R.A.D.I.C.A.L. Thoughts for R.A.D.I.C.A.L. Women

When you’re going through a midlife divorce, you tend to be so focused on yourself that you forget about the good things you can still do for others. I’m back in Wichita for another round of sorting at my parent’s house. Here’s one thing I’ve discovered: hand written notes and personal letters are important to people. Mothers especially tend to keep those hand made drawings and early attempts at getting our love out into the open. At least that’s true in our family. I’ve discovered letters I wrote my parents from elementary school days, college and early years of married life down to the present day. I’ve found notes from my brothers to my mom or dad. They are mostly fun to read even though sometimes they were written at times of distress or decision. And I’m still finding pads of my mom’s scribbly, edit-as-you-go words on endless yellow pads (and I think of all the yellow pads in my own big plastic bins at home! – By the way, I’ve started using white pads because I heard it was easier on the environment!)) Mom’s words, though I haven’t gone through them all, will end up being a collage of her life and her philosophy. They represent ideas and beliefs she wanted to share with people about God and about life in general. I’m wondering what my kids will discover about me and my philosophy of life when they go through my stuff? Will they see that in spite of my despair about my divorce that in the deepest part of my soul I still believed that God is good and still in control and that he always keeps his promises regardless of how bleak the immediate circumstances sometimes look? Will they see a bitter, angry woman? Will they see someone going through the normal process of grief and then a cleansing release and an embracing of new purpose? I guess because my mom always wrote her thoughts down for us as children or teenagers or adults and because she seemed to write to gather her thoughts before a class or a lecture somewhere, that I tend to flesh out my own musings in words, too. I know getting my thoughts into concrete words helps me solidify my thinking. Helps me see fallacies in my arguments. Helps me get past the experience itself and into what the experience actually means in the big picture. But it means I’m also leaving a paper trail for those who come after me. That’s true for you, too. A little scary, but true none-the-less.