Imagine your life changing 360 degrees right in midstream. You become someone with a very old soul. A book on an Oprah show, a circus oddity or a museum antiquity.
I remember being so strong at one time. A mother of six with a disabled epileptic child, a churchgoer, a cook, a boyscout leader, a home-school mom, a singer, and a republican. Funny, huh? These were the hats I wore, but were they ever really Kate? This was the dilemma that brought so much upheaval.
3 years down the road, a divorce, and a sudden move to Romania, I sit here on this computer with a European husband and much of that former courage lying dormant. My initial awakening is now cooled and again I am trying to reinvent myself. Who am I really? How do I hold on to it? How do I express it?
This blog is the beginning. Welcome to a wild ride at the Chronicles of Kate!
Paula Kate Meserole said,
April 28, 2008 at 9:53 pm
My Dear Friend Kate,
The answers to these questions always seem the most daunting when one is in the midst of the trouble at hand. But the truth is that while your strength my seem dormant and your great courage not apparent, nevertheless, those things are front and center.
They are there in every word that you wrote and are there to fight for you.
You are right about one’s own right to do as one please to do, not as someone else directs, whether it be church going or any other subject.
But it must be difficult when love is part of the equation and marriage to a man who is not familiar with American women. For whilst not wanting to make waves or out and out disagree with one’s new husband…in the end the truth is always better and one must act and do as one believes is right for themselves regardless of what a new and foreign thinking spouse might think, after all it is who- you -are …and one must always be true to oneself and one’s own nature.
American’s by nature are free to do as we please and that it seems, is where the conflict
always appears when anyone else in the world looks at us and our American ways.
But to deny the freedom you were born with, (namely the right and ability to think and do as you please) to deny that, is to deny who you are and the graces that you were born with and no one should have to face an identity crisis like that.
You know it seems that most women in America have been liberated long enough to want to completely eschew any kind of place of control by another and having said that, it must be tough for your husband to have lived so differently than the woman he is now married to has lived.
History teaches that in Europe wives are like second class citizens who are to supposed to blindly follow the husband whether they agree with him or not. Not so in American women. Most of us demand our own way and live it whether we go to church or not.
But I believe that communication in all things is the key….Communication and firm resolve to conquer the problem whatever it might be without losing all your rights in the bargain.. The art of compromise is hard to teach and negotiate in someone who has been raised to believed he is and has the last word in everything. But that is not the American way…and is not the way for any American woman…period.
As far as the list of things you wish you didn’t know…I have to agree that it is a fairly daunting list of happenstance. But if I were in that situation I would try to concentrate my energies on the fact that I did not put those things into place and that I do not have any control of what others do. I don’t know if that helps at all, but for my acid reflux’s sake I would try hard not to dwell on it too much.
“Who am I?” You asked. You are Kate, an American woman pure and simple. That makes you strong and resourceful. And it is that resolve and those resources that will provide the handles for you to hold onto who you are… no matter where you are in the world.
Finally last but certainly not least, ask God, through Christ everyday for His help and your faith in Him will move the mountains that threaten your peace.
Anyway that is my take on this. I so enjoyed reading the blogs. You are such a good writer.
God Bless you Kate.
Paula Kate