Shifting Paradigms: Unsteady Ground

I will admit that at times I am jealous, tired, sad, and resentful and when I get these feelings, or emotions, they tend to cluster together and feel overwhelming. I know that they will pass, but I also wonder what they are trying to tell me? How do I sit with these feelings and not just want to stay in bed and cry? Who in the wide world of sports wants to know that I’m suffering in this way? My children definitely don’t, and my friends, well, they usually come to me with their issues. I know though, that I’m not alone. In the New York Times Bestseller, “Are You My Mother?”, writer Alison Bechdel shares poignantly about her own envy saying, “I was suffering at this time from nearly unbearable spasms of professional envy.” I feel this way when I read about women like Arianna Huffington publishing yet another book. And I tell myself, “This is the old paradigm, this is the paradigm that says there is not enough, or that if Huffington has so much, there is none left over for you, if Huffington is espousing mindfulness, why should you bother.” And in this paradigm, “How” I ask myself “can I compete?”

In my new paradigm, I know that there is no need to compete. This doesn’t sit with the research I’ve found that says women drop out of competition even when they are worthy of the task. Do we compete then, or not compete? Or do we trust the universe? Is it masculine power to compete? Femine power to trust? For me, in my understanding of trusting the universe, I don’t have to compete, I just have to show up and the universe will usher me into the next place in my life. I am trying to make sense of some of this with my own therapist, who has been really helpful, but I’m not sure he understands the different paradigm I’m trying to shift into. We can call this “laws of attraction”, “abundance”, or whatever this is, where all of our emotions are good, and we learn from them, and we trust in abundance rather than lack. I feel very alone lately in my trying to make sense of this.   

In Bechdel’s story, she is seeing her own therapist, who replies, “All this makes me think that in your own family there wasn’t enough room under one roof for several geniuses.” And that is sort of how I feel, only, it’s not just in my own family, it’s in the world, and it’s also the fear that perhaps I’m not really a genius at all, just a want-to-be writer, just a little girl who didn’t have a voice growing up, who wants to be heard. I don’t actually even want to be a genius--whatever that is, as much as I want to have a place of belonging, which is a more accurate description of what was missing for me growing up. There was no-one in my family even aware of what it might mean to be intellectual, to be curious, to have a desire for more of life; and so, in my bookishness I felt odd and alone. My middle daughter Erin, put it sweetly once, when she said I was like Roald Dahl’s Matilda. 

I worry, too, about what I write about. As my daughter, Kathleen is writing her own memoir, she is writing about her disconnect from me, and I wonder, is my focusing on my own lack in my growing up just continuing to show up? I had hoped to have provided a place for my daughters where I felt no place as a child, and maybe in my own striving to not be my mother, I still was my mother. This makes me feel so hopeless. Yet, I also know, that whatever it takes for my daughter to make sense of her own life, I want for her. 

Maybe I’m the one who wonders if there is room for lots of people to have their voice, to have their emotions, to have their genius. Often, I struggle with playing down who I am, what I’ve done, what I know, maybe believing that I need to let others share and shine. I wonder, as my daughter writes, if I still need to write, want to write? Can I just pass on the torch or is my voice still valid? She tells me that when wisdom comes it is not us, that we need to get out of the way; but I want to own my wisdom, I felt so much of wisdom was forbidden to me as a child, forbidden to me as a woman, that the wisdom I feel I have is hardwon, and to say it comes from some universal good feels like all I've done will be taken away from me, yet a part of me believes she is right, too. As I want to normalize and understand all of our humaness, all of our emotions, I struggle with what emotions are ok to share only with loved ones, and which to share with the world. I was brought up that way. There were always so many secrets, so many things to keep private, so many things that were hidden away that the burden of it all became too heavy. Finally, the door that these things were behind became unhinged, and it all fell out onto the floor, into the light of day. Here I am, so imperfect, yet so willing to keep trying, to keep loving, to keep showing up, without trying. As my paradigm shifts, do I recognize my own voice? 

As my paradigm shifts can I allow Huffington to be who she is without comparing myself, can I read the unparalleled genius of Bechdel and still feel like I too want to contribute? Can I let my daughter's voice tell of all of our struggles to love each other and still feel loved? I want to believe it can be so.