Release: Part 6, The House

This one is really tied up in Identity too. For the past 9 years I've called myself the Mistress of Hatton House. The house restoration was my thesis and the reason I went to graduate school, the reason for my involvement in the local movement and government. It has been the only thing I talked about, my ice breaker, my lecture topic, my example.......my portfolio for assessment.

I am releasing all of that into the hands of strangers? Preparing my house for sale has been a heartbreaking, gut wrenching process and one I wonder if that inner ego of mine isn't sabotaging the effort. The house is mine, so shall another be. I do not belong to the house. It is a large gracious house, but a needy mistress in constant need of attention and care.

Since moving here, my non-fiction prose abilities have flourished but my poetry all but disappeared. I stopped painting, drawing, and colouring. All creative resources I had mentally and physically went into the house. My thesis was completed but the manuscript was not: it is stalled out and I know why. It's a long, hard goodbye. A novel, one chapter from completion.

Something changed when Lil'Bug came into our lives. The new form of our family became our story. What a grand adventure! I realized that the life we had been living was in no small part tied to my childhood hurt......thoughts went swirling- the happy part was on a farm. I loved living on a farm! Driving to a rural campus over landscape that touched these memories, that's when the dreaming began. Then I whispered it to husband. That whisper took hold of us and it is what we are actively working towards. It will be easier to say goodbye once we are closer to that goal, I imagine. Part of me will always be the Mistress of Hatton House......