toss & ripple

May 13, 2017

Half-sleep

I was enjoying re-tweaking my story. Updating it from a distance of over eleven years out of The Way is different from when I originally penned it two to three years out of The Way, in 2007 and 2008. Now, in 2017, recalling how I felt is less muddled and the memories seem clearer. Maybe that's an age thing - clearer long-term memories.

And then, last Friday happened.

Via an email, I learned Bob and Dottie were recently made "mark and avoid," The Way's shunning and excommunication practice.

In updating my story, I'd added some information mentioning our state leaders in 1995, about their influence in Hubby's and my decision at the time to continue with The Way. Those state leaders were Bob and Dottie.

Their influence wasn't bad, in the sense that they didn't strong arm us. Not at all. They weren't verbally abusive, or anything like that. Hubby and I had grown to trust them. Our decision to stay with The Way at the time was solely our own.

But I think, in another sense their influence was bad. It was a manipulative influence, whether intentional or not. Call me naive, but I want to believe their intentions were good. Yet secrets, that should not have been secret, were kept from us. But that's a whole nuther story and not the point of this one.

I received more emails later on Friday containing copies of three letters. Two of the letters sounded to me like a coup to force retirement of the recent president of The Way who served in that position from 2000 until 2017. Bob and Dottie's names endorsed those two letters. Within a couple hours of when I received the letters, those two letters were posted publicly on Greasespot Cafe, the ex-Way online forum.

My insides were like a ping-pong ball, bouncing all around. I felt anxiety. I felt like I'd had some sort of encounter. I felt "tarazzoed," supposedly from a Greek word for confusion or anxiety or turmoil, something I'd been taught in The Way. I felt a feeling of being pulled into an unhealthy enmeshment again - enmeshment with ex-Way stuff, the Knapp stuff, and the whole cult-recovery mindset, for lack of a better way to say it right now.

I didn't like it. At all.

And it became harder to continue the updates and edits to my story. Harder to clearly recapture what I had felt at the time things happened in the past. My recall became foggy and murky. Hazy. At one point, I felt the haze come over my mental sight like a half-sleep. I physically shook my head and said, "No."

I had to walk away from becoming involved on any level with the current situation of top Way leaders defecting, though they say they aren't defecting. They say they aren't starting another Way splinter group, though I don't see how they can get around not doing that.

As I've grappled with my emotional responses, I've not been quite sure what to appropriately label them. Which would help me, I think - to more clearly label them. Or maybe what I seek is to more clearly understand them. I'm not sure.

But what I did feel pretty sure about was what to do to help rescue my self from going down a not-good rabbit hole.

And that is, to walk away. It is not my responsibility to do anything about the situation or to be involved on any level.

Though, the thought hits me now, that by writing this post I am involving myself on some level. But, then, not. Because my point of this post is to share my responses, or part of them, to what happened. And that's the extent of my involvement in any of it. At least at this point.

Since making that decision to walk away, and following through on it, my clarity is coming back.

I'm feeling grounded again.

And that's good.

May 1, 2017

Re-tweaking

In an earlier post I stated I had tweaked my Way story and thought I was happy with it.

I was wrong. Ha!

So, I've been re-tweaking and re-tweaking. It will probably be an ongoing project.

But, I feel that Parts 1 and 2 are more complete.

I again rearranged some paragraphs and the lay out. And I've added more personal details which hopefully add some color to the narrative. In the past, those details were just too big of a task for me even though I'd written about them in various memoir vignettes posted on my blog(s).

I also added a link to a blog post I wrote "About The Way," which describes some of the doctrines and just a wee bit of history.

Part 3 needs quite a bit of work and will be the most difficult. It covers a lot of years. I may have to add an additional addendum or two to flesh out more details. I'll see as I go along.

Links:
About The Way
My story, Part 1
My story, Part 2

~*~

Update, 5/03/17
I got Part 3 tweaked, again...
My story, Part 3

Beaches, birthdays, and belly laughs...

Last week, Hubby and I went on vacation to Daytona Beach Shores, Florida, just south of Daytona Beach. It was perfect! The weather, which was clear the whole time. Our room, which was beachfront. The bicycles we rented and the routes we rode. The restaurants where we ate. The state parks we visited. Just perfect.

The only thing I didn't like was I-95. It'd been five years since we'd driven it. It's gotten worse. Geez, what a race, and what a boring road. And I didn't even drive. Hubby drove the whole trip.

We left the balcony door of our room open the whole time, when we were in the room. Every night the ocean lullabied us to sleep.

The bike rental place had two mountain bikes, which were perfect for our riding. We rode the beach, two rail trails (Lehigh in Palm Coast and part of the East Central from Enterprise to Osteen and back), a local route from our hotel down to Ponce Inlet and back, and across mangrove marshes on wooden decks. I rode a few trails solo in a couple state parks.

I didn't take any beach walks because I would have had to use my trekking poles, and I didn't want them to get sandy and rusty. So it was wonderful to have the bike to ride the beach. Since our room balcony was ocean front, we felt the full beach experience without the sand sticking to sunscreen. Our room was on the third floor right beside the elevator, which made my life easy. The hotel was only three stories high.

We didn't see lots of wildlife. But, from our balcony, we saw dolphins almost daily. We saw a bald eagle up close along the right side of the road as we were driving back from one of the rail trails. The eagle was pulling some roadkill off the paved shoulder into the grass and sand. Smart bird. I saw three box turtles, two with hubby and one when I was on a solo ride. It was a delight to watch them diligently make their way to their destinations. One of them, which we saw in Tomoka State Park, made its way to a tunnel. He knew exactly where he was going. I wanted to see an alligator in the wild, but didn't.

My birthday was last week, so the trip was a wonderful way to celebrate life. I turned 58 years young. I wasn't far from where I was born in Holly Hill, Florida. But I didn't visit there.

I received one of my best birthday gifts, if not the best, earlier in the month on April 1. The family took a day trip to Grayson Highlands. We all rode in the same vehicle. No one could remember the last time we took a road trip all together in the same vehicle. It was great fun and included some belly laughs.

~*~