Lately I find myself being called back to my childhood to review certain aspects of my life. I feel some of this is related to my programming and some of it perhaps is related to my Divine Calling.

As a child, my minds eye takes me back to the winding walks down the ravine path to Lake Michigan. I can feel the anticipation well up inside in my stomach, it is the feeling I had back then and the feeling I have right now, as if I’m going to visit a friend that I haven’t seen in ages. As I’m walking the path I can smell the damp leaves, feel the uneven pebbles beneath my feet. I look to my right and see the brook that leads down to the lake. Every turn, every twist, is a place as familiar to me as if it is part of my own body. My mother lets go of my hand and I run free, skipping and jumping, ever closer to the brown, sandy beach. The trees are immense as they tower above us. I feel dwarfed, like a tiny elemental elf, skirting in and out of the underbrush, my home beneath this gigantic kingdom of trees.

The brook widens as we get closer to the beach. I run faster, driven by the momentum of the downhill path, but more so by my excitement to get my first glimpse of the wide open lake. I run faster, with wild abandon. I throw my arms wide open as if to run into the arms Mother Lake. I kick off my Keds and jump straight on into the murky water, which feels like a warm hug.

In my child’s mind, I point out the dolphins and whales that I see on the horizon of the Lake. I tell my Mom about how I plan to ride a dolphin one day and that we’ll ride out to the ocean together.

I feel so much happiness well up in my heart when I think of how meaningful those simple walks through the woods were. Perhaps, intuitively, my Mother was guided to take me on those walks, or maybe she knew how much those walks helped her too.

My walks to the lake were just a small part of childhood, communing with nature. I easily spent more time outdoors than in. Deep down, I feel there is a connection to that strong desire to be in nature. Even my love of animals.

When I was little, I also preferred my animal toys over any Barbie doll. At one point, I had a Barbie camper and it was fill with my animal figurines, not Barbies. In second grade, I traded my Barbie doll for a friend’s giant (and I mean GIANT) 4 foot tall stuffed animal. I think it was a bear or a dog, regardless my mother made me take back the trade, I never understood why.

My best friends were animals, not people. I had a Weimaraner dog named, Hilda. I spend hours exploring our yard, building forts in the bushes and running around the gardens with my best friend, Hilda. She was more than a friend, she was a true guardian to me. I couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5 when we ran around together. That dog was amazing to me. Later, in my mid-forties, my siblings told me the truth about Hilda. When we moved from the suburbs to the city, my parents found a home on a farm for Hilda. Several times Hilda ran back to our house from the farm. They realized they couldn’t keep her from running away so they put her down. 40 years later, I was furious to find this out. As a child I begged to take that dog to the city with us, but my voice fell flat. It crushes me to know she wanted to be by her people. And her people abandoned her. My eyes are welling up with tears and my heart is aching as I write this. I can only imaging what an awful feeling that must have been for that poor animal. How insensitive for my family to have done that to our dog.

I can see how abandonment has become a theme for me in this life (and others). Watching my dog get abandoned by our family, my siblings being so much older than me and going off to have their lives while I’m still at home, my parents divorce and my dad moving a 1000 miles away, having boyfriends that left me, more animals that got sick and had to be put down and many friends that came and went. It seems like a daunting list of abandonments. But, through these perceived betrayals, I have learned to lean on me, to rely on me, to trust in me and that I will never leave me!