist & Creativity Coach who knows we make the world with the stories we tell.
Her work helps people create life affirming stories about themselves so they are empowered to re-shape the landscape of their living. These stories are not fantasies; they are real facets of identity, different versions of who we are. She works with women and men around the world while she enjoys a vibrant practice at Cross Roads Clinics in Vancouver, BC. She is currently writing an autoethnography titled ‘Grief & Desire: lies I’ve lived by’. She resides in Surrey, BC, with her husband and sons.
To learn more about Magdalen and what she offers, visit her website www.CrucibleCommunication.com
