LTY Writings

IT WAS WHEN I WAS BORN

MY LIFE WAS A VAST GLOWING EMPTY PAGE

“…I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page, and I could do anything I wanted…”

JOY

“…Joy accompanied me as I walked…”

I love my joy. I love joy. My joy is me. I know I have a gift of joy as it is so easily set on fire. For me, joy is Spirit’s fire and it is pure and free and can be wild and unadulterated. I love it when for no reason whatsoever there is a surge in me that is in sheer delight, just because. No reason at all. Sometimes, I feel I burst with joy just in knowing. Knowing what? Knowing the good. Recognizing the good. Looking for the good. Sometimes it is like looking for a needle in a haystack. But I look for the needle. I organically look a certain way towards life that knows that within every single thing that is, or happens, is a Goodness, and if not immediately apparent, it is to be revealed. Good is there. I know it and yet sometimes it takes everything I have to look.

There is an ease in moving into joy that is within my nature. I was aware of joy when I was very little, even amongst dark, dark hours. There was always something wonderful in my spirit that was present, and it is stronger today.

I am lifted by simple things. I find so many things that are free, or very simple, are utterly wondrous. A single moment is organically rich and fills me up, when I choose to look, really look and really see. I feel wondrous about animals. I can be in a contracted inner place, and an animal passes near me, or I see a bird flying in the sky, and I am immediately engaged and lifted into wonder. There is such free joy in wonder. My key to easy access to joy is I have an attunement to what good is. If I press the point, good is God.

When I was little without any formal information about God or spirit or religion, I had a natural knowing of joy, freedom, expansion, and curiosity. No matter what conditions came my way that were hard, there was a presence with me that let me know that all was well. I trusted this. I spoke to no one about it, I just knew.

I took joy in learning. It was, and still is, a passionate joy. My curiosity was vital, alive and voracious in me as a child. Reading became my best friend along with my dog. I loved words. I loved the mysteries of books. I loved the feel of a book and to open it and see words that I did not understand, but I knew they would tell me wondrous things. Books were a bounteous gift in my life. My Mother’s library, my Grandfather’s library, and the school library were my temples. They were sacred. They were free. All I had to do was choose the book or books, and presto, soon I would be ‘traveling’ in my silence, either in a school room, a bus, my bedroom, or anywhere I could carry a book. I was in my own joy space, and safe somehow. Books were wise friends guiding me along and preparing me. But they were not always school books.

I read before I willingly spoke. Words on a page were a safe way to experience life, and lives, in worlds upon worlds, especially when in the quiet of my own room. I sucked my thumb. I loved sucking my thumb and reading. The joy of my bed, and my dog, and my book, and my thumb, was indescribable. My vital mind drank deeply from everything I read, and I awakened to deeper understandings within myself. School became an intrusion upon my free and expansive mind that did not want to be told how to learn, or what to learn in some institutional collective fashion. I intuited very young that life was bigger and better than any teacher I had, or school book I had, that was attempting to train my view of life. I was restless with school. I longed for hungry minds like my own. I passionately wanted to ask bigger questions than what seemed to be allowed, or taken seriously.

My Grandfather became my oasis and my answer. He soon recognized that I was a bit unusual. I was not drawn to my peers at all. They scared me. I loved to be alone, or with him and my dog. I loved to run, just because it filled me with joy and make me laugh for no reason. I loved to dig for worms with my dog in the garden, and I loved walking in the rain with Grandfather, who would teach me to look. Look at what happens to a worm in the rain, and look at how they navigate in their amazing mechanics. Look at the colors of nature when the sky was grey. He would answer any question I had the best he could, and he would take me sincerely. I would ask about the stars and fireflies and anything that appeared mysterious and vital to my awareness. He would answer me from what he knew as a highly educated professor and farmer, but if he did not know, he would encourage me to look, to inquire, to observe, and find out for myself. He never limited me or discouraged me, and he always wanted me to ask. He recognized that I wanted to read and learn and he gave me books, often his books, just to see what I might comprehend. I definitely preferred being in the company of older people.

When alone, or with these compatriots, my Grandfather and my dog, I found joy to be my constant companion. When I was in school and amongst the progression of grades, teachers, formats, expectations of belonging, my natural joy was much harder to freely express. In fact, I felt it best to be contained. It was wise to observe and learn the ways being presented to me. I did not rebel. I found it safer to cooperate, do my best to pretend I fit in somehow, and being as invisible as possible seemed a handy approach. I felt better being unnoticeable. I knew that what awaited me in my room, amongst my books, in my own rhythm of silence, with the powerful Spirit presence that immediately embraced me, my thumb, and my dog, would be Joy itself.

CELEBRATING FREEDOM

I celebrate the freedom that I get to Choose. Growing up as an American in post-World War II, I never knew other than freedom in my social circumstances. I felt expansive as a little being, somewhat wild in my inner sense of self as truly Free. I caused some concerns to my mother by being outspoken in innocent observation of people’s hypocrisies. Often what they did, and what they said to me seemed off. So I asked. I began to learn the ways of lying: good manners. My irrepressible wild self, full of joy and observation, began to be molded by correctness and image. I hated being controlled. Still do. I have a wonderful photo of myself at three, all dolled up standing by my mother who was drop-dead gorgeous of movie star proportions, outfitted in 1940’s wide-shouldered, page boy, and red lipped shine. She was trying to get me to smile for the camera. I did not like her tone of control, and instead the photo captures an instant of joyful, playful rebellion of myself laughing and sticking my tongue out at my mother. The camera fully caught her consternation with her little rebel Leigh.

At the same time that I was joyful and free and climbed anything resembling a tree, I was also acutely sensitive and attuned to life around me. I loved loving. I loved kissing everyone and sometimes anyone, I loved cuddling and singing lullabies to animals. At two, I already knew that smoking was not so good, and was endlessly carrying each dead cigarette in the ashtray to the garbage. A small thing, shuffling in my new shoes carrying the ashtray with a screwed-up nose. I have home movies of myself doing just this from 1947. I never judged my father for smoking, I just cleaned it up.

No matter how people or my family would try to mold me, I had an innate celebration of freedom in my nature, and it simply would not be put out.

My mother was a single working mother in Washington DC for the Department of Agriculture, and there was no child care facility in 1947. Each day she left me in a boarding home on her way to work. It was a large old home in Arlington, Virginia, run by the owner, Mrs. Westfall. Mrs. Westfall took in small children each day while their mothers worked, and each night would turn them over to their tired mommies, until the next day.

Mrs. Westfall looked exactly like the Wicked Witch of the East in The Wizard of Oz. She wore a long black dress with a white slip that sometimes hung below her hemline. Her stockings were rolled under each knee. Her hair was black and netted in a small bun at her neck. Her husband was in a wheelchair, he had a big head of white hair, and he looked sturdy and harsh. He centered himself in the kitchen, his headquarters, where he could dictate all activities. I was still at times on a bottle. Mrs. Westfall would be at the sink washing the bottles, full with beautiful colored small stones that she would shake with soap to get them really clean. I loved seeing the multi-colored stones. I would enjoy crawling all over the kitchen floor, as I loved looking up. I was fascinated with planting myself under her feet and looking under her skirt. Her rolled stockings, slip and underwear were riveting to me. She was constantly chastising me for crawling and would yank me to my feet. Her husband would follow up by yelling at me.

I remember my mother’s best friend had a small baby boy around 11 months, and this baby was now one of my very young compatriots in this new, strange world of the boarding house. One sunny day, Mrs. Westfall put this baby on a large blanket in the backyard to sunbathe with no clothes on. I was running around barefoot in my little white baggy underpants, and upon seeing him on the blanket I became instantly and indescribably bewitched noticing that this human creature, wiggling his legs and cooing, had an aperture very different from myself. I took off my pants and looked carefully at myself and his ‘aperture’ and thought his was just wonderful. It was much more interesting than my smooth little self. I became entranced with bouncing his little thingy back and forth, giggling at the charm of its flexibility and his immediate baby laughing. We were bonding. It was the sweetest coming together of noticing difference, and celebrating it. In the middle of this reverie came a hard yank of my hair and Mrs. Westfall was screaming at me. She dragged me into the house, to the parlor room with the baby now crying in the background. She threw me into a chair screaming into my face fiercely, “Stay there and don’t you move…you are a very, very bad girl and you will be punished”. She left the room and I knew she would return. I was a little girl with no clothes on, sitting in a very large over-upholstered red velvet chair trying to become even smaller in size, my hands clutched between my legs. I was scared and shocked and alone. She returned with a bar of soap, dragged me out of the chair and pushed me across the room to a dark Victorian corner. It smelled old and musty. She shoved the bar of soap in my mouth and said, “Don’t you dare remove this…you will stay here until the soap is gone”. She hit my legs with a switch and told me I had to stay standing. She then left, having drawn all of the curtains.

I remember at first just processing the soap, along with the shock. I took the soap out, trying to figure out how I could make it disappear without being in my mouth. I remember taking in the darkness and the smell. I then allowed myself to feel the confusion of the violence and the energetic of the desire to hurt me. I felt alone in the silence and smells and the savage judgment that I was bad. I did not know I was bad, nor did I know what I had done that was bad. I had no internal connection between my time with the baby and Mrs. Westfall’s violence. I did not understand. What I was aware of was my awareness. I was aware of Being. In the midst of this trauma was a completely neutral, expanded being observing the experience. Somehow I experienced I was free. I was not bad…whatever ‘bad’ was, I was alive and I knew that I would choose now to speak. I had delayed my willingness to speak long enough, and I understood now how important it was that I tell my mother what happened. Up to now, I had refused to speak, and if I did, it was barely. I did not want to interfere with my attunement to the spiritual presence around me, and the sweetness of the invisible world. I felt speech was noisy and would corrupt the silence I preferred to live in. It was a more authentic and truthful world, and I had felt safe in it. But that was before now. I was very clear, and now choosing that I would speak. It came in very handy and I understood that.

As uncomfortable as I was, and shocked still, I also understood that Mrs. Westfall could not really hurt me. I was free as myself in this little body. I felt joy at how temporary and even silly her misguided attempt at encaging and punishing me was. I was fully aware that I was still free to celebrate me.

FREEDOM: THE GHOST SHIP THAT DIDN’T CARRY US

“I’ll never know, and neither will you, of
the life you don’t choose. We’ll only
know that whatever that sister life was,
it was important and beautiful and not
ours. It was the ghost ship that didn’t
carry us. There’s nothing to do but
salute it from the shore.”

In my first year of college at Northwestern University, I was immensely shy and unknowing of my life, and where I really should be. Showing up in University seemed the next step one took after high school, and it certainly was the step my parents wanted me to take. I had registered with my ‘major’ being Economics. This was ridiculous as I had no oars in the water with money, how to work with money, and no interest in learning about it. It reeked of math. Math was foreign to my brain and it terrified me. I had no other vision for myself, so my default position was to go with my family’s flow and go to school. My mother and father were comforted and proud that I was ‘set’. I was accepted at a good school, and very soon hopefully I would be accepted into a good sorority. My father was a businessman and he felt Economics would be the medicine that would assure me of becoming a stable and grounded person. Not.

Sometime within the second month of classes, a newly found sorority friend named Mary Douglas, also a freshman, invited me to join her for lunch after her acting class at the theatre school. She told me that sometimes the class went a bit long, so come into the theatre quietly and sit in the back. When class was over, we would have our lunch. I was excited mostly because I really liked her. She was smart and fun, and was so talkative my shyness made no difference. She just handled the pauses. I was delighted that she liked me too. I had no expectations or thoughts of her class. I went a bit early and found my way to the theatre’s door. I slowly opened it into the darkness of a theatre with all of the light focused on the activity on the stage. Students were sitting in the rows, and actors were on the stage, and a little imperious lady was marching back and forth in front of the stage barking feedback to the actors. It was riveting. The actors were attentive to her words and then they went back into the play implementing her orders/ suggestions. She stopped them again, and again she barked. She was so mesmerizing in her command but also her perceptions. I watched the actors become transformed in their performances.

I had been struck to my core. It was Paul on the road to Damascus. I was struck by the Light. I swear that this was the moment I knew what I wanted to do. I continued watching in bliss. Acting seemed to be the molding of human behavior into bigger ideas. Ideas being clearly communicated through a character. This was revelation. I felt I had found a treasure for me alone. I had found my voice, my place, my passion through creativity, humanity, and philosophy. I was understanding exactly what the Greeks’ original intention was for theatre. It was an elevated purpose: the mirroring of the human condition so the audience might transform and learn by looking into the souls of characters through the structure of a complex situation, a play. I was a very high-minded girl.

One stop shopping for Leigh had been miraculously bestowed: Acting.

I never turned back, well at least not for another 46 years. I was on fire. Nothing about my life was the same. I knew. It was my secret and it infused every decision I made thereafter. I changed my major to Theatre without telling my parents. Even though terrified, I auditioned for everything in the school that would take me. I soon had bonded with a senior in the theatre school who became my mentor, a fierce supporter and excellent guide. Voice was his specialty, and Shakespeare. It did not hurt that Sir John Gielgud was his dear friend. He simply saw something in me. Around all my classes, I managed to work diligently with him on my voice. He was determined to eliminate my midwestern squeezing of vowels. He tutored me on auditions. My quiet ‘showing up’ and my very clear passionate intention came to the notice of Alvina Krause, the fierce little woman I had seen teaching that first day. By the end of my freshman year, I was the youngest and only freshman to ever be invited to her summer stock theatre in Pennsylvania. It was called Eaglesmere. There would be nine plays in ten weeks, and you built the sets, acted in every play in different roles that she assigned, and then directed.

My parents approved, it freed them as well for a romantic summer, and they were pleased I was so focused and happy. To them, I was having a lark.

I worked hard and came out of the experience with lifelong friends and an increased passion to go to New York and study as soon as possible. Not a conversation for my parents, as yet.

In the fall of my sophomore year, the night before the first quarter’s finals, I called my mentor and friend, Richard, and asked if he would kindly drive me home to Michigan that night from Chicago. I told him I was leaving school to then go to New York. My plan was to surprise my parents. I would arrive in the middle of the night with everything I owned, accompanied by my passionate intention to go to New York to be a professional actress. I was scared but resolute. He picked me up.

My remarkable parents eventually relented but not without great dramas and testing. They tested my resolve by having me stay at home for months. I cleaned the house, took care of my beloved siblings, cooked, and was an all-around house helper. Finally, they helped me go to New York on my grand adventure. I was barely 18.

My life took so many turns in the fulfillment of this dream. I lived at the Rehearsal Club, and was soon studying with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse. My side job was selling Ferraris. Through some miraculous circumstances, I quickly acquired the best theatre agent of the time, Stark Hesseltine, and was shortly starring on Broadway in Gower Champion’s first non-musical comedy with Paul Ford, called Three Bags Full. Within a year, I was starring in Peyton Place, a global television phenomenon, and had moved to California. I married Ryan O’Neal, had a son, and 15 days after his birth I was starring in my first film for United Artists with Peter Sellers, a great superstar of the time, called I Love You Alice B. Toklas. I then began making movie after movie.

When my husband, Ryan, shared with me his relationship with a very famous superstar and that he wished to continue, I made a decision. I closed my eyes and wherever my finger would land on a laminated map on my desk, I would go. It was New Mexico. I went that day. I rented a home in the Pecos Wilderness for $45 a month. I came home to pack and leave Ryan, blessing him in the process even though I had a young woman’s broken heart. I took my son and my dog, and in the wild and beautiful desert of New Mexico, I began to be transformed by spiritual longings of such intensity and dimensionality that it began to overtake my passion for my work.

I decided it was time to go to India. Peter Sellers was encouraging this journey, and he would be giving me letters of introduction to his Gurus. I had grown up with India as a second culture, and these roots were calling me. Ravi Shankar’s music and his unmet presence was hovering near me, soon to be fulfilled in a profound relationship. Yogananda had been a vital teenage inspiration to me, and such mysteries were awakening in me again with an unassailable hunger.

The painful dissolution of my marriage had shattered all of me, or so it felt. I felt empty of the world, of ambition, of the familiar passion for my craft, and for what had become a life full of excitement, disappointment, and challenge. I was starving for a mystical connection with God. I did not want church. I wanted nothing less than a direct relationship with God.

As I was preparing my trip to India, my agent, Guy McElwaine, who I would later marry, called and said I was being offered the film, Klute. I turned it down and was deaf to his pleas to reconsider as it was the role of a lifetime. I said ‘No’. I was going to India. Jane Fonda took the role, won an Academy Award, and I went to live in an Ashram on the Ganges in the Himalayas.

With that ‘No’ began the first journey of the ghost ship. The sister life had begun to form itself as the career so long loved. It was ceasing to be mine. And the life now chosen was taking me Home to God. I salute that beautiful ghost ship, no longer carrying me, with a heart-rending love and gratitude.

THE STORM AND THE PATH

I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and it was around 1970. I lived miles out of town, in the Pecos Wilderness on the original Old Santa Fe Trail. The Old Santa Fe Trail extended directly from Santa Fe out into the Pecos and my home was at the end of a dirt driveway right off of the Trail. The Trail was still a dirt road and historical, and it had never been paved. I loved it just as it was. Driving on the trail, I easily felt the heat of the horse’s breath and the acrid smell of sweat coming from the Pony Express rider, driven by the intensity to deliver the mail on time. The Trail was alive for me.

I had turned in my Los Angeles beige Mercedes convertible for a colorful red and white Jeep truck. It was a 1970 early version of an SUV. I had placed a purple ‘opera’ light on top of the Jeep that I turned on at night. It felt outrageous and natural. I loved the rotating purple light, my great big tires, and I felt very empowered not only by my Jeep, and the wild Pecos, but by my choices. I had left my husband, taken my little boy and my dog, and almost overnight had moved hook, line, and sinker, to Santa Fe. I had chosen Santa Fe whimsically only because in a quick moment of duress, just given the information of a very public infidelity, I knew I had to leave everything. It felt to be a choiceless choice. It was ‘meant to be’, by me. I closed my eyes, said a prayer for my life, and told myself that wherever my finger landed on the map of the United States laminated on my desk, I would go. It landed on New Mexico. I was committed. I would go.

I thought, who do I know there? Was there anyone I could connect with, and someone came to mind. I thought of the astrologer who almost a year earlier had read my chart for me as a gift from Peter Sellers. It had been a first experience for me of the wondrously mysterious and magical reflection of astrology. It was a fascinating and very meaningful experience as he was Jungian in training as well, and used astrology and the symbols of astrology as keys to guiding me in a Jungian meditation into the unconscious. As he guided me ‘down’ into my unconscious, I spontaneously had a powerful opening in my consciousness. I realized later that my crown chakra had blown open. My head was full of Light and I could not see, and it was an experience of pure fluent bliss. It shocked us both. Needless to say, he was memorable and I had heard he had moved to Santa Fe. I found his name and number in the old-fashioned way of calling Information in Santa Fe, and I immediately called him. He answered.

Although a year had passed, I spilled my story of shock and heartbreak to him clearly and so intimately that it was as if he was my family. I asked if I could sleep on his floor if I came, and my intent was to come that day. Considering how sudden and out of the blue came this call, it is amazing that he remembered me. He said, “Come”. I called my travel agent who knew me well. He booked all of my first-class movie travel. I was still very much living in the world of glamour and fame, thus there was immediate response, and I had my tickets and a car. I told my nanny that I would be back in a few days and to take good care of my little son. I felt utterly safe with her character and adoration of my child. I wrote a note to my husband and simply said that I was going away for some days to think. I was very organized, clear, and present, even though I felt in a movie of someone else’s life. I had a hole in my heart. I was roaring into the unknown with full abandonment, one clear yet strange step at a time.

My best friend was Lucy Saroyan. Her father was William and she was my alter ego. I was very innocent and she was the wily one, the Roadrunner. She adored me. We were an odd couple. I adored her. She was Jewish/ Armenian and I was a very American midwestern white girl with academic parents who were farmers. She came from true literary and artistic aristocracy with Charlie Chaplin as one godfather, and Marlon Brando as her other. Her stepfather was Walter Matthau. Her ‘aunties’ were Gloria Vanderbilt and Oona O’Neill, and her mother was the amazing Carol Marcus, a debutante sister to Gloria and Oona. Throughout this journey to Santa Fe, Lucy stayed ‘by my side’ with many phone calls as I traversed not only distance by plane, but deep emotional upheaval. I was a walking earthquake in process, even with my seemingly quiet if not strangely serene exterior. She was like a pylon. I kept holding onto her voice and climbing forward.

I arrived at last in Santa Fe and it was dark. The small plane doors opened and I walked down the stairs and there he stood. Ed Steinbrecher. He was bald, deep circles under his eyes, wearing a blue vest with big white stars on it. I hardly knew him, but he had shown up and I felt so grateful. He was kind, and extraordinarily odd in how he looked, but he also seemed ordinary and this was comforting. He proceeded to tell me that he and his partner were moving to a new home the very next day, and they felt it best that I stay in a motel until the move was done. I could then come and stay with them. I was unable to say anything at all, but I found the words, “Thank you for coming”. I felt this cold terror come into me quietly, as I had been holding on with all I had just to get there. I needed human contact, as being alone felt like I might not do so well. I could not seem to understand what really had transpired in my life. That day I had lost my true love, and I was now on the edge of a mountain cliff’s edge, and the fall appeared to be into a vast darkness. I was in shock.

Ed took me to a motel in the center of Santa Fe. It was a very dreary motel and my room was painted pea green and sparse. I was alone. It was night and cold, as it was early February. Snow covered everything and the room was cold. I took baths. Bath after hot bath to calm myself with the heat, hoping my heart would warm and the shivers from my soul to my skin would stop.

They didn’t. My brain felt almost violently awake, and I suddenly remembered another I had met in New Mexico. He was a writer whom I had come to meet with six months earlier with the hopes of optioning his first book to make into a tour de force movie for Ryan. It was called the Total Beast. A very rough, tough and painful story of a character being incarcerated in a Texas penitentiary for the simple crime of a marijuana joint being discovered in his pocket. The deeper story was of the convict’s revolutionary spirit and the cost of rebellion. To me, it had great potential for adaption and a starring career-changing role, and I wanted to produce it. I had flown to New Mexico to meet with the writer at his ranch and talk it through. He was a potent, intense, and extremely intelligent person who challenged everything. On this dark, cold, and empty morning, I was remembering him. I called Information, and at 4 a.m. I called him and bluntly shared my day. He was very quiet and said, “I am coming to get you”. To this stranger, more or less, I said “All right”. My life was about to courageously, dynamically, and utterly change its course.

THE HEALING OF A BROKEN CIRCLE

I remember being 25. I remember Ryan sitting cross-legged on the left side of the bed in his old brown plaid robe rolling a joint. It was early morning at our home on Anita Drive and I was dressed for my jazz dance class. My body was eager and alive with an electricity in every cell anticipating moving to joyful dance and music. Even the long drive on this bright Saturday morning to the class seemed thrilling in my new fast Radford Mini. I felt joy. But first I laid out the architectural plans of the new house I was designing for us at the beach. I was excited with the surprise I had for Ryan. With the architect, I had designed a racquet ball court for him. I got on my knees at the foot of the bed and spread the drawings out. I was immersed, happily pointing out the details in this new design, and Ryan suddenly said, “You aren’t going to want to live with me there.” I remember I looked up smiling. I could only register there must be something not quite right in the drawings and this was just an odd way of saying it. I digested his face. My whole body seemed to have a sudden intelligent awareness, and my energy began to drain into a slowing dullness. I was confused. I asked simply, “Why not?” I remember vaguely feeling that I was at the edge of an internal cliff and that I might suddenly and unexpectedly be pushed off. Time seemed slower. The light at the edges of the room were dimming. At the very same time, there was a narrowing focus and heightened awareness. All in a micro-instant.

“Because,” he said, “I have a mistress.”

My system froze. My heart rate took on a life of its own. Without any effort I was processing a worst terror come true. It was the oddest thing, for even as my body went into a strange adaptation, I was taking in the one who I loved so deeply, who was part of the fabric of my heart and so familiar. Everything was so familiar but I knew that a surgery without anesthetic had just been performed, and now all was going to change. A stillness came upon me. It was a river of calm and it was warm and strong. Unexpected.

I said, “Would you tell me who it is?”

He paused, hesitant, “I don’t think so. It will blow your mind.”

“Well, I think my mind is already blown. I would be grateful to know.” I was aware my voice was not compromising my love for him. It was sweet and calm and open, with no judgement or reaction. You must keep your wits about you in a Tsunami.

“It’s Barbra Streisand.”

“Barbra Streisand?!!!!!!! WOW.” I said.

I adored her. She was the one and only Icon I allowed myself to adore. The conversation took on a new dimension. In this moment my Heart Self was stepping on a thin wire, high above vastly tall buildings in my ballet shoes, no net, delicately balancing myself so as not to fall. I focused my eyes on him to steady myself, the “him” that was the anchor of my affection, my loyalty, my “security’’. I saw now only a lost boy. Beyond my pain and my fear, my love and compassion for him rose up instinctively inside of me. I moved up onto the bed and came close into him. I reached out, cupped his cheek, looked into his eyes saying softly, “What are you doing, baby?”

He began to cry and said, “I don’t know.”

In 2000 and 2001 I had very difficult years, actually they were devastating and in retrospect, utterly transformational to the good. At another time, I will fill in the events of this time that led to my being without money, no stable home base, ill, with limited strength, and no seeming light at the end of any tunnel.

Five days after 9/11, I had a counseling with John Morton, who is the spiritual director of my church, a wondrous man, counselor, and my friend. I shared some of the conditions of my life and my confusion at how to handle my everyday responsibilities in order to survive with no job or health. I shared with him that I had been evicted from my home, and through the grace of a good friend had been able to rent a small house that I loved and hoped to keep as a place to stabilize myself for more healing. The rent was due in a few days, and I had no resources and was deeply confused and felt paralyzed as to what to do. John was thoughtful and suggested that I needed to ask for help. This idea was foreign to me. In fact, it was terrifying. He went on to say that “asking” was not my strong suit and needed to be developed. He said that there were people in my life who needed to give to me to balance their own imbalance with me, and if I did not ask them to help me, they could not fulfill their debt. I would be giving them an opportunity to come into greater balance with themselves. Wow, this was such a smart illumination in my awareness of another possible dynamic in “asking.” I listened to my beloved friend John, and took the information he shared to heart.

As I was driving home thinking of the session, I was very aware of the rent being due in two days. Who could I possibly ask? I did not like this. There were no ideas in my conscious mind. I then heard in my right ear, “Ask Ryan O’Neal.” In shock, I reactively turned to the right and said loudly, “Absolutely not!” The “voice” was relentless, and patiently repetitive. “Ask Ryan O’Neal.” I did my best over the next two days to ignore the message. And the more I ignored it, the more disturbed I was becoming. It did not go away.

In the late afternoon of the day before my rent was due, I finally picked up the phone, my heart beating miserably loud, and I called Ryan. The relief I felt when I realized it was a machine, was quickly matched with panic about leaving a message at the sound of the tone. I sort of mumbled and barely alluded to what I would ask of him, then I hung up. Done. Relief. I was sure that was enough. It was embarrassing and it was done and I was letting go. Melting into my inevitable coming crisis, I felt like Scarlet O’Hara…tomorrow was another day. I went to bed early, immersing myself in pillows and comfort and my cats to be with God. I was more at ease asking something of God.

At 3am the phone rang. I answered and a voice said, “It’s Ryan.” Half asleep, I spilled the beans. I told him everything that had happened and what I needed and if… perhaps, would he possibly consider … assisting me? In answer to his few questions, I awkwardly shared my monthly nut and financial obligations, and told him that I had no money to pay them. There was a slight pause, and he said, “Go to my office tomorrow morning at 9am and there will be a check for you for all of your expenses.” I was shocked because it was a graceful experience with no sharp edges, no demand for when he wanted it back … in fact he told me to forget about that, and if I needed it again the next month, to call him. And then some Ryan humor I don’t remember, and a kind goodbye.

For almost one year, until my health was strong, Ryan helped me. At one point he said to me, “Thank you, Leigh, for asking me to help you…I owed you and did not know what to do about it.”

The healing of broken circles back to wholeness is what my inner life guides me to do. My experience with Ryan was just that, the healing of a life circle. My courage in asking for help, which in turn invited Ryan’s generosity, changed that moment of my life to greater good. What came from this greater good is a clean slate that is bright today in my friendship with Ryan. And he continues to extend his generosity to our two beautiful granddaughters.

I share this very personal story because I live my life aspiring to be grateful, to forgive, to love, to accept, and to understand others even when situations or circumstances have sometimes hurt me. Back in 1970 when my heart felt as if it was broken, I was a young woman who really needed to move on in order to grow. Ryan’s choices became just the catalyst and the blessing I needed to move on, leading me ever more profoundly into my spiritual journey. I was already learning that loving is an inside job, and not based on whether someone else loves you, or not, the way you would like. These lessons are not always easy, and I am still learning.

Oh, by the way, remember John Morton, that wondrous man, counselor, and friend I mentioned? I married him in 2013!

 
 
LTY Marries John Morton – A Blessed New Day
 
 
Learn More About John-Roger

FATHERS AND DAUGHTERS

My birth Dad was Carl Ramsey Taylor. He was kind, quiet, sensitive, and a noble man. He called me Lady. He never called me Leigh. I think of him often and wonder where he is in the Spirit, or, if he is back here, that perhaps our paths have crossed on this earth since he passed…

Regardless, I like to let him know that I know he is a very beautiful being, and I am proud he is my Dad. He died in an alcoholic coma in his fifties. He was interpreted to me by others as a tragic figure. I did not know he was tragic. I just knew him to be unusual, and that was because you never really knew what to expect. He often smoked two cigarettes at once because he would forget he had one lit already…and placed it somewhere. He smoked Marlboros and he drank only Old Crow bourbon Whiskey. He used Noxema soap and he smelled like the soap mixed with alcohol and smoke. His apartment was quite dirty, musty, and of course smokey, and I did my little girl best to clean it. Dishes were stacked in the sink with crusty food, trash was piled up, magazines in stacks all around, and a lot of Playboy magazines. His apartment in Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C. was kept dark, as the blinds were closed. He loved sports, especially golf which he played when he could manage the mobility. He had such a nice girlfriend named May. I thought she was beautiful in her way, and looked like my Mother but in Irish. She smoked and drank, was quiet and kind, and from North Dakota. They both worked in government. My Father worked for the State Department in AID, Alliance for International Development, and his ‘area’ was South America. I don’t remember where May worked, but I thought it was secretarial.

My Father took me to bars, and for some reason he got me into them at a very young age of perhaps as young as four or five. I remember perching on the bar stools of red leather that turned fully around with my little legs dangling. The bar was dark and mysterious with red colors and black. There were mirrors and lots of lit-up bottles on shelves, and a man behind the bar who did not seem to mind my little self. He gave me some version of a Shirley Temple with a big shiny cherry with a stem in it. He was noisy. He liked my Dad. I just watched, quiet and alert for what I had come to expect…the unexpected. I felt scared when Daddy would order his drink of Old Crow, as his quiet sweet temperament might change to violent in a blink of my eye. For no reason whatsoever, or so it seemed to me…I just never knew. Someone might look at him in a way that triggered him, and he might become aggressive. A fight could happen, and sometimes it did. I remember him getting hurt and awkwardly helping him get up, and there was blood. Once his eye was badly damaged and I was very scared to see him that hurt. I was utterly in his care, and there were no options in my awareness but to go along with whatever happened. Being so little, I did not know what I could do to alter any situation. I know I developed hypervigilance around any sudden possibilities, real or imagined, not unlike the acutely alert feral cat in our backyard. I have worked this out over the years, and yet still in certain situations, I can feel the apprehension come over me of the possibility of a sudden unknown shock. Today I still might jump if someone suddenly surprises me coming into my space unexpectedly. It is not conscious, but clearly hard-wired in my nervous system.

He never ever hurt me. He would talk to me often about my Mother, and sometimes he held me close at night, in the dark, and talked about her in a sad and disjointed way. I knew I represented something of her to him, so I was glad that I gave him some happiness even though I was scared. My heart felt him deeply, and I felt a helpless compassion. I would smell his breath of sour alcohol and answer whatever I thought would help him. I would wait until he fell asleep, very concerned that my heart beating so loudly would keep him awake. My heart sounded so loud in the quiet of the night.

He kept photos of every moment of my life around him until the day he died. He died in bed drunk, and just opposite was a four-foot photograph of me holding my new baby.

He fought in World War II, and he left for the war newly married to my beautiful, vivacious, and very smart Mother. He came home for more training and then left for the Pacific, leaving my Mother pregnant with me. When he returned, my Mother no longer loved him, and he never recovered. He went to work for the State Department, was well respected, but in time, he dissolved into alcohol. Alcohol held father and daughter hostage. Our possibility to grow into trust and intimacy and safe loving was stunted by alcohol in this life. Yet, I held, and I hold, a tender protection in my heart for his pain, as I simply understood that he suffered inside and he did not know how to handle it. I always wanted to comfort him, I always wanted to help him, and mostly I always wanted to bring him happiness.

There is the deeper story with Carl Ramsey Taylor, my Father, as although it was riddled with painful and scary moments for this little girl, I grew up always with a sense of honor of who I knew him to be as a good man. I don’t have any idea why this was so, but it was, and it is so now. When I go inside, where it is eternal and very alive, I experience him as himself, who he is and was, without all he carried so heavily that altered his personality. There was something about him that was aristocratic and very kind. It radiated out amidst the turmoil and the constant disturbance of his addiction. This sense of him did not make anything easier in experiencing life with him, but it is this awareness, this remnant of him that endures more than any of the pain. I am just so sorry I could not know him as his more whole self. I love and honor him regardless of it all.

I was blessed to have a remarkable Stepfather. It even feels odd to call him Stepfather as he showed up for me fully from age six to the day he passed. His name is Donald Earl Young. He was another experience of a noble gentleman. He guided my life in so many profound ways. We had parts of our relationship that were very edgy. He had already had a powerful life before he became my Father and married my Mother. He had bombed Germany at 19 as part of the famous Eighth Air Force stationed in England. He was a bomber pilot in World War II and on a daily level demonstrated the courage to fight to protect the world from the ferocious challenge of Naziism. He is a highly deserving ‘member’ of the Greatest Generation. He flew 30 missions, each day not knowing if he or any of his ‘brothers’ would return back to England alive. This surely helped sculpt his character. He got his college degrees on the GI bill, including high marks at Harvard Business School. He went on to join the FBI, being trained in Quantico, Virginia. Then back into the Air Force in the more secret service part of the military. To say that he did not suffer fools is an understatement, and for some reason, I was a living demonstration to him of someone desperately needing training to overcome foolish tendencies.

‘Daddy’, as I soon called him, had a low-grade irritation to his nature, and I could irritate him it seemed more easily than most. He loved me dearly and also felt I needed a ‘military’ hand to guide me. I seemed to him barely grounded. I talked to plants, loved every animal and climbed trees, caught flies to save them from annihilation, and was a free spirit who did not like control, rules, or orders. When he was either upset with me or frustrated with me, he called me an idiot. That became my nickname of sorts, but it was just a vernacular way of expressing his love, and his confoundment. I actually achieved way beyond any expectations he had of my possibilities. He genuinely was concerned about my tendency to give without regard for my own needs or intentions. I got to surprise him with my successes and he grew to love it. As time went on, he realized that something else seemed to guide my life and it did not always appear to make any sense to him. He struggled with it, but more or less he began to enjoy the show of my life, and even to enjoy my nature that was inclined to the unexpected. At times he seemed hard on me, but looking back I am overcome with love in seeing so clearly it was his way of loving me.

One day as he was in his dying process with cancer, and in pain, I asked if I could rub his back. I was overcome that he accepted. As I was rubbing his back tenderly, sensitive to his pain, I took the courage to ask him if he would share what he thought of me, to clear anything needing to be said. I was anxious, but I was willing, knowing he would most certainly tell me. He was very quiet, and finally he said, “I think you are one-third genius”, there was a thoughtful pause as each word was considered and carefully chosen, and then he said, “I think you are one-third saint”. I was so still. I was aware his words were an anointing of everything true and genuine he could give me. He took the longest pause and I knew there was more to be said…”And, I think you are one-third complete idiot”.

I love you Daddy very much wherever you are, I admire you and honor you, and I thank you for the life you gave me.

I do not feel that I experienced the depth of the Father loving that was easy, or truly safe in its nature, or funny, or humorous…but I was deeply blessed by the beings who stepped up, or in, to father me. It was perfect. Because I did not have it, I did not know I was missing a thing, nor did I long for anything other. I did not question the hand I was given. It was good and I accepted it.

And then I met Charlie.

Charlie was a beautiful Palomino Clydesdale horse who for twenty years had pulled carts full of children at Disneyland. When he became too old to do his work anymore, he went to live at Windermere Ranch in the Santa Barbara mountains. Here he was lovingly cared for by the staff and many volunteer visitors.

One day I went to Windermere to groom Charlie, as I had adopted him and paid for some of his care. As I stroked and brushed his very large and beautiful body, it quickly became a deep meditation. Charlie was very quiet, his eyes halfway closed with pleasure, and lovely horse breaths were puffing softly and rhythmically from his nostrils. I began to feel a Presence of quiet, an enduring sense of patience and peace was emanating from him. The energy was warm and it infused me to my core. I became profoundly aware that I was experiencing Charlie’s essence surrounding me and embracing me. It was loving me so unconditionally and fully that all of a sudden I felt that I was experiencing having a Father. This was not a rational process I was having, but it was penetrating and it was real. I was overcome. I felt I was recognizing the qualities of the Father that I had missed, and not fully known. Everything I might have wished for in my life from my dear Fathers was manifesting at this moment, and I knew it consciously. I did not argue inside, I claimed it for myself. Charlie’s energy kept enveloping me in timeless waves, and offering such knowing of me, acceptance, understanding, and safety, that it was palpable.

I leaned into Charlie, weeping and weeping into his warm body, immersed in his comforting smell. He just stood and held for me, my face in his shoulder. His mane was wet with my tears. I was healing myself in the heat and love of his presence. Before I left him that day, I wrapped my arms around his neck and put my forehead to his and whispered, “Thank you, Charlie, you are the Father I have never known. You are cherished in my heart forever as one of my beloved and honored Fathers.”

I stayed close to Charlie, until one day he could not get up anymore. All the horses on the ranch came around him and they circled him as he gently left this life. He left me the legacy of a wise and patient teacher who healed my heart.

A GOLDEN THREAD SHINING IN THE FABRIC OF THIS LIFE OF MINE

I was sitting and reading in the lounge lobby of my hotel in Madrid, Spain. It was 1969. I was 23. The corner I had found gave me an open view of the lobby, and the comings and goings of people as I sat enveloped in a red velvet chair. I was reading Jung: MEMORIES, DREAMS AND REFLECTIONS. I was in heaven as I usually was when I was reading, and I was feeling content from a busy day of fittings for my next film, THE HORSEMEN, including a fitting for my new gold nose ring. It was English tea time. I felt I had created a field around me that said No Visitors, as I adored immersing myself in reading, drinking a lovely tea, and observing life around me without any intrusions of human interaction. A woman approached my haven. Before I could react, she was instantly compelling to my artist’s eye. She had glistening, thick, silver snow hair, flawless, translucent skin with natural rose-pink cheeks, and clear, turquoise eyes. She was short, slightly rounded, and utterly radiated warmth and electric vitality. She was wearing black, simple and elegant, highlighted by the most magnificent American Indian turquoise necklace. Of course it matched her eyes. I could not even determine her age as she was so remarkably alive. I took all of this in within an instant, as I was equally negotiating that I wanted privacy please.

With an enchanting smile and no concern for her having intruded upon my precious space, she said, “What are you reading?” “Jung”, I said, not knowing why I offered her up my book. “May I sit down?”. “Oh dear”, I thought. “Yes, of course,” I said.

Within seconds, or so it seemed, I was in love. We began a pithy and effortless communion. Scarcely moving, highly alert, we were excited in our sharing of books, philosophers, and Spirit. Our conversation was as if we were one person divided into two women making a new whole. It was seamless joy. I was starved for this sort of engagement, and I felt I was with my best friend and that we had been so forever. It was a warmth of being increased somehow, as she was filling my cup to overflowing.

Sanora Babb was her artist’s name. She was Sanora Wong Howe as wife and partner. Sanora was a writer, a poet, and well-published. Apart from being the wife of one of the film industry’s greatest cinematographers, James Wong Howe, she had spent her life amongst the aristocracy of the world’s finest writers, philosophers, artists, and scientists. She was a Muse as well. Hemingway, Saroyan, Maxwell Perkins, Steinbeck, Diego Rivera, Frida Kieho, Einstein, and more, had been her friends and compatriots, and lovers.

I was a 23 year-old actress starring in a film with her husband as my Director of Photography, and she was 60, an artist intellectual with a spirit like fresh breezes. She was my inner life made manifest in a friend. I was instantly less lonely. The promise of our future friendship was secured this day. If we had cut our fingers and mixed our blood, speaking some childish poem of eternal loyalty, it would not have been strange.

We both lived in Los Angeles. As the years progressed, she deeply understood who I was in so many dimensions unknown by others, and I understood her. We had no age difference. We were just free, unfettered, and utterly outspoken and vulnerable. I gave her the key to my heart with abandon, and she gave me her heart with no frills.

She remained a golden thread shining in the fabric of this life of mine. True Wealth.

She passed at 99.

I was close with her in her dying process as she slowly let go of this world. In great spiritual intimacy, I ministered her into her next adventure, and she blessed me into the remaining chapters of my life. She is with me now, and I know she heartily approves of my choices and is glad. Fiercely, however, she would be wanting more of me to be expressing creatively. We are both Artists still, passionate, loving, and free.

Some of her amazing books:
An Owl on Every Post
The Lost Traveler
Whose Names are Unknown

– LTY

Learn More About Sanora Babb

LTY & FRANK SINATRA

Today is the 100th Birthday of Frank Sinatra and tonight on CBS there is a special on his life. I know it is wonderful. This morning on CBS Sunday Morning there was a most beautiful segment to celebrate Frank with Charles Osgood. It featured his daughters and son and it included really authentic heart-centered sharing about him.

I found myself unexpectedly crying as he personally touched my life in my early twenties. I was remembering the often comforting if not healing ways he cared for me. I first met Frank in Las Vegas when my boyfriend at the time, Ryan O’Neal, took me there to spend time with Frank and Mia Farrow, his new wife. The connection was that Mia had been a star of Peyton Place and left the show to marry Frank. More or less, I was Mia’s replacement on Peyton Place. I was playing a different character, Rachel Wells, but nonetheless I was now the ingenue star of the show, as Mia had been. It was amazing to enter that world and be with them for several days. I remember the colorful people around them. Jilly and other Vegas characters in their entourage were memorable. It was wild. We had no mornings or evenings…just all days and nights as one. I was welcomed and included. At Frank’s Vegas show his opener was the outrageous comedian, Don Rickles, who did an unbelievable roast of Ryan and myself. We were Frank’s guests and sitting with Mia, and were thus perfect targets for his brilliant evisceration. I was shocked. Primarily I was very shy, and having all of that focus in such a fashion was quite terrifying.

Later, now married to Ryan and soon pregnant with my son, we were often around them. Mia wanted young friends to be incorporated amongst Frank’s deeply loyal older friends to make it interesting. It was. One dinner evening I remember at their home in Bel Air there was Frank and Mia, Ricky Nelson, Bill Cosby and Camille, Dean Martin, Ryan and myself. Looking around the table and taking it in was fun for me. It was very ordinary, and very extraordinary. My favorite was always Frank as he made a point of kindly engaging me, and encouraging me to converse. It was as if he understood my shyness. I loved them all, even though I was quiet and expressed myself seldom. Ryan was an extravert and brilliantly funny. I felt best being quiet.

I was having difficulty at times comprehending my marriage and the unexpectedness of certain behaviors. I was in love, I was very open and vulnerable, and did not have a developed skill set to deal with so many personality shifts. And worlds.

As boxing was Ryan’s passion, I had taken to avidly studying The Fireside Book of Boxing and going with Ryan into the raw world of professional boxing. I would often go to Hoover Street Gym and watch the gritty training schedule the boxers would go through. The world of boxing was like none other I had witnessed. By the time I was 23, Ryan and I both managed a very gifted Welterweight fighter named Hegemon Lewis. I was often running with Hegemon and his trainers at 5 in the morning, as I loved working out. I also loved the sweaty male world of training. I had a Spartan warrior spirit close beneath the skin of a beautiful, long- haired young innocent girl. They welcomed me and included me. We went to Thursday Night at the Fights downtown every Thursday night. I loved everything but the boxing. I loved the people. When my son was born, my contractions started during the fight of a young Irish boxer named Young McCormack. Ryan wanted to name him Rocky. We negotiated, and because Ryan’s first name is Patrick and there was a boxer whose first name was Young…my son’s name is Young Patrick O’Neal.

When my son was born, Floyd Patterson, one of the greatest heavyweight boxers, became his God Father. I loved Floyd. One of the Gentle Giants. His ‘second’ in the ring was a man I soon adored. His name was Ray Barnes. Ray lived in the hood, and grew up in an awful time of Jim Crow in America. It had seared his nature. He was quiet, humble, and hard-working, and one of the kindest human beings I have ever known. He loved the Ring. He became my body guard. He traveled with me all over the world when I worked in films. He looked after me. I have many Ray stories and will tell them in time. Right now, I send him my love in Heaven.

Back to Frank. Sometimes hurt, confused, vulnerable and insecure with Ryan, Frank would often make a point of extending a very Italian protective courtliness to me. He treated me like a Queen. It was not at all inappropriate. It was just him, how he was, at least with me. He would order my food when I was pregnant, and was absolutely fierce that I eat and eat well. He would make sure I was not cold and send out for a blanket if he felt the air conditioning was too strong or there were any drafts. It was as if he was demonstrating how to treat me. I believe he recognized the lamb that I was, and the world I was in, without much to sustain me as a tender girl.

This morning I was remembering how dearly I felt nourished by Frank’s caring, and how much it comforted me and lifted me up to keep going. I was desolate at times, and lonely. I did not have confidants, therapists, or close family that could understand the unique intensity of my remarkable and complex 22 -year-old gift of a life. So much was wildly ‘out of the box’. I was very loyal and private, and had no inclination to share what I did not understand.

This morning, with my beloved husband, John Morton, I was reflecting how much it can mean when someone is kind, and reaches to touch the spirit of someone else. It can be powerfully affirming, such that they may be extending an infusion of life force. My sense of such good impression is not because he was Frank Sinatra. I have never had much awe for celebrities, or stars of any kind. I just like them, when I do. In Frank’s case it is because he was a Prince in his heart and he touched it to me in compassion. It has stayed with me all this time. God Bless you, Thank you, Frank, and Happy Birthday in Heaven.