May 1991
I just received your fax, Sarah. What you say in it can’t be right. Tell me this isn’t true. This can’t be true. You are not canceling my consultancy.
I have your formal letter of confirmation of this consultancy.
This was to be a four-month full-time job, Sarah. I hired a new staff member to work on your project. I’ve been expecting the signed contract and your first payment any day now. I even bought a new printer.
WHAT’S GONE WRONG?
How can you cancel such a massive consulting job at the last minute when we have a contract? I turned down two other jobs to work on yours. And now this.
Please check your files. This must be an error. Please tell me it’s an error.
YOU CAN’T IMAGINE HOW DIFFICULT THIS IS FOR ME.
I am standing in the small, cluttered, windowless room that doubles as my home office. I finish reading my fax message, place the paper on the glass, and lower the lid. This is my sixth professional disappointment in three weeks.
Hunched over the machine, I sigh as I push the “Send” button. These are the desperate words of a middle-aged planning consultant at the end of her rope.
The
end
of
her
rope.
I feel frustration, anger, and defeat. And more defeat. All around me, on every horizontal surface, sit piles of paper and mounds of unfinished work. Work that wakes me in the night with that familiar and persistent nightmare of failure and loss. Dreams of financial ruin often follow.
Racing to “finish” everything and get it all perfect, I am one of the women Clarissa Pinkola Estés describes: “trying to live a balanced life with the accelerator pressed all the way to the floor.”
It’s mid-January, two weeks before my 48th birthday.
How can I still be terrified that my inherent evil-ness will be discovered?
January 1991
How did I get so old so quickly? I am alone, divorced, broke, directionless, desperate, and up to my ears in defeat. And always yearning. That’s my strongest emotion right now. I yearn to be free, happy, successful, and prosperous and to have love and passion in my life. I feel I have lost my inner fire, and my flame is no longer being fed. Old patterns no longer serve me. I yearn for the youthfulness that midlife is snatching from me. I feel my body and mind becoming empty and dried up. And I long for connection. Connection. That’s it. But the new way is not yet clear.
Not by a long shot.
And I keep asking: “What would I feel like if the yearning was gone?”
Then there’s my planning consulting business. Like a weak, fussy infant, it keeps me up at night. I worry, fret, and tinker about things that never seem to make a difference. This bloody business is devouring me. While I can’t imagine all of this is entirely my fault, my professional life is also deteriorating. Fast.
The fax beeps with Sarah’s reply a short while later. My ears are so alert to the fax’s beep it’s like being a mother of a baby. I can hear its call in the courtyard. I race back to my office. It’s a reply from Sarah, all right. But not what I was hoping for:
Dear Wendy.
I must ask you to stop sending angry faxes. I have spoken to people in our head office, and they will issue an official complaint if I receive another abusive fax with all those capital letters from you.
And I need to ask, what planet are you living on, Wendy?
Do you ever watch television, listen to the radio, or read newspapers?
South Australia is in a massive crisis. The State Bank of South Australia wholly owns our organisation. So what is happening there is happening to us.
I must beg you to stop sending your angry, all-caps. faxes.
All our consultancies are frozen for an indefinite period. I expect that to be at least six months.
Thank you, Sarah
I tear the fax off the roll, turn off the light, close the office door, and stumble into the living room.
I turn on the television. There is only one newsworthy item in South Australia. No other news. An impending nuclear attack would fail to dislodge stories about local panic about the collapse of the State Bank. At least, I don’t feel targeted or paranoid. Things are falling apart. A line from a poem rattles around in my head as I turn off the TV: The centre cannot hold. I love English poetry, especially Yeats (yes, he’s Irish). I locate my volume in the bookcase, open it and lay the book on the top of the offending TV set.
Writing in wartime, 1919, about “The Second Coming,” Yeats is screaming:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…
Here, in South Australia, the center cannot hold. The peaceful State of South Australia and its capital, genteel Adelaide, “The City of Churches,” in massive turmoil.
And I hadn’t even noticed, so firmly was my tortured head up my ass.
In classic Aussie style, a local journalist gives the unfolding (and escalating) disaster a Cock-up Rating of 10 out of 10. When I receive Sarah’s fax, the State Bank’s affairs are in considerable disarray. A few weeks later, the bank collapses with debts estimated at $3.1 billion, triggering the biggest economic disaster in the State’s history. (The Government underwrote its assets.) The Managing Director (who promptly skips off to Melbourne and drops from sight) shares the blame with our more principled Premier (who resigns after a $970 million bailout). I cannot know now, of course, that the Labor Party will lose government in a landslide defeat at the 1993 State election. For a left-wing consultant, that is more shocking news on the horizon.
One sentence rattles around in my head: “Enough is enough.” I know it’s from Jungian analyst, Jean Shinoda Bolen, channeling the Hindu Goddess Kali, the terrifying and fierce protectress and the Goddess of Transformational Wrath. Well, goddammit, Kali, enough is enough! I’m fed up. This evil feels too much for ordinary gods to overcome. Only a goddess can succeed in a situation like mine.
I phone my economist friend, Sevan, in Sydney. He studied at the London School of Economics, and he’s all over this crisis. He admonishes me for not paying attention. “I just moved here from Melbourne, for fuck’s sake, Sevan,” I wail into the phone. “A lot’s going on. Mica’s back, too. It’s pretty chaotic here.”
Sevan has no interest in my disasters. But he’s passionate about unpacking the South Australian crisis that he blames on the neoliberal deregulation of global financial markets. Tragically, ours is also a local story. Our much-loved little bank, founded in 1848 with one employee, had the virtuous aim of helping working-class men. Sadly, it turned its back on a community-oriented history grounded in old-style morality. “Greed is good” and “doing the deal” (especially risky deals) became its new mentality, reflecting what Sevan describes as current fashions in the global banking culture. Sevan regards this tragedy as an intellectual story about the collapse of social democracy. When he’s hollered the full import of his analysis into the phone in his heavily accented Armenian English, I thank him and hang up. At least I don’t feel responsible for my circumstances. Well, not totally.
For me, a consultant almost entirely dependent on government-funded consultancies, our bank’s ruin is the last straw. Its collapse both heralds and reflects a recession that lasts until 1992, with unemployment rates at 10.8 percent, interest rates at 17.5 percent, and business loans exceeding 20 percent. (I have one of those.) Before things start to rebound, unemployment will hit 12 percent.
January 1991 is a very dark time for everyone in South Australia, particularly those whose financial prospects depend on the State government. At times like these, I turn to poetry. It always works for me. I read a poem by another Irish poet, Derek Mahon, “Everything Is Going to Be All Right”:
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright….
Everything is going to be all right.
Mahon and other Irish poets often speak the poetry of self-compassion. I am a reluctant convert to self-compassion, but I stay with it. I imagine a future time when I will reflect on my current suffering and bless it, bless this struggling Wendy, and bless the whole hot mess.
I’m struggling on so many levels. I’m not just broke. I’m broken. I know from reading approximately a zillion spiritual books and attending an equal quantity of healing workshops that an unexpected mentor might appear at this very point: to guide a challenged, starving soul like me. Okay, so I’d better remain open. Well, where the fuck are you, mentor? I’m here.
Maybe my mentor is Mica, my hippie friend? Hmmm.
I check that the fax is working, leave the office, and walk through my small kitchen-living room to the courtyard. It’s mid-summer, but a cool evening breeze often blesses “Mediterranean” Adelaide. I sit in my deck chair and consider my options. I need to go on a journey. But how? And where? And I feel so wounded. Can a wounded person journey far, I wonder? And with what? I’m at a low ebb when it comes to resources. And anyway, what would I achieve from another exploration? I am running out of time to change myself for the better. I am getting old, and I don’t like what I see in the mirror. And what is my identity anyway? I must bring myself to a halt to figure out how to proceed with my life.
Maybe I need new adventures to restore me. But where to start?
During the early, tumultuous months of 1991, my fax machine reliably spits out a stream of electronic bad-news messages on its Thermofax paper. The grey digitized letters are often askew, stretched-out, incomprehensible, the words crunched together or falling off the edge of the paper. Falling off the edge myself, I continue to rail against my fate during this time. Some friends and counselors offer advice, not all of it welcome. Or helpful. I need new friends because some old ones just can’t get what’s happening to me. Most of my long-time friends are a bit younger; I am the vanguard of a midlife hot mess.
My new friend, Angela, is a trustworthy and brave younger one. She constantly encourages me to embrace my terrors and turn my face to greet new challenges and adventures. As usual, we are discussing our shared dilemmas as planning consultants. Angela’s got some things to say about my future. But first, we discuss her plans. She’s about to close her sole proprietor business and join a large planning firm.
“I am too old and crotchety for that option,” I sigh. “They’d never hire this stroppy old bat, in any case.”
Angela smiles graciously. We know it’s true. We move on to discussing my “journey.”
“So … even though they love you and mean well, some of your friends could block your courageous instincts if they lack courage themselves, Wendy,” Angela pronounces, placing her hand on my wrist in that gentle way she has of reassuring me.
“Oh, I agree. I do need to do this one on my own, Angela. Alone.”
I wave my hand to emphasize my point before brushing crumbs from my lap. “Even my ‘besties’ are terrified of empty-handed leaps into the void,” I continue.
“So if I were you, I would be careful with them, Wendy. Very careful.”
Angela puts down her bowl of coffee as though to emphasize her point. She looks at me directly: “You must befriend courage, affirm its presence, and feed it, Wendy. To access your inner wisdom, you need to step into your yearning. Just leap right into it, yearn your little heart out.”
“And you can sing your little heart out, too. Every single day,” she advises.
I listen to Angela’s advice about my singing because I know it’s good for my health. So every day, I sing my brave songs in my outdoor voice. I sing as I walk around the block, I sing in the supermarket, I sing at home. Luck Be a Lady Tonight is my current favorite. I also sing the gentle, sentimental songs my Dad taught me: Me and My Shadow, My Blue Heaven, and Alice Blue Gown. On melancholy days, I sing A Garden in the Rain. My singing evokes memories of the soothing, maternal sounds of my childhood forest in Canada. I remind myself that I am strong and resilient. We’re in a bloody global recession, after all. I try to reframe it: the recession that has brought my business to its knees is just another of life’s seasons, so I’d better take stock and get my bearings. That feels more like healing than trying to rectify my deficiencies.
Years later, when the Global Financial Crisis strikes and cripples my business – yet again – I remember these difficult times. And then, from 2008 to about 2010, I remember not to blame myself. [When the Covid-19 pandemic strikes in early 2020 and keeps going, and all my work dries up, again, I remember this period in my life. The Australian bushfires. Climate change. If it taught me anything, my Midlife Hot Mess taught me not to take global catastrophes personally.]
But right now, I am so impatient with my woundedness and this bloody yearning. Is my nagging impatience a sign that I need solitude, I wonder? It’s like a dog biting my ankles. Piss off, impatience! I ask endless questions: how would I feel free of this emptiness and connected to my life source? I am starving for something else, but I have no idea what.
Am I having yet another “coming of age”? At 48? It feels like a time of transition. I desperately yearn for time alone, to sink deeply into grown-up questions like, “What have I learned about life from my experience?” and “what truths do I need to face now?”
On this topic, Angela offers astute advice. “Oh, Wendy, you are so harsh on yourself,” she sighs. “Please, my dearest friend, try to be true to yourself, stay empty, and allow the pieces of your life to come together. Now is a time for gentleness, not blame, Wendy.” Then she gives me “the look”: her straight-on, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners look. Years ago, Angela was a Catholic nun. Maybe they taught her “the look” in the convent? And she has more to say: “Only when you are open, Wendy,” she says, “can you affirm your innate intelligence and wisdom. Then you will see the patterns of meaning and purpose in your life.”
Or so it seems today. Yesterday looked different.
When I feel brave and poetic, my thinking goes something like this: my future beckons to me as I stand at a threshold, a place of crossing-over, preparing to walk into the landscape of my new life. But I am lost. I do not know what or who I will meet or how they will restore me. I’m desperately short on spontaneity. Angela and I agree on two things: I must leave this life and make a new path.
I find a quotation by Jean Achterberg about the trajectory of a seeker:
She who goes willingly, the Fates will lead;
she who does not go willingly,
the Fates will drag along.
I am going willingly, and I am being dragged along. It might sound trite, but I know I will make my new path by walking. Occasionally, I glimpse a thin, almost indistinguishable trail beckoning me. I must find and follow that trail, carrying my longing inside me. Now, more than ever, I must walk into the darkness of not knowing. American poet, May Sarton, reminds me: “Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth.”
It’s a balmy Adelaide summer evening. Warm and dry. Things always smell a bit “toasted” in an Adelaide summer. Always the whiff of distant bushfire smoke. Tonight, however, the air is fresh, and my star jasmine is still blooming on the fence, its petals making a delicate snowdrift on the courtyard’s brick floor. Like incense, its heavy scent cleanses and protects my urban space. Standing in the doorway, I can just make out a bar-shouldered dove calling from a nearby tree.
Something about its mournful, repetitive call touches me deeply.
I decide it’s time for divine help, some divination. Tonight I choose the Norse runes. I’ve consulted them since 1985. Throughout the day, I sit with a simple question: “How to proceed?”
Now I put myself in the hands of the gods – or whoever – and seek guidance. Over the years,
I’ve used the runes in a kind of “working-through” way to guide me through problems and predict (but only ever somewhat) what might happen if I take a particular course of action. The runes work by allowing me to focus my conscious and unconscious mind on the question or issue at hand. I am often astonished by the stones I turn up.
Barefoot, wrapped in my Fijian sarong, I step outside into my tiny courtyard. I love this about Australia: going barefoot so much of the year. In Canada, we wore shoes all the time. For some bizarre reason, my Dad insisted we wear shoes indoors. He said it was his prairie upbringing. I never understood. Going barefoot in Australia feels like the ultimate rebellion. (Fifteen years ago, I stopped wearing a bra in another protest statement.)
I place my ritual paraphernalia on a chair and feel my shoulders relax as I settle in for a peaceful interval of oracular guidance. I light a red candle and place it on the glass table. Then I lay out the deep violet velvet cloth I trimmed with a gold braid. It’s about the size of a large placemat. From my papier-mâché box of sacred items, I draw out my book of Norse runes. The author, Ralph Blum, is a Harvard scholar. That always makes me smile: the scholarly and cosmic co-existing.
I pull up my chair and prepare to seek guidance for my future direction, which my everyday, rational mind cannot give me. I open my burgundy velvet bag of runestones and pour 24 small clay stones onto the velvet cloth. They are nearly square and about half an inch wide. Each is inscribed with a symbolic marking (called a glyph or a rune). And each separate stone tells a story, explained in the book. I turn over every stone so that only the blank sides appear. I avert my eyes from the one I mended with super glue. I try to forget which rune that is.
Then I carefully frame my question for a three-rune spread. It goes something like this: “What do I need to change in my life now to become whole and have a life that will serve this planet?”
I slowly move the stones around on the soft surface, begging for direction and support. These stones are my friends, and I can rely on them. They say the right stones stick to one’s fingers. I draw three stones in order: one for the context of my inquiry, one for the action required of me, and one to describe the possible outcome of my inquiry. Of course, I’m asking what to do about my future and how to do it. (Again.)
Carefully, consciously, I turn over each stone, discovering that each is demanding that I change and grow now. I must expect the great awakener, elemental natural powers, disruption, and “radical discontinuity.”
Radical discontinuity. I must give up the old and embrace the new. I must do this with attention and no distraction because it matters if the glyph appears upright or not. When a rune appears in a reversed position, the message is often a negative one.
Jasmine-scented air wafts through the garden on a soft breeze as I carefully read aloud the pages that relate to the three runes I chose. I take notes in my journal. The message boils down to this: I am now experiencing a time of diligence, of stripping away, fertilizing the ground, a time of listening to myself, attentiveness, and sensing subtle changes in my bodymind. I may experience the death of friendships, the darkening of the light, and a need to face up to death consciously. I may need to accept that some changes are permanent. I must remain modest, be in the world but not of it, experience the true present, and know myself. A correct relationship with my Self is primary.
I breathe in the big lesson: the Universe is demanding that I do, in fact, change.
Radical discontinuity!
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