Submitted by Delaine Moore

It’s a feeling under my skin – one that has gradually started pushing to the surface this past year. It tells of love, despair, mischief, and adventure. It comes from sharing, loving, losing, marrying, birthing, trying harder, bleeding, and celebrating. It’s a feeling that tells of surrendering and letting go, pushing forward, and living NOW: I am becoming “A Woman with a Past.”

When I say that sentence out loud, ‘with a past’ doesn’t drag behind the ‘Woman’ like a heavy, iron chain. In my ear, it is melodic, the tail end swoops upwards, like a swirl, like a spiral of color, to show the vastness and bounty of my spirit and life experiences. Cause even though I’ve ‘failed’ and cried and made mistakes time and time again, some amazing part of me always pushed me to dig, grapple, fight, and thrust myself forward again.  Most importantly I’ve worked hard to ‘bury’ my mistakes – not so I could hide them, but so that I could recycle them into new tools for the future.

In my mind’s eye I see the timeline of my history stretched behind me and the various shades of light and dark that have beheld me. I see my evolution, my innocence and naivety, my growing pains, my spurts, my times of immense personal trials and tribulations.  And even though the Woman I am today doesn’t look or feel the same as five, ten, fifteen years ago, I am glad to be Delaine – a vast, multidimensional Woman …with a Past.

I don’t know if being a Woman with a Past is something one only feels with age. I’m not even sure if most women are consciously aware that they’ve become one; that they made the choice to surrender, let go, and live ‘now’.

But as I look ahead to my soon coming forties, I envision who I want to be in that decade; how I want to feel. And I see her caring less about what others think of her and the mistakes she made ‘back when,’ and caring more about being true to herself NOW. I see her wearing her past mistakes, not as a source of shame or burden, but as the necessary splash of black that keeps her grounded and wise. She will live and feel with intensity, sparkle, radiate, dance, and uplift.

And this divorce I’m pushing through right now will be but one more hard-earned awakening that not only makes my skin richer and more beautiful, but puts a sparkle in my eye.

Delaine

www.iamdivorcednotdead.com