I have used this expression after surviving difficulties in the past, but it took on new meaning for me on May 12, 1994--the date my home, personal property, rentals, and consultant business were destroyed in flames. You may be familiar with the descent and resurrection stories of the Greek Goddess, Persephone, and the Sumerian Goddess, Innana: this is mine. It is my story of destruction and reconstruction, my spiritual journey.  

From what I endured the past three years, I know first-hand the inner and outer aspects of home-building, a time of facing loss and finding soul. I have returned from the underworld, where I confronted what remained after the smoldering smoke and billowing flames: an attack on my life; an insurance battle; and the design and rebuild of my house. Seeing the stained glass windows installed in my newly completed house makes me feel like it can be my "home." On the west wall of the living room, my phoenix rises from ashes stylized as black and gray temple steps. She soars with vividly colored, thickly flourished feathers spreading widely with her head high, confident and hopeful. 

A Brief Spiritual Autobiography

Growing up in the fifties in North Dakota, I was a good girl, a model student and a diligent Catholic. My double life was manifested by reining in my innate inquisitiveness, just enough to fit within the boundaries of home, church and school. The inner me found pleasure in reading, writing, and imagining far-away places. I questioned incessantly, "Why must I believe the way I'm told?"or "Why don't kids from the poor part of town get invited to the birthday parties?" Ultimately, I did what was expected of me. In reviewing my fifty-three years, I see my inner life was often given a back seat to my outer achievements. Yet a strong inner thread has been meandering through my outer life. 

I followed my expected trail--married in 1965, shortly after graduation from the College of St. Benedict in Minnesota. I divorced in 1970, two years after moving to Ukiah, California, where I became a Family and Children's Supervisor for Mendocino County at the age of twenty-four, supervising social workers over twice my age. In the mid-seventies I worked as a nonprofit deputy director and completed a masters degree in psychology. In 1980 I accepted a fellowship in Washington, DC, lived on Capitol Hill until 1991, granting $14 million annually to innovative educational improvements. I was operating a national consulting business, developing model youth service programs and writing professional books and articles. As important as this nationwide experience was, I became disillusioned watching colleagues being seduced by "Potomac Fever" and jockeying for power at the expense of their work 

My inner self was finding meaning in DC through being exposed to broader diversity and working in social action, civil and human rights. I was moving further away from the prescribed thinking of my youth. For the first time I was actively involved in a neighborhood which was 80% African American; I worked in soup kitchens and listened to the stories of homeless people; I promoted artwork of South Africans and learned the visceral value of art; and I demonstrated with multi-faceted people for gay rights. 

My springboard to appreciating women and spirituality occurred in the late eighties when I participated in a four year project with sixteen women. We were a diverse group representing different ages, races, marital status, careers, and religious backgrounds. Brought together to examine women's relationship to God and Church, our research guideline was that our own personal stories were to be our single source of authority. At first we saw mainly differences, but later felt warmth in the closeness of our common themes: tragedies, lack of support, language, peaks and valleys, resiliency, life cycles. 

I fed my adventuresome nature during the eighties by negotiating time from my jobs to travel to distant places. I needed to form my own opinions by being with people in the places my government was telling me not to go. I investigated life in Nicaragua, the USSR, Poland, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Guatemala. In all of these places, I saw how women held homes and communities intact. Repeatedly, I saw how little the people identified with their governments. So often I heard, "Why does your government want to hurt us?" I realized how hard it was for me to dissociate comfortably from my disagreements with my government. Also, among the many groups helping the desperate plights of these people, I found that those rooted in liberation theology seemed most firmly committed in their work. I broadened my view to include politics in spirituality. 

In the summer of 1986 I discovered my Polish heritage trekking about Poland and studying Polish Economy at the Adam Misckievich University in Poznan, the city of my ancestors. Here I found beauty in being Polish, in my name, Katarzyna. 

I continued my outer identity with my Washington DC professional image. But, my inner self, Katarzyna, was claiming her time. I could no longer accept logical arguments favoring career development. Fate prevailed in early 1991. Days before another promotion, I sold my condo, left DC, drove the old Route 66 across country, stored my belongings in Ukiah and traveled extensively around Guatemala. 

The Depths of My Underworld

Following the fire I lived at the "Discovery Inn" and sought sanctuary in the Mendocino coastal village of Elk. A month after the fire, while driving on the coast highway, a pick-up truck began tailgating me, then repeatedly rear-ended my car. The battered pickup swerved around me on a curve, side-swiped my vehicle, and blocked the road in front of me. A huge, maniacal, red-faced man got out of the pick-up, cursed obscenities at me, pounded my car, and pushed it toward the ocean cliff. Instinctively, I rolled up the windows, locked the doors, cowered physically and disappeared psychically. Then, all of a sudden, he walked away, he was gone. It was like a bizarre, spooky movie. 

As time passed I felt more alone and vulnerable. The fire was shocking, but it did not make me afraid--the attack did. Six months later, fear took over and I couldn't fight off the nightmares. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. After years of risk-taking adventures around the world, I prided myself on being fearless. Here in Mendocino County on the heels of a devastating fire, it was as if the Goddess was warning, "If you didn't hear the wake-up call from the fire, it is time to take stock of your life!" 

I felt so alone, isolated in a way I'd never known possible. I did not mourn the loss of things. My loss was the unexpected evaporation of my confidence and the disappearance of friends and relatives. Perhaps my tragedy brought them too close to an experience that "only happens to other people." Maybe it was too difficult to relate to me when I could not handle things in my old "together" manner. Shunning advice to hire an attorney, I tenaciously dug in my heels to sustain the enormous challenge of taking on the insurance establishment alone for a twenty-three month effort. To counteract the intimidation I felt from the claims representative, I posted phrases by my telephone to remind me what to say to keep my case alive. At times I felt I was in a boxing ring and couldn't take any more, so I would take time out before going back for another round. I persevered with nothing to show for this solitary, drawn out activity, and found myself questioning my worth. In the end, I received an insurance award nearly three times the initial offer, for which I'm just starting to give myself credit. 

I tried to rise up and be "strong." Oh, how I tried. So many times I felt like I was in control and would announce how I was "regular," only to fall on my face time and time again. I felt enormous shame at not being able to convince myself through determination to conquer this place, the underworld. This was especially true in my school program. Four months after the fire, I entered the Women's Spirituality Doctorate Program at the California Institute of Integral Studies. In addition to an ever-increasing attraction to the subject matter, I needed a nurturing community of women. My sister scholars came from across the country to live and learn with our professors for a long weekend each month over two years to complete our core courses. Personal stories, rituals, artwork, and movement were honored along with our courses in women's studies, women's spirituality, research, gender, nature, and culture. This was a time of looking inward. Suffering from post traumatic stress, I rarely left my apartment except for those weekends. 

I luxuriated in womanhood. Through the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas, I was delighted with feminine symbols from Neolithic and Paleolithic times. Intuitively, during my world travels, I had collected artifacts with these same symbols: chevrons, Vs, zig-zags, Ms, meanders, streams, circles. I began connecting to my earth source, feeling a sense of continuity with women who came before me, and forging deeper relationships. I found strength in my studies and creative fuel in my journey to wholeness. 

I met Innana, the Sumerian Queen of Heaven and Earth, in a class devoted to her, and she became my guide in the underworld. Innana kept me firmly implanted in the abyss until I learned the lessons of my journey. Finally, I'm bringing back the gift of intimacy with myself, which I found when I dropped resistance, embraced fear, and surrendered to the unknown. 

I now know I can make plans and choices, but I do not have control. In a way it is so simple it makes me laugh at the paradox of surrendering to the unknown, when we are always living in the unknown. With this vivid awareness I have opened in ways of the heart I'm not yet able to identify fully. There is a kind of comfort in realizing this "in-charge" person is not really in charge. This knowledge is humbling, because I know it is to be a continuing process-a never-ending struggle but worth it. 

The more I know my spirituality, the less the word spirituality seems to mean. At this time, my spirituality includes: celebrating my female body, connecting all of nature to my core, working for justice, embracing all cultures and the spirit of many religious teachings while rejecting the total structure of any one. For example, this afternoon I'm reading excerpts from Praying with Benedict by Katherine Howard, a former prioress of a Benedictine convent, and When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron, abbot of a Tibetan monastery--the themes of these two women are not dissimilar. 

I'm finding lessons from the Rule of Benedict, which I learned in College, more powerful to me today: to integrate work and prayer, hospitality and solitude, community and silence. I want to integrate and balance both the strengths of my professional abilities and the nourishment of my spiritual life with my authentic and whole self and to remember how something is accomplished is equally important as what is produced. 

Home: A Woman's Temple

Unexpectedly, an intensely personalized home began taking shape in my thoughts. Simple beauty--the essential guiding principle in my healing process--provided the energy necessary to offset the devastation and ugliness of what was left in ruins from the fire. Ever so slowly, I began creating the design of a home personifying female roundness with arches, curves, meanders, and swirls. I found comfort in ordering the gentle, softness of ovals placed where sharp edges are more commonly constructed. The ancient female symbols I incorporated probably came from both my studies and from the depths of my unconscious, but there is no mistake; my home appears and feels like a woman lives here.  

My home is open and airy. Suggestions of movement abound. Sacred places like my altar, the views from my writing area and the symbolism in the stained glasswork exemplify my care to details. My choice to live again in Mendocino County, did not come from long-term planning but from a place outside my control. 

Growing out of my personal experience of coming home, inwardly and outwardly, I am realizing more universal implications of the meaning of home: At midlife, those women looking for deeper meaning experience a need for highly personalized surroundings to reflect their essence. This reflection is as unique as each woman. For a time, many of us felt that home held us back. I suggest it is time for women to embrace home intimately--that this is a natural process for maturing women. 

Each woman can honor herself as the sole expert in making her home a temple. Women can choose alternatives to traditional patriarchal approaches with their emphasis on uniformity, efficiency, practicality, right angles and trends in home design. We women can choose consciously how our homes can nurture our individual spirituality. We do not have to wait for an actual fire to be a phoenix rising.