In 19 months I am running away to join the circus.  Well, not exactly but pretty close.  I have wanted to join the circus since I was a little girl.  I spent hours in my backyard perfecting my performance skills and then putting on shows for the kids in my neighborhood.  We had a wood fence that was the width of a balance beam so I learned to walk and do tricks on it.  I also learned to read tarot.  I did not get serious about it till many years later but now it is something I love to do and I am really good at.  I have a plan.  Over the next year Keith and I will be taking his amazing gypsy wagon on a trial tour.  He will draw people to us and I will be waiting in the gypsy wagon to read tarot for fellow travelers of the world.  I feel like every experience in my life has led me to this.  You see tarot reading is not just about knowing the cards.  Anyone can study and know the cards.  Knowing the cards does not make you a good reader.  What makes a good reader is being able to use those cards as a tool to help people to open up and then you read the people.  It is about being able to tap into the universal energy that connects us all.  My skills in this area are high.  People open up to me and then we can have a deep discussion about their life and where they are headed.  Because of my life experiences there are not many things I cannot relate to.  I also know things.  I cannot even explain it but someone once said to me “The things you know is kind of scary.”  Sometimes it feels scary to me too.  Sometimes I know things that I do not want to know.  It is a gift I have had for as long as I can remember.  My mother wanted to send me for therapy over it.  The therapist thought this was a wonderful gift and so my mom stopped the therapy because she thought it was evil.  There is nothing evil about it.  In fact I believe part of this gift comes from being in situations where I have had to be on high alert to save my life.  I learned to see or hear the slightest change in people.  I learned to pick up on interactions between people.  A glance between two people can show so much.  Because of this I know things.  I am almost always right.   It is both a blessing and a curse.

I will retire from my job and run away to travel the world in 19 months.  I will be meeting wonderful people and seeing amazing places.  I will get to travel with Keith who is my closest friend and confidant.  It is what I live for now.  My freedom was paramount to this plan opening up for me.  The universe had just been waiting for me to say “OK I am done playing around with people and things that lead nowhere. Its time to live my destiny”.    I am ready for my close up universe, let’s do this!

If you would like us to visit your festival, fair or party let me know.

I have a monkey box.  It is not a physical monkey box but it is real.  A monkey box is a box with a hole large enough to squeeze your hand through that has something in it.  For a monkey it would be a banana or other fruit they love.  For me it is a person, a substance or a habit.  When you grab the thing in the box you cannot take your hand out of the box and so you are stuck.  The box keeps you occupied for hours and hurts you as you try to pull free with what you see as your prize attached.   Sometimes you walk around with the monkey box dangling at the end of your arm weighing you down and causing constant pain.  The weight is a constant reminder of the thing you cannot have.  My hand has been bruised and battered for years over relationships that were damaging me.  I would take my hand out and walk away from the box for awhile only to return and jam my hand back in thinking this time I can solve this puzzle.  But there is one rule about the monkey box.  The monkey box never gives up the prize.

Months ago I realized my hand was firmly in the monkey box.  The pain it was causing me was the worst I had felt in years.  I kept rationalizing and trying to make excuses for why it was OK to carry the cursed thing around.  I convinced myself that it was not so bad.  I told myself that it would get better and the box was not as heavy as it had been in the past.  In fact it was the heaviest box I had carried in many years.  But I was waking up and I started to take my hand out on a regular basis.  When I would take my hand out I would think about why I deserved to be finished with this pain.  I would write down things that were causing me pain.  I made a list of things that I would no longer tolerate and stated that I would end it immediately if those things continued.  Then one night it all exploded and I tried smashing that monkey box with all my might.  I said no more and meant it.   Of course the monkey box still lives but I have duct taped it shut by making the choice to cut the banana from my life completely.  There will be no talking to, looking at, touching or dancing with the banana.  It will only lead to my hand back in that dark box that leads to nothing but pain.

I have learned so much these past months and I am grateful for that.  I am most grateful for the lesson of silence.  The closure I need resides within myself.  I will never get the answers to the questions I was asking.  I would only be asking for more pain.   The closure I need is to accept my behavior and be OK with it.  I am OK with it.  I am proud of myself for loving myself enough to say no to anything that does not make me a better person and for not returning to the box that will beat me every time.

#monkeybox #breakup #ex #nocontact #mending #Ididntruinmylife #Rauncie

On Sunday morning I got up and started filling a garbage bag with things that were triggering me.  It was mostly clothes I had worn that reminded me of negative things that happened.  I threw out almost all my bras and several pairs of underwear.  I threw out a couple of tops and some sexy lingerie.  I can’t really remember anything else.  I was on a mission.  Then I moved all the  things that I had put in another room into my bedroom and made it exactly the way I wanted.

Then the squirrels showed up…

The squirrels is what I call the attack on my mind that happens when I start thinking and cannot shut it up.  They torment me with things that I cannot change.  They taunt me about how I was not pretty enough, smart enough and no one will ever love me.  They were relentless in their attack about that last dance I had wished for.  “He didn’t even care enough about you to wait one hour and tell you the truth.”  “Why did you ever think he liked you?”  “Stupid, you knew he would choose someone younger and prettier”  It was crushing me.  Have you ever seen that cheesy 80’s Movie Gremlins?  Well, my squirrels quickly morph when I feed them, especially after midnight and early morning.  There is a stripe in the pack who is especially mean.  Stripe talks about how I should hurt myself and how much better off I would be if I just gave up.  She whispers in my ear that things will never get better and I will die alone.  She pulls chunks off my heart and laughs as she eats them.  (yeah I am taking creative license here but its my story.)  When the squirrels morph I am in deep trouble and the worst thing I can do is hide because they just keep multiplying and getting louder and louder.  Just like the Gremlins, light is their enemy.  As soon as I shine light on them and talk to someone who is empathetic they start screaming and running away with smoke billowing behind them.   It is the best way to defeat them.  Sometimes I cannot bring myself to share because I feel ashamed.  Yesterday I said to a friend that I wished I could just have no emotion at all about him that I could have just walked away and shrugged my shoulders.  If I did that I would not be Rauncie.  I am a woman who loves deeply and I always miss someone who has been a part of my life, even if they wounded me.  So the squirrels have been flooding the walls I have built up over the last three weeks and I am trying my best to fight them off by talking about it.  But there is another way to deal with them that I have not been able to deploy yet.  One of my closest friends shared something with me a couple of years ago.  He said “Those squirrels are part of you.  They are just trying to protect you.  They are a warning call that something is wrong and all those words are a way to try to get you to stay away from that person because that person will hurt you.  Instead of trying to kill them invite them to sit on your lap and tell them everything will be OK.  Breathe with them and love them Rauncie”  That was such a different way of looking at this.  I drew a picture of me with the squirrels in my lap and one in a tree sticking its tongue out at me that I was reaching out to and I named it after him.  I need to put down my weapons and invite the squirrels to come and sit with me and talk it out.  I am going to be OK.  I am going to grow from this.  Eventually I am going to write a book about my life.    It will  be a way to share with others that the real answer is within ourselves and how to process and grow from experiences.

Now I am going to try to lure some squirrels in for a lunch time meditation.

#healingfrombreakup #Icandothis  #Ididntruinmylife #itsover #mendingfromheartbreak

I had a hard time today.  I am not always full of anger and I am not always numb.  Sometimes in the middle of the day out of nowhere I get a thought that hangs on until I cry.  That happened today.  I cried because there was one thing I wish could have been different.  I wish I could have had one final night of dancing with him.  Dancing with him was the best part of our relationship.  It breaks my heart to think that the final night we were standing on the edge of the dance floor and I was so happy to be there with him for the first time in a long time…and then I realized what was going on.  I felt so betrayed and broken in that moment that I was too wounded to say…Let’s just dance one more time.  I even shared with him that I wanted to dance with him one last time before he left the house with his things but it never happened because ..well, it is hard to say goodbye.  Our last moment together we kissed and put our foreheads together and for a moment I remembered why I loved him so much.  It was not all bad.  It was definitely hard and at times horrible but there were moments of joy and many of those were on the dance floor.  I think that is why losing him on the edge of that dance floor was so devastating for me.   Our relationship is over and there is no turning back and I know I will never have that moment on the dance floor.   It is the only thing I wish I could change.

It is normal to have some anger when you have been wronged.  I refuse to beat myself up about that anymore.  Being angry is something I have struggled with all my life.  My therapist kept saying to me over the last 6 months “when are you going to get angry?”  Well, I got angry and now I am ready to let it go.  It would be unrealistic to think I will not feel that anger again over the next few months but every time it comes up I will write about it if I need to but the first thing I will say is…..

I am no longer in a relationship with you and I release you to the universe.

So now it is time to focus on me.  It is time for me to focus on how I can grow and transform, take the lessons I have learned and level up.   I have created a schedule and will start out by taking better care of my body.  In addition I will make time for friends I have not made time for.  Our friends are so important.  The first 5 days when I was hurting I had women come and visit with me off and on and one woman Nina who spent the night with me four nights so I could sleep.  Nina is going to have a guest co-blog with me one day soon.  The presence of women made a huge difference.  The mistake I made in the past was suffering alone.  The interesting thing was I did not want to talk about what had happened.  I just wanted to be with them and laugh and be distracted and it worked.  Never isolate yourself when you are going through a breakup it will only make things worse.  It is fertile ground for negative thoughts and emotions that will take you down for a very long time.  I know, it has happened to me in the past.  I was determined to never let that happen again.  I have to say the biggest help has been having my housemate and close friend Keith supporting me and being there all the time.  Just knowing he is in the house comforts me.  Without him I would not be doing so well.  We talk all the time and he is always willing to listen and give feedback.  He is also a master at helping to distract me by pulling a book out and talking to me about something interesting.  He even watched a Pollywood movie with me.  (Pollywood is a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pollywood )  He is also willing to watch a netflix series if it is a good one.  Then there is Mr. B short for Mr. Bojangles who went through some mourning of his own but has bounced back the last couple of days and is so helpful to me.   That is Mr. B below and this picture of him really sums up what the beginning of this change was like.  It looks scary as hell and sometimes you stand there for a bit thinking “Do I really want to do this?” and your stomach feels sick and you feel scared. Once you actually get in the midst of the forest you realize that it is a place of growth, love and safety if you pull those who love you close to you.  I am truly blessed to have this little 10 pound dog in my life.  I am truly blessed to have true friends and a wonderful life ahead of me no matter how long or short it turns out to be.

So the focus is on me now.  I will be blogging about my relationships, PTSD, Anxiety, living life authentically, transformation, my experiences, the Goddess, Tarot, my family, my dog, my housemate, our house, food, my job, art, dancing, exercise, books I read, people I meet, my amazing friends, current events, traveling and sometimes I may need to let some pain out.  It is time to let some sun shine through the trees.