My daughter took me away for the weekend of Mother's Day. I returned home and my husband of six years had moved out. He picked me up from the train station, brought my bag inside. He was standing in the door way of our apartment, holding the door key out to me. I knew what was happening. He said, with the compassion of a man telling his wife that he was making a quick run to the gas station,"I will call you. I'm out of here"

Do I miss him? Yes. Have I lived my life with him with an uneasy dread in my gut that it would never work? Yes. Did I hold on to the love and the hope? Yes. Did I know that he was a selfish and self serving person but hoped that I could help him change? Yes.

On May 10, 2009 when he walked out of the door, I wept for a long time. I stumbled through the apartment on auto pilot. I could not feel my feet. Then I got up and cleanned the house of every shread of him which he had left behind. It went out on May 11 th in a big garbage bag.

The second day, I cried less. I sat with myself and extended my hands to the universe and asked it to show me what I am supposed to learn from this. Please, I begged, let me grow through this and not just go through this.

I heard my inner voice speaking to me soft and low. It whispered that I should get up. It urged me to find meaning in my own life and new definitions for my own happiness. It reminded me that I was no longer the 5 year old child who stood at my fathers feet as he packed his clothes into a box on Christmas morning to leave us in 1963. I came face to face with the same moment of pain and terror of so many years ago when I begged my daddy not to leave me. I know the exact moment when I began to hate myself, give too much and love so unrealistically. On Monday, May 11, 2009, I relived ,with perfect clarity,the moment when being alone and abandoned became the defining force of of the past 45 years of my life.

Where do I go from here? I don't know know yet. I only know that this place is a start. I know that I am talented, smart, kind, giving and loving. I know that I love all people and flowers.

Do I miss my husband? Yes. Do I close my eyes and wish that he would just hold me for a moment? Yes. I know that I am a woman and not the little girl in the closet tugging at my father's pant leg. I dont know how but I must survive and I must make peace.