What is that strange pull?

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”― Rumi

I stumbled across this Rumi quote many years ago and always felt it described my life’s journey so well. I have spent my entire life following that strange pull, so it seems like the ideal title for this blog. I’ve known that a while now, but how to begin? There have been so many beginnings. Isn’t every end a new beginning? I find myself now, after almost fifty one years of living, again at a new beginning, because there has been a recent tragic end. So beginning this blog ought to be easy with so many beginnings to choose from, right? You’d think I’d be an expert at beginnings by now!

I don’t want this blog to be about suicide, though that will definitely come up. Nor do I want it to be about dealing with the acute grief of losing my husband to suicide, though that too will most certainly arise, especially since it is still such a recent end and there is still so much current anguish, so many wonderful memories to savour, so much to try to make sense of, so many strange pulls involved in the whole story.

I hope this blog will be all about those strange pulls, what they have been for me, where they have led, and why – despite the course of my life that has pulled me to some truly strange places and through deep trauma and grief – I have not been disappointed.

I suppose this will do as an introduction. I don’t know exactly how I will continue, nor how often I will post. It won’t all be brand new. I have written bits and pieces already that I will slowly drip feed you, and I really hope it won’t all be full of pathos and earnestness, which I have a definite tendency towards, especially in the light of my recent life events. I myself get impatient with that, and find myself silently drawn towards those who can laugh at themselves and love life enough to make it enjoyable and danceable regardless of what life throws their way.

So what is that strange pull? How does it tug at us, beckoning us in its direction, asking us to leave behind the familiar and the comfortable? It is not a forceful pull. We can easily choose to ignore it, turn away, strike a different direction, follow after another notion.

But it is what we really love that is pulling at us. That can be quite insistent. All we need to do is allow ourselves to be silently drawn in that direction. It isn’t necessarily a dramatic thing, loud and radical. No, it’s not loud; it’s a silent thing, a tugging in the quiet depths. When we allow that current to take us, surrendering to its drawing power, we will not be disappointed. It will not lead us astray. It will lead us straight to what we really love.

I look back on my life so far, all fifty one years of it, and I can see the times I let myself be silently drawn in that way. Sometimes it resulted in quite a radical outcome. In fact, I think I can safely say that I have led a very unusual life. Outrageous even, at times.

I will write about those unusual – sometimes outrageously so – events of my life, and why it is that I can look back, even in the face of the most heartbreaking of tragedies, and see that yes, it did not lead me astray.

I won’t always write in chronological order. In fact, I probably never will. It will come out as it comes. I will drip feed you bits of an extraordinary life spent being drawn (I haven’t always been good at the silently part) by the strange pull. Mixed in with my writings will be links to songs that have poured out of me during those times, for the piano and guitar and various other instruments have been the main pages of my journal throughout my life. So I will let them speak too at times.

I will speak of others who have journeyed with me for a time or even all the way through. Will I protect their identity? I think I will for some who may not appear particularly gracious on these pages. I like the idea of giving them another name, an alternate identity. Yes, I’ll do that. But you won’t have to be a detective to figure out just who I’m talking about if you are so inclined. And that’s okay, because I have nothing unkind to say about anyone, nor any malicious intent to hurt anyone. I only intend to tell my story, and those that took a part, especially if it’s been a large part, will simply have to feature in here at times.

As with my songs, some of what will appear here will be leaves torn from my journal along the way, not something freshly written and carefully edited, but the rawness of whatever poured out of me as life happened to me.

I guess you could say, this is your warning, my reader. You won’t be able to accuse me of not having warned you of what’s to come.