The older I get the more I realize and witness over and over in not only myself, but also in my clients and my readers, that we always get what we ask for. “But!” you may object, “I didn’t ask for this lousy relationship,” or “I didn’t ask to be sick.” No one asks for these things. No one ever gets up and says: “Ah, what a gorgeous day, today I would like to get sick and attract the ultimate loser today.”

Answer this: Does anyone ask and focus and meditate about living happy and healthy lives well into our golden years?

I bet the answer for almost everyone is “no.” Because those things are expected, it’s wishful thinking, we go about life one day at a time, perhaps planning on paper, but never really visualizing the blessed life that we truly want to live.

Tomorrow is my Dad’s 63rd birthday. It may well be his last. In fact, it’s surprising that he’s made it this far. Four of his sisters died long before they ever reached his age. All died of lung cancer within a 2-year period. It’s his turn next…

When I was 10 he started a secret affair with his secretary who was only 17 at that time. My mother got wind of it through various excuses that didn’t add up anymore, two years later she confronted him. He moved out and in with his girlfriend. At which time I lost contact with him and my sister who moved in with him. He spent all of his life savings on this now 19-year old girl who left him a year later for a younger man, and just in time before he was low on cash. It broke his heart, he turned to the bottle, lost his job, which forced my sister to drop out of school at the age of 14 to take on a job just so they can meet rent.

My mother too now had to work six days a week, 12 hour days, just to make ends meet. I was asked to pay for my own way, my own clothes, which I bought at Salvation Army, my own food. All she paid for was the roof over my head and my health insurance. I too dropped out of highschool and moved out to be on my own.

I was 12 when he left and hated him for “what he did to us” as a family, in my oblivious teenage heart hate is all I could see. My mother turned to hating men in general, her disappointment about having dedicated her life to this man and us children was met with disappointment, disbelief, loneliness and bitterness that only humans can fabricate within their own hearts and carve into their own faces.

Then again, I remember being puzzled about whether or not I should be angry at my father and men in general for cheating on us or if I should be angry at women for stealing other women’s wives. I decided that it always takes two. At the moldable age of only 12 I decided back then to hate them both. I lost faith and trust in humanity and in the fairy tale that I had envisioned for myself and my future husband.

I promised myself to never get married and to never have children so they would never have to go through what my sister and I had to go through. I could handle life alone, I had lived most of my childhood in abandonment and being left to myself was manageable, although painful. Living with someone in a lie was even more unbearable to me, so I opted to stay single for the rest of my life.

Ten years later I met a man who seemed to defy my view of men and meanwhile my own growing up defied my view of women. I broke my promise (thank Goodness) and said to the Universe: “Okay, if I ever get married and any man would have a chance with me, he would have to be a nice guy who could cook and clean.” My father was not a nice guy, especially not when he drank. He had no idea how to cook an egg sunny side up and didn’t know where the on and off switch was to the vacuum cleaner. He was raised as an only boy with 5 sisters; spoiled rotten and used to being catered to by women. Although I love to serve, serving on that level bordered being a door mat. I was of a different breed and viewed incapable men (and women) as flawed, nothing I wanted to deal with. Judgment on my part? Absolutely.

I ended up marrying that man when I was 25 and I got exactly what I asked for:

- A nice guy
- Who could cook
- And clean

AND, I even got a bonus, he also knew how to sow on a button. I hit the jack pot! So I thought.

What I learned over the years of being married to him was that those four things were all I got. Nothing more, nothing less. While I moved on and changed and grew and expanded and manifested my ambitions into reality, he only had 3 dreams for his life: