My “self-rescue”
“The trick to navigating the Descent is not to despair, and not to push too hard — but to let the new story emerge in its own time. So our sad princess becomes mired in the dank marshes of simple survival…the system…that keeps so many of us trapped in a life we hadn’t entirely planned to be living…..Hers isn’t a happy life, but it is a life — and in all the best fairy tales, where there’s life, there is hope. Through all the long years, this princess refuses to give up. She endures the stasis and apprentices herself to the hard lessons…playing the long game — until one day, finally, she is ready to act, to move on. She seizes her opportunity to escape.
*One of the finest things about this story is that no one rescues this princess. After she’s suffered her time in the Underworld and grown old enough and wise, she discovers that now she has the resources, finally, to rescue herself.”*
From Sharon Blackie’s book, Wise Women: Myths and Stories for Midlife and Beyond
It was November. And the condo was ready. It was time for my escape, time to finally rescue myself.
The “Pivot”
It was an era of double-digit mortgage interest rates, high inflation, and, for sure, I was playing with fire getting an adjustable-rate mortgage. But it was the only way I could afford it. And I still look back in awe and gratitude that I got the mortgage at all, by myself, without needing a co-signer.
This was only 6 years after women finally got the right to get a credit card in their own name without a man on the account. So for me to be approved for that mortgage from a local savings bank felt like a damned miracle!
Of course, I had the silent treatment at home for weeks after I said I was buying the condo and moving out. But if he thought that tactic was going to stop me, he was mistaken.
That day in November was the “no-turning-back” moment for me. I sat alone in the silent paneled room of the venerable local savings bank whose history reached back way beyond me. I realized the magnitude of what I was doing once I signed on that line, but I was going forward. From the moment that voice in my room had spoken and told me it was time to get out, I never hesitated. THAT had been my “pivot point.”
“Pivot: Life hinges on a couple of seconds you never see coming. And what you decide in those few seconds determines everything from then on… And you have no idea what you’ll do until you’re there.”
From Marisha Pessl’s book, “Special Topics in Calamity Physics”
So, when the man in the suit came into the room with the stack of papers, I made my pivot and signed on the line.
In those few moments, four years after I bought that Corningware dish set on a whim, it was done….The condo, and a whole new phase of life…were mine….
Now, it was time to sink or swim.
Soul Mosaic 
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