Reflections: A Moment in Time -
A collection of Life Poems
This is the "Foreword" excerpted from the book.
y name is Gloria. I was a woman of 40, married for 22 years, with two teenagers; I had just received a two year degree in Applied Science – Office Management and was recovering from being mauled by two very large dogs, when I was thrust into the world of divorce. After three weeks of non-stop crying, literally pulling the hair out of my head and watching my kids (ages 13 and 18) think only of their father, I decided I needed to work on myself. I had entered into months of divorce therapy, attending many divorce networking groups, when my kids moved out of the house to be with their traveling Super Dad. When I had to empty the house by having garage sales, get a moving van, and sell the house with no help, I decided to move out of state in order to start to heal.
My last winter there, I shoveled a record 75 inches of snow, no help. I guess I should mention that I am 4’8” and weighed 92 pounds dripping wet. The snow piled up to 6 feet and I had to lift the shovel and throw it 2 feet over my head. Super Dad said they didn't have to help me, so they didn't. Of course the snow plows would come along and I would have to start all over again. Moving to Arizona was the best thing I could have done. My mom and a friend from one of the divorce groups were here.
My final wake-up call was watching my ex, who was an alcoholic and a diagnosed pathological liar, having a major mid-life crisis, cheating on me, all at the same time. He was coming several times a week to pick up our daughter and gave our son the van to drive around town. Both kids wanted to be with their dad because “he was more fun and took them places.” One day I just snapped and picked up a butcher knife as he pulled up to the house. I was absolutely shocked at myself, I put down the knife, as I said to myself, while looking at my husband out the window, you are not worth it. From that moment on, I stopped literally pulling my hair out and went to the farthest room of the house so I wouldn’t see my ex, hear him or talk to him every time he came to the house. I learned to hang up the phone when he would call and verbally beat me up. While I thought it was rude to hang up the phone (that’s what I was taught), I learned to do that with a great feeling of control over who said what to me. It was very, very powerful.
I watched women in the divorce groups, who after 2 years, were still pining for their exes. My psychologist asked me when I was going to stop crying and what did I want from this therapy. My answer was to learn to live without a man. I wanted to be strong, happy on my own, support myself, learn about who I was, what I did wrong and how can I change so that I don’t repeat the past, as I went along with my new life.
After the divorce, selling the house, and with my kids having turned against me, I decided to move to Arizona, got a good job, rented an apartment and started to learn who I really was inside and out. I started the healing process, started to grow, found out I had a good work ethic, was relaxing, making new friends, having fun and started looking into getting my bachelor’s degree from the University of Phoenix. This helped me to discover that I was not dumb and stupid. I am so proud of earning that degree at 50, because it represents and validates that I do have a good mind. To me it is more than just a degree. It represents that I am still growing and learning and loving it.
I finally made up my mind to stop beating myself up, blaming myself for everything and started to “wash that man right out of my hair.” I wanted to be a very strong, independent woman. I wanted to heal and find out who I was and how strong I really was. You will see by my poetry how I started to grow.
I started writing poetry in 1983. I started to grow one step at a time, and went two steps backwards for quite awhile. Although I had never written poetry before, never completed a class in poetry and never learned what the rules of poetry were, one day I was just flooded with words. It didn’t matter if I was driving, at a stop light, on my break, or at work, the words just kept flowing and I would just keep writing. On many occasions, I wrote until midnight. I kept paper and pencil in the car, by my bed at night, in the lunch room at work – it didn’t matter. It took me almost three and a half years of constant writing before I could begin to see that I was making strides in the growing department.
I even lost my poems in a move at one time, only to find them again many years later and decided to put them in a scrapbook. That is another talent I found recently – scrapbooking.
I hope this book helps you in some way. You are not crazy because of your emotions going up and down, minute by minute. It doesn’t matter what your crisis was, a divorce, loss of a child, any loss is difficult. I would write a happy poem one day and five or six sad ones at the same time. Sometimes on the weekends I would write until midnight. I hope that Reflections: A Moment in Time will help you get through some tough times and will help you on your way of being a strong, loving, compassionate individual on the inside as well as the outside.
Gloria Hildreth
info@gloriahildreth.com