The Original Betty who started the Bettying--that is to say Lucy March who decided to blog for 500+ days until her 40th birthday--describes what she went through, her last marriage, as being towered. The term comes from the tarot...
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| I love the added insult of God's hand reaching out with a mallet to give the tower a thwack and the "not again" look on the Fool's face. |
"There’s a card in the tarot called The Tower. Although tarot decks vary, The Tower is one of the illustrations that offers the least variation. Almost always, you have a tower, the top of which has suffered some horrible calamity, causing it to break off, and as the Tower tumbles, you see people jumping off, trying desperately to get to safety. Typically… it doesn’t look good for them."
"...Despite the apparent tragedy of the card – and let’s make no mistake, there’s loads of tragedy in a good Towering – I have to say that, in hindsight, I look at all the times I’ve been Towered in my life and I think, “Thank God.”... every Tower that has fallen has taught me something about how they are built." [To read her full post go here.]
Now she's found some peace and the blog is being turned into a community, but it's leaving in mourning many of the blog readers whose lives didn't undergo the same transformation that hers' did over the last 500 days. There's a reasonable sense of abandonment, that was poignantly addressed in a recent entry.
But still... a new journey can begin any day, for anyone. Many journeys have already begun, it's just that they're still at the scary-bottom-of-the-hill-looking-up-at-the-steep-incline stage. Or the brave-explorer-lost-in-the-frozen-ice-fields stage. Brr.
As I walked home from the library today Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten" came on my mp3 player, and instead of thinking of Pantene, I thought of Betty Angel.
I am unwritten, can't read my mind, I'm undefined
I'm just beginning, the pen's in my hand, ending unplanned
5 comments:
At the ripe old age of 53, I've been towered a few times. One thing I've learned is; don't fight it.
It's going to happen. Fighting it makes it worse.
Better to just hang on and go with the flow.
Once the towering part is over, you can pick yourself up and choose a direction.
That was be what the Fool is thinking in this picture. "Hanging on. Going with the flow."
Funny how it works ... there's something that must be embraced rather than resisted... then the way through becomes finally apparent. Not always pleasant but always fulfilling at some point. At least that's my tower experience. And the end of life is the ultimate towering experience we all face, isn't it?
If towering happens because your life has been built on some false idea, then I guess death as the final towering happens because life is built on the faulty premise that something physical can last forever. ;-) And all our surgeries and anti-aging products are about that lie.
Hey London Mabel. I LOVE that song! I absolutely hated when they made it into a commercial. Though I was hoping and happy for the singers' success.
I can't see the vid but the pic is hitting home. As I've said on my new blog (Thanks Betties for the inspiration!) I've been towered a LOT and that is usually my expression. "Really?!? Again?!? Jeez. Long way down."
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