Breakthrough — The Person. She’s my inspiration
Tags: Friends, Breakthrough, This Happened To Me, Inspiration, Blogger

We nicknamed her Breakthrough because that’s what she’d excitedly claim at every meeting:

I had a breakthrough!

And, she always did, despite being 72 and the oldest member of our prosperity class, she had breakthroughs regularly.

Yes, a prosperity class. It was 2008, two years after the book The Secret hit bookstores, and three years after I discovered The Law of Attraction.

After years of suffering from depression, I left my husband and started a new life. Exciting, yes. Easy, no. There was never enough money. The end of the month saw my bank account balance too low to buy a Starbucks coffee. My car had some rare deformity causing it to lose oil like a gunshot wound causes a body to lose blood. Estimate to repair: $800 — a lot more than the Starbucks coffee I couldn’t afford.

My previous family — the one I married into — considered me the devil incarnate for daring to save myself from a marriage that was certain to lead to my suicide. I was a complete outcast to the people I loved more than my own kin.

Friends I believed would always be by my side disappeared when I met and fell in love with Ben. Jealous? Maybe. Most were in unhappy marriages.

During this rough time, a neighbor introduced me to a new way of thinking — well, new for me — called The Law of Attraction. The neighbor invited Ben and me to a “prosperity” class at a New-Agey church that she sometimes attended. Ben went because I was interested — he’s that kind of guy.

The church was in an office complex that looked more like a place where you’d have a meeting with your CPA than learn about spirituality. Still, the two female ministers were welcoming and interesting. Class attendance varied each week but usually hovered around twenty. And, it was less a class than a discussion group monitored by the ministers.

The subject of “prosperity” conjures images of wealth — fancy cars, exotic travel, and McMansions. That type of wealth was not our focus. We were learning how to achieve personal and spiritual prosperity by living a balanced life and giving gratitude for everything that came our way. All lessons I desperately needed.

Photo by Deniz Altindas on Unsplash

Each class began with personal stories about the week before. That’s when this woman would exclaim: I had a breakthrough! She’d continue with a charming story about her lightbulb moment of the week, usually something about the beauty of a flower in her garden, or the twinkling of a star, or the taste of a new spice on her tongue. Her discoveries were tenderly childlike.

We may have thought she was terribly naïve, at first, but soon, we were all waiting for Breakthrough’s next breakthrough!

She also attended a class on memoir-writing. As she delved into old memories, her personal discoveries grew deeper and she eagerly shared them all with us.

Breakthrough became my favorite person in the class. I often sat next to her, and we talked before everyone settled in. She was a delightful lady with an amazing capacity for wonder and joy. I wanted some of that.

The class ended after twelve weeks, but I continued to come across Breakthrough at different events in our city.

When she was writing her memoir, she hired me to help with a computer problem. I followed directions to her quaint home in a middle-class neighborhood. Her small lot was a giant garden that she proudly showed off to me. Her home was simple but charming and warm — very much like her.

As she and I caught up on one another’s lives, I was thrilled that she was still the same Breakthrough, excited to tell me all her new discoveries and insights.

After losing touch for a few years, Breakthrough included me in a group email announcing her new blog. Her writing style is to focus on certain words, different ones each week, that she types in caps — like, REVELATION, TRUTH, WAITING — and she simply writes what’s in her heart about those words and what they mean to her or lessons she’s learned about them. Her writing is deliciously innocent and wise and never fails to make my life seem a little brighter. I can’t read her blog without experiencing a wave of appreciation and gratitude for the world around me and for her.

Breakthrough is now 87 and lives in a retirement home. Although leaving her lovely home and garden must have been a challenge, she continued to write enthusiastically about her new friends and activities, always excited about this new adventure.

Besides her blog, Breakthrough writes a weekly article for her retirement home’s newsletter and leads a meditation class there. And, once a week, she teaches a poetry class at a local college.

I smile when I receive those weekly emails announcing her newest blog post.

And, often the post begins:

I had a breakthrough this week!

She continues to be the Breakthrough that I remember in that class so long ago, always an inspiration for me and so many others.

© Dennett 2020