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Maria Owl

Emerging from the Eclipse

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2001 Winter
"I got a four page letter from your father today," my mother's voice said over the phone. I was sitting in a phone booth at Lost Valley Educational Center in Oregon. I had called her on my day off between two personal growth workshops I was helping to put on.

"He said he's divorcing all of us. He gets out of jail in four days and he's going to serve me with divorce papers. He says he loves us but he can't forgive what we've done to him."

I was used to my mother relaying the latest drama of my family to me. The pattern was for me to listen and then relay the story as I heard it to my friends. It was only a year ago that I realized how much energy I had tied up in my parents' "stories." How I used them to label and define who I was in the world: Victim, Savior, etc.... My first reaction to this story was to smile incredulously and sarcastically respond, "Uh-huh."


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