Her story in her words

CHERRIL DOTY

It could have just been a Monday kind of thing. Whatever the reason,

I found myself in a dumpster of my own design and creation. I needed

to get out so, putting on tennis shoes and shorts, I followed my own

oft-repeated advice and set off on a walk.

Low tide at Crystal Cove seemed like the landscape of some other

planet as I walked the tide line far from the bluffs. As greedy gulls

loudly fought over tasty morsels, I found myself hoping to again see

the pair of Caspian terns I’d seen at the north end of the beach just

last week. Greedy me. Always wanting more of that good stuff. This

tied to the story I had been writing before I was driven out into the

cloud-filled afternoon for this walk.

It was the story that friends kept asking me to tell -- my story.

So this is my story. And since it is mine, I will tell it my way.

It is not an easily told story for it covers a broad space of time,

has myriad aspects and seems to have no order to it. It is about the

things that happen while we are making other plans. I’ll start at the

end.

PART I

Imagine a woman who ... tells her stories ... who trusts her

experience of the world (Patricia Lynn Reilly).

You can’t go home again.

In this case “home” was a metaphor; “home” was like hitting the

rewind button. I wanted to start back at the beginning, back before

Jan. 21, 2004, back before my husband Mike fell down that Baja cliff,

breaking his neck. I thought I had left something important back

there and I pored over my journals, searching for clues.

I knew that at the precise moment of Mike’s pell-mell rush down

the cliff 1,000 miles to the south, I had been completely at peace --

taking photos of sunset reflections on water. But what had I been

doing and thinking in the days leading up to this moment? Why was I

even there at the beach taking those photos?

As I revisited my journals, I discovered that in the days that

went before the accident I had been doing what I often do in the

fallow time of winter -- setting down seeds, making goals founded in

vision and intention. In a few words, I was putting possibilities

into play. Possibilities for new workshops, for new art work of my

own, for new venues, new clients, new writing, new work. I had

explored some of the edges and found places where I thought I could

simply push out a bit farther. That was not to be.

So last week, I set out on the physical journey to revisit the

places I’d been, try to recapture the sights, sounds, thoughts and

feelings that seemed to have fostered those possibilities in the

first place.

Along beaches from Pacific Beach to Doheny, I did what I do. I

watched and I walked and I sat and I wrote. I photographed surfers

and waves on the sand. I captured the sun’s rise in a soft pink and

blue sky. I took pictures of sunlight on water in the haze of midday.

Photos at sunset were filled with fiery orange and red hues and after

the sun had gone, I wrote of the strawberry-tinged underbelly of

clouds on the horizon.

There were clues, I suppose, but I could not find it -- that

something I thought I’d left behind. Where was it? What was it? Was

my chase after the muse failing me this time? Again, I looked in the

pages of my journals.

As I picked through the bits and pieces like shards of broken

beach glass, seeking the “perfect” one, the perfect answer, I

realized something. Whatever goals and visions I had back in January

2004, things have changed and I have had to change with them. Nothing

was really left behind at all. In the end, we remake our lives in the

ways that we need. We may be able to look at the past, but we cannot

go home again. That’s just how it is.

And so we move on.

(PART II next time will cover the challenges, learning and

healing.)

* CHERRIL DOTY is a creative life coach and artist in love with

exploring the mysteries of life. You can reach her by e-mail at

[email protected] or by calling (949) 251-3883.