EMPOWERMENT WITH HIGHER SELF
13
Falling Together
After Falling Apart
Everything can be taken from a man but
one thing; the last of the human freedomsâ
to choose oneâs attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose oneâs own way.
VIKTOR FRANKL
Manâs Search for Meaning
* STEP BACK TO EXPLORE A connection to struggle and to what no longer serves. * LET GO of making excuses. * SAY YES! to creating your new life as you want it. * BREAKTHROUGH âI know what is important to me, and I honor it.â |
* Theresa: Truthfully, I donât talk much about my background and childhood because people just get overwhelmed about it, feel sorry for me, or see only the difficulties. But I really donât view it that way. I believe that everything thatâs happened to me has made me who I am, and I wouldnât change any of it. The reality is that I was born to a mother who was imprisoned for being a con artist, and as a baby I was handed off to my motherâs sister. I suffered abuse in her home and was removed by the state. I was taken in by a series of foster homes for the next several years and was placed in my final adoptive home when I was 6. It was a small farm in Kansas, and I had a very modest upbringing. I worked all the time, and there was no TV, no playtime, no frills, nothing was wasted. Basically, if we didnât grow it or kill it, we didnât eat it. We were very poor, and certain days of the week we would have to go to the trash dumpster behind the grocery store to get our vegetables to eat.
Growing up, I had two very powerful role modelsâmy adopted mother and grandmother. Both were very strong, resourceful women. To my mother, there was nothing that couldnât be accomplished. Despite all that she was going through, I never heard her once complain or say, âWhy is this happening to me?â She did what had to be done and worked from sun up to sun down. I learned so much from her. Itâs funny, I tell my kids now, âI can rebuild your engine, change your oil, and milk a cow, but donât ask me to do the Martha Stewart stuff.â My childhood was all about being resourceful, doing what had to be done, and wasting nothing. We were disciplined, always working.
I was lucky that I did experience love from my mother. She was as loving as she could be, given the fact that my adoptive father was terribly abusive to all of us. He spent time in prison for his abuse, and after prison, he committed suicide in a violent way. He set the house on fire and then shot himself to death. Even through that, my mother kept going, trying to be there for her five adopted children as best she could. She didnât always succeed, but she did her best to be there for us.
Theresaâs childhood story is full of suffering, trauma, and hardship. But when you speak with her, sadness and pain are not the feelings that emerge. What you hear is courage, confidence, resilience, and hope. From all that she endured, she has become strong, independentâin short, a survivor. She refuses to be a victim of her past. Instead, she chooses to use all that sheâs suffered to rise above her current situation and be a powerful vehicle for change. Her mother and her grandmother provided two courageous role models for fortitude and endurance. She witnessed firsthand every day whatâs required to keep going in life despite crushing challenges. Theresa saw her mother and grandmother rise above their trials, showing an unshakable commitment to putting one foot in front of the other and being the best they could be for those who needed them.
Theresaâs Adult Crisis
In 1999, I had a deep personal crisis. Out of the blue, my husband of thirteen years simply walked out on me and our two children, who were 5 and 7 at the time. It was Valentineâs Day, and I remember he gave me two dozen roses in the morning, and by nighttime, he had left us, walked out, gone forever. I was absolutely shattered. I truly didnât see it coming.
I had a job as a TV journalist, but my salary wasnât nearly enough to take care of all our bills. For months I struggled, trying to earn enough money, be there for my kids, and hold things together, but everything was falling apart. It really did feel like a sort of death. Here was a person I loved and thought Iâd be with for the rest of my life, who just bailed on us with no warning whatsoever. It was a horrific experience, and I went through a long period of great turmoil. I didnât really come to until about a year and half later when I began to feel stronger and get the sense that Iâd be okay. And with each passing year I felt stronger and stronger. But the key symptom for me during this time was that every problem, no matter how big or how small, from bald tires needing repair to my children crying, everything seemed so magnified, so larger than life. It was like, âI canât bear this, too!â I couldnât tolerate the crabby boss, the whining child who needed a nap. I just felt so overwhelmed by the simplest thing. I felt like, âI canât take one more thing here.â Everything felt like too much.
As hard as it was, I realize now that this period, this traumatic experience, represents the seed for The Blessing Basket ProjectÂź.
Theresaâs crisis of âeverything falling apartâ is typicalâan enormous event occurs that shifts everything all at once. In this crisis experience, something you view as cataclysmic transpires so that nothing looks or feels the same as it once did. This shift, while deeply unsettling, can bring into focus the most important elements of who you are if you let it. It allows you to see more clearly what to let go of in order to move forward. This shift also brings into clearer view what you wish to be and do in this lifetime.
The Blessing Basket Project Is Born
During my period of crisis, people around me started sending me cards and letters of encouragement and support. Iâd lay them out on the mantel and look at them frequently. Then one day, I collected them all and put them in a basket that one of these kind individuals had given me. It was a beautiful split-wood basket, and I started calling it my âblessing basketâ because it was a place I kept all of these wonderful blessings from others. Other items began to find their way in there, too, like a piece of old tire from the time I couldnât afford to buy new tires for my car, and I had decided to cash in my life insurance policy for the money. That day, a colleague at my office who knew what I was going through asked me, âHave you cashed in your policy yet?â I said, âNot yet. Iâm going to do it tonight.â Then he handed me his credit card and said, âDonât do it, Theresa. Go buy some tires and take care of anything else you need.â The kindness and generosity Iâve received from people, many of whom were strangers, still awe me. There was another time I simply couldnât pay my monthly bills, and I got a phone call from a woman who said, âHi, Theresa. My name is Ruth. You donât know me, but Iâve been instructed to take care of your electric bill this month.â
These words and acts of kindness and love kept pouring in. At night, after a particularly hard day when the kids were in bed, Iâd sit there with a cup of tea, desperately trying to figure how Iâd get through another day, financially, emotionallyâbeing a mother, a professional, taking care of all these responsibilities. Iâd glance over and thereâd be my blessing basket. Iâd pore through it, reading the words of encouragement. Iâd think, âMariaâs praying for me,â or âSo-and-so gave me these groceries. Iâve got to go on. Theyâve made an investment in me.â My basket kept me going. My crisis then reminded me of my motherâs experience when my father was sent to prison. I thought to myself, âIâve got to survive this for the sake of my children,â just as my mother must have said about us.
As I started to feel stronger, I began teaching womenâs groups about overcoming struggle and trauma, and how to survive it. In leading these workshops, I discussed my special blessing basket and what it did for me. Women all over found this concept very powerful and wanted to buy a basket for themselves. So I acquired some baskets from a neat woman in Arizona who imported them. As I sold them, I heard amazing stories about how these baskets helped women heal and survive their challenges. One woman came up to me and said, âMy blessing basket got me through the death of my husband.â Another said, âI found a way to pay my bills thanks to this basket,â and so on. It was clear that this conceptâgathering remembrances of oneâs blessings in one spot and being reminded of the love and support that surrounds usâwas changing peopleâs lives. I loved this idea but was bothered that the baskets I sold simply said âMade in China.â I realized I wanted to know who the individual maker was, and to bless the maker of the basket as well as the recipient.
As time went on, I realized too that I wanted to do something to help the world in a big way. My dream was to reduce world poverty. I was discussing my dream with a friend, and she said, âSo, whatâs stopping you?â What a powerful question that proved to be. I decided from that moment on that I needed to stop making excuses and do something. I asked her to help me be accountable, to stop making excuses for myself, and to take ...