Tag Archives: emotional health

Mar14

Emotional Socialism: “Let it Go”

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I have some really smart friends on Facebook. While I will post the occasional cat meme, I am blessed with cogent debates about things that matter to me. My primary interest in life is what I call “Advocacy of the Self.”

Which to me means to live life with health, awareness and self-regard while also considering others. It’s not always easy. I stumble a lot.

Today, I opine on the harm of “Let it Go,” our new emo-national slogan.

I don’t know the slightest thing about the movie “Frozen.” Nor do I know the lyrics of “Let it Go” and obviously, I have no clue about the plot line and the song’s meaning (having three boys, the youngest of whom is 11 will ensure that I will never see a female-geared animated film).

I prefer this version of the film:

The November 2014 issue of Psychology Today dedicated its cover to “Let It Go.”

I posted on my Facebook wall a blog post written about “Letting Go of ‘Letting Go’.” My appreciation of the post was found in the penultimate sentence, when the writer gave herself permission to essentially take her time in “letting go” of things:

My new catchphrase is, “Let go of your need to let go, pay attention to what is happening now, and life will move on, you cannot stop it.”  Not as pithy as “Hang in there, baby,” but much more useful.

Somewhere along the evolution to our current emotional pop culture schema, we have been told that anger is bad. No. It’s not. Anger is a strong emotion, and it often tells us that something is wrong with our world. When anger morphs into violence or self-harm, then it’s dangerous, but as its own organic thing, anger is extremely valuable, useful and healthy. It tells us to be aware, to be on the lookout and to plan for survival. This concept of “Let it Go” in order to avoid anger, reminds me of valium. Be angry, allow it. Let it motivate you to a healthier place (but that takes guts). Just don’t be a dick to other people because of it (it’s so much easier to act out than to go within isn’t it?). I’m guilty of that.

Even giving ourselves permission to Let Go of Letting Go of things, reminds me of a Escher Drawing or a hall of mirrors. I suppose the mantra I used to have, “Fuck it” is the same thing. It never worked for me. I had a friend who said it all the time and her adult life has been much more chaotic and disturbed because to me, in retrospect, she lacked the interest in navel gazing. I’ve always been interested in what motivates us.

So “Fuck it” doesn’t work.

It begs “Fuck what?”

Fuck that. The thing that’s bugging you. Fuck it. Throw it in the trash.

Okay. Now what?

Live your life. Don’t connect the dots.

What?

Connecting the dots only makes trouble. Trust me.

But what if what happened to me shows up in others ways? Have I learned from what was bugging me?

Who knows.

What if it happens again?

Then you haven’t learned.

So then what then?

Learn from it.

But you told me to Fuck it. To let it go, to move on… But it happened again.

Who did?

You did. I did. We decided together. To fuck it… move on. But here we are.

Here YOU are. You’re supposed to go through it again, apparently.

But I don’t want to.

Then you need to learn from it.

What does that mean? To learn from it?

To process it, examine it. To look at it, take it apart, smell it, hold it up to the light and other things –people, stories, patterns, experiences– in your life, stretch it out, throw it against a wall, rinse it out and leave it in the sun to dry. Accept it. Take it in. Try it with a nice cabernet or maybe a broiled salmon and dill sauce. And then see if it comes back or if you’ve processed it and you have had your fill of that.

Then what?

Well, you won’t know until you know, you know?

Huh?

Regardless of whether you accept it, you do have to go on. You can keep looping, wearing that same thing all over town, saying the same thing, all the time about the same thing, or you can accept it, eat it with some cabernet, as suggested and see what happens. Because LGO: Life Goes On. Look, you have two choices: keep looping or accept it so you take it in as a part of your reality and then let it go. You can’t let go of what you’ve never accepted and denied in the first place. Right?

No.

What?

Well, I can fight it.

That sounds familiar. Sure, fighting what is. Fighting, denying your reality. Do you like gravity?

What?

Or the sun? Do you like the sun?

I like certain parts of gravity, that it keeps me from floating away, but I don’t like what it’s done to my boobs or that it’s given me arm flags.

But that’s not how it works.

What?

Gravity. You don’t get to like just parts of it. You have to accept all of it. Look, accepting it doesn’t mean you LIKE it. But so far, if you don’t accept all of it, you’re denying all of it.  How’s that worked for you so far?

Not great. My arms still wave. I could get surgery, I suppose.

WHAT? Are you daft? You know you will die one day, right?

Yes. I do. But I don’t like it.

Don’t like what? Death? Who does. But do you accept it?

Well, I have no choice.

Yes, do you.

What?

You have a choice, all the time. You can accept this is how it is, or you can by all means: deny it. Because it’s worked so well for you so far, so, by all means keep doing it.

What?

Keep denying. Or … accept it, process it and learn from it.

But isn’t that wallowing? That processing and learning?

No. Wallowing is wallowing. Processing and learning are processing and learning. Wallowing is like … maybe just as bad as saying “fuck it.”

Hmm. I guess I didn’t process it. I guess I wallow.

Do you loop?

What?

Loop. You know, repeat the same story? To yourself, whomever will listen, the cat? That’s wallowing. You’re just blah blah blah… mew mew mew, but no real action or acceptance?

Yes. Definitely. I’ve done that. But not about my arms.

You just thought you’d be fit and trim and perky-boobed until you were dead at 90? That gravity would just keep your body on the Earth but not pull your chin along with it? You do know your chin IS part of your body… so are your boobs. So are those difficult challenges in your life you keep seeing in different clothes.

I didn’t really learn from it. I still experience the same people in different iterations, I still fall for the same stupid stuff. I still have these things happening to me.

Well… Does it hurt?

Yes.

Then fuck it or accept it. This is about physics, Newton’s cradle, emotion-style: “Fuck it” is a kick upward. And what goes up must come down. The other, acceptance is a pull in. Per physics, once you take it in and allow it, it can only do one thing: go away.

What if it’s anxiety related?

Breathe. Process through what has you twitching and all the while, remember to breathe.

But isn’t that “staying in the moment”?

Good catch. Sometimes it is. Sometimes that “living in the moment” shit can cause serious confusion.

Right. Because if I stay “in the moment” in which I’m freaking, then logic would dictate that I would stay there. So then what??

When that happens, breathe it out. Take a look of what’s around you, assess if you are in danger or are actually threatened, and see if you can breathe yourself to the Next Moment — the one where you can rest and know you’re really OK.

People don’t like to hear us complain all the time, so we feel a need to put on a pretty face, to “fake it until we make it,” as they say. To get arm flag surgery. My jury is still out on the value of “fake it until you make it.” Sometimes bootstrapping and moving on is really the answer because staying and sifting through ashes and destruction makes no sense. Other times, if we don’t take an assessment of what the hell burned down around us, we are doomed to revisit it.

Sifting through emotional stuff is a personal experience, even if we all share it — like 9/11. We all experienced it, but we all have our own reactions and everyone has a different rate of distillation. As illustrated through the scary visit to my brain above, the answer really is acceptance to what is. (Another catchphrase.)  What might take you a couple hours to accept that what’s bugging you as not just a fleeting phase, could take someone else six months or six years. That what is bugging them is major — to them (often it snags on a deep wound they themselves don’t quite have their finger on — and that the rest of us who suggest, encourage, propose and ultimately urge people to move the hell on is coming from not a place of love but one of exasperation.

Sometimes “let it go” is akin to a request I used to hear from my father (sorry Dad) often as a child, “Oh, geez, come ON… just… Will ya? Will ya let it go? Will ya?!” I can not tell you how many times that phrase and its essence, its urge to get the hell over yourself, was uttered. In the white-collar 70s, emotions were verboten. My memories of my parents are that they were often like George Costanza’s: often talking over each other, lots of rushing and not much empathy or patience for one another. I often heard “Will ya?!” from both of them toward each other and to me upon expressions of what was considered to be “harping on” and looping of emotional tapes.

I remember as I aged and got married and had children of my own, that when my mother made her frequent requests of me for a “real and kind woman-to-woman relationship” between us, I would have to (there was no way around it in my book because real means real) approach her alcoholism and how it affected me and our relationship. To me, this wasn’t a new friend I met at the bookstore (as I think she wanted to pretend our relationship was). This was my mother.

Inevitably, upon her numerous often heavy-handed requests for a relationship and my eventual broach of our past, she would groan. Often she would tell me to move on, to just let it go. It was often mere breaths before “Will ya?!” flew from her gut, through her duodena, up her esophagus, pass her tonsils, glide over her tongue, and press out her lips. She wanted no part of that part of the relationship whereas to me, getting real was what it was all about between us if there was ever a future. She never apologized. Not once. Often I was told that I was too emotional or that my expectations were unreasonable or that she was sorry she “wasn’t the perfect mother…” which was often a slap against any sentiment of mine wishing that she were a healthier person. That’s where my anger always stepped in. I would become enraged and she would patronize me. So I didn’t accept her as she was and she pushed me to let it go. We were the definition of a Newton’s cradle, the balls smacking back and forth again and again and just keeping time.

Often, when we suggest / plead / beg / urge / insist to others that they let it go, I have found that it’s to benefit the requestor (witness) and not the person going through the gauntlet. Witnessing someone go through the juggernaut subconsciously stirs up all sorts of feelings of vulnerability and no one likes that.  So they tell them to get over it, or let it go or move on. A healthy empathetic response is to see that person’s release and simply hold a space for him, to let that person emote.

Often, we want to stop this stuff. It makes us feel all oogey inside. Our stomachs turn or our throats seize up and then our eyes well up. We don’t like that. “Now you’re going to make me cry…” (How often has someone been shamed by another person who blames the first person for making her cry… It’s okay people! It’s just salt water and emotions! You WILL survive this! I promise!) Case in point: I was told by my therapist that when people / witnesses reach out to very upset person with a hug or a tissue to stop or put a pause on the grief. That tissue or hug isn’t necessarily empathy, sometimes it’s a repellant.

It seems that this concept of pushing people to get past things has become something of a national pastime.

One of my friends on that FB thread said “Let it Go” reminded her of our obsessive cultural pursuit of happiness. Whatever happened to just letting shit happen and giving each person his or her own pace and time and method for dealing with life’s ups and downs? Whatever happened to contentment? Why must we be HAPPY all the time? It’s exhausting.

As the thread progressed, I had decided that “Let It Go” has created some strange form of emotional socialism. That everyone needs to be emotionally dressed in muted gray or beige and that equanimity (which to me is like an opiate of the masses because let’s be honest: sometimes shit sucks) is ranked with godliness.

I used to really believe in equanimity. I used to drink that Kool-Aid. I even wrote about it. But over the years, and since my mother’s and my father-in-law’s deaths and watching my sons grow up and all the emotions that has stirred up, I think equanimity works best for the monks in the caves and mountaintops.

You can’t Live Life, in all its richness if you simply let everything go. You cheat yourself out of lessons, out of experiences, and out of triumphs when you do that. You rush acceptance. In fact, you skip right over acceptance when you are pushed, per someone else’s emotional deficits or clock, to let it go.

We can’t let go of anything we’ve never truly accepted. And even then, even after we accept it, we still have to get to know it, this new awareness, a little better. Try it on for a few days. Take it for rides in the car. Go shopping with this new awareness. See how it interacts with our friends and family. See how we feel with it as we rest at night. See if it tugs at us as we try to sleep or if it simply lets US be.

I hope this post didn’t suck. I’ve already let it go.

Thank you.

 

 

Jan20

Grief: Alcoholics are Not Nice. ACOAs Have their Moments Too

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Little known facts:

Before I write publicly, I always take a few breaths and meditate on what I’m about to do.

Each post I write tends to have 20 small revisions before I click “publish” (which really is a misnomer, because I’m sharing, not exactly publishing, but that’s another post sentence paragraph altogether).

For the past year, I’ve not only meditated, but I’ve gone with my gut when I write, doing my best to cast any fear aside so I may best and most freely express myself.

For the past nine months, I have appealed to Archangel Gabriel, the angel of messaging and the one who visited Mary and told her about her pregnancy — to me Gabriel has it going on, and if I can get a smidge of that, I’m happy. What I’ve specifically asked for of Gabriel is three things: candor, humility and humor. Sometimes in differing order; I determined that Gabriel really knows the best way to parse out these things.

Last weekend, I hosted my family for what we call “Second Christmas” — it’s named as such because we don’t all see each other on Christmas. I host every other year. Thanksgiving is all my side of the family and Christmas is my husband’s.

Mom has been gone now about 16 months. Some “holidays” are easier than others; the last time we celebrated Second Christmas at my house, it was February 2013 and the experience was really emotionally profound for me personally. I recall going outside and looking at all the snow which had recently fallen and seeing our outdoor Christmas lights still on our bushes out front light up the snow from beneath it.

The street was silent. The snow, in its big fluffy flakes, was heavy yet soft and I could hear it land on all sorts of surfaces, other flakes, the leaves of the bushes, my jacket, my cheek … and I remember saying to myself that I was really so very happy. I took it all in, privately and alone outside looking in toward my home where everyone I cared for most deeply in all the world was existing, for just that moment, in what I inferred as a state of harmony and presence.

I remember coming back into the house, the contrasting heat and voices rushed over me. I came in from silent, dark yet white to chatty, bright and yellow. I said to everyone, “There could be no finer hour for me again because everyone I love most — in all the world — is safe and here right now.” I am sure one of my brothers made some snarky remark because I can tend toward the sentimental at times (it’s seldom but it happens), or maybe he didn’t, but the truth is that I was in such a state of bliss, it didn’t matter.

That was the last time I hosted and it was the last one Mom attended. She died seven months later of a massive cardiac arrest on her way to get a root beer float.

So this year, we were all together again at my house. I knew it was going to be hard for me; I was twitchy the week before and I knew it was just something I had to push through and I was really happy to do it. My immediate family is one of my most favorite things, but it was still a lot.

During one of our down times, we turned on the previous night’s Saturday Night Live. The musical guest was a former hip-hop artist named Sia and I’d never heard of her because I’m ancient and I listen to Pandora or yoga music. Her first performance was really … just so bizarre that I couldn’t turn myself away from wondering what the hell she was going to do for the encore. She did nothing bizarre, but she sang a song called “Chandelier” which simply took my breath away.

I Googled Sia. I wanted to know about her song, about her as an artist beyond what my family could tell me: she went completely underground for a while, but now she’s back. She obscures her face, in some form of ironic protest to the amount of publicity she gets, so now, instead of having a face everyone can see, she has created more interest in her face because you can’t see it now…I don’t know… People are weird.

Anyway, the song is about alcoholism and it’s an autobiographical anthem and when I say anthem, I mean Anthem: she belts out this song as though her life –and possibly others– depended on it. I could have been Sia; I could have been an alcoholic.

Maybe it’s the chords, or the song’s structure of minor keys and minor chords, but I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by it. It spoke to me about my own mother and the sadnesses she must’ve pushed away in order to perform as much as she could in a real world with real children who have real needs.

Sia isn’t asking for acceptance or your pity in this song. She’s just telling you how it is in the most primal and aggressive and self-sacrificing and beautiful way she can. I don’t know how she can speak after singing that song — not only is it emotionally draining, but her vocal range and thrust of the sounds that come out of her head are insane.

So it got me thinking, after reading about her, the song, her history and as much as I want to give my mother a break — even though she’s dead — for all the shit she put me through as a child and young woman and young adult and middle aged adult, there is a part of me that just … isn’t quite ready.

It’s not that I want to re-live all that hell, and I definitely don’t court it. Simply, part of me can’t move on entirely from it yet because I think I haven’t processed it fully; I haven’t fully accepted and decided that what all the books say about Adult Children of Alcoholics is correct: that we aren’t the cure, the cause, nor can we control it — “it” being the alcoholic’s alcoholism — and that thinking you have some control over someone else’s life choices is a bit of an ego rush, no matter how sick.

As much as I want to let it all go, there’s a hang nail: if I keep it — the pain of being an ACOA — in my chi, then I also keep Mom alive, and that’s really hard to deny, so I don’t bother. If that’s all I had with her, for the most part: her rages, her narcissism, her deflection, her projections, her denial, her lies, her manipulations, her rages and rages and rages — all those things coupled with my fear dressed as anger, then she isn’t really dead is she? And I get to still play a victim to it. (Lots of layers…)

The other thing is that I lived on “alert” about Mom for more than 40 years, so it’s going to take some time to wind down and let it all go and relax.

I have many wonderful people in my life who tell me to let it go, to move on, to forgive her, to let it go to let it go to let it go… and I have, for the most part, but it’s completely impossible, isn’t it: expecting me to release all the pain and fear and hurt and shame and guilt and rage is like expecting me to forget what the sun on my skin feels like. We love it when the sun rests on our skin for a few moments, don’t we? We do. And we recognize it immediately as a good thing, a familiar thing. It powers us, it feeds us vitamin D, it cleanses our senses for just a moment when we are zapped into that moment — from WHATEVER we had going on in our heads — to feel that eight-minute-old blast of heat, nourishment and “celestial love” from our giant blazing gas orb. The sun sustains us.

So it is the same with me and being my mother’s daughter. That relationship lasted almost 46 years. I’m no masochist and so I ask of anyone who knows an ACOA (who admits they are an ACOA) to cut us some slack when we get swept up by a song, a memory, a smell, a sound, a feeling or a silence. Just cut us some slack. This shit’s hard.

Growing up with an alcoholic parent is hard — like, the kind of hard some people can’t even imagine: We have to rely on someone like “Drunk Uncle” to take us to school or make our lunches or wake us for school or bathe us or take us to the doctor… But “Drunk Uncle” is a sloppy drunk; he’s funny and creepy but not super angry. Replace sloppy, funny, and creepy with pissed, snobby, paranoid, mean and morose and that’s what I had. Imagine that taking you to a friend’s house and meeting their parents. Imagine that opening the door or answering a phone call for you.

A part of my being an ACOA denies my mom her affliction because that is too hard to admit: that she chose a substance over caring for me. Plus, I protected my mother like a guard dog from a harsh society and its realities. It’s nuts.

How do we do it? Well, I do it with humor and candor and humility (“There but for the Grace of God go I”) which keeps me as stable as possible and well, slightly more off center than someone who grew up in a “regular” home. But I cheer myself also, because unlike someone who grew up in a regular home, I’ve overcome shit you don’t even understand and while that doesn’t make me better than anyone else, it does mean I’m not a damaged loser either — I’ve overcome it, with a semblance of love, kindness, humor, silent compassion and reality which can astound.

ACOAs are not into trivialities — we don’t have time to bullshit. We hug you because we mean it. We love you because we feel it. We repel you because we feel you’re toxic; we are like human barometers — we don’t have time to suffer your delusions, rationalizations, intellectualizations and obfuscation, excuses and blathering tedium because WE HAVE LIVED THROUGH IT already. So if we cut you out, it’s because we’re done; likewise, if we keep you around, it’s because we love you with a love that is powerful, humble, vulnerable and loyal. When we Do The Work of being an aware ACOA, we are probably one of the best things to have in your life. We’re like rescued pets…

Candor.

My dad asked me yesterday after I ranted about what a wretch my mother could be, about her rages (which he knew nothing about because he and the rest of the world was at work or asleep), “You say you miss your mother…. why do you say that and then say things like this?”

I thought I’d explained it before, but he’s older now and it’s been a rough ride for him — almost 60 years with that woman will take its toll and he has his own health as an aging human — so I cut him slack and say, “Sure. I get it. I know it’s a conflict. The thing is: I always missed her, or what she was supposed to represent: a mother. I mean, I am still here; she didn’t completely jack it all up…” But I don’t miss HER at all. I really don’t. Not for a second.

The worst was some of her AA friends. Mom had all the books, attended all the meetings, even worked the phones for AA at midnight to help people who were suffering as she was, to support them and try to encourage them from taking that drink in the middle of the night. I remember the phone would ring at all hours, waking me up. But I supported it. Some of the people calling were really hammered though. I resented them; I knew she would likely fall to having a drink on the call. The lure was too strong.

And her meetings friends … they were really insufferable, saying all the sayings and using all their codes, nodding knowingly at me as I would walk by, snarling and hissing. They disregarded my pain, the suffering of our family. They said many times that I needed to cool my jets, be a better daughter because my mother was so fragile, that I would toss her over the brink. Many times I told them to go to hell. I see it now, it was a form of self-protection: a tribal “thing”: they were doing the same things to their families and kids, they had to protect her from assholes like me… There was only ONE person I respected in her lineage of sponsors: Ellianet. She was a tall, lean and sporty woman. She was still in Buffalo. She was tough and real and she would allow my anger. Not enable it, but “see” it and she understood it. She was a loving, consistent and firm hand to Mom. Mom thrived with her. I think she was sober for a couple years with her. Then we moved. Even if Ellianet lived here, there was no way she’d hang with some of the cheap-shoe, big-haired, Cadillac-driving poseurs my mother ensnared in her web. I honestly think Mom went to those meetings to recruit actors for her plays and Tennessee Williams readings in our moody, suburban, book-lined living room…

But there were good years for her. Mom worked the program for a bit, she made real changes and I was proud of her. Still bitter as hell, but proud. I knew better than to let my guard down as I became a full-blown teenager. She would help people, staying sober for a few months at a time, maybe even a year or two. She was lovely then. But the relapses… oh, they were crushing.

Humor.

We talked about people on my Facebook page who have much fonder memories of my mother than I was ever blessed with (why they can’t imagine that a person like Judy Garland, Carol Channing or Liza Minelli would ever make a good parent is beyond me). They offer their plastic platitudes and essentially refuse to see the other side of the story — that having an angry Bette Davis for a mother is really, not cool. They would gloss over my pain and ignore the truth I’d love to skywrite on our cyan canopy. I say that says more about them, not her and certainly not me.

These people mean well, I know they do guess, but they have an appreciation of my mother that … simply didn’t exist in my world. That version of Mom was more of a visitor. Dad understood that; lots of people didn’t know my mom. She was a secret wrapped in an enigma disguised as a puzzle. I don’t think she knew herself.

Alcoholics are really difficult people. They booze up to cover their pain which they won’t tell you about because __________ and then they expect you to just rainbows and butterflies deal with it; that you’re the one with the problem if you have a problem with their problem. 

I told Dad, “They say things like “think of her fondly…” and “she was a wonderful woman …” and “she loved you so much… ” or “she was your mother, of course she loved you…” (so all those times she woke me in a rage at midnight 1) to find her things she was convinced I stole; 2) correct or defend a paper or diary entry I wrote; 3) or to clean up a mess I made hours before when she was out of commission was her way of showing love).

I rolled my eyes, laughing in contempt.

He understood it only partially. So I went further. Dad is one of the funniest people I know, and so I portrayed and parodied my response to those platitudes, “Oh! Yes, I can recall those wonderful moments … sure. Give me a second …” and I used my left forefinger to count on my right hand, finger by finger and opening my palm recounting the kindnesses, moments of fearless love, and security my mother selflessly extended to me and I mocked myself, pushed back pain, feigned enthusiasm and difficulty discerning the pleasantries and I counted to four. He laughed and we moved on.

Was it all for effect? Was I performing? Yes and no. Sometimes humor is all I can muster to deal with the reality.

Humility.

Reflecting on that with my dad revealed to me that it was yet another moment for me in my life of now 47 years that I realized that I’m no walk in the park either. I joke with friends, “It’s so nice being perfect…”

I can be super reactive like a viper; I can say some really stupid things — completely without thinking — as a result. I have a sense of “humor” honed by years of pain and hurt and rage which can either lift you up or stun you. I try to apologize when I figure it out. I try to grow.

So I listen to this song by Sia again and again to flush it out of my system and then I get it, as I’ve gotten it so many times before in my life and this won’t be the last time (thanking God)… because

There but for the Grace of God go I…

I’m a lucky person. I am so aware of what this year means to me — when my mother was 47, she was uprooted from her hometown of her entire life and essentially forced to pitch tent in a new place… oh! Hers was an emotional tsunami that no one could’ve ever predicted.

If I ever thought my mother was “weak” (and I have plenty), her defiance of that life we all tried to make in 1981, has shown me otherwise. Mom was not weak, she was a force, but it broke her, that move.

So I will be on my toes for weird stuff this year.

I believe in genetic energies — that when she was 47, I was almost 14. I was her middle child. I am 47, my middle son is almost 14, and this year has lots of messages for me and my son and I plan to do my best to watch it all and stay present and stay humble and stay grateful for the fact that I’ve survived what I did.

I also need to give myself the latitude of knowing that I am NOT her and that if we end up (randomly and unexpectedly) moving this year and start a new life, that it will be OK because I am ME, not her.

I can embrace that whatever lesson my mother had to endure to teach me by example to keep my life together –despite all the pressure and feelings of entrapment and bullshit of life that she and we all endured– that she taught me well.

Mom taught me well. She used to say she was so grateful that I’d escaped alcoholism. She used to say she was proud of me for it, but those conversations only resulted in me being mad that she wouldn’t stop. And then we would fight.

I haven’t had a hangover in 17 years. I’ve never submitted to the “hair of the dog” to convalesce after drinking. Somehow I knew that having a drink because I was sick from having too many drinks was a reeeeeeally bad idea. She would tell me often of how I am genetically marked, that I exist in the crosshairs of a fatal condition.

Will I think only fondly of Mom from now on? No. And please don’t ask me to because I’m messed up too. She didn’t always speak of her mother with 24k golden love either.

For some people, when I write about Mom in this way, they chafe, the shift in their seats, they furrow their brows, they take breaths and sigh… They get mad. That’s on them… that’s their messaging from their own bodies that they need to pay attention to.

If what I say bugs you SO much, I posit to you: why? Why can’t YOU handle me writing about my alcoholic mother in such a fierce way? Is it because to you she was so much more than that? Ok… I’ll allow it. But as much as I allow it in you, I ask you to allow it in me that she (as any alcoholic is) was a fatal, atomic combination. She, in particular, was a talented, entitled, narcissistic artist; an actor; and a drunk. You try growing up in that and let me know how you turn out. Let me know if you fart rainbows.

In her egoic, human state she would want only gorgeous remembrances — that she was more than what I paint her to have been. She would want me to throw her a bone because she refused many times to permit my recollection of the horrors of my life as her child. She never apologized, she never owned her stuff nor allowed that she shaped me. She used to say, “You have anger issues, Maally…” and I’d be thinking in my head, “YA THINK?! I WONDER WHY…”

But as much as she couldn’t allow it in her human state, in her energetic, spiritual state I feel “she” gets it and “she” knows that it’s not so simple: Mother sets the tone — I know this more than anything — as she recalled of her own mother. My mother set the tone and I fell in line, like a duckling. Maybe in some crazy way, she didn’t want me to get too close to her because she was teaching, training and honing me in order for me to stop the cycle.

This is my lemonade.

So this past weekend was the last revolving holiday “tradition” Mom attended and for me, writing about it was cleansing. I feel as though I’ve been able to close the chapter now. Moving on.

Maybe it’s time to think about forgiveness.

Thank you.

Jan7

Transference — Tend Your Own Garden

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I don’t know what it is about the winter, but it seems to bring out the bear in me. At a time, when I should be going inward, slowing down and reflecting in order to prepare for a better or new / improved renewal in the spring, I have found myself lately drawn in to the drama of other people and getting really tired of it.

Usually I can float on the surface of such things; usually I can smile and nod, like a game show host at the unraveling contestant on my set. I could gesture to the camera tech or producer to cut to another shot.

But lately, the allure has been too much. I have found myself zooming in, in super-HD to examine the pores and nose hairs of the people in my life, looking for flaws and looking for ways to fix them. For me, this is wrong, and it’s classic transference:

Transference is a phenomenon characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is “the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person’s childhood.”

Basically, I am recreating the dynamics of the same crap / relationships I had as a child. (Transference is hard to depict, and it’s very subtle. If someone wants to help me out here, correct me: please do!)

This is my own layperson’s understanding of transference: that when a person named Percival does something that reminds you of a person named Mortimer and you end up unconsciously treating Percival like you would have treated Mortimer, even though conditions, situations, context, relationship, everything is different.

And so Percival is all like, “Gladys! I had no idea you felt this way!!” And you’re all like, “Gladys?! My name is Hilda!”

WAKE UP! This isn’t about your grandparents.

Hahahaaaa… Anyway…

That is transference as far as I can understand. And it’s unconscious; it is something we are not aware of, but when we become aware of it, and our tendency to exhibit transference in our relationships with other people, our lives can change.

I miss you, Charles Schulz.

I miss you, Charles Schulz.

It didn’t used to be like this. I have had significant “training” (therapy) to help me understand when this is happening. In fact, I quit my first therapist because I believe he started exhibiting transference to me and I felt the neutrality was jeopardized. But lately? It’s not like it’s been happening without my knowledge. I know better.

It was like sipping from the bottle of chaos for me. Look at another person’s so-called problems, and treat them as I would the person that I’m reminded of so I don’t have to focus on myself.

I chalk it up to boredom. I also chalk it up to a basic fatigue of navel gazing, of looking back at the misfires in order to create a more content and pleasant future or present.

It’s addictive, the navel gazing, and it’s really narcissistic too, because after a while, if we don’t make any healthy changes based on our navel gazing, if we don’t become aware of our tendencies redirect, or deflect, or point the finger at someone else, we end up deciding that our way of living is A-OK, Billy Bob. (I don’t know where Billy Bob came from…) And nothing changes. We drink/gamble/eat/smoke/shop/dream/navel gaze too much, we shout too much, we hold on too tightly. We don’t improve.

What bugs me most about result-less navel gazing is that lots of people are into it. As a yoga instructor, I try very hard to live the code of mindfulness, of “live unto others” and be cool with whatever happens because that’s meant to happen.

I had a student who reached out to me. She has since quit my classes (yes, they do leave me). It was not under the best of circumstances that she left (she transferred her past / mother on to me and wanted more of me than I felt was professionally appropriate). But I don’t “cut” people off unless I get a directive from them or the situation goes from awkward to untenable. So as is customary, when I was sending out the announcement for the upcoming session, she asked me to remove her from my email list. I did. I get it: clean slate, start over. I dig that. It showed me growth from her. I was actually happy for her.

Namaste and all that stuff.

Moving on.

Oddly, a few months later, she sent me a link to a blog about yoga instructors and how we need to check our egos at the door and not make the classes all about ourselves and trying to attain the perfect pose and just letting our students meet THEMSELVES where they are, so-called “limitations” and all.

Well, if you’re a friend of mine, or you’ve read anything I’ve written or taken a class of mine, you would know right off the bat, that I strive each day to be a growth-oriented and “it’s ok where you are” type person. That paradigm shift for me was massive, 10 years ago. I can hear me now: I didn’t just accept things the way they were! I fought them! That solid, cold, black iron rod must be bent and turned into a platter to suit my needs! Without fire! Without heat! Without cajoling or kindness or flattery, sincere or otherwise… Man, I was a fighter, but without cause.

Back to reality: the irony, of course, is that this former student (and I can say this with a ton of confidence) was still projecting her stuff on to me. My days of “perfectionism” are toast. Twenty years of combined marriage, parenting, yoga, crazy mother, and classic psychotherapy, CBT and EMDR have exorcised that demon. She spoke endlessly to me about her need to make the Yoga Journal -cover perfect pose when reality simply didn’t allow for it.

I recall clearly that I would speak with her after many classes. Calmly, nodding, listening and hearing her, feeling her desperation for acceptable levels of perfection….

I drew her attention to a tree outside and said, “Would you ever consider that tree imperfect? Would you say that it’s not a ‘tree’ as defined by what our understanding of what a tree is? It’s got a missing limb or two, some knots and a hole in its trunk…” She shook her head ‘no.’

“Those things give it character. A place for animals to live.” I added, like freakin’ Snow White Freud.

She nodded and agreed, her eyes welling up a little in the sun. Her nose grew pink and she started to chew on her inner cheek, leaning on one leg more than the other.

“Then why do you beat yourself up? Do you think that tree would consider you somehow imperfect? Why must you insist that you are? And why must you fight your story, your reality, to prove –for whom I don’t know– your perfection?”

I was all “This is our reality… It is what it is, man… y’dig?” In my Nehru shirt and dandelion chain tiara crown.

She said she understood, that she appreciated my help and time. That I was a true teacher and friend to her for doing so and she thanked me.

Then the phone calls increased, the emails increased and the text messages increased. She wanted more of my time; I began to feel uneasy. This is my issue: I didn’t like being someone’s salvation. I couldn’t save my own mother, there was no way I could to do it for a yoga student.

She wanted more of the class’s time and attention. It became a cyclone of need. I had to draw a line; I had my own personality limitations as well as a real interest in protecting the integrity of the class, the time of other students, as well as my reputation as an instructor to manage disruption. I had to ask her after class to stop the chatter, the distractions in class, the bringing of the “outer world” into the room. “…We take our shoes off as a gesture of the solemnity and respect for the practice of yoga, likewise, we need to do with our day, our woes, our ego and our mirth. I ring the bell at the beginning to announce the tenor of practice, to introduce a new moment. Not everyone had a bad day like you did… not everyone just aced a final like you did… everyone is working on something personal and unique in here, so please respect that.”

She didn’t say so. She didn’t say anything in fact. She packed up her stuff and thanked me for a nice class. Only later, I surmise, did she decide to tell me (indirectly through that email) that my interests in protecting my yoga classes felt unkind and ego-identfied to her. That I was asserting my “authority” in a non-produtive and territorial way. I was the enemy. She resorted to her native coping skills and never communicated with me again.

Until that link to the blog.

So I sit and I sigh. Distracted by this not-very-subtle jab at my person and teaching style I start to wonder, actively, about that person. About what makes her so high and mighty, what makes her the high priestess of ego and yoga teaching? She’s not such hot stuff, why if she were then … And what’s with the contacting ME when she told me to take her off my list?? Talk about BOUNDARY ISSUES!!! Why she …. …. …. ….

And down the rabbit hole we go. Watch out for that root on the right as you go down, it’s like a whip.

The good news is that that rabbit hole is brighter now; it has landing strips by it and it’s not as bumpy, deep or as curvy as it used to be. My descents into it are less intense and more fleeting. It’s more of a gopher hole. But the gopher holes are everywhere and they’re in my garden.

Instead of tending to my gopher holes, instead of sealing them up or planting a flower in them, I look over the fence, into someone else’s garden and I start to think about where an azalea would look good to cover up that ugly corner; or that a shade tree would do well to keep from burning up the astilbe… My, she doesn’t know how to tend to her garden; she’s got shade plants in full sun… her kids are likely on drugs too… that son is a mess… I thought my mom was weird … her mother is a trip…

… and there we go again. Me thinking about someone else’s crap instead of my own. Me transferring my energy and my thoughts and my precious little time left on this planet to someone else, someone who’s into the drama, who’s into the distraction and who’s not able to understand my “brand” of help; or my timing.

People need to work at their own pace and just because I can see all the traps and falls awaiting that person, it doesn’t mean 1) she can or 2) he cares. Sometimes the elixir of someone else’s problems or issues are SO important strong that they keep us from working on ourselves. As I said to a friend this morning, fully aware of all the trappings of the drama I’m hovering over, “I love decorating someone else’s house…”

What else this means is that I stop the narrative I’ve been telling about my life. I’m 47. It’s time I put things in their boxes and ship them off for the garbage dump (or the book). My story of who I am and how I got here is precious to me, yes, but it doesn’t define me and it needn’t hold me hostage anymore. I’m not just the result of my parents’ union; I have transcended that — years ago — and I am a fully functional adult female human who has co-created three more humans. I am more than 1967 – 1990; so much more. I am 1991 – 2003; and 2003 to now, and counting. I look back at the time I feel I have squandered worrying about my mother and father, about “reputation” and about fear.

The only way I can, and you can, and your neighbor and your former friend or ex-spouse, or ex-lover, or former yoga student can fully achieve our own fantastic full-blown personhood is to learn from the past, not let it hold us back or down anymore, see it for what it has provided (a backdrop, that is all — and that backdrop changes with the set of our stories!), and move on, with gratitude for all it has provided. We can leave that garden where it is without regret — and that is hard!

Leave that garden in the sun or in the shadows, in a state of flourish or disrepair, but walk away from it nevertheless. It’s not our garden anymore, and the garden that IS ours, needs us. We can walk into our own garden, as modest as it is, and tend to it. Talk to it, let the sun in and the rain fall. We can see it in the greater landscape with all the other gardens, in their own individual growths, and we can admire it all, while keeping the errant vines and the weeds out of ours. And we can step back. And we can see it grow.

Thank you.

 

May15

Cutting Off Is Never That Simple

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I have never “enjoyed” the process of letting people go, of making the decision that cuts them out of my life.

It is incredibly hard. Depending on the depth of the relationship, it can be emotionally devastating. But so can staying with that energy, allowing it to cloud your judgement and color your thoughts.

I was once told that I seem to do it with such ease, that nary a thought occurs to me when I execute such a decision, that I seem cold, heartless and missing the bigger picture: that having sandpaper people in our lives can yield in us a softer and kinder person. That the parable of the pearl, created through agitation, can apply to us humans as well.

I get that. In fact, the phenomenon of a pearl’s creation is one of my most favorite analogies in dealing with life and its moments of intense difficulty.

I also think about bridges and how they snap under too much pressure; I think about how load-bearing walls are there for a reason; I think about how hurricanes and tornadoes and earthquakes and mudslides show us how when enough is enough, it’s often too much.

I have been a jerk to people and they’ve summarily cut me out. I get mad, defensive and feel like they’re insensitive to MY needs, that for some reason, I should be tolerated for epochs and should be able to just chip away at people because hey, “I’m flawed. Love me anyway, ok? Love me for me….”

Why? Why should people love me for me? Are they Jesus? Are they the Dalai Lama? Are they Mother Theresa? No. They are not limitless in their compassion (which means “to co-suffer,” by the way), and often it’s their compassion that needs to kick me to the curb. They need to get out of my way so that I can look at myself in all my idiocy, with all my raw data and no filter to see myself, as I can be: an asshole at times.

Enter nine years of therapy. Being raised by a brilliant, distant, narcissistic, elegant-on-the-outside, tortured-on-the-inside, terrified, caustic parent has prepared me for others like her all my life. I get it now: Mom prepared me all my life to be on the lookout for more people just like her.

Exploiting Kindness

Even Mom said to me when I simply couldn’t handle any further duplicity or hurt, “You have nooooooooooo problem just cutting people out of your life…. you just cut them off because you can’t handle what they show you about yourself… You’re not strong…. you’re weak….” and I used to believe that.

I used to think, “Holy shit. She’s right: I am unable to cope with this, I must be stronger and show myself that I can take it….After all, ‘what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,’ right?” which from my now very-cheap seats, that kind of self-talk sounds a lot like masochism, and self-abuse. It looks a lot like enabling too: if we keep letting it happen, if we keep exposing ourselves to the same people who hurt us or that make us uncomfortable, then we are tacitly endorsing it, we are allowing it. All of this, and many more forms I’ve likely not mentioned looks a lot like putting ourselves last.

When we take a stand, we hear the appeals and the apologies and the boo-hooing and before you know it, you’re shoving your intuition down the tubes and taking care of the offender, by putting them first. You’re suddenly responsible for their feelings. You’re suddenly telling them it’ll be ok and thrust into feeling bad for making them see the truth. (More below.) It’s verrrrrry sneeeeeeaky.

I’m not talking about the discomfort that arises when you do something uncool and someone calls you out on it. I’m talking about witnessing an uncool act and then saying nothing about it. The former is an opportunity for change; the latter is fertile soil for codependency and continued ugliness.

Over time, the bridge can only handle so much load. Over time, the walls cave in. Over time, the bough breaks and down will come baby, cradle and all.

If you’re like me: you were conditioned to doubt what you saw and what you felt and rationalize everything that hurt. You were conditioned to try harder, longer and put up with more, to essentially stand in the lightning storm under a tree, then the guts and the gumption to begin to decide to cut people out often comes at a price: we are bruised, we are broken, we have suffered and we have poured out our spleen on the table — only to have to defend it. It’s madness.

But we still try. We try to keep the broken wagon rolling because we have been conditioned to do ALL WE CAN to abate the pain of the offender. We don’t want the other to feel bad for our exposure of their treatment …

Then there’s the actual decision: incredible self-doubt to make the decision to sit up, to stand up, to leave, to walk and to not look back. NONE OF THIS IS EASY.

Then there’s the weight of the decision, the appeals and the blame and the “but you’re not perfect either and I love you anyway!” music from the person who can’t sit with your decision, who can’t sit with the hurt they’ve inflicted on you, who can’t look themselves in the mirror and dig deep inside themselves to shine a light and look at why they do what they do — and not just to you, but to lots of people. Why they stir pots, why they fight so much, why they pick and tear at people and their psychic fabrics. They have to keep flapping because that keeps the dust flying. If they were to stop flapping and let the dust settle, they’d see the wash of destruction and hurt they’ve inflicted on people.

Another point, and it’s very subtly played out: When person A starts out with an apology, but it morphs into “you’re no prize either, I’ve seen you do some crazy shit…” You, person B, have naively slipped into the defending-yourself-for-no-apparent-reason-when-this-was-supposed-to-be-an-apology-from-the-other-person zone. It’s a slick slope.

I don’t like this feeling when I cut people out: the supposition that I’m intolerant, that I’m hard, that I have no flexibility, that I’m the one who is unkind, that I don’t forgive and forget, that I’m super-sensitive and that I have no compassion.

But is that me? Am I projecting that opinion on to myself and placing it on society? When I’ve heard similar stories from other people about treatment they’ve endured up until a point or whilst in the midst of it, I’m certain I’ve said, “That sucks. You need to cut bait and leave…” So why should I, why should you, why should anyone stick around?

Is there some great grand lesson? Heck yes! The lesson is this: IF IT HURTS, STOP DOING IT OR IT WILL CONTINUE.

This is what we say in yoga, “Take the pose to your edge, no pain. If you feel pain, back off. You are not supposed to feel pain.”

I can’t believe for ONE second that we are put on this earth to suffer; that God or whatever you want to call it is so spiteful that we are supposed to ENDURE needless emotional pain, for that’s what lasts the most.

But I Love You Anyway…

Those people who try to pull this on you, say “I love you for you” and “You’re messed up just like I am…” are again placing their crap on you. It’s subtle and sneaky and I like to believe it’s even unconscious, but they are again saying, “Take me for how I am with all my shit [because I’m unlikely to change] because I take you with all your shit [which is equally screwed up; but even if it’s not*, my misery loves company and I can’t bear to be left alone with myself] and you and I will get along fine… [Just don’t remind me of what I do…]”

Don’t be fooled by it! They are trying to lump you in with their bad behavior; they are trying to point the finger at you; they are trying to play the upper hand, and BELIEVE ME: THEY ARE JUDGING YOU! Right there! They are judging you! It’s very very very subtle, but you’ve just been judged. They’re keeping score, they’ve been watching you screw up all along so that when the freaking hammer falls, they’ve got an ace to throw on the table. *if you’re drawing a line, if you’ve hit your limit, chances are you’re no longer as equally screwed up…

The last time I checked: if I didn’t give birth to you or marry you, I don’t have to take this. I can be nice, I can be civil, but there’s nothing else I need to give to you. Speaking of children, what are we modeling for them if we just keep taking it? To teach them resilience AND self-care, we must model strength in all its forms.

People who are close to self-actualized play fair and  this recent bullying experience has shown me all I need to know: if an adult is an actual adult, and possibly your friend, s/he doesn’t go after your kid to attack or argue with. They go after you. They don’t rationalize what they’ve done as “crazy” and they don’t offer forced apologies to continue to rationalize their behavior.

Any adult who goes after a child is a predator, no matter how you slice it: they go after the weaker and the smaller and I simply don’t have time for that.

God gave me my mother for a reason and I’m so grateful now. Mom showed me that I had to put up with only one person like her, because she honed me to deal with life in a very clear cut way: I must stand up for myself because expecting someone else to is folly. Shrouding abuse as friendship / love / marriage is really insidious.

As Travolta said …

Cutting people out is never easy. There can be community repercussions, you might lose some sleep over the decision, you might want to run back hours or days later and say, “I didn’t mean it! I am sorry I cut you out after you abused me! You’re right! I should’ve been stronger! We all make mistakes!” (DON’T DO THAT.)

Sometimes, it’s the only way. You don’t have to take it. You can’t be a jerk about it, but you don’t have to take it. A clean cut, no matter how difficult and uncomfortable, will also, my friends create a pearl, or brighter yet: a diamond, and that sparkly, shiny thing is you.

Thank you.