Return To Sender

Having only left there less than a year prior, it was my intention to celebrate my 50th birthday elsewhere. Bermuda was my choice but my daughter, who had invited herself and my granddaughter along for the trip, really wanted us to go to our island home of Jamaica.

We migrated to Canada now almost 14 years ago, however, my heart remained in Jamaica for the longest while.

My past was there and during my five months stay I had hoped to retrieve it.

Much like a time traveller, somewhere in my mind there was the notion that I could go back and fix things, undo others and change the course of even more. My stay on the island from November 2013 to April 2014 was a dismay as I was unable to do any of that. My past was gone.  

There was only empty spaces, places and lots of memories to greet me.

Retreating to my hostess's home after one desperate trip to catch even a glimpse of the back of my past, wanting to just shake a fist at it for its cruelty to me, it dawned on me around 3:00 a.m. that it was time to return to Canada.

Time to go to Me.

Until then, my life had never truly been about me. First, it was centred on my mother and her needs, demands and expectations that I had to fulfill. All the empty spaces of her past were tunnels that my life was designated to close.

My daughter was third in line, after the "love of my life." Sixteen years it would be before I would turn my attention fully towards my baby. No, she was not neglected, far from it. Every cent that I earned went to her keep, education and entertainment. Well, every cent that my mother did not get. After the breakup and my breakdown along with it, my eyes zoomed in on my daughter. Side-ward glances to short lived distractions including another marriage but even that was for the benefit of my baby girl.

Suffocated by me ever presence and intrusion in her life, my daughter and I were estranged for many months. It was only then that the journey to me began in somewhat of an earnest.

This trip led me along a lonely, tiring, soul deadening, possession-losing, close to homelessness path. It was during this period that my determination to return to my past, bittersweet as it was, heightened. I scrounged and saved every penny possible and bought a one way ticket for home.

Five months later I realised that I had returned home but had not unpacked.

Now April 2015 and  I am physically back in my Canadian home of Edmonton, Alberta. It is where my daughter and my precious granddaughter reside. In just over a week, I would have been back one year. In that time, my return has brought me full circle to where it all began 50 years ago.

To Me.

Happy with my visit to my past, I am not returning. Grateful for all that I have learned along the way, the rest of my life is and will continue to be the best of my life. I have everything: Love, peace and an ever flowing stream of abundance.  I no longer have anything that I can lose as none of my "everything" is dependent on another human being.

That is the blesson of returning.

Share your thoughts on this or any of the posts in this blog. You may leave a comment here or on my coaching page. I look forward to exchanging thoughts with you.

Namaste,

 Claudette