My time on the mountain began as a climb out of purgatory.  I still have no idea what sins or ill dealings I partook in during a past life or early in this one to land me there.  But I spent years in a self-imposed prison not realizing the key to an unlocked door was in my hands.

You see, I was a martyr without a cause.  I stayed cemented to my situation for all the wrong reasons.  The perceived one was for my children, but parallel to that, coming in a close second, was fear of being labeled a failure.

But when the chips were down and I had to choose life or death, I realized I wasn’t cut from the cloth of a martyr.  I chose life.  In doing so, I had to give up a relationship I had endured more than half my life.  I gave up the lifestyle I had grown accustomed to.  But most of all, I gave up the lies manufactured to keep me rooted in that relationship.

So began my long climb to the mountain top.  Don’t misunderstand; this was not like Martin Luther King’s mountain top epiphany.  This was a “who are you to you”, mountain top experience.  There was no blame, no finger pointing, no expectations for or from anyone else. This climb was personal.  It was about healing.  MINE.

My climb to the mountain top took me into a seclusion of sorts.  I looked at myself with more honesty than I thought possible.  I never focused on what I felt was done to me (that came later).  My focus was on where do I find strength within myself.

I find blame to be debilitating.  Healing does not include blaming someone for your situation.  It involves accepting it for what it is or was and building from that.  As long as you involve yourself in the blame game, I believe, you become a co-conspirator in your own victimization.

That was not my intent.  I was determined to shed the pain, disappointment, disgust; those feelings of insecurity, insufficiency, and immobility.  I wanted to build on self-esteem, self-determination, and self-actualization. 

The beginning of this process was simple.  So obvious I questioned myself as to how it had gone unnoticed for so long.  As a person particularly in tuned to my spirituality, I began to pray.  I prayed for guidance and deliverance.  I prayed for strength and clarity.  I prayed for a renewing of my spirit.  Then I went to work.

This was not a 9-5 type of job.  It was and is a 24/7/12 job with no end in sight.  Healing is a work in progress that goes on until it is done.

Prayer was just the beginning.  I began to journal.  Something I hadn’t done seriously in my life.  Oh, of course I had a diary when I was a teenager, but the superficial mush I wrote on those lines was nothing compared to what I poured onto those most recent pages.

I accepted the negativity that had been a part of my life.  Then I developed strategies to make sure I never place myself in those situations again. See, one of the things I realized was life is full of choices and those choices lead to consequences.  And contrary to popular belief, consequences are not always negative.  My responsibility was to make sure I always aligned myself where there would be positive consequences.  As a result, I began to look at the choice piece as sort of a cause and effect scenario.

I started with how I felt at the end of a certain experience within my relationship.  Then I worked backwards.  What could I have done differently when it happened?  Change the cause and thereby affect the outcome.  And I worked backward until I understood why we were powerless to behave in a proper manner in the beginning of that particular life scenario.

And notice, I did not say he was wrong.  Nor did I blame myself.  We were both culpable in driving our relationship to its end.  It was the effect from causes we did not handle properly or in a timely manner.