My isolation odyssey starts on April Fools Day. This is appropriate since the argument with my dad that changed everything involved my supposedly being made a fool of. This pivotal point in my past was based in love and misunderstanding. My dad was the best person I have ever known. He loved me unconditionally despite the fact that I was another daughter, not a son.

So my past has shifted from rock solid to fluid in the past year. The present swirls with political upheaval and I have let go of my expectations for my future. There is no solid ground to plant my feet on.
I am strangly at peace in my floating, sinking and flinking. It has been a bit freeing not being the pole that others dance around. I am no longer holding down a fort or holding up the sky.

I credit this peace to my friend Sandra. We used to use the term adapt like it was our code word. I have felt her with me many times since her death. I brought her framed photo here to keep her in my mind as I swim through the next month or more in isolation to write and change my mind from solid to fluid.

My new talisman is a wave pendant on a necklace and a shirt with the Kanagawa wave on it to remind me that energy moves and change is constant.

I may blog through April or I may be silent. Just know I am doing my best to tell three stories of three women from three generations in my family who were prevented from following their heart’s desire for their “own good” and how that turned out for them.

Paternalism is a double-edged sword. Men may be able to make women do what they want them to do, but they cannot make them WANT to do what they want them to do.

FLOW is flowing.