Authors: Belinda Carlisle
The sensation, like a pressure, had stopped between my heart and my throat. It was one of the weirdest and greatest feelings of my life. I’d heard talk of people’s kundalini force rising up and coming out of their head. It was the reason some thought the experience, if done incorrectly, could be dangerous.
I had heard about Gurmukh’s rebirth class. She did it infrequently, from what I understood, but when she did it was supposed to be one of the most extraordinary experiences. But I’d also heard it could jangle your emotions pretty heavily. Gurmukh told us as much.
“Everyone reacts in a different way,” she said as she began taking us through what seemed like a normal kundalini class. A little bit into it, I heard people making strange, almost guttural noises. Then those noises turned into screams and howls. It sounded like people were in pain. There were also sounds of laughter. Giggles. I wondered what was going on.
I wasn’t feeling anything different from the class. Then, toward the end, I felt myself get angry. It started in the pit of my stomach and gradually overtook me like a fever. I didn’t know where it was coming from or how to manage it. I was like, Screw everyone here. I hate everybody. I got so mad that I couldn’t look anyone in the eye, not even those with whom I had shared laughs and hugs a few hours earlier.
At the end of class, we held hands to form a circle and everyone took a turn passing through the symbolic birth canal. People welcomed one another through with an ebullient
satnam
, the traditional Sikh greeting
that means “truth,” or “truth is my identity.” I was cursing those who tried to reach out to me. I still wasn’t able to understand this uproar of anger and vitriol. When the last person was through, Gurmukh gathered everyone together. I stood off to the side and said fuck that. Then I started to sob uncontrollably.
I ran to my room and threw myself on the bed. I couldn’t stop crying. It went on and on; I had not cried as hard in my entire life. Eventually I got up and paced across my room, trying to figure out why this had happened. As I breathed deeply and looked through my tear-filled eyes, I saw my childhood come into focus, then my parents, and particularly my mother, whom I had always blamed for a lot of the bad things that happened to me as a little girl.
I had forgiven my father—my stepfather, that is—this person who had beaten me and abused me verbally and emotionally. He had turned into an amazing man after he got sober. I understood that he had suffered from a disease. My mom, I had always assumed, should have known better.
But there in India, following this rebirthing class, I had an epiphany. My mom had been eighteen years old when she had me. She hadn’t wanted to be pregnant that young or be with my real father. She had been upset about the change in her life. As a fetus in her womb, I had absorbed all of her anger and emotions and now I realized that I had carried those feelings around long enough. I had to let them go. I had to release them like ashes in the Ganges.
All of them.
My mom had done the best she could.
It was time for me to understand, forgive, and let go.
That afternoon I had an appointment. The evening before I had gone into the nearest town to get a few things and the ATM I used to withdraw cash had eaten my card. A nice Indian man who owned a local jewelry store where I shopped saw my frustration at the machine. He said he knew the manager of the bank and would take me to him. He arranged a meeting place and time.
On my way to meet him, I ran into Gurmukh and her husband. She reached out and hugged me.
“What have you done to me?” I said. I started to cry again.
“You’re one of the bravest people I saw today,” she said, drawing me close again.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “I don’t get any of this. Not what happened. Not why I’m here.”
“Satnam,”
she said, letting me go.
I was sure I looked like a wreck when I arrived at the spot where the jewelry store owner and I had agreed to meet. My eyes were swollen, my face was puffy, and I felt like shit. I had to remind myself this was India, the country where a wise man said, “I once complained about my shoes, until I met a man who had no feet.” I looked at the bustling traffic on the street, hoping to see my ride. I had no idea what kind of car he drove.
All of a sudden I heard a loud
put-put-put
, like a souped-up washing machine motor. I turned and suddenly my guy pulled up in front of me on a motorcycle. I stood in place, frozen. A motorcycle? I couldn’t believe I had to do this.
“Come, get on,” he said.
I didn’t want to. But then as clear as I heard everything else around me, I heard the voice of my friend Lesley Blanch say, “Go for it. This is what life is about.” I looked up at the clear blue sky, saw a graceful white bird soaring high above, and then without a second thought swung my leg over the motorcycle.
An instant later, we were zipping through traffic, dodging cars and people, turning corners and zigzagging through carts and cows and beggars. It was so unbelievably dangerous and crazy; it was just so unbelievable, period. I was dressed all in white and my red hair was blowing in the wind. As we raced through the city, I felt open and, in a sense, reborn and alive.
They say whatever God is, you can feel it in India. It’s there. It’s everywhere. It was for me.
Lesley was right, I thought, as I hung on to the back of that motorcycle. This was what life was all about.
Back at the ashram, I felt the invigoration of the bike ride fade and my previous malaise return. I went to my room and found two monkeys going through my suitcase. They had climbed through the open window, as frequently happened there. If it wasn’t monkeys, it was rats. After shooing them out, I got back into bed, curled up in the fetal position, and stayed like that for the next three days. I pretended to be asleep as everyone else from my group departed. I couldn’t deal.
On the fourth day, I got myself together and moved to a five-star hotel up the hill where I cleaned up—especially my feet, which were black like a hobo’s. But no amount of scrubbing got rid of my weird mood. I moved back into bed. Scared, I had the hotel’s doctor come check me. Aside from dehydration, he couldn’t find anything wrong with me. I was unable to explain my symptoms other than to say I felt like I needed to shed a layer.
And that was exactly it. This emotional thing that I was going through simply had to work its way out of my body. It took a few days, but little by little I felt it pass, and a giddy feeling took its place. I went from one extreme to another. Although I was still totally out of balance, it was better to feel like everything was wonderful than to feel miserable. Before I left, I evened out.
At home, everyone remarked that I looked different. I had been gone only about two weeks, but it felt like two months. I must have looked it, too. Without question, the trip was transformative. Morgan listened attentively to my tales. Although he had no interest in participating in such adventures himself, he saw the benefits manifested in me.
Duke was the one who shook his head. By this time, he had worked as a page in the U.S. House of Representatives, started to write articles for newspapers, and made politically oriented videos, which he posted on YouTube. He was thinking about where he wanted to go to college, and he was looking toward a career in politics. The one blemish on this ambitious landscape was his rock-and-roll mom. He had half-jokingly warned me in the past about staying in the background, and I saw that same look appear on his face as I told my stories from India.
Sure enough, he said, “Mom, as a favor to me, please don’t say any of this stuff in the press. It’s a little weird.”
“So?” I said.
He winced. “You’re going to become a political liability.”
“A political liability?” I said.
“I’m afraid so,” he said. “You’re my Lillian Carter.”
I laughed to myself and thought, Hey, once a punk rocker, always a punk rocker.
IN MID-AUGUST 2008, I called home from Los Angeles with bad news. I was on my way to Mexico City for a couple of shows, but I got word that the promoter had run off with the money—or something like that. As a result, the shows were canceled. Now I was stuck on the West Coast just days before my fiftieth birthday.
“I’ll meet you,” Morgan said.
“Don’t spend all that money getting over here,” I said. “It will cost a fortune to get a ticket at the last minute.”
He wasn’t convinced.
“We’ll celebrate when I’m back,” I said. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”
I was fine with turning fifty. It was easier than forty. I was in a much better place, a really good place in fact. I had worked hard to understand who I was and like myself better. I felt nothing but love and gratitude.
For my actual birthday, I got myself a kick-ass suite at the Helmsley Palace in New York. In the morning, I chanted for a couple hours at the SGI center on Fifteenth Street. I acknowledged gratitude for my first fifty years. One might ask if I really felt gratitude for all the turmoil and problems I had experienced. Yes, I did feel gratitude—gratitude for all I had in spite of that trouble, gratitude for all I had learned, gratitude for all the love that was in my life in spite of me and because of me. It was a sense that transcended the conventional thought of aging as bad and something to be avoided at all costs and by all means; instead it made the years seem fortunate and worthwhile.
At night, I went out for a quiet dinner with some of the guys in my band and my friend Sandra Bernhard and her partner. I had a perfectly
nice, laid-back, happy evening. Then I got back to my hotel room and a man from the front desk called. He said there was something for me from Carter.
“Carter?” I said.
“Carter,” he repeated.
“Well, send it up, please,” I said.
A moment later, a bellman delivered a small box to my room. I saw it and chuckled.
“Oh, Cartier,” I said, smiling.
The card was from Morgan and inside the box I found a beautiful pink gold bracelet with a delicate pink sapphire. I held it up and appreciated its simplicity. I was extremely touched and thought of the many ways that bracelet typified our twenty-three-year marriage. We love each other, fight, give each other long leashes, and look forward to being together again. He still makes me laugh like no one else. He’s annoying, but funny. I don’t want to hear what he has to say about me. A lot of people may not understand what we have, but we do—and it works. To this day, he’s my best friend and soul mate.
I put the bracelet on. It was even prettier on my wrist.
I wanted to thank Morgan, but I didn’t want to wake him up. I settled for leaving a message on his cell.
Satnam
.
In the months that followed, I went back to France and enjoyed being home. I recorded some new music in London and Los Angeles. I appeared on the TV show
Dancing with the Stars
, which was kind of a lark. I had spoken to its producers a year earlier and forgotten about it. Then, the day before I was supposed to make another trip to India, they called and told me to get to Los Angeles immediately to start rehearsing, I was on the show.
So I went and had a good time for the few weeks I was there, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I didn’t like being judged, and I could tell the pressure I felt wasn’t good for my sobriety. I would have liked to have stayed on longer, of course, but I was also very relieved to leave the show. I rejuvenated by making good on my postponed trip to India. I spent the end of 2009 and early 2010 starring in the play
Hairspray
in
London, and afterward I launched an online store offering bags, shawls, jewelry, oils, and other favorite items from my travels around the world, starting with India.
I stayed busy, but not busy without any purpose. I came to an understanding about my past. I let go of the things that had always brought me down, knowing that I had outgrown them. I appreciated the good times and the crazier times for what they were and how they had shaped me. Without them, I wouldn’t have ended up in such a better place. I didn’t worry about the future either. I thought about a time long ago when I had met Sammy Davis Jr. at a party. He had looked at me and said, “Baby, you are a vision of nowness.” As far as I’m concerned,
nowness
is a pretty good place to be.
I am still very much sober and grateful for each day. Once I stopped doing drugs and drinking, the real work began. As you have come to know, my journey to where I am today has been sad, tough, amazing, stupid, silly, and enlightening. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
I’m living proof you can teach old dogs new tricks. With the help of my program and loving, patient, understanding, and remarkable family and friends, I have truly changed. I have done something I never thought possible. I have become the person that I’ve always wanted to be and knew I could be, if only I could get through the bullshit.
I recently made the trek from my house in the South of France to Austria, one of the world’s most beautiful, inspiring drives. The sheer cliffs in the Dolomites always test my courage, but then each time I arrive at the fields and mountains in Austria I feel like I should start singing “The Sound of Music.” Anyway, after starting out, I pulled into a gas station in Italy and pinched myself as I got an espresso out of the machine. How amazing was it that I had figured out how to get around—not just these crazy directions from one country to the next, but in my life in general?
I finally appreciate my career. The Go-Go’s will always be one of the loves of my life, something that’s responsible for so much opportunity and so many memories that I will treasure forever. I’m proud of the music we made and the doors we opened for other girls with dreams of rocking as hard and successfully as the guys. I’m blown away by the
many lives we have been able to touch. Music, like all art, is born of a time and spirit, but it lives on if it’s any good. I am honored knowing our music continues to be meaningful for so many people.
I wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anyone other than Jane, Charlotte, Gina, and Kathy. Although we’re grown-ups now, I’ll always refer to us as “the girls.” Sometimes we’re closer than at others, but we have that special bond from having grown up together. Some of my fondest memories, not just of the band but of my life, are when all of us hit the vintage stores together when we were on tour. We got to a town and within minutes were doing what we did almost as well as we played music—shop. I love them like sisters.
Before a show we played in 2009 in Las Vegas, I was walking down the hallway to the elevator, where all of us had agreed to meet. Before heading to the venue, and I stopped for some reason and thought about all the years we had played together, all the places we had been, all the memories we had accumulated, and all the people we had entertained, and I really, truly appreciated being a Go-Go.
I have no idea how many more shows we will play or whether we will put out more music. Some days I love being out in front of that band. Other days I ask myself why I’m still doing it. I know I don’t want to be doing it when I’m in my mid-fifties. I’d like to end it on a high note, with a little dignity. I hope along the way we have inspired other girls who want to play music. It can be done.
As for the future, I’ll likely continue to make albums on my own, at least as long as I find songs that I feel I can sing.
If not, I’m okay with that too. My work does not solely define me, as I had believed for many years. I finally realized that I’m so much more.
I am able to receive love and give love and even love myself. My relationships with my husband and son are better than ever. My one regret is all the hell I put them through. For many years I was too selfish to see that or care. Now that I’m present, all that has changed. I’m blessed to have them in my life.
I’m blessed to have my life—and that’s a wonderful way to feel.
I look forward to each day. Sometimes I regret that I didn’t get it
sooner. I guess I’m just one of those people who had to figure it out the hard way.
But hey, look at me—a Valley girl who ran off to Hollywood, moved to the South of France, and found herself on the Ganges, in India. Who would have thought, back when I was working the photocopy machine with the crappy boss at the Hilton Hotel Corporation, that all this would happen?
Actually, I did.
A girl’s gotta dream….