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Drop That Pillowcase
We can drop our pillowcases and walk away lighter .
by Dolores Halbin , contributing writer
September is my birthday month . It was also our anniversary month . Was , is , I ’ m not quite sure of the verbiage . As I cruise into my 69th year on this third rock from the sun , life is nothing like I thought it would be a decade ago . A decade ago , I was married , coming up on our 40th anniversary , living off the grid in our treehouse in the forest that my husband built for us , and working as a nurse at our local , rural 28-bed hospital . Life was good — really good — until it wasn ’ t .
Now , ten years later , post-raid that killed my career , then my husband , and then took my treehouse — I have found myself re-entering the workforce as an RN , thanks to Amendment 3 ( A-3 ), and really being forced to use my brain again ( something else I didn ’ t see coming ). I also have had to accept the law of the land , the language of A-3 , “ as though it never happened .” We live in a democracy . We must accept the outcomes of our elections .
Work aside , I have been giving a great deal of thought to how I want to spend my final decade before ( thanks to a bunch of old over-achievers working well into their 80s ) I can finally call myself old and claim the benefits . My grandmother once told me , “ When you ’ re old , you can fart when you want and say what you want . You ’ ve got nothing to lose .” That ’ s the goal for my future .
46 September 2024
A-3 required us to put aside our resentments , which has been challenging . Working through this difficult task of acceptance , I had an unexpected response to this journey — freedom .
As I began to feel the grace of freedom infiltrate my soul , I started to consider , maybe , just maybe , I could A-3 all the rest of the resentments I have carried through life . What I have found particularly interesting is this : the concept of A-3 does not require forgiveness .
Forgiveness is the real F-bomb .
I remember ( with embarrassment ) being in my 30s , the age of enlightenment . Any older folks with adult children know that those “ enlightened ” years are hard to put up with . Our 30-something adult children know everything , which makes them very annoying . I was one of the most annoying and enlightened people in my 30s when I learned that forgiveness is the real F word .
I was in Nursing School back then , in my psych rotation . We were in “ Circle ” at the end of the day , which was the one and only time the nursing students were allowed to talk , a practice I think they discontinued after me . I was at the end of the circle and had listened to one after another speak about their wounds . These patients had allowed the resentments of people in their past to deteriorate their spirits to the point that they were in the psych ward .
So when it came to my turn to talk , I , The Enlightened One , said , “ I don ’ t know . It seems like it would be easier just to forgive the people that hurt you and move on .”
It took the clinical case manager about 20 minutes to regain control of his group . After setting boundaries with them — no , you cannot tar and feather the nursing student and run her out of town on the rails — he then stood in the center of the circle and acted out the following scenario :
“ It ’ s like this ,” he started out . “ We have all these people we are angry at and for good cause . Nobody is disagreeing with that . But we can ’ t let them go , so we put them in a pillowcase , and we drag them around with us .”