A story of hope and new beginnings (and also my thoughts about publishing with the Narrative Arc at the bottom of this piece)

Goodbye Netherlands, Hello Freedom My New Friend

To begin again, choose life, the key is in your hand

Eight years of life, eight suitcases for each year returned, one Miracle, and my life landed back on American soil on July 11th, 2018.

Netherlands chapter closed. Still alive, fifteen hours of travel and we, my cat Miracle and I, were home again in New England for good.

Great loss and great gain. Great sorrow and great joy. Great pain and great healing.

I am me again.

By 2018, I had withered away to scary skinny. Stress had eaten away at my being, my fat and my muscles. I was a wisp of what was left of myself.

My tether to life had nearly snapped. But I knew, to live I would have to leave all I had created to continue life.

Even if I had nothing, I’d be alive.

But I did have peace in the utter chaos. The joy of my classroom. The walks along my canals. The alone time. So much time alone. Sometimes, for days not knowing where he was.

By the end, I had lost most of my care for him, along with most of the care I had for myself. I was on autojenny. Life was not fun, nor safe. It was drizzled in a constant fear and sadness. Even if I had made my tower my heaven, it was still a prison not of my creation.

But the key was always in my pocket. It would jab my leg as I slogged through days, one foot in front of another. I just needed to remember it was there and use it.

Be in peace again away from there. Be free.

I kept telling myself, if I can find art and words and love and care here in this hell, with an anchor I am swimming with daily, how light life will be when I’m free!

I can create a heaven once again in my other home.

Damn, was it all so fucking scary. But what was more scary, was the idea of losing my life to that suffering.

It was a choice that took me so many years. I write this in compassion for the woman I once was. Running, staying. Hoping, praying. Until I ran out of hope, and my prayers were of being taken from this planet. Taken from existence.

It was an unlivable situation. I knew if I didn’t leave, I wouldn’t make it. Besides what I came home with, I had nothing else to my name. Beginning from scratch, but with the key in my hand.

I had safety. I had freedom. I had my life back.

My elderly, handicapped mother drove all the way into the city to pick us up, and bring us back to the second home I grew up in after my parents divorced. This house has been the only place I have ever felt really home. It’s my safe haven from the sucks of life.

My mother has always created a home for us to be safe again. When she left my father, this place was a symbol of her freedom. And now, once again, became a symbol of my freedom. This small little house is our freedom.

Today it holds a lot of love, two cats, Miracle and Jake, my love Georges and my mother.

My Ma and I have our moments. We’re different and also the same. But this woman has done whatever she can to make sure I’m okay in this world. And now, as she ages and is in her deep pain, I make sure she’s okay in this world.

Some days it’s heart-hurting hard listening to her pain. Carrying decades of pain will weigh heavy on ourselves and those we love.

But here I am safe again, on the American soil I was born to. Caring the best I can with the energy I have to give.

Reverse culture shock hit me right in the gezicht after living and leaving my life in the Netherlands. I left dear friends who held my when I cried, my gezellig home I created, and the best teaching job I ever had. I also left a man in the hellish grips of addiction.

But here I have my life. I have my peace. I have my freedom.

Endings hold such massive grief in life. But with each end comes the crest of a new beginning. Ride that freedom of change.

The euphoria of the warm bath of English around me. The pure joy of the wind over my dancing hand out the car, while I drove again for the first time in years. Not going to sleep afraid of what would happen in the night.

Thousands of kisses upon my Miracles head here at home, reminding her and myself,

“We made it. We’re safe.”

We’re alive.

Not everyone has the safety to return to. Not everyone has a mother who cares enough to keep saying, please come home. Please, just come home.

Two years into moving to the Netherlands, I discovered Hyde (not his real name) had a full blown cocaine addiction. Five rehabs, five immediate relapses, every dollar I ever made, and all I put into that home, I left.

Nothing is worth my safety. Nothing worth my peace. Nothing worth my health.

I knew I could begin again. Adaptable, pivotable, and resilient are aspects of my being. I had to have hope again. Hope of real healthy love someday. The freedom of not being possessed by someone possessed by drugs.

Returning also meant I’d be returning to a mother who needed a lot of help. I was wholly unaware of how much help she would need. But I was home. I was safe.

It’s been six years home now. I still do remind myself on the daily, I am safe.

I am safe.

I often wonder what my life would be like if I had left earlier. But would I have met my Georges? Would I have followed my dream and started writing for the whole world to see? I really don't know.

Endings can really suck, they can be heart-wrenching. Sometimes our futures end up not going the way we envisioned them to be. And fuck, we grieve hard for that loss of what might have been. But like my mother once said to me, “Sometimes we have to give up on the future we envisioned, to be able to create a new future for ourselves.”

But with a new path, there is hope. With a new beginning anything is possible. Know you always have a choice to start again, in every moment. You always have the choice to choose joy in sorrow, to get up and keep going. See your shadow right in the face, embrace it, but do not become it. See the way of your new beginning.

There is hope.

When I turned on that lane, and said I’m deserving of real healthy love, I’m deserving of safety, I’m deserving of peace — the Universe had signs all along the way to help get me there to a new beginning.

The way may not be lit brightly. It may feel disorientating, but hold onto the love around you to help light the path. It may not even be familiar. Or like coming home again to me was, the unfamiliar familiar — but this lane has hope.

So, know if you are in a place of hopelessness, or desperation you too can choose. You can pack a bag or eight. You can cut off the rope that is anchoring your being. You can begin again. I know you can.

And real healthy love can walk right into your life, like my Georges did into mine. You can have a real healthy love in the relationship you have with yourself.

Is it hard? Of course it is, but what is even harder is struggling through a life that isn’t your struggle.

But you know what’s so beautiful? To be able to be wake up with hope of anything new! Starting afresh can be our every new morning awakening.

You deserve to thrive in your new beginning, with your one dancing hand in the wind and one hand on the wheel of your destiny. You deserve real healthy love. Know it’s out there.

Miracles do exist.

In fact, you are the miracle walking.

Choose love. Choose joy. Choose life.

And if you are in a situation where you are using every ounce of what is left of your life force to set yourself free and begin again — I admire the fuck out of you.

Please do reach out if you need help here. I now am blessed with the safety and compassionate space to do so. It was a gift I was bestowed and it is my gift to you, if you ever need it.

I know you can be free too.

And if you need any words of hope, words of encouragement, or help in your darkness, please reach out here and send me a private note. There was a group of women who did the same for me during my last year in the Netherlands. And I will forever be grateful for their words of renewed hope. If my words can do the same for anyone doing their best to get free, well then, I have succeeded.

Remember there is always hope. There’s always another way.

And if you ever need a reminder, perhaps my words can light your way, too. I’ll be here with love in my heart, understanding the best I can, and a lantern of compassion in the darkness.

Our time to begin again is always here in this eternal now.

The key right there.

Let’s set ourselves free.

With radical love, Jenny Lane

🌈💜

~namaste~

You are loved.

Note to readers: I originally submitted this piece to a publication called Narrative Arc. You may have heard of it, a very popular publication.

I took a chance on a publication in the hopes my story could reach more people in the clutches of abuse. To help others who may be in the same situation. To know there is hope. For more eyes to find this piece, so people know they too can get out. They, too, can be free.

I trusted Narrative Arc to take care of a very sensitive topic for me to even write about with compassion. And throughout the days long process of editing, whole half days in between editing suggestions, including to cut the parts where people can reach out to me and encouragement (of course, I’ve put them back in) I got the runaround until this morning. And now the whole piece needs to be reworked to describe more of the “why” behind my leaving. After making all the other changes.

My story was not about my abuse, but about leaving hellish abuse and starting again. In other words, we need more trauma in this piece. To write more about the trauma that led me to leaving. My original piece included the library of my why traumatic stories I have sat uncomfortably writing, so that anyone who comes across my beginnings piece could go into the library of why.

There’s no way I can fit 8 years of abuse and 6 years of healing into one 6 minute piece. I guess I could have bulleted the physical and emotional abuse and the blessings I have now. But this story is about the courage to start again. In the hopes that anyone who may need encouragement can find it.

I was asked to remove my library of other pieces, which I did. I have included them again below if you want to read more about my story. Sorry abuse is not what this piece is about. It’s about hope and beginnings and freedom from the pain. The theme suggested was beginnings, not abuse.

After making every change Narrative Arc asked for, I guess there was too much hope and not enough trauma for this publication. Which is a disturbing trend I have heard about, and now experienced. Wrapped up in niceties. Although I have been told secondhand about many like stories as mine, through the grapevine about publishing with Narrative Arc, and how it’s editors are treated, I wanted to see myself if this was the case. Hearsay and all that.

Well, obviously, it is not a good fit for myself and my words. And I caution anyone who would like to publish with them. Because I am not the only person who has experienced this theme. I now have first hand experience I can write about.

When we write about trauma these words need to be held sacred as publishers. Not treated like content to be churned out for a buck. It takes a lot of fucking courage to write about trauma, and even more to send it to someone else to dissect.

My suggestion is that as publishers we remember there are human beings behind these words. As writers we are doing our best to process what we’ve been through. That takes care and love. Not this. And I’d say my personal experience was the lite version of what I have heard.

I am fully aware at how hard the editors work at the Narrative Arc, and frankly I have massive amounts of compassion for them. This is not about the editors. I am glad that some editors made the decision to leave this publication for their well being and mental health.

This is not a rant about the hard working editors. It is about the publication as a whole. Of course we all want to be seen, but we need to be treating sensitive pieces about trauma with more grace and compassion.

I am not a number to be boosted. This is a story about my life, a very difficult story not some words to prop anyone’s ego.

The “why” stories behind my beginning.