I keep swaying between highs and lows, where I'll trust the Universe and myself to lead me to freedom, or where I question my right to seek it. I've been taking some bold steps of late..steps like daring to believe I can and going so far as even taking small bites of freedom. I got a job a month and a half ago and have worked just to prove to myself that I can. Its been hell at home...my spouse is sort of a cavemen, women should be seen and not heard let alone work outside the home. God knows what ideas others might stir in my soul...God knows what revelations I may come up with on my own.

I went to the beach the other day before work. It was exhilarating. I experienced feelings I have not felt since I was ten. That was the age when I felt whole for the first time in my life. It was an age when I began to read and write for my soul, not just school. I explored and felt at one with nature, poetry, music, art and nothing else seemed as important, for I felt sheltered in the promise of life. It was a time when I had discovered I had my own identity. Its sad that I allowed it to be striped from me...but abuse does that doesn't it. Still, that short time in my youth was the only time when I trusted myself and truly enjoyed being free. At the beach last Saturday I was transported back to that time. It was as if I was that carefree ten year old girl again, when harsh words and actions could not disturb my peace, nor faith in the potential of my future. Its been a long time since I've had that sort of trust in me and my right to follow my dreams.

So much in life depends upon our beliefs and the power we allow others to have over us. I was raised to always follow, never to question those in power, to do as I was told with a smile on my face lest the smile be knocked off. Like so many other little girls we were to be seen and not heard. Is it any wonder I married a man with the same beliefs as my father? They say we do though, marry our fathers only worse. After all, what intelligent thing could we ever have to say, what could we ever contribute that the world would deemed of value?

Perhaps that's why I turned to journaling and books, to sketching and hiking deep in the woods or dancing alone by moon light. And, now when I've just about finished raising my children, when the pain of staying in a highly dysfunctional and oppressive relationship out weighs the fear of leaving and the light of possibilities outside my door...

I find myself feeling as if my very desire to be free is a fall from grace. As if I'm this dirty, ungrateful child that should not question, but rather be grateful for whatever bit of love she has been given. God, its so pathetic. I feel so powerless and pathetic at times and yet that quiet, daring ten year old in me keeps struggling to be free. I want to follow her.

I've seen life open a few doors where there appeared to be non recently, in fact the more I believe in my right to my dreams the more opportunities seem to spring up. But, its all so alien too, and that's what makes it kind of frightening, that and the fact that the way is not marked clearly. There are so many twists and turns and setbacks and I wonder if I am wise enough, strong enough, intuitive enough to chose the path of grace and beauty, the path of light and the me I was born to be.

Dare I trust life? Dare I trust me? I've taken steps forward into an unknown future at a time when there is so much darkness in the world and such small faith. Hope is all I can hang onto for now, hope that I pray will lead to more faith and the miracles that spring in the light of freedom.