The Ship Built Beneath My Feet: A Memoir

My heart has been broken a thousand times along the way like everyone. It is unavoidable and when it happens we try to make sense of it to give it meaning to name it. We consider what we might have learned possibly something worth sharing. Strength rose out of weakness as the young woman of my past stumbled over insecurities and uncertainties until I learned one of lifes most valuable lessons. Of course there was a price and loss but mostly I think there was gain. Being true to ones self takes courage but we must insist upon it. There will be frightening unknowns and that turns out to be the big test. My girlish dreams of love and marriage didnt pan out according to folklore and fairytale but it did afford my greatest blessing. Motherhood would be my most ardent teacher. It would take me closer to heaven than I ever expect to get and it would drop me firmly to my knees. I stood humbled at the doors of a university and wore out a pocket dictionary in the first year. I made bread and did stacks of laundry tested the strength of marriage and felt old at thirty-five in a lecture hall of twenty-year olds. I gazed at a poster outside a classroom Teaching abroad. There were dreams that never came true and those I hadnt dreamed of that did. In all I discovered the length and breadth of the I that defines me. Some stepped onto the pages of my writing that Id lost track of the daring carefree little red-haired girl the daughter and sister the friend the sweetheart. Trust and hope has tethered me to something greater than myself. I see it now in my journey backward the signposts and directives the intuitive flashes strewn throughout my story appearing in unexpected moments. They have held me up and seen me through the best of times and the worst of times