Chapter 2 - 50 Shades of WTF fair·y tale /ˈferē ˌtāl/

• something resembling a fairy tale in being magical, idealized, or extremely happy. modifier noun: fairy-tale "a fairy-tale romance"

Most women I have talked to that are in their 50’s were raised with two competing narratives battling for the top spot. Wife/Mother and Bad Ass Feminist-glass ceiling breaking-executive.

Our mothers really only had one option – Wife/Mother, yet gave birth during the Love revolution of the 60’s.  The world had a massive paradigm shift during those years and while feminism wasn’t new, it took a strong hold in many of our mothers.

My mother wanted to raise strong independent women, and boy did she. Although she also instilled in me the notion that marriage, children, the picket fence and all the trimmings was something I should strive for. Or was that Disney? Anyway, I apparently needed to succeed at both.

Women of my age were told we could have it all. Now if that isn’t a fairy tale, I don’t know what is.

Kudos to all the women that say they do. Maybe it’s true. Yet I, honestly haven’t met a women who has tried to have it all and didn’t suffer from the pressure of attempting to be all things to everyone.

At my age I’ve come to understand I can’t have it all, be it all and I’ve learned I don’t want it anyway.

But I sure did give it a go and failed miserably.

No one ever really taught me about love, relationships, men, sex. All of my lessons were learned by trial and error.

Many many errors.

I have been married twice. Once when I was 22 that lasted about 18 months.  Prior to that I had spent my late teens and early 20’s dating much much older men, some of whom helped me with my career, most of whom didn’t care one iota for me, I was beautiful, young and willing. I didn’t ask a lot of questions, new my place and when it was over, there was usually someone next in line ready to pick me up and take me out.

I was ambitious and driven and focused on my career. Men were simply a tool I used to get me where I wanted to go. Something I was taught at a very young age about men.

There was one man, the quintessential one that got away, who I will never forget.

The brother of a production accountant, a Navy officer, handsome, kind, loving, he eventually became a psychiatrist for the Navy. We spent an amazing summer together and on long drives between LA and San Diego, just like the ones I did with my dad, we would listen to books on tape. Napoleon Hill, Og Mandingo, Joseph Campbell and many other motivational thought leaders of the time. My head laid in his lap as he drove, he would often stop the tape just to talk about what we’d heard.

He was so sweet to me and I had no idea what to do with that. He was thoughtful and made sure I made it home safely, would never let me walk to my door alone and never pressured me to go inside. Of course I always invited him in and early on he said no. No?! That was confusing for me.

We did eventually make love and I think he is probably the only man I have ever been intimate with that I felt loved by.

As the summer came to an end his ship was ready to sail, literally, and he actually invited me to move to Japan, he would take care of me, we could consider marriage. And I laughed and said no way. I have a career. I’m going to be the head of a studio by the time you get back. This has been fun, but see ya.

I had no idea what I was giving up and no ability to receive love.

Probably one of my only true regrets.

I was just starting a new production when he left and within a few days was already dating someone else. Handsome, funny, rich, well connected and for some reason, the “marriage clock” started ticking. Like this guy I should marry, we were good together and so we did, get married.

A terrible mistake made by two young lost souls neither of whom had any idea how to be in a relationship, let alone be a husband and wife. I was focused on my career and his family was focused on me making sure he stayed out of rehab. It was a very controlling environment where I was counseled on what to wear, what to eat, what jobs I should take, where we would live…

Always feeling like I wasn’t enough, a poor white girl from the valley marrying into film royalty. I never felt enough and so I rebelled.

It was quick and painless, I left with basically nothing and moved on with my life and began a pretty successful career in the film business.

Never looking back when maybe I should have.

I spent my late twenties driving my BMW convertible, walking my dog in my hip West Hollywood neighborhood, and shockingly made it out without a venereal disease or a drug addiction.

Much of this story I told in Killing Buddha, although highly fictionalized. The cliff notes are that I mad my way up to Sr. VP of Production for a mid size production company producing late night B movies for the emerging cable tv and foreign markets.

I was head hunted by a major studio to become director of production, my dream was on it’s way. At 27 I was listed as one of the top 50 producers to watch in the Hollywood trades, things were hoppin’

As I toured what would have become my new office, 20 something floors up, I suddenly felt nauseous.

Not sure if it was the vertigo, my fear of heights or the sudden realization that this wasn’t filmmaking, this was paper pushing. I loved being on set, waking up before the sun, drinking shitty coffee in random places with a crew of people who had become like family.

I was raised on movie/commercial sets. It was my happy place, my safe place where I knew the rules and was usually in charge and in control.

This was a corporate environment where the word fuck wasn’t cool to should when things weren’t going your way.

And so, as I rode down the elevator to my car I decided this wasn’t it, I wasn’t sure what was anymore, so I quit…everything. My Sr. VP Job, the film business, everything.

Plot Twist.. was this the moment I fucked it all up?

I went home and out of nowhere decided to start a gourmet dog treat business with my then boyfriend.

It went well for a while, but, as things in my life seem to do as fun as the climb to the top is, the fall is gonna hurt, badly.

One day I came home and found a small envelope on the floor. I opened it and found a love letter from a woman, my “boyfriend” had been seeing for pretty much our entire relationship.

It seems he liked my apartment, BMW and other perks offered as I traveled for work in my cool. Movie job, which I quit, were too much to pass up and I wasn’t bad either, when I was around.

Once again…not love, just an arrangement.

This would become a theme, I attracted emotionally unavailable men who used me and I guess I was using them. I didn’t understand any of this as I entered my fourties’, after 2 divorces and a whole lotta heartbreak.

I broke up with my 20’s on 9/11…no shit. That’s the day I was tired to join the Bleep team.

Bleep came along and I packed up my cool digs, with him still thinking he was living in it and left for WA.

Where I met my second husband.

My second divorce was at 41, it wasn’t my first metanoia. It was just the one where I became conscious of its existence. Clearly, I am a slow learner.

After 40 years of acting out unconsciously all the trauma my childhood taught me for my survival, and after 9 years and 9 months, Metanoia 4.0, a total annihilation of my external life hit me.

The beginning of an awakening that would lead me to right here and now, Metanoia 5.0

My divorce and it’s aftermath felt like it was it. Like I had full on Tom and Jerried my way through life until this moment and finally the cat was going to catch the mouse.

I had no idea what I was doing, even with al the cool quantum physics and the ability to explain it all. I knew fucking nothing.

Everything, and I mean everything I had built evaporated in a nano second. House, Cars, Husband, kids. 2.1 (For the record how can we have 2.1 kids…asking for a friend)

Trauma sucks… and it takes multiple iterations and crashes to the system to unravel.

This would have been helpful information for someone to teach me when I was five. I know every sound a barn yard animal makes, but no one taught me the life skills I would need to survive and thrive in this circus.

Those we learn by trial and error….alot of errors.

At 41 I lost everything. Except hope… Somehow that one thing stayed clinging to my lifeboat as the seas pummeled everything I thought I loved. I still had hope.

I was born resilient. I am told it’s in my chart. I have the chart of a person who will create everlasting change in this world- which could go either way, actually. Like I could be Hitler, Joan of Arc or most likely something slightly less epic but still have an impact. Which I have done on some level.

For my Metanoia 3.0 I had the pleasure of being big part of a small team that made a film that did, in fact, shift the paradigm, especially my own.

How I ended up there makes no sense.  

Child actress > Porn producer> Spiritual Influencer…

Yeah… the crow doesn’t usually fly that way… But I did.

Somehow this little girl, born white trash ended up opening for Deepak..  

It all the makings of a small town girl makes good story. But I seem to always fuck up the ending.

When I blew up that story line, I was still young at 41. I felt like I had so much life to live, more time to love, explore and create anew. I still held onto the romanticized stories of love and happily ever after.

Shocking right?! One would have thought I’d have given up on love by then. I mean 41 is late to figure out the idea of love you’ve been sold was a lie.

Those bedtime stories are hard to shake, especially in a reality that will stop at nothing to ensure your conscription into the patriarchal narrative.

For the record I wrote a whole book about my system failure at 41, Tipping Sacred Cows. I questioned everything. Everyone. Every life lesson, every word, utterance of wisdom. I died, or a piece of me did, anyway.

So what’s a seeker to do in an existential crises. Go on a spiritual quest!

So I did!

This is the thing, you’re never done…ever.

But I rallied, dug in…did my work…

Focused on raising my kids, doing my work, creating, writing and trying to love, myself mostly.

My most recent metanoia, in my fifties, came about purely out of utter exhaustion and a desperate desire to finally have it all, my way. Love, success and most especially the peace that comes from knowing that it will all be ok.

Ok? what does that look like?

Jesus Fucking Christ what else am I supposed to do?

I have walked on fire, splayed myself naked in front of the gods and a bunch of dudes supposedly holding space, who I think were just getting off on my tits… sang a love song to men I didn’t even like, drank weird shit in weirder places, spent days blind folded and lost in the woods, climbing barriers into the center of a ”tank”… I have done it... Women’s work, Men’s work, Aya, shrooms, toads breath, breath work, anger therapy, systemic work, ancestral healing, micro dosing, danced like no one is watching… wtf?!

Me thinking I had finally done “all the work” necessary to achieve those things, allowed me to believe it was finally possible.

Ha!

Not so fast sweetie… says BoB.

Love, understanding, acceptance, will always elude you- he said…

As a side note- why is my “universe” male? He isn’t, it’s they, them, he, she, it, fucking unicorn…. With no gender it’s just named BoB… I call it he because for me, it’s my dad. The only male figure in my life worth anything.

I thought I was ready for love and loyalty. To be seen fully, understood, and accepted. I wanted patience and kindness, all the things those fairy tales promised me and started to believe I deserved.

Even if I am “crazy”, too much, needy, whatever... I am… what I am…

After almost 12 years of raising two kids basically alone, financially responsible for them and myself, while trying to hold onto my dream, never selling out my soul, and often selling my mind, like a high-priced whore with the only penetration being my connection to spirit, something more valuable than a BJ.  I needed to be held. Tightly… for just a minute...

And for a minute I was, and it felt so amazing, it awakened that place in me that was so deeply hidden. Buried underneath so much sorrow and pain, deep cellular level pain.

Even if the man holding me was only touching my body and had no interest in getting to the light underneath my hardened and wrinkled skin.

I believed, for the first time, in a long time, love was possible. Even with all the chaos of these last few years, and the torture of my lifetime with men, like what did I do to deserve such fucked up karma with love. If I knew I’d do whatever it takes to clear that shit…

Seriously… anything…

Even knowing I somehow don’t deserve to be loved in this lifetime, I held onto the belief that I would find true love.

I know, this sound utterly dramatic, and to me it is, right now.

I am in my metanoia. Swimming in it. Lost in it. Drowning in it.

And the one thing that has been my savior, my rickety raft I hold onto in the muck and mire of this reality is writing.

And so, this is my Metanoia 5.0

It’s time for me to understand love. Relationship. My story around men. My Karma, My Dharma. The story I have continued to live out…

What have I been hiding from?

This book is going to be honest, raw, and written as I feel it. It’s time to speak out loud some of what has been churning violently throughout my mind. Causing me to falter and faint under its weight.

**Art by Holly Wood and is available for Purchase

These are chapters I am working on from my new book 50 Shades of WTF. I’d love to hear your thoughts…Would you read this book?