Why Now?

Heirloom Dress - by Pietje

Rummaging through twenty-plus years of stuff – trinkets, toys, baby clothes, letters, boxes of photographs, Dutch children's books, heirlooms, diaries – I experience a lifetime of emotions in just a couple of hours; melancholy, joy, sadness, love, relief, shame, silliness and so on.

After years in Seattle my fiancée and I have decided to trade in the green of the Pacific Northwest for the red of the desert of New Mexico. Now we purge. It is an appropriate time to rid myself of all the baggage I’ve been, quite literally, dragging around. Having moved from this continent to that and back again, from house to house; I have unopened boxes from two moves ago.

Then there is the other baggage. We all have some of that. In the past couple of years there have been some life changes. Both my kids left for college, my 20-year marriage ended and I fell in love with a woman. Each of these events are significantly life changing on their own.

Through all of this, or because of it, I discovered something else. While adjusting to my new life and struggling to find my place, I came to realize that the damage done by my Christian upbringing was more far reaching than I had dared to admit. This discovery was a slow process. It was with the help of friends, experts and conferences that I learned how my thinking and processing had been formed early on in my childhood by fundamentalist Christian messages. While I had left religion more than 15 years ago my brain hadn’t changed with it; I still lived and walked through my life with the same fears and judgments.
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Why now? I have always loved writing and I have written in the past. Now, while preparing for another garage sale and a huge geographical move I’d like to explore and share my story. It is one of many stories. But no less important. Read with me, learn with me, share with me. If not now, when?

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