The Shedding of skins

    I've diverted from completing my journey through "The Rest of the Story" entries and it turned out to be for a very good reason.
    On my second experience with Maine I learned something. I was moved to draw a picture of my figurative self, with the spirits I had worked with over the preceding years by my side. I gave that picture to a young woman. I intuitively understood I was leaving the person I had become behind and bestowing it on her. Further evidence of this was after did this, her mother began speaking like I had, responding to her daughter as I would have mine. I could hear and see me in her. As authority over her daughter, she had claimed my 'skin' for herself. Her daughter can claim it when she is ready, I'm sure...and it will be awesome! She is a physically disabled young woman with great potential to heal that which is an inherited generational disability/dis-figuration of the leg.
   From then until now I have been embodying a more independent woman, no longer a victim and learning to walk as a sovereign being in full oneness within herself. After 4 years of no intimate relationships other than with my children, I had finally invited in the experience of more intimate relationships outside the home; community, female friends and romantic with men. I was still solitary in controlling resources, being independent. I have been embodying an empowered woman, respected. With each "no thank you" comes a replacement with that which is closer to what I want in an intimate partner. Greater and greater self awareness, respect and appreciation in each man I "go through".
   This latest was profound. Spiritually active and creative, very self determined. He actually offered to legally give me rights to a piece of land as part of a sort of "live-in pre-nuptial agreement" to guarantee that if things did not work out, I would not be left without resources because where we'd be living at, I would not be able to obtain resources for myself. I would be giving up a job and affordable housing to live a life with him and he understood that. While it's not going to work out because he is not as willing to make the same acknowledgement of emotional responsibility in a relationship, something new was given me to embody. And with the introduction of that new picture of who I could be, the single career mom is shedding and the one upon who it shall be bestowed is already chosen. She is dynamite! With this embodiment comes my resonance with what I always dreamed of having. Everything. And my embodiment of it will draw the right man able to be emotionally responsible AND understanding a woman's position. I cannot wait to meet him!