Borders of the Heart: A journey to peace

By Connie Longsworth

There is something beautiful about finding our roots, knowing who we are, and understanding our cultures. It is freeing, it is growth, it is peace.

Borders of the heart, a memoir about being a Latina born in Columbus, Ohio to a Mexican mother and a German-American father, who were divorced when she was just a baby. Raised in a Mexican culture and experiences both in Mexico and in the U.S. She shares her insights into what we carry generationally and how we can embrace our families and be spiritually reconciled. An unbelievable journey that offers peace and understanding.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Aug 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9798385001941

Connie Longsworth

Raised by a single mother in Mexico and the US, she spends much of her life looking to understand and come to terms with the roots of her upbringing with a mom who was a single parent to six children, growing up at the border town of El Paso and Juarez. Half Latina and Half American she brings her experiences from spiritual retreats over the last fifteen years, her studies as a graduate from the Spiritual Direction Institute of the Cenacle Retreat House and her experience facilitating small circle retreats, and volunteer as a Spiritual Director and Mentor. Today, through deep spiritual work, and lots of forgiveness and understanding, she writes as a grandma, and feels overjoyed to finally put her life down on paper.

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Copyright © 2023 Connie Longsworth.

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except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 979-8-3850-0193-4 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0209-2 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-0194-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912107

WestBow Press rev. date: 07/25/2023

Para Tí Mamá

CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1    The Stories

Chapter 2    The Homeland

Chapter 3    Hard Lessons

Chapter 4    Who We Must Become

Chapter 5    Transitions

Chapter 6    Two Worlds

Chapter 7    Romances

Chapter 8    True Love

Chapter 9    Connectedness

Chapter 10   Many Roles

Chapter 11   Marriage and Motherhood

Chapter 12   Rebirth

Chapter 13   Grief

Chapter 14   Begin Again

Acknowledgements

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

My heart raises every time I read one of my mother’s poems. As if I am encountering her once again. I hold the pages in my hands, the same ones she wrote on and I can still recognize her scent...

Mi Muneca (My Doll), she writes in this poem...

Melancolica y dulce munequita (Gloomy and sweet little doll)

Que a mi vida un dia tu llegaste (who came into my life one day

Cuanto misterio veo en tus ojos garzos (I see so much mystery in your blueish eyes)

Cuanta ternura tienen (they hold so much tenderness)

Tu manos finas de alabastro.(Your hands, white as alabaster)

Munequita divina y sonadora (My little and beautiful dreamer doll)

Que Dios siempre te llene de contento (May God always fill you with happiness)

Porque por muchos anos yo buscaba a una muneca (Because for many years I searched for a doll)

Quiza porque cuando fui nina (Perhaps because when I was a girl)

Nunca tuve una entre mis brazos. (I never held one in my arms)

Loye you alwys (as she spelled it)

Mom

I keep her writings in a fireproof box, and I always know where this box is in case of an emergency, along with family pictures. The irreplaceable pieces of our stories. If I had to leave home in an emergency, this box would come with me.

Now I am writing a book. Mother, "do you remember the times we talked about writing? I remember them clearly. Most of the time we were at your apartment, in that cozy tiny living room with just one love seat and your yellow swivel chair. Oh, and let us not forget your black leather footstool with wooden legs. You would tell me what you wrote about the night before. Poems for your children mostly, and memories of your grandparents. I never knew them, but in your writing, I felt the love you had for them and how much they loved you.

These are some of our best memories! And somehow, your love for writing became part of me. In my later years that seed you planted sprouted out, and I began journaling, writing my thoughts, quotes, affirmations, prayers. They were like breaths of fresh air when I felt I could not breathe. Writing became part of me, part of us. So much that I am now writing this book.

In my dreams when I tell her, she runs to hug me.

You are? That is wonderful! She says, It took you long enough! You have been a writer for a long time. So, what are you writing about?"

Now I feel the knot on my throat and take a hard swallow before I can answer my mother’s question –

Mmmm about life, I answer casually.

Trying to avoid more questions and move on to stories.

What about life? she asks.

Experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly, I reply.

She gave me that look, those beautiful black eyes that needed no words. Affirming, she is still my mother.

Do not worry, I tell her. I don’t feel that way anymore, and that is what this book is about. Forgiveness. It has a good ending.

Sitting on her yellow rocking chair, she looks at me with a smile, knowing she can’t stop me and at the same time knowing I love her and she has nothing to worry about.

I kiss her goodbye and as I leave, I hear her say…I will be here if you need help.

Since my mother died, I have had many conversations like this one. Words that slipped our mind or were concealed by fear. Our relationship did not end when she died, instead it improved and deepened. It has taken me twelve years of listening, practicing, praying, forgiving, learning, and loving. I am thankful to God for the courage, the grace, the opportunity to Ride this ride, this journey to my true self and healing.

Community has been my school of wisdom in this process. What started as an invitation to a spiritual retreat, became the first step of twelve years of learning, listening, messing up, getting back up, praying, forgiving, and lots of loving. A community of women, of family, of people that came into my life by no coincidence. Through my job at my church, and at retreat centers, I came upon this community. They are threads in the tapestry of my life. They give me courage to tell this story.

Together, along with my family, they challenged me, loved me, accepted me, encouraged me. Year by year, peeling layers of my life – to find my center.

I love music, and these lyrics from the song Oceans by Hillsong United, really describe these times for me...You call me out upon the waters, where feet may fail. In oceans deep, my faith will stand. Your grace abounds in deepest waters, your hand will guide me, let me walk upon the waters.

In these pages, my hope and prayer is to be companions and on a journey and invite you to get on this ride, known as life, with me. Have you ever noticed how a rollercoaster ride has seats for two, I like to think that the designer knew this ride was not meant to be experienced alone. And thought of two people riding together, to be companions in the highs, the lows, the unexpected turns, the triumphs and the final arrival at the end of the ride. In sharing my stories and those of my family, I invite you to hear your own voice in your own stories. Together, with hesitation perhaps, we will take our seats, buckle up, look at each other, and hold on. We will hear our voices, screaming, laughing or crying, and feel our hands holding on tight. Together, sitting side by side, we will ride the ride. Step by step, day by day, month by month, year by year, as long as it takes to finish the ride. We will hop off when needed, stop when necessary. The key is getting back on the ride, moving but not leaving, A friend once told me – when I go to my dark places, I park there, for a while, but I never stay there. She had lost her husband to cancer, and it was her way of saying I’m ok and "It’s ok if I am not ok somedays, as long as I keep moving forward. On this ride of life we can sometimes get stuck and stop, but we must move on, or we won’t know the thrill of it all.

Movement was essential in my journey, and it will always be, to continue growing and becoming the best version of myself, original and true, as God intended me to be.

Our lives are part of who we are, but that doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. Ride with me, and together we will grow.

Be Blessed!

PROLOGUE

We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend.

BRENE BROWN

Saturday, 6:15 pm. I will never forget that time, that day…she was gone. A few days prior, Sylvia called me at work and said I needed to come to Midland, mother was very sick. I stepped outside to get some fresh air, as I felt I was choking. In disbelief, I asked to talk to her nurse, who confirmed to me over the phone that my mother had a short time left. I insisted she tell me an exact number of days, she said - come soon.

Give me a time frame, can I speak to her? Is she in pain? Tell me anything, except what you are telling me.

Soon, she repeated.

I went straight home after work and told my husband Jerry the situation and he immediately told me to go be with my mom. I was so confused, thinking of the kids, the house, my job. I was really in denial and doing and planning kept me busy trying to avoid the situation. My daughter Amanda had just graduated from college the year before, Kathleen was starting college, and Wesley was starting high school. I was still grieving my daughters going to college, their bedrooms still in place, just in case they came back, and knowing our son would be leaving next. Then what?!

I did not want this, another leaving and passing so what could I do?

So I procrastinated, and pretended that I had more time. I began doing laundry to leave the house ready for Jerry and Wesley. I in fact took two days to prepare and leave the house ready for me to be gone. I finally booked my flight, it had now been three days since Sylvia called me and I talked to the nurse. I could have taken an early flight, but I didn’t, and that was something I lived with for a long time. Why didn’t I take an earlier flight? I would have arrived earlier and been able to say goodbye.

Regret settled in me and was my companion during this part of the ride. Uninvited it took a place and I said nothing. I simply let it take over.

I made a choice that day, and although it felt like a wrong choice for a long time, I stayed with it and it became an invitation, an open door, to forgiving myself and learning that All things work for good for those who love God Rm 8:28.

When the tires of the plane hit the concrete and I felt that jolt, that was the same moment she took her last breath - without saying goodbye. As I walked towards the luggage claim area to pick up my one suitcase, my phone rang. It was my niece, anxiously I answered the phone - I’m here, just waiting for my bag. Her voice, I can still hear saying, She’s gone, it’s too late. She just passed at 6:15pm. My legs buckled under me and the person next to me, a friend of the family who had come to pick me up, had to hold me up.

No! I screamed loudly, as I felt as if the very building I was standing in crumbled down falling on top of me and bringing me to the floor. My ride grabbed my bag and hurried us to the car. It was only a 15–20-minute ride and the whole way I kept saying - it’s not true, it’s not true, it can’t be, it can’t be. I immediately began criticizing myself. Why did I wait another day? Why did I pack a bag! Sobbing, I hurried out of the car once we arrived at the home care facility where my mother had been the past few weeks. I recognized some family members as I ran across the halls to get to her room. I felt their eyes looking at me as I passed and they would tell me, This way, this way.

When I entered the room, there were people all around her, some crying, some solemn, others silent. I felt her still warm body and buried my head on her chest sobbing. Begging her to say something, but she never did. I was too late, and she did not wait for me. Those words would spin around my mind for a long time until she started to come in my dreams.

Night fell, and we waited for the funeral home personnel to come get her body. My mother used to tell us - When I die, you all make sure I am really dead, that I am no longer breathing. I do not want to be buried alive. She said it in a funny kind of way, but that night, we remembered and waited to make sure she was truly gone.

A tall muscular man came with a stretcher, everyone cleared the room and in complete silence we watched how her body was transferred to the stretcher and taken away. Now she was really gone.

I was 47 years old when she died and I began to look into my history, my heritage, my roots, myself. I wish I knew then what I know and come to understand now, but then again, if I did know then, my story would be different, and I would not be who I am now. So, for that reason, I am thankful I didn’t know it all.

I have since thought often of my first memory as a child. It was when I was six years old and my mother was holding my hand walking me to school. No matter how hard I try to recall earlier times, this experience was the first vivid memory I have. Through pictures, I know I was baptized, that my birthdays were celebrated, that we had Christmas, that I had family, and that I loved dogs, but I don’t remember any of it before six.

We can spend a lifetime not knowing ourselves, we think we do, but do we really? It usually takes an unexpected turn of life events to put us on the track of self-awareness. Like the death of a loved one, as it is in my case. Until my mother died, I was on a smooth ride, so I thought. I knew of my family history, what I did not know was how it impacted my life, myself. I did not know I had this interesting, challenging, heart breaking at times, complicated life, until I began to weave it together. It can be scary, exhausting, intimidating. At times I wanted to give up, jump off the ride, and close my eyes to avoid seeing what was in front of me, but that stronger self in me wouldn’t let me. And I had to know that part of me.

There is a beautiful quote from Marianne Williamson’s book – A Return to Love

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant,

gorgeous, talented, fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

On the eve of my 60th birthday, I can truly feel and understand that I am uniquely created and loved so much. It took me a long time to sort out my story. The time between my childhood and today didn’t just magically happen, I didn’t wake up one day and all of a sudden I knew how much I was loved – in fact my life between then and now has been a long ride, and I am grateful to finally receive goodness and see goodness around me.

In this process, I came to understand my mother and relate to her as a mother myself. It all began with me missing her, and I followed the thread that eventually took me to loving her more and make peace.

Ask and it will be given to you;

Seek and you will find;

Knock and the door will be opened to you;

Matthew 7:7

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THE STORIES

We discover something about ourselves when we discover something about our ancestors.

THOMAS S. MONSOON

When I was a little girl in Juarez, Mexico, my mother was always telling stories.