Tag Archives: dysfunctional family

Jul24

30 Days of “A Year of Living Your Yoga” — Day 18: Hard Needs Soft

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Welcome to Day 18 of my blog series based on Judith Hansen-Lasater’s “A Year of Living Your Yoga.”

I will try to keep these posts to less than 500 words once we start the quote.

Here is the quote:

February 15 — The more difficult a thing is, the more it requires softness. When we encounter a difficult person, situation or asana (pose), we often respond with hardness. In your practice (or life) today, choose a difficult pose (or situation) and approach it with both mental and physical softness. Become like the water the flows around a rough boulder, gently washing against it edges.

When I first started therapy, I was acerbic, tough, sarcastic, biting, unforgiving and HILARIOUS. I was like Don Rickles with a uterus. I was all kinds of fun to be around, as long as you weren’t in my crosshairs. All of that was a huge projection of myself and my inadequacies. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. I just thought I was being funny.

Then my therapist went on vacation.

Before he left, he gave me homework. He was always subtle. Never demanding; he never said, “DO THIS.” or “READ CHAPTER 1,973 of ____” it was always a proposal, the jerk. (I heart him.)

He said, “I wonder what it would be like for you to be soft and vulnerable.” (I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this before.) AND IT SUCKED. He had me by the shorthairs and he knew it. I actually held back vomit. I actually lost my footing. I actually felt like I was going to pass out. It was as though he’d take a bat and swung it within an inch of my solar plexus.

WELL I DON’T WONDER, YOU JERK. I DON’T WONDER AT ALL. Is what I wanted to say, with a bat.

But he was right. My life was hard. My life was rough. My outlook on life was equally those things. I had been given a lifetime pass to the bottomless buffet of steaming plates of whatthefuck all my childhood and then I got married and had kids.

So, natch, I had to do the homework, because I was a Type-A person. Of course I would do it.

And it was hard. He came back from vacation and I said to him, “It’s hard to be soft,” and we both laughed at the childlike simplicity, candor and truth of it all. But it was the beginning of my rebirth and embracing pink and girlhood, not just femininity.

It was also the beginning of my allowing myself to be imperfect and a buffoon and not such a blowhard. I became less like my father and more like my mother, including her really wonderful and softer and more flirtatious side. I like to think of myself as suede or as gossamer now. Weathered, resilient, soft and reliable. And super funny.

I think of this phrase as it applied to when our son was bullied. We knew this other family was reactive. We knew we had to treat this situation as we would a minefield. So we did. We were as delicate about it as much as possible: we were firm and upfront but also not at all confrontational. It was a difficult situation and had all the etchings of potential disaster on its very thin veneer. When it all did go pear-shaped, I was deeply hurt, but I also knew that I’d done all I could to be soft and strong in it all. The shrapnel was not from any bomb of mine; it was all theirs.

So yeah, being soft in difficult situations is always going to be challenging. Think of moderating your voice instead of yelling, or of whispering, even. Be that water washing against the boulder. Think of a slow and mindful descend to the floor into your grasshopper pose or a push-up instead of a plop; or a five-second count into your downward facing dog as you lengthen the spine disc by disc or work and sink into your warrior 2; it will always make you stronger.

Thank you.

May10

Friday #Fiction 2.1 — Perfect is the Enemy of Good

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Although she was not normally a morning person, Claire relished this time of day: dawn, in the “donzerly light” (as she used to call it as a little girl) and watching the sun rise, crest the tops of the baby green leaves on the tallest oaks and poplars by the river and see its climb to the high noon. It’s when she did her best thinking, her only thinking, really. She felt melancholy, but couldn’t understand why. She felt distracted but didn’t know by what. She felt unsettled but everything was in place in her world.

This is a fourth in a series; please go here for the first “chapter”: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/friday-fiction-friends-2-0-familiarity-breeds-fonder-over-greener-ponds/

She unlocked the boathouse door, walked inside, flipped on the light, unlocked the padlock and hoisted up the roller door to let out the barely lit into the darker. She saw her shell, “Claire-ity” sighed and said aloud, “Girl, it has been toooo long, it’s so good to see you.” The water had warmed just enough for single rowers could take out their shells and go it alone. She wouldn’t be alone though, she had her memories with her and the geese and cormorants and fish and frogs, her long-lost friends. Crickets were still chirping outside the boathouse. She turned to grab a dusting cloth from the musty racks and gently wiped down the shell’s periwinkle fiberglas hull.

“Oars first. With the water bottle, check,” she said quietly to herself. “Being off the water for several months, even though you mostly know what you’re doing, does not mean your first time out will be flawless. Perfect is the enemy of good. Perfect is impossible, clarity, yes. Perfect, no.” She said as she lifted the oars out of the rack, signed them out of the log and headed down to the docks, leaving her water bottle behind.

“How many times do I have to forget to learn?!” she whispered to herself. “Just one more time, Master Bruce,” she answered to herself as Michael Caine. She kept walking down the slope to the dock, she had decided that the water bottle would have to wait.

The dock was barely visible, save for the abrupt reflection of the water when it met its sides. Claire had been to the boathouse so many times though that she could walk to that ramp with her eyes closed.

“End of the dock, smoother push-off,” she said gently to herself. “It’s all coming back now…good,” she had learned to be kinder to herself and allow tiny moments of praise when she had figured things out. The concept of self-congratulation was foreign to her. She grew up in a world where adults abdicated their responsibilities to their children to desperately flee their reality. “If no one dies or winds up under the table with a bottle, we have achieved success. Today,” was how she encapsulated her life as a child, teenager and young adult.

The guilt from being unable to fix her mother and perform her father’s bidding to try to fix her mother was just too much at times. It hung around her neck on a 10-pound choker, like a 100-pound iron weight on a 50-pound chain and Claire weighed only 140-pounds so, it held her down from time to time even now, in her late 20s.

She placed her oars at the end of the dock and as she turned, the sun was lighting the sky although she still saw Venus behind her near the moon to the west. “Venus, you beautiful thing! Go to bed!” she shouted at the sky, laughing to herself and startling a heron perched on the water level sign about 12 feet off the shoreline. She jumped when the heron barked at her, “the feeling’s mutual, bird!” she said to the tail of the great gray bird who silently coasted above the water landing on a log floating on the surface.

“Looks like it’ll be a row in the cove today,” she said to herself, taking notice of the debris floating downriver from the recent rains. “Yup. Not going on that with no one else on the water.”

When she approached the shell, she squatted down to make sure the bolts and riggers were still in shape and to inspect for any signs of rust or bugs. A small red spider dropped down from inside the port hole cover on the bow of the boat as if to greet her. “Sorry chap, no free rides today,” she said to the spider and grabbed its web as she gently placed it on another rack. She checked her boat’s position to the other riggers and her riggers to the other hulls and mentally prepared to remove the shell.

On a mental count to three, she squatted back down, straightened her back, leaned in, shuffled her feet out and lifted the shell. Her bow ball tapped into the floor, sending a vibration through the shell and Claire overcorrected, slamming the stern into a rack. Crestfallen, she apologized to the shell and took a few deep breaths saying to herself, “Easy now. Do NOT let this get to you. First time out is always rusty.” She got her bearings straight and smoothly executed a “lower to the waist, water-side down” so she could exit the boat house with the riggers pointing up and down and narrowing her chances at hitting anything else in the boathouse. With the boat in her hands, she looked down and saw her water bottle, again, all by itself. “You will just have to wait,” she said.

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The sky was much brighter now and rays of the sun’s telltale white glow were shining above the treetops. She was relieved that she was no longer in the dark. Carrying sculls is one thing, carrying a 25-foot, 31-pound racing shell in the dark was quite another. As she approached the dock, she saw a pair of slings ready and waiting for a shell like a cradle waiting for a baby. She put the boat in the slings and turned back to get her water bottle.

Once on the water, things started to click into place. She felt her muscles ease into their old motions and she thought actively about her form. “Press through the heels, straight back, left hand over right, straight back, square the blade, drop the blade, pull the handles, feather the blade, roll back up, press through the heels …” and on and on. Again and again, taking her to her zone, her place where she was most alive and free from the weight of the world. A fish jumped beside her shell leaving the water in ripples and her scull blades did the same. Down, whoosh, slide, up, back, down, whoosh, slide. She was warming up and felt a bead of sweat under her baseball cap. Her skin was cooled by the gentle breeze her rowing provided. She was at peace.

She decided to practice some balance drills.

Lay back, pull in the handles, hover the blades, hover … hover … skimming and shisshing is okay… shisshing is ok, hover … hover… shish…balaaaaance… hands together… silence! annnnd roll back up to the catch, repeat the drive and hover…. balance … balaaaaaaance… skim… roll back up to the catch…

“This. This is MY happy place,” she said with a mild swelling in her heart, a little tear in her eye and an effortless smile on her face. It had been a long winter for Claire and now it was spring and she was ready to begin anew.

© 2013 Molly Field :: All Rights Reserved.

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Thank you.

Next round: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/friday-fiction-2-1-pants-on-fire/

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Here is today’s prompt provided by the lovely World’s Worst Moms: “Let your characters work through the old saying, “Perfect is the enemy of good.” 

That’s it. piece of cake. Cupcake.;)”

Check out the posts from our other Fiction writers today:

http://clearlykristal.com/?p=3532

http://wp.me/p2FdGQ-1mK

http://worldsworstmoms.com/friday-fiction-part-16-the-ties-that-bind/

http://debiehive.blogspot.com/2013/05/fiction-friday-challenge-impossible.html

http://neargenius1.blogspot.com/2013/05/fiction-friday-may-episode-2.html

Feb18

What I Will Gain by Quitting — 2: Five days after Facebook Lent Give-Up

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This post is incredibly self-absorbed, so if you click X right now, I’d not blame you. However… what if what I have to say strikes a chord with you?

Here is my first entry about this topic: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/what-i-will-gain-from-quitting-journal-entry-1/

So it’s been five days since I left Facebook for Lent. (I think of it more as a matter of convenience actually, as I look back on it now because I’m not terribly religious, but I am spiritual.) The first thing I’ve noticed, and have allowed myself to admit is that by being on Facebook for so long, I’d become programmed or conditioned into thinking about my life, my day-to-day, or even my extraordinary experiences as status updates or as blog posts.

Often, I would wonder,

“Is this clever enough, will I get a Like?”

“Will it impress or somehow engage someone on a deeper level, or will it be ignored?”

“Do I want a deeper level? Do I even want to engage? Am I lying still to myself about all this?”

This is deep stuff and I am a deep thinker.

from http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/headcandy/2009/02/10-tips-for-giving-up-facebook-during-lent.html – this is a 4-year-old article. Its best line: “Write down the last five things you did. Wait ten minutes. Read the list. Ask yourself if you give a &%$#.”

Now, after a few days off the grid, I find myself itching to go there, during moments of perceived boredom, during moments of downtime; and I don’t know why yet. In reality, I am a SAHM, so there really isn’t any downtime; something always needs mending, cleaning, attending. I don’t know why I think I’d be better off reading about someone else’s life: it’s a distraction. A way of not dealing with my own.

Is it truly connection?

What is the point?

Is it to compare and contrast?

These are queries; and I haven’t a clue. I don’t judge anyone else; Facebook has been invaluable to shut-ins and people who have little outside exposure. But what about the rest of us? Those who are gregarious and social by nature? Is Facebook turning us, those people into shut-ins? I remember that Facebook lets 13-year-olds on it. I remember how it started: as the revenge tactic of a snubbed young man who decided to release his anger publicly at the woman who rejected him; but that wasn’t enough: he had to pull other women into the fold and embarrass slander them too.

The entire Facebook concept was begat of rejection, shame and vengeance. Of course we are told it has evolved since then, and it largely has, but still there lies a mustard seed of its essence: comparison and emptiness. I am kidding myself if I believe otherwise. Watch “The Social Network” if you aren’t savvy to its origins. Often I would be tired after being online. Seldom refreshed. – Me.

I used to be a news hound. I still am, or at least I thought I am. But I find myself discarding my news updates in favor of going on Facebook. I used to exercise diligently. I used to have amazing self-discipline. That has wandered away. I am hopeful that I will fill the ever-growing void of Facebook with self-engagement, with self-empowerment.

. . . . . . . . .

Last week, for Valentines Day, a “holiday” I would normally reject, I made “lovesagna” (instead of lasagne), I made red velvet cupcakes and I dipped strawberries in chocolate. All of this, this wellspring of familial enthusiasm for the babies I created with the love of my life was encouraged by a meeting with a eldercare consultant, who knowingly nodded to my snub of Valentines Day, my referring to it as a manufactured holiday. It was never really celebrated in my house as a child; my family of origin was not a dependably happy place. Lots of pain, secrets, privacy. I told her these things; we must get to know these consultants in a way we are not comfortable with. They need to know things: like how we engage with our parents. That was a very difficult exchange.

She understood my reluctance, my inwardly directed shame at not being a better daughter; at not tending to my aging and needy mother. She understood my hesitancy to over-perform with people who did not over-perform for me. Who left me waiting outside the camp grounds or the dance alone or with teachers or counselors who’d had places to go and who knew that although it wasn’t my fault, I was the target of their heat vision. So much pain, but so much joy too. She answered me with, “You can not always give back what was not easily given to you.”

She listened to my recollections of the day and others like it and quietly said later on, “I just believe we should celebrate something every day, and if we are given this gift, to celebrate the most wonderful thing of all, the one day we can let it all out there, and put it out for the world to see, we should. We just should.” And she was right. I’ve never given much celebration to anything major or minor occasions in my life; a remnant of my parents’ emotional parsimony and narcissism. I need to change that. I am demonstrative with my kids, but I am not honoring my true inner cheerful human person when I get vexed every time a happy event comes around just because my parents had issues with it.

How this dovetailed though, with the Facebook sacrifice (ouch) is that I wouldn’t have done those things, I wouldn’t have gone to the store, gotten the makings, gotten out the pans and the mixer and the gear to make those foods because why… I would have gone on Facebook instead. I would have logged on and said “Happy Valentines Day!” and I wouldn’t have meant it. Not one syllable. I would have Liked other people’s stuff, and Liked their stories, and I would have Shared some sentiment of the day, and I would have grumbled inside, fueling my inner misanthrope and calling myself a hypocrite because I would have been denying my inner self: the private person I am, the deeply thinking and deeply feeling person I am, the analyst, the artist, all of it denied rejected to stay popular with the crowd. To do what everyone else is doing.

I celebrated Valentine’s Day and the best part of all of this is that I didn’t say it on Facebook, but I said it privately, to my family, and I meant every syllable. For the first time in a very long while. Probably ever.

Yesterday, Sunday, I watched nothing but old movies on the couch. I watched “Gaslight” and “How to Catch a Thief” and then later I watched the not-as-old, “A Beautiful Mind”; I was struck by them all. Every single one of those stories was about masquerade in one fashion or another. We all have vulnerabilities.

Today, I am waking with less self-consciousness of my thoughts; whether they are “Share” worthy. Wondering if any of it matters. But I miss my close FB friends very much. But I don’t reach out; I feel slightly alone, I feel slightly sad about my decision. But this is how it goes. This is where the growth is. This is where the pay dirt is. As my very wise therapist said years ago when I was addressing my addiction to chaos he said, “all resistance is to change.” How right he was.

Thank you.

ps – here is the next entry: https://mollyfielddotcom.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/what-i-will-gain-by-quitting-facebook-for-lent-3-resisting-urges-feeling-left-out/