{"id":3247,"date":"2015-06-09T13:11:21","date_gmt":"2015-06-09T20:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/?p=3247"},"modified":"2016-02-16T12:50:01","modified_gmt":"2016-02-16T20:50:01","slug":"june-9-2015-the-gift-in-our-unlived-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/dev\/life-stories\/june-9-2015-the-gift-in-our-unlived-life\/","title":{"rendered":"June 9, 2015 &#8211; The gift in our unlived life"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"fcbkbttn_buttons_block\" id=\"fcbkbttn_left\"><div class=\"fcbkbttn_button\">\n                            <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">\n                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/dev\/wp-content\/plugins\/facebook-button-plugin\/images\/standard-facebook-ico.png\" alt=\"Fb-Button\" \/>\n                            <\/a>\n                        <\/div><div class=\"fcbkbttn_like \"><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/dev\/life-stories\/june-9-2015-the-gift-in-our-unlived-life\/\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\" layout=\"standard\"  width=\"225px\" size=\"small\"><\/fb:like><\/div><\/div><div id=\"attachment_3252\" style=\"width: 606px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/under-the-bed-11.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3252\" class=\"wp-image-3252\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/under-the-bed-11.jpg\" alt=\"Hiding under the bed...\" width=\"596\" height=\"530\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-3252\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Hiding under the bed&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Listen to this post:<\/p>\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-3247-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/20150609-Post.m4a?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/20150609-Post.m4a\">http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/20150609-Post.m4a<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>It was the summer of 2003. Joe and I had spent the weekend at a little beach house in Stinson Beach \u2013 on the coast of Marin County near where we live. He went home to work on Monday and I stayed two more days by myself. It was a tender time &#8211; we were in the middle of sorting out whether or not to do a course of in-vitro fertilization. It was a cool late afternoon &#8211; the fog was coming back in. I wrapped the little blanket I was sitting on up over my bare legs. The cell coverage was better out on the beach than in the beach house. So, it was there I talked to the fertility doctor for the first time. He was very gentle but matter-of-fact. This was going to be expensive, not covered by medical insurance, and at my age \u2013 (then I was 41), we had a far less than 50% chance of success. I remember getting off the phone with the fleeting thought: <em>this might not work<\/em> &#8211; I might never have any children. It\u2019s remarkable how protective denial is. I was so emotionally ill-prepared to handle that <em>very real<\/em> possibility that I had the capacity to just put it out of my mind &#8211; like it was an awful sight that I could avert my eyes from. I just couldn\u2019t go there. Buried in that denial was the fear that the disappointment, the grief I\u2019d feel, would completely devastate me.<\/p>\n<p>You know how this story came out. We did IVF and I didn\u2019t get pregnant. Four eggs were harvested from my ovary, one four-celled embryo was implanted in my uterus (we have a Polaroid picture of it \u2013 labeled \u201cGreenwood-Brown\u201d). It didn\u2019t take. And the grief came. I felt it and avoided it and then it stalked me, until I felt it some more. I\u2019m nowhere near as raw as I was then, but if I go looking for it, it is right there. I suspect that it might always be. As a woman, I have all this amazing physiology that I will never use, never feel my baby kick inside me, never endure the agony of childbirth, never look into that brand new little human\u2019s eyes or ever be called \u201cMommy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If you are wondering, yes, we thought about adoption and yes, there are plenty of other children that I could have given (and still could give) my love and attention to. <em>And<\/em>, I completely get how parenthood brings with it a whole lot of hard work and even grief of its own. Neither of these places are where I\u2019m going here.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a book in my collection by Dawna Markova called \u201cI Will Not Die an Unlived Life.\u201d She awoke in the middle of the night, the exact moment when her father died. What came to her in this moment was: \u201cI will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire\u2026.\u201d It goes on. The message of the book is powerful \u2013 \u201cReclaiming Purpose and Passion\u201d is the subtitle. I\u2019ve read this book through, have shared from it and quoted from it. It\u2019s been part of my unfolding.<\/p>\n<p>But, the thing is, I think we all <em>do<\/em> have an unlived life. My dad recently told me that he missed out on the going-away-to-college experience. My mom has always loved technology &#8211; she had the domain name niz.com in 1995! But, because someone at IBM in 1959 told her she had no aptitude for it, she shied away. Can you imagine what my force-of-nature mother might have done if she\u2019d gotten involved in tech when it was in its infancy? Two of my spiritual mothers have lived each other\u2019s unlived lives: one the sensuous marriage to her soul mate, the other a life of contemplation and spiritual exploration. My unlived life is motherhood.<\/p>\n<p>It may not be so for all of us \u2013 but I am still very conscious of the life I didn\u2019t get. On the practical level it left space and time to focus on something else. But it also brought with it a well of painful emotion that has fueled me to persevere. The circumstances in my life and my internal wiring were such that going back to a \u201creal job\u201d retained a serious pull on me for many years. This immense disappointment has sat right over my shoulder, waiting to come barreling through if I were to cave in on living a more fulfilling life.<\/p>\n<p>It has done its job. I could <em>not<\/em> have made this up. I had <em>no idea<\/em> this art was in me and would end up saving my life \u2013 or that I had the capacity to accompany others in the process of their art saving <em>their<\/em> lives. But now it\u2019s hard to imagine there\u2019s anything else I am better suited for.<\/p>\n<p>Sunday afternoon I had a two-hour talk on the phone with Brenda, my friend of 30 years. It was a fierce conversation. In the most loving way she admonished me to care for my endeavors &#8211; art, teaching, my work &#8211; as if it were my child. She said that my allowing myself to be pulled away by other demands upon me was like neglecting to change my baby\u2019s diaper. It was Brenda who watched me pull a plastic bag of unframed paintings out from the dark and dusty space <em>under my bed<\/em>. She told me that I <em>had<\/em> to get them framed and hung for people to see. I had been afraid of spending the money to do this \u2013 didn\u2019t know they were worth the investment. She said I <em>must<\/em>. The paintings above and here were the ones that were in hiding.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/under-the-bed-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-3245\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/under-the-bed-2.jpg\" alt=\"under the bed 2\" width=\"600\" height=\"532\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s long since time when having a baby has even been possible for my body and I am at peace with that. Sometime last year I spent a few hours with my dear friend Julia\u2019s toddler. We had the best time, reading books and drawing. When Julia came to get her, as they left, I noticed that I was ok, I was good. I no longer <em>longed<\/em>. That part of life had passed by. I felt like a grandma \u2013 in the sweetest way.<\/p>\n<p>I believe that this unlived life has wrapped itself around and through my <em>lived<\/em> life. None of this would have come to be without what I did <em>not<\/em> get in this life. Unlived lives have energy and power. They call upon us to honor them, to listen to them. Mine is very real and clear to me. It has demanded my attention. With the help of my dear friend, it reminds me to fully inhabit what I got instead, and points out the incredible richness of the life I <em>am<\/em> living. <em>You<\/em> are part of this richness. As I write this, I am washed over with a wave of gratitude that breaks me open.<\/p>\n<p>Love,<\/p>\n<p>Cara<\/p>\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to this post: It was the summer of 2003. Joe and I had spent the weekend at a little beach house in Stinson Beach \u2013 on the coast of Marin County near where we live. He went home to work on Monday and I stayed two more days by myself. It was a tender [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>June 9, 2015 - The gift in our unlived life - Life in Full Color<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lifeinfullcolor.com\/dev\/life-stories\/june-9-2015-the-gift-in-our-unlived-life\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"June 9, 2015 - The gift in our unlived life - Life in Full Color\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Listen to this post: It was the summer of 2003. 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