A Tree House Memoir
“70” Vignettes and Life Lessons from the Tapestry of My Life
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Vignette 26 New Jersey became a place of challenging growth and change for me. I realized that I was really feeling very lonely and isolated. I did all the redecorating I could manage alone. John was out of town so often, and both Jay and Julie were in school and working. Currently, I identified myself as “a child and home-management specialist.” I volunteered at church and had friends, and I was also restless and ready for something else on my “résumé.” I decided to check out the local community college and work on my education again. They had an associate-degree program in psychology. It sounded like it would be a really good fit for me, and so I signed up. I felt like I was the oldest student on the campus! A young man, 21 years old, was in most of my classes, and actually became a friend and a mentor for which professors and classes were the best. I loved to read and write, and I was very open to all the new information to which I was being exposed. Suddenly, Mom was coming home with homework to do and papers to write, too! I loved it! I was open to each new challenge as an opportunity for me to both learn and be creative. I was in a health and wellness class, and our first assignment was to go to a float-tank studio and then write about our experience. The professor said, “It will be the closest experience you’ll ever have to being in the womb again.” I was not sure what that meant, or to expect! It was the shape of a big capsule, and it opened up in the middle to reveal soft lights, about 14 inches of warm saltwater, and gentle music. I showered and climbed in naked. I was amazed that I literally floated in the shallow water as the door gently closed and the lights dimmed. I lost track of time and space almost immediately. Then it became so quiet. I began to hear soft voices. Then I realized it was my parents. I heard them softly whispering. A deep awe and awareness came over me as I realized that I was being conceived in my mother’s womb. I had no words to describe it. I heard no words. It was a quiet, sacred, holy experience for me. I believe it was a glimpse of being truly wanted by them, and by God, on this earth. The message for me: I was intentional. God had a plan for my life. There was a purpose for my birth. There was a purpose for my life. It was an experience too deep for any other words … Some of my life lessons I have mastered better than others. Everything has been my teacher. The day I started back to school, I read a quote, in one of my daily devotionals, from the Sioux Indian tradition: “You may not touch the wounded until you have scarred hands.” It felt very prophetic somehow, and I so I taped it inside my class-schedule notebook. Little did I know how prophetic it was. Life Lesson 26 Aristotle was right. “When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Vignette 34 Two metaphors come to mind right now about where to go from here: 1. My life feels like a tapestry that I have been writing about. I realize now I have been looking at it from the underneath side for 70 years! So many crisscrossing threads and knots and colors have made it difficult to really see the picture of my life – until now. Because of this project, I have turned the tapestry over. Now I can begin to SEE the picture, and how all the threads of my experiences and stories are important. It feels a lot like when I got my first pair of glasses in the third grade. 2. The other metaphor is similar. My plastic containers held the evidence I needed to remember, honor, validate, and reframe the story of my life. It felt like I had a bunch of puzzle pieces in a box, only without the cover. I was not able to see the whole picture! My plastic containers held the puzzle pieces that I needed! Now I can see, remember, and put together so many of the missing pieces I had forgotten about in the puzzle of my 70 years of life! Life Lesson 34 In a prayerful, thoughtful way now in 2020, I see my 70 years of life with new insights and deep gratitude. Intimacy = in to me see. I have learned that I can let others see into me, too.
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About the Book
Growing older often catches us by surprise! As I welcomed my 70th year of life everything I knew to call “normal” changed. My husband John Kelly and I moved very unexpectedly from our house I loved, into a villa in a retirement community. In one of the moving boxes from my office I discovered a gift that would profoundly change my life. It was from my two oldest granddaughters Ashley and Emily. It was a handmade, spiral bound journal with a picture of a teacup and the words, “Grandma tell us your story!” I couldn’t imagine having the time, or the courage to do it. However, I promised myself to “think about it” as I tucked it away for “someday”. The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 provided me with the opportunity. Writing my memoir has been both a labor of love to birth, and one of the most profound experiences of my lifetime. I could never have imagined myself continuing to “see” my clients remotely for our counseling sessions, and then using the isolation and confinement of being quarantined as a “gift of time to write”. Only God could have divinely inspired me to sift through 70 years and choose what I did to write about. I learned some amazing life lessons along the way. I learned to finally see and understand that God was with me, and a part of everything that has happened in my life. My life was meant to be a gift. My memoir is filled with 70 vignettes and life lessons that span my lifetime. I dedicate this book to all those I have written about, and who have been so important in my journey.
About the Author
As a Licensed Professional Counselor and a National Certified Counselor, Kathy Kelly has had the privilege of meeting and working with clients in a rich variety of settings. Her professional life has included working as a counselor in a social service agency, two elementary schools, as a parish counselor, and since 2006, exclusively in her private counseling practice, The Ministry of Wellspring, LLC. Her mission and goals have always been to support healthy living and healthy relationships. She believes that each of us have a wellspring within that can restore balance in our lives, empower strengths and inner resources, and encourage healthier living and healthier relationships.