Marilyn Redmond Books: March 2021

By Marilyn Redmond

My path to a better life brings new ideas and understandings for growing. Acknowledging that my life was desperate brought a new vision. Through many perils, I learned that self-honesty is the best policy. I thought I was a great manager, keeping me safe from harm. The truth is that I was the walking dead, terrified, and looked anorexic. I had to come out of my denial and fantasy.

My castle in the sky saw myself as a wonderful person, who was there for everyone. I took care of my family, taught school, went to church, and I worked in the family printing business on my off hours from teaching. My real dreams were left in the dust. The toughest part for me was to acknowledge that I have to change my mindset and behaviors of reacting from being a fear based person into responding in loving solutions. Realizing my life was actually based in fear was life changing.

As I began my new journey into honesty, I discovered that I was a control freak. It is not my job to figure out the outcome. My motivation was not from love but survival and need. I moved from functioning in the problem to focusing on the solution.

Learning that walking in faith brings better results was a new idea for me. In addition, it was not my job to manage my life; allowing intuition to guide my next right indicated situation works well. I can I release my negative emotions, thinking, and responses, and replace them with my new healthy ways of accepting conditions without judgments and criticisms; then I feel better. Today, I do the necessary footwork for my part while leaving the results to the universe. Amazingly, I found the outcome is better than I could have arranged.

It has taken several years to identify and release my old thinking, emotions, and reactions into trust, healthy communications, and good feelings. The inner work has been worth it. After my divorce and on my own, I could focus on me to create a new foundation for life. My book, Paradigm Busters, Reveal the Real You on Amazon, has the steps I took.

Continuing on my path of fresh beginnings, I found I needed to make amends to those I had harmed. It was not my nature to harm a person. However, I needed to make a few amends and restitution to resolve my old actions and relationships.

Moreover, I found my negative emotions did damage others. I could not love my family if I were full of fear. Fear stops love. I was not that wonderful person because my optimistic emotions were blocked by past harms and terror. When I cleared my side of the street, the world turned in a novel direction.

In meditation, I was told to treat myself like a princess, because I was the daughter of the King of Kings. I made a vow to myself not to place myself in harmful situations, again. I cleaned out my old emotions to clear my channel for extending real loving thoughts. In this inner work, my feelings can move from my heart to others. I live my amends from a bright place. Living my amends means that I send healthy energy and treat others well.

I had always felt like a victim in my abusive marriage. It took eighteen years after my divorce to feel my part in some of our clashes in my domestic violent relationship. Surprisingly, I unwittingly participated; I was not the victim and he the bad person. In a realization, I found that I unintentional was defending myself from my past harms. To him it felt like I was as attacking him akin to shooting him with a gun, but at a subconscious level. Inadvertently, I was invisibly attacking him. Others saw his observable reactions of defending himself as his attacking me. I got honest and realized I was the cause of many conflicts. Sadly, this passive-aggressive game intensified over years.

Owning my side of the difficulties brought the understanding that I was as much at fault. I could no longer make him out to be the awful person. This was a huge admission. We were emotionally two little children trying to make it in an adult world, but hurting each other in the process. Finally, I wrote him a letter of apology for my side of our troubles.

I continuously prayed for his well being and forgiveness. This served me well when, several years later, I was invited to our twin grandsons’ high school graduation. For the 48 hours of celebrations and the ceremony, I was able to be around my ex-husband and not play the victim. I stayed in my adult consciousness. I did not play the old game. This was an enormous victory for me. I had matured. He had been my teacher to find the real me.

I had not seen him after our divorce, except for our grandchildren's’ graduation. When I was notified of his death, it upset and touched me more than I would have guessed. My grief blind sighted me. Finally, I understood the damaging childhood that he had to play this part in my life. Today, I am glad that I had the courage to own up to my part of our difficulties. I needed to become forgiving, be in gratitude, find compassion, and have unconditional love for him. In grieving, the past was left behind.

Surprisingly, I have grown beyond reacting from my past harms. In my prayers and meditations, I have thanked him. His part in my life brought me into adulthood. I now have empathy and a clean heart. Finally, I have peace and serenity. I am pleased to have a healthy life style today. My weakness became my strength; I am empowered. I learned this was my path for adulthood. My reward is that I am liberated to live in the “Now”.