Blossoms and beginnings...

Dear readers,

​Where I live on the west coast of Canada, the fruit tree blossoms have been billowing like pink snow across the town avenue, making the monthly run to the recycling center and dump today somewhat enjoyable. I've been to the beach with my elder father for his coffee and his daily recovery walk from breaking his hip three months ago. What I call a “clan” of eagles, six of them of varied ages, have been full of their seaside mastery; gliding, swooping, and fending off the crows that chase and scold them. 
 
Though the wind and the whitecapped waves on the ocean today kept us from our normal spotting of the local pregnant seal and the playful otters munching sea anemones, my father and I accepted that we really go there together as a kind of peace vigil - to sit in each other’s presence, in quiet, and try to find words that give us a sense of heart and communion together.

I know that people coming to this blog, and the Pearl and the Hut books, have their unique experiences of how they are managing the sometimes challenging and painful relationships with divorced parents, or how they are helping someone else in the often divisive and distorting issues. I don't assume that your experience is the same as mine, but I hope that the Pearl books will help you to value, share, transform, and celebrate your own experiences. In the books I share parts of my own story to deeply humanize my source of empathy, acceptance, and inspiration for living the path of a "Pearl", and to welcome you to have your own voices about your experience of this kind of healing journey. There are millions of us on it now. 

(If what I say from here down in the blog sounds completely new or confusing to you, please trust yourself to set it aside for now or to consult a therapist or psychotherapeutically informed support person. I'll explain more in future blogs. Not everyone has looked into their feelings and potential struggles around their parent divorce as much as others have, and there's no right or wrong about that here. You've been doing what you needed to do before you decided to look into this website and The Pearl and the Hut books. Some of the ideas and terms that I use below may be completely foreign to you and nothing's wrong with you if you feel the need to check out from this part for now.) 

I was reluctant at first, prior to writing these books, to enter into any kind of discussion, work, or task that reminded me of child of divorce themes. Many of us have been told that it can sometimes retrigger neurological challenges and emotional pain around traumas and upsets that we've been working to overcome. At times, we've been advised by some psychotherapeutic experts to avoid going over the story. and yes it is appropriate to let it all go to sleep for periods of time in our consciousness. We truly need to create "hut" space to become free of the cycling of painful memories and anxious thoughts. Yet, many of us know that the issues regularly come up anyway because the problems are systemic in our families.

Therapeutic practices that help us distract or calm our thoughts about our lost expectations, reframe our sense of aloneness at times, change beliefs the bring low self-worth, and bring mindful and even inspirational insights to manage anxieties and see our important inner gifts, have their positive effects and also their limitations for harmonizing some of our truest practical issues. We can't necessarily get away from the psychic triggers even though they often lead to some level of suffering and renewed pain. We can't always afford the therapist costs for an experience of more relationally wholesome connection and to take up practices that sometimes only offer simplistic and temporary relief, as important as that help can be. So we can get locked in any number of states of resistance to growing through our child of divorce experience, or we simply dissociate. 

My own resistance to facing the issues again came when my deeply supportive husband died and, in grief and mourning, I had no truly understanding family to  turn to in my sense of loss and abandonment. I needed to experience the right kind of  important comfort, empathy and healing support that is a natural need when a person loses a loved one to death and which can be a unique experience for an child or adult child of divorce. I realized that the only truly dependable "family" that I had was myself and the community of other adult children of divorce that had been my soul siblings in life, as well as the soul-spirit community of people who had also become my surrogate family over a long time.

In the spiritual glow that has happened frequently for me after the death of someone important in my life, I realized that I needed to honor that surrogate, soul-spirit family by writing two books on the life-long concerns that relate to many children and grown children of divorce. At the start, the challenges seemed too big and too gnarly and I much preferred to just do my best to make light of it all and try to find some basic ease and peace away from it. I wanted to bypass. Why go back in when I knew that going over the story could just be a source of suffering if I wasn't careful?

Well, my decision had to do with righting, with very different and full kinds of humanitarian insights, the damaging misunderstandings that parent relationship break-ups and their stigmas continue to create for children of divorce. Through the light of Rudolf Steiner's theories and practices which have truly opened endless potentials for me for restoring and managing important missing pieces inside, I sought to help bring these insights and tasks to other Pearls to allow them to trust themselves and their own hearts again first and foremost. I also felt the need to bring the significant stories of other very real and deeply human children and adult children of divorce who had experienced similar supports. 

So, after much healing and growth, and more challenges and new world-trauma events to manage, I set out to make this path of the child of divorce worth all of the life forces and work demanded of me and others over several decades. I took a kind of Buddhist approach and went further - not just to feel the fear and do it anyway but to not deny or avoid the suffering and know that it would free me and others in unknown ways one day. I felt called to share, support, and enliven some highly relevant perspectives, creativity and heart-strengthening practices that I and so many other Pearls worldwide were finding strength from.

This website, at www.anthropearl.com, is a place to learn about ways for yourself, or the people you're caring for, to do just that. Here I'll be posting events, excerpts from the books, and insights from Rudolf Steiner's work as they relate to the daily lives of Pearls. I'll also introduce other Pearls to you who've meant so much to this kind of anthroposophical journey for children of divorce. I'll share helpful links too and explain more about how to share some of your creative expressive projects around the work here, if you care to. I’ll also post what other Anthroposophical practitioners are offering to give you different perspectives and introduce people of other soul natures to experience what Dr. Steiner offered for coming into diverse heart-wholeness. Not everyone can learn the most from me and my soul type, but they can learn from a garden of different but connected souls. And finally, I'll offer ways for you to get in touch with me and to also receive on-going newsletter updates about the Pearl work. 

I imagine welcoming readers of The Pearl and the Hut to this blog space as if we were coming in for some warm drink or soup together. A savory spring pot of nettles, overwintered leeks, year-round parsley, olive oil, butter, and Cashew milk would be what I would bring this early evening. I wonder what warm nourishment you would love to sit down to, with several Pearls, if you felt safe and valued enough to do so. How would it reflect your safe and authentic “hut” experience? What would be the cultural flavor? What would the sitting down look like and where? A table and chairs, couches, floor cushions, a campout at a park or beach, or a group of vehicles circled together with us distanced in our hatchbacks but connecting? (I don’t actually have a hatchback, but my imagination goes far in virus lockdown "weather".) What pearls of wisdom would your soul have to share with the rest of us? 

Though The Pearl and the Hut books come with some authority from a great philosopher and spiritual-scientific master who gave profound insights for our times, I myself am still a learner and working on lifelong healing and development. I hope to join you in the kind of sisterhood-brotherhood that I've spoken of in the books. I know that an unstructured, virtual gathering through an on-line blog could leave some people nervous, and this blog “gathering” space can’t offer formal counseling. I’ll work to keep most blogs as much as possible to specific Anthroposophical practices and rhythms featured in the books. I'll also be holding people in my meditations and prayers who may be in deep pain or suffering while reading here and striving to find the healing and connection that they most need. 

This Pearl and the Hut blog space is dedicated to helping Pearls to find their way to and through the books, to find help, and to hopefully make their passages smoother in navigating the sometimes stormy fjords of divided family life to the life-renewing, full etheric heart. 

Sincerely striving for you the best that I can,
Yiana