Why I won’t be eating turkey with you this year

When I was young and you said racist and sexist things, I cringed, but had no words, no experience and no one to defend except myself. And so, like everyone else in the family, in our family, I listened, I heard and inside I crawled far back into the recesses of my mind where it was safe to be different from you. 

As I grew up, I saw other families who could be safe with each other in all the ways they were different and I longed for that but believed it wasn’t meant for me. I read books and had experiences with stories, getting to know people who wouldn’t know me, keeping myself as safe as I could. 

I went off to college with your blessing and learned of patriarchal ways and found heros in Audre Lorde and Tillie Olsen, coming home for the holidays I was excited and wanted to share what I was learning, but there was no space. No words to bridge the worlds between us. I accepted your hugs and subtle rules that we don’t talk about anything meaningful, but mean things could be said. 

This year, I am hurting and I need to be in a safe place that isn’t inside my head. You see, I’ve realized inside my head was a refuge, not a comfort. Any there are people in the world who have space for diverse ideas and conversations and people, and these are now my people. There is no solace for me in turkey and vapid conversation. 

I hope you enjoy your turkey and mashed potatoes and gloating over your new president elect. I hope you all feel safe both inside your heads and around the table, where only certain things can be said. I don’t want to hear or condone mean things being said anymore and I’m too tired to enter into conversation with you; to try to tell you it’s not ok. You’ve never listened and the silence is deafening. 

Start Again

Staying in stride is easy. Stopping and coming back, starting over again is hard. I’ve been thinking about how to come back to my writing, how to post another blog post, after it’s been so long. So many thoughts to write about, so many things have happened. I can just stay inside myself, where I’ve lived for so long. Where I’ve developed a relationship with myself, where I know the dialogue, or start again to share my world. Where the words need to be heard, not just said. 

For the last two years, I’ve grown my private practice to full-time, which means on any given week I am listening to anywhere between 28 and 38 people, couples or families. Listening deeply, and entering into conversation that facilitates awareness and healing. I love my work. It’s satisfying and mostly it comes easy for me. It’s also very different from being in my own little world, with my own little (or big) thoughts and putting them on paper. So to switch over feels really hard, like moving a boulder. And so most days, I tell myself, “It’s okay that you’re just a therapist now, it’s okay to not be writing for a while.” And yet as these days start adding up into weeks and months and years, I feel sad, and I miss my writer self. I’ve been reading more books and articles and feeling that sad jealous feeling that this person is a published writer (and I’m not). 

So, here’s my attempt to come back, and I’m going to tell you some of the things I’ve been doing, instead of writing. 

Years ago, in a class on art therapy, I made a collage of myself with a very large head and a small body. Once it appeared, as art seems to appear as we create it, I thought, “Yes, this is how it is. I’m all in my head, not in my body.” And very much like the Dorian Grey story, the opposite of this collage was actually becoming true. My body was becoming bigger and bigger. I’d never thought much about my body for most of my life. I was blessed with a rather proportionate body that worked really well, and I took it for granted. 

While in graduate school, and working (sitting on my ass for most of the time), I gained weight and I lost flexibility. I didn’t eat well, I skipped breakfasts and I ate trail mix for dinner while sitting in a classroom. This was after nearly a lifetime of doing a lot of moving around with my body, whether it was chasing children, riding bikes with them, doing yoga and circuit training and even aerobics at times. Working full-time, and being in school meant that I sat all day at work, I sat in the evenings in class, and then sat more when I started my private practice in the evenings after work. I sat writing papers. I barely knew how to bend over any more, seriously. When I dropped something on the floor, it took work, serious work, to pick it up. 

So, I decided to move my body again. I started walking, I started doing yoga. Doing yoga after not doing yoga for years was discouraging. I used to be pretty good at yoga, not great, but good. Now, after about a year and a half, I’m getting some flexibility and strength back. It was like no one was home in my body anymore, like all the stress in the world had somehow found my hips and shoulders and decided since they were empty to just settle in there. I had to remind myself that little by little I would become strong again, flexible again, and to not continue would be to accept my body becoming even more rigid and weak. Not an option. 

I’m eating better now. I’m eating actual food, not trail mix. I’m counting calories, not just to count calories but to see if I can get all my daily nutritional needs met by eating the right food. Some days I can, some days I can’t, but I know I’m getting more nutrition than ever before. I’m feeling better, feeling stronger and I’m heading off the five pounds a year I’d been gaining. All this calorie counting and food preparing takes time, and so when I think I have time to write, and instead I make breakfast and lunch and enter the food items into the computer; I no longer have time to write. I’m flying out the door to one of my two office locations. 

I’m trying not to feel like I’m turning my back on my writer self, I’m telling myself I will get back there. I will start again, just like with the yoga. Life is stops and starts sometimes. Life is beginning all over again sometimes, when we’re like, “What the hell? I have to start again?” And life is like, “Yes, start again.” 

Blatnik Bridge

I took my fears with me on vacation. In June, I rented a lovely cottage on the shores of Lake Superior, in Bayfield, Wisconsin; only to find it was on the cliffs. I have a fear of heights. I had two of my grandchildren with me, the younger two. Even when my own children were young, if they got too close to any railings that overlooked anything, my heart would choke, and my knees go weak. I had this feeling on and off while we stayed there. I worried that I’d rented a place that was ‘dangerous’. We were all fine, there were fences around the property, with beautiful overlooks. Never mind that there was a huge drop and cliffs and rocks below. 

Before we even arrived in Bayfield; I had a panic attack going over the Blatnik Bridge in Duluth, this bridge takes you from Duluth towards Superior, on the way to Bayfield. I was driving and I just kept going even though I wanted to just stop the car. Once over the bridge, we realized we were going the wrong way, and guess what? To get to where we needed to go, we had to go back over the bridge. Right, I can do this. Both being lost and having to cross the bridge were difficult for me. My daughter turned on her navigation on her phone, and then realized, oh--we have to go back over the bridge again. She offered to drive but we were on the freeway system in Duluth, without any easy exits to switch seats. 

I drove over the bridge again. Three times all together. Why does my body do this to me? Why do some people get a thrill at things that totally turn me into jelly? I was angry too, and wanted to problem solve. There should be a warning, or a lane that goes 20 miles per hour for those of us who not only don’t want to be up that high, in the wind, but also going so fast. Don’t the people who build these bridges and set the speed limits on them understand that some of us have fears, phobias? It seemed insensitive. My heart still tightens thinking about it. I white knuckled it and talked myself through it. 

Taking all this in stride, I did kayak Lake Superior. The whole family went. This was excitement I could handle. We had two amazing guides and when the water was too rough by the cliffs we turned back. The views were stunning and keeping the kayaks going in the right direction was a fun challenge. I’d been doing yoga for over a year now, trying to build my strength to kayak, and so this was a huge personal success, even though my daughter Megan (in the back of the two seater kayak) did most of the heavy paddling work.

All in all, the vacation was wonderful and too short. I did not pull over on the bridge; that seemed even more scary that to just keep going. I want to trust my body, know that it can do amazing things, even if it tells me it was not created for such heights. 

Meloncholy Baby

I’ve been reading Patti Smith’s M Train. Erin gave it to me for Christmas. I’d read passages of it and the writing was so beautiful I put it on my Christmas list. It is a gift, and yet in reading it, it takes me into a place of words that twist and beguile in a way that I feel lost in my own past, the way the author gets lost in her past. And it makes me worry about aging, about getting old. The way even thinking about Patti Smith when she was young makes me feel, somehow musty, dusty. I become afraid, and I have to tell myself, to just shake it off, move on, life is good, vibrant. 

What does young mean anyway? For me it was unfettered, before children, before being accountable for someone’s life. When I traveled, as Smith recounts traveling. When I was in Paris, London, Rome, even Berlin, before the wall came down. A busload of college students traveling through Europe. Before I got married, making a note of the places I’d return to: Hydra, Prague, Saas-Almagell in Switzerland. I have memories of walking the beach on the French Riviera, dark narrow streets in Venice. On our honeymoon we went to Paris, London, and Stratford on Avon, but once the babies started coming, I was home, and Steve traveled the world not with me, but with Prince. 

I’m accustomed to women writers, hip mamas, whose lives are about mothering. I’m surprised that Smith doesn’t talk much about her children, she wishes she could see them as they were when they were little again. I’ve thought of this, of how my babies would run to me, how they were bursting with newness about everything, and now they are adults, so different, and yet, the same. I envy her this detachment, at least in her writing. I measure it masculine against feminine, how cool ‘girls’ were the ones more like the boys, detached. I also worry that this is what happens in aging, that the important times, the immersion in the mess of parenting or relationship, is what really counts, and nothing else counts, now. 

Like a shadow life. I’m afraid of a shadow life. I was pulled back into the past just yesterday by Kathleen. Trying to make sense of her own beliefs about herself, about life. Remembering the horrible therapist I took her to when she was so little, who encouraged I punish her. I colluded against my beautiful daughter, I did not understand what I know now. And all I can say, is I’m sorry. I’d wish I’d known better, I wish I could go back and hold your beautiful child self and offer understanding for all of it. Winnicott* says that a child needs to believe that their emotions will not annihilate their mother. I did not let you believe that. I believed that your emotions were too potent, too powerful, and I didn’t know what to do with them, or with you when you were overcome with your own beautiful feelings. 

Feel them all, let their beautiful messages about life and love and everything in the world inform you more than MSN, more than Facebook, more than Tolle or Smith or anyone else. I have not been the perfect mother, I have placed some things as more valuable than others and sought after these. But Nature Boy spoke the truth; The greatest thing you'll ever learn, Is just to love and be loved in return. I’ll finish M Train, it’s a beautiful read, but then I need to move on out of this melancholia that began in the fall. Return to bright colors, scents of spring, the past few months too dark. 

*With the care that it receives from its mother each infant is able to have a personal existence, and so begins to build up what might be called a continuity of being. On the basis of this continuity of being the inherited potential gradually develops into an individual infant. If maternal care is not good enough then the infant does not really come into existence, since there is no continuity of being; instead the personality becomes built on the basis of reactions to environmental impingement.(Winnicott, 1960)

Hail Mary Pass

Our first teachings are our real religion-- they are what guide us on our way. Jesus loves me this I know but what love feels like I’ve come to feel as fear, as judgment, as not good enough, ever. Would you die for your fellow man? So I make myself small. We are all dressed up complete with lacy veil upon my head, as my mom’s head is covered, too. We are women and not allowed to be in the church with our heads uncovered. My dad’s head is uncovered, his words unfiltered as we drive to and from mass. He is swearing, and I am scared and wonder how his mind throws so much anger about. The car is full of anger, and again, I am full of fear. If I can’t sit still in church my mom will give me a dirty look. I want to cry, again, to overflow with the things that I have no words for. 

Just last night, when my sister spoke back, he struck her and I lay in my bed, in the room I shared with my sister, too scared to intervene. In my head I want to run down the stairs and scream at him to stop it, but I don’t. I stay small quiet. Pretending to be asleep has come to be part of my survival repertoire. Would you die for your sister? Would you be able to spare her life? I would not pass the test, I may not get into heaven, anyway. But still I try to be good, be quiet, not have any needs that might exasperate anyone.  

Who is in charge here? My mom feels confident that my dad will never strike her, and he doesn’t, yet us children are at his mercy, and at times, at her mercy, too. She yells and hits and threatens, too; but sometimes hums and talks about better times. She talks with her sister on the phone, maybe she’ll come for a visit and the yelling and hitting will subside. Hail Mary full of grace, where are you really, when I need you? You are holding baby Jesus in a way I’ve longed to be held, cradled, safe. 

Look at the pictures of the Holy Family, Joseph, teaching Jesus at his carpenter’s bench, so peaceful, so loving, before Jesus goes off to his gruesome death. I go down the basement to my dad’s workbench and get out my paints. I feel safe down here, connected to dad stuff, work stuff, important stuff, my dad shows me how to clean my brushes with turpentine. My mom hangs my still life of rose in a vase on the wall on the staircase landing. I am a good girl; smart and talented. 

I want to be like Jesus and travel around, making friends, making statements, being controversial, but I don’t want to die a horrible death. I want to be happy. By the time I am only 11 years old, my oldest sister has become pregnant and married to her boyfriend. She used to tell me that our parents should get divorced, this just confused me too. The fighting starts to end. It is only me and my younger brothers in the house. My dad isn’t angry enough to hit us anymore. The older siblings tell us how lucky we are. My dad still scares me, my mom still confuses me. I try harder to be smarter, better, a good girl, waiting for Mary’s embrace, approval from my lord Jesus, a smile from Joseph. 

Angel of God,
my guardian dear,
To whom God's love
commits me here,
Ever this day,
be at my side,
To light and guard,
Rule and guide.
Amen.

I am never alone. God, and his angels, see every, every, little thing I do. I need to be guided, because I on my own know no good thing. Every day there is something that confuses me. Dodging slings and arrows. I secretly start to disbelieve or believe that perhaps I am crazy. Just a little bit crazy. 

New Year

"They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold. I deem them mad because they think my days have a price."   Kahlil Gibran

Since I’ve been on the other side of 50, I have this feeling that I’ll never quite have time to do all the things in life that I’d like to do. If at 20, I had no clue of all the things that were possible, I now see possibilities everywhere, and know that I mostly just have to choose. I used to see so many obstacles; gender, class, money, location. I now know that those things are entirely constructed and therefore, can be deconstructed, and moved through or around. That I did not know at 20. 

So, how do I structure my days, “spend” my time? I am learning the opposite of what I believed to be true about money and the arts. It is that not only can you make money in the arts, you can make money doing what you like to do, and create more time to do what you love to do. It is actually less risky than I’d come to believe, in that you learn to trust yourself and the universe to support you, rather than a hierarchical institution. As I write these words, I almost can sense the pushback, there must still be some vestiges inside of me, of the belief that we can’t actually have what we want. Like it is wrong of me to even tell myself and others that. But I know we can, because I continue to get more and more of what I want in life all the time. Now, it's just choosing how I want to spend my time. 

I’ve been asking myself, then what do I want to do the most going forward? There have been a few projects on my mind. 1) Getting my memoir, Mother Love, polished and published. I wrote this around 10 years ago, in response to people asking how it was that Kathleen was able to be such a young mom, and still go on to get a graduate degree; and also as an encouragement (manifesto?) that young parenthood is not really that different than parenthood at any other age.  2) Creating and teaching courses for other therapists for continuing education, and/or creating courses for people in general. 3) Finishing the Etsy site I started nearly 2 years ago and build a website to sell my handcrafted jewelry. 

Instead of focusing on one of these things, I just keep kicking about all three of them in my head, and end up not doing any of them. I haven’t even really been writing much this past year. I didn’t realize that being a full-time therapist is actually very time and energy consuming, and even though I love it, I also have other things I want to do, too. So, if I own my time, and if I can do what I want, how do I choose? Well, somehow, crafting my memoir has become my priority. I have gotten enough feedback from people to know that I need to start the rewrites, and I’ve started to think more about it, and soon, soon, I will just open up the pages and start the process of editing and visioning the whole project. As I write this even, I find it a bit daunting.

The daunting part is quieting the voices that tell me it's too late, that I'm too old, that ask how much do I think I can have in life. That tell me a quiet life is ok, that I don't need to imagine book tours and speaking about being supportive of our kids, no matter what. It's a trip I started on years ago, and I've had a chance to rest a bit. It's now time to get back on that road, and just see where it takes me. I want a chance to say, in my own voice, that when we love each other, imperfectly, of course, it still makes a difference. 

You Can't Always Get

What you want, what’s that about? Seriously, what is what we want about? I’m been thinking about this lately. Thinking about what I want and how do I get what I want, and how important is this. I think it is important, and I’m not quite sure why, but it has something to do with efficacy. Efficacy literally means; the ability to produce a desired or intended result. If we don’t know what we want, how to we produce a life we desire, a life that is meaningful, intentional? 

Yet how many of us were told as we were growing up that we could indeed, have what we wanted? I know I wasn’t. I don’t even know if it was something that was possible. I rarely, if ever got what I wanted, and the one time I remember getting what I wanted, I was ridiculed over it. What I was taught, indoctrinated into really, was the idea of sacrifice. That this was the meaning of life. 

The Red Plaid Dress

When I was about 7 or maybe 8, I took the bus downtown with my mom to shop at Dayton’s department store. This was a big deal, shopping with mom was a treat, as one of eight kids, we rarely got one on one time with her. Dressing well was really important to my mom. When she was out of high school, she worked at both Donaldson's and Dayton's department stores, and knew what better dresses were. She told me often of the beautiful dresses she and her sister would buy when they were young. This was the 60's and looking well-dressed was probably the most important thing in her world. This was what the hippies soon rebelled against, and we may never again see the well-heeled world that I, as a youngster grew up in. 

I don’t remember the occasion, or much else about it, but I do remember trying on dresses; and then my mom asking what dress I wanted. I wanted the red plaid dress. My mom didn’t think it suited me, but I remember really wanting that dress, and so my mom broke down and bought it for me. On the bus ride home, my mother was upset that she’d let me have my way, and she let me know that she thought it was a bad choice. I’d chosen the wrong dress. 

I don’t remember the actual event as much as I remember my mom telling this story about it, many times over. She was upset that she’d bought the dress for me; and then I never wanted to wear the dress, since it was associated with such bad feelings. And then, me not wanting to wear the dress, prompted the story that my mom would even tell to strangers on the bus. It seemed like that year, every time we went somewhere together, my mother would tell this story. The story about how I made such a bad choice, and how my mother bought this dress for me and then I never wore it. She would tell this story in front of me, and I would feel the pain and embarrassment, over and over again with each telling. 

So, now that my children are mostly grown, and I don’t have to devote almost all my energy to taking care of them, and I’ve worked toward a career that suits and supports me, what do I want? I feel a little trepidation even asking myself that, as if to want in and of itself is not cool. “Who me, no, I’m fine, I don’t want anything.” Cool as a cucumber in my not wanting anything. Yet this story haunts me lately, I think it has something to tell me. 

I don’t have the answers yet, on how this wanting is an important part of being human, but it’s on my mind. And I think if we let ourselves want what we want, we can be powerful in our lives. Which is yet another whole piece of the puzzle-- another emotion that we mostly don’t want children to feel: powerful. I'm relearning to let myself want what I want, to know what I want, and to feel powerful enough to believe I can have it, and then get it. We'll see where this goes. 

Lost October

It’s October 26, nearly the end of the month and the sky this morning, at 7:00 am was still dark, dark, dark. It lightened slowly by degrees until at 7:30 it was light enough to tell that the sky was overcast. Good, it somehow feels better that way. Today is Mary’s birthday, my friend from Catholic grade school who got kicked out of seventh grade with me. Even though it was acknowledged that I was the ringleader of the underground newspaper, because she had helped, (and was my best friend), she too was suspended. It was both of my sisters’ birthdays on October 11 (not twins, one was born on the other one’s birthday); and I have cards for all three of them around here somewhere. 

In September, I’d come down with some hellish cold or something, and was not feeling very well for weeks, along with my daughter. So, things weren’t really being very well kept up. At the end of September, I closed my private practice office in St. Louis Park, in preparation to be full-time with the group practice at Catalyst that I’d been part-time with. I was very excited for this move, but it meant that I had to get rid of my living room furniture to make room for the office furniture that was now going to go in my living room, and so in preparation for this we painted my living room and dining room. I had a lot going on. 

On October 5, our new Catalyst offices opened in Bloomington and I was excited for this new part of my career, no longer on my own, but fully part of a supportive group practice.  On Wednesday, October 7, as I was happily driving to Bloomington, trying to figure out how to configure my new office space, I got a phone call from my oldest daughter, Kathleen. “Mom, are you driving? Will you please pull over?” Fortunately there was a grocery store just there and I pulled into the parking lot. It was then that my daughter told me that her two sons’ dad, Jay, had been found dead in Iowa. The saddest news I think I’ve ever heard. Jay and Kathleen weren’t together, but they were friends, and continued to parent together. They had known each other since Junior High. 

I continued to my office, while my middle daughter Erin made her way to Kathleen’s. I cancelled all my clients and then drove to Kathleen’s to wait while she and Erin went to pick up Max, 13, at his school, to tell him that his dad had died. I then drove Max and Kathleen to Medford, to Jay’s parent’s home, outside of Owatonna, where Kathleen’s oldest son, Elliot, 18, had been living. We mourned and wondered what had happened. The days before the service were a blur. That next Saturday was the funeral, closed casket, so not much closure, especially for the boys. So sad to bury a young man, so many mourning a young dad, a son, a brother, a friend, an uncle, a bereaved girlfriend. 

Somehow, weeks before, in the midst of the painting and the moving, I had convinced my family to plan for a weekend in Wisconsin, and I’d reserved a cabin in the woods in Bayfield, Wisconsin. And so, a week after burying Jay, we drove the 4-5 hours to Bayfield and were able to just spend time together. It was a beautiful weekend, only slightly marred by Kathleen and I fighting briefly on the way home. We were both tired and hungry and grieving, figuring out how to be there for each other in the midst of pain and loss. Kathleen was at times overcome by the weariness of it. 

And now, now it is the end of October, plans are being made for dinner out for Thanksgiving. I am grateful for this. I want to settle back into the day to day, the gratitude for little things, the taking for granted of everyone in my life, knowing that really-- we can take nothing, nothing, for granted, and each breath we breathe is precious. I want to move past dreams of my dad, who died nearly 14 years ago, the sam year Max was born. Dreams that he is still alive, but just in the other room. Dreams of my parents still together in the same house I grew up in, even though my mom is in an assisted care apartment, way up North, where my sister lives. I want to dream of Bayfield, of hot tea with Kathleen and Elliot, after a long walk on a trail with Andy and Audrey, overlooking Lake Superior. Kathleen, Erin and Megan all doing yoga on the screen porch surrounded by trees. The colors of leaves reminding me of the upbeat Boy George song, Karma Chameleon, because the beautiful autumn leaves are red, gold and green. 

Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon

You come and go

You come and go

Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dream

Red, gold and green

Red, gold and green

Reverse Engineering Your Life

We are a culture that values working and productivity. We start our wee little ones out in kindergarten now with a full day ahead of them. Just last week my granddaughter started kindergarten and when she didn’t get off the bus when my daughter was there to pick her up, the bus driver found her asleep on the bus seat. I will admit I am ambivalent in many ways about our values and our systems. 

Just recently, I read an article that questioned if following our passion is really a good idea; is this really a way to make our way in life? The author was critical of this idea and skeptical. Maybe rightly so. We have so many messages that we are bombarded with these days, especially now with social media, it’s confusing. And with the style of writing that is becoming the norm, the quick, witty, everybody’s an expert 2 minute read, it’s hard to know really, what the person’s expertise really is.

Without really wanting to be an expert, with trusting the wisdom that I have from my emotions, from my body, this in a way, has become my expertise. I have learned that what we do does not necessarily generate the feelings that we want to feel, unless we are doing things that we are passionate about. It doesn’t even have to be doing something that we are passionate about in the short term as long as it aligns with something that we are passionate about (the outcome). 

But what our culture does, from the time we are very very young, is train us to perform. This is what our schools do, and this is the subtle value that creep into children’s minds: you are only as good as your performance. This value is within the overarching value that your time is no longer your own. You need a hug from mom, too bad, you are at school until the school day ends. Your time is not your own. Your teacher has power over you, and the power to discredit you to your parents and your peers. Your voice is small. 

And so, in the structure of school, what happens to our emotions, the way we feel? And at home, what happens to our emotions, the way we feel? Do we learn that our feelings matter, or do we continue to try to figure out how to perform in ways that will get us promoted? From one grade to the next, from one school to the next, and on and on from high school to college to the working world. And in between these transitions, how are we feeling? Good enough, smart enough, loved enough, seen, heard? 

What if we as a culture, focused more on how we felt, and less on how we think? And what if we believed that if we just left children to their curiosity and passion for learning that they would grow up just fine? Until we do that, how can we as adults change the values we've internalized about how life works, and create lives that have meaning, that support us, and that we feel passionate about?

I have become a firm believer in reverse engineering your life, this means, you decide how you want to feel, the values that are important to you, and then you let the universe fill in the blanks. I’ve done this off and on in my life and it works. I have no magic formula other than figuring out what has felt good, and what you want to feel more of. When I was newly divorced, and hadn’t worked in years and had to get a job, I had just finished my undergraduate degree at Augsburg weekend college. I had been commuting weekends from Owatonna to Minneapolis, and I loved being back in the city. And so, when I had to get a job back in Owatonna, I imagined to myself, “I want a job that feels like I did while I was at Augsburg.” I did this more wistfully than willfully, not quite knowing the power of creating how we feel. 

After a couple of terrible temp jobs, I ended up working (through the temp agency) at the front desk of a conference center owned by the University of St. Thomas, right down the road, in Owatonna. I hadn’t even known this center existed in the little town I lived in. The job was a good fit, I liked how I felt being there, even though being a receptionist was not what I envisioned. I was hired full-time and eventually promoted to the sales and marketing assistant. It was a job that I loved for most of the time I was there. 

It was actually that job, that fueled my interest in being a therapist. While there, we had life coaches and teachers come in and present seminars and teach. I was intrigued by a profession in which you could study and learn and share what you’d learned; either one on one, or in a group. That you could connect with people on a level that was not about their performance, but about their passion. 

And so, I wonder how each of us can become more connected with how we feel, and if we can conjure up in our imaginations not just where we want to be, not just a professional fit, but a professional feeling? How do you want to feel every day, how do you want to spend your days? How does someone come to believe that when they are a child and they love the sea, that they can play in the sea every day and become a marine biologist, instead of an engineer in an office? Is it ok to love your life, to value your time, to not mark your days by the time clock, but by the sunrise and sunset? How do you reverse engineer your life, to create a life that feels so good, your vacations melt right into your schedule? I believe it’s possible when we connect to our emotions, use our imaginations and trust that we can do what we want in life, being real, not performing. 

I also believe in the power of writing down the things that we want in life, and so rather than writing out the profession you want, or the things you want to accomplish, make a list of what you value and how you want to feel: 

I am in a place where the people are supportive and I feel accepted. 
The days are going by peacefully as I hear the sound of the ocean nearby. 
The people I work with are happy to be there and we combine ingenuity with collaboration. 

What's on your list? 

Risking Your Life

Sometimes in this brave new world of ours, where information is available at the click of a button--I am overwhelmed. I try to tell myself, “You know enough already.” But sometimes, my curiosity keeps pulling me, trying to find answers I already have. I picked up a yellowed, tattered copy of a book I’ve had for years now, called “Risking” by “America’s foremost common-sense psychiatrist” (David Viscott, M.D.) this morning. It was published in 1977. So many things about this book tell me it is old. Who knew psychiatrists used to use common sense instead of pills? The binding of this little paperback is cracked, the cover is stained. 

I bought this book most likely in about 1998? I remember when I read it, I was fascinated by the idea of learning how to risk. Back then, I had no idea that research would soon show that women took risks at a much lower percentage than men did. And because of this, women reap much less rewards. We are still socializing people by genders in different ways; and even though men are no longer really looked at as ‘breadwinners’ anymore, they still make more dough. 

Risking starts out with a quote by Helen Keller: Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. 

This quote, of course, is enough to make a helicopter parent explode, right? My child taking risks, having a daring adventure? But I do believe this is true, and good, and is one antidote on it’s own, to depression. 

As I flipped through the yellowed, somewhat musty smelling pages, I also came across this: When a person tries to control feelings by controlling things, his judgment becomes clouded by his incomplete understanding of his emotions. His feelings remain hidden but still exert a destructive influence on his life, which easily gets out of control.... Such a person tries to apply whatever controls he can, simply to reassure himself that he is not powerless and may persist in a self-destructive course of action even when the results seem opposite to what he claims he wants. Such people dread losing power more than anything else. That is understandable because they seek to control the outside world rather than looking at themselves and dealing with the feelings within (p. 49). 

I think most people believe that they can actually control others, and/or their outside world more than they can control, or even access, their own feelings, and this is the true struggle for most people. How do we regain access to our innermost self, our emotions, our embodied wisdom about who we are and what we want? What we believe limits what we perceive, and what we perceive directs our thoughts and behaviors. 

This means that we must first believe that our feelings have meaning, have value, and that to be able to be connected to our feelings must somehow be a priority. So many people believe that if they access their feelings it will be the undoing of them, when it fact, the opposite is true. But to change our thoughts about our feelings, about our emotions, requires a risk. Once this endeavor however is embarked upon, a whole new world opens up, and the adventure begins. 

I knew there must be a reason I've kept this musty little book. There are some gems inside. 

Good Morning

I slept so deep last night
It was like trying to climb out of a hole to wake up
The daylight stared at me
Glared at my body just lying there

I read a little of Written on the Body
and fell back to sleep again
Only this time half asleep
One ear listening for the drip of the automatic coffeemaker

I worry about my clients sometimes
this is my work now
The one who’s parents disowned her and
she is so alone in the world

The one whose beliefs about himself
are tied up in a religious system
which makes it hard to like anyone
let alone love yourself 

I wander through my mind thinking of ways to help 
I remember to sit and listen with love
open hearted
but still maybe there’s a book that will advance the cause 

Once I drink the coffee all will be better
I will be out of the dark hole of sleep
into the light of day
caffeine telling me go on go on 

Whisper of breeze
the buzz of a motorcycle
the color of the roses on my patio
brown sugar and whole milk in my coffee

The Intersection

At the intersection of race, racism, oppression and belonging. 

This is what I tell my clients, that two of our greatest needs as humans are autonomy and belonging. We need to know that we have agency, and also, that we belong. When we know we belong, and are supported in our autonomy we can feel confident to explore and express who we are. In understanding the context that much of our culture was (and still is) built on oppression, where does this leave the oppressed in fulfilling the need to belong? How can both people of color and women belong in a culture that oppresses them? 

I started dating my ex-husband, who is black, in the late seventies. I was all of maybe 18, when one day my older brother came into my bedroom to talk to me. My brothers never really talked to me; they teased me, but we didn't talk. He brought up the fact that I was dating a black guy, and he was nervous talking about it, he was trying to be protective, and this is what he told me, “If you keep dating him, no white guys will ever date you.” Another brother tried to be humorous about it, "It's ok with me, I hate everybody anyway." 

I was hurt and angry and confused and not even sure who to talk to about this. If I talked to my girlfriends, they might agree with my brother; if I talked to my boyfriend, I might hurt his feelings. I already knew that to talk to my parents just would make me feel more confused, they were always in their own worlds. I was certain that we were in a modern era, certain that nobody could really still be a crazy bigot. The world loved Jimi Hendrix, didn't they? It was a crazy person who shot MLK, right? I had no idea of patriarchy, or hierarchy, or historical racism, and how could I? They certainly weren't teaching it in school, even if they were teaching noblesse oblige and strained tolerance. 

And so now, we have Rachel Dolezal, and nobody quite seems to know what to make of her, but you know, I kinda get it. She was raised in this space of having adopted siblings into what might quite be a horrible mess of a family. She was raised by white parents who probably knew as little as any other white people what historical racism and micro-aggressions are about. Because so few people understand the significance of attachment theory in adoption, most adoptive parents have no idea of the the obstacles to creating a sense of belonging in children who have been taken from their birth parents. 

So, where does Rachel belong? She’s created a life and a persona that felt as close as right to her as she could get; she’s found that she is stuck in a corner of oppression and non-understanding that comes from being a white woman in America. I think it is notable that in our history, black men got the right to vote before white women. I think it seems unseemly and unthinkable for many white women to admit that they feel oppressed; because, after all, they are white. But oppression is oppression and it doesn’t feel like belonging. I sometimes think that what my ex and I had in common was the unspoken feeling of being oppressed. 

Where do stories of mixed race belong? How do we tell them, and is it safe to tell them? I ask myself this still. White people tell the stories because they have the privilege, their voices demand attention. I've made my life and my peace with crossing color lines; I am a white woman with children who are both black and white. People have ‘accused’ me of having adopted my children, people have asked me what my kids ‘are,’ people have come up to us and started speaking Spanish. People can wonder who and what we are, but I hope that because I have tried to foster both autonomy and belonging in my family, we are people who love and support each other first, and our bloodlines and DNA come second. There is racism and oppression in our American culture, but we can choose to live in places where the dominant culture is not our culture--and how we present to the outside world really doesn't matter. When the culture we live in, is woven of oppression and lies, how do we tell our truth? 

Memorial Day After

I always think that when there’s a holiday (like Memorial Day), I’m going to feel really rested afterwards, and that I’m going to somehow get caught up on everything, yes everything! And then I wake up on the Tuesday afterwards and I’m still not caught up on everything, and I wonder why I still think that this is a possibility. There is no catching up in life and I’ve realized that when I’m working I’m not riding bike and when I’m reading in my free time I’m not taking sailing lessons and when I’m shopping I’m not traveling. 

Someone sent me an article today that said when we talk to ourselves if we use our first names (instead of pronouns) we are more likely to be successful. So, here I go, Theresa, you need to walk more dear, you need to work less (and less, and less) and you must make time to travel, and of course do yoga everyday. There, now I’ll wait for this life to emerge. 

Yesterday I decided to go on the last leg of my ex’s yearly Memorial Day cemetery and gravesite visit along with my youngest daughter. My ex honors his ancestors in a way I can’t help but admire. Most of the time I still cannot understand his choices or the way he shows up in relationship, but he is my daughters’ father and I once loved him dearly. And so even though I’ve been angry at him for not being the father I’d want him to be, I went with Megan and her dad, and his long-time friend to Lakewood Cemetery to visit a few of his relative’s graves, and then we literally swung around to the other side of the cemetery and stopped to find my dad’s grave. I was unprepared with no flowers and no flag. 

Being at this place always fills me with tears and memories and loss. My dad was there for me in ways that set the bar of being a dad, that set the bar for me being a mom. He supported 10 people (including himself) and made a good life for us, and when I was a single mom, when I was so overwhelmed that I’m even now just processing many of the emotions I didn’t know how to feel then, he showed up and mowed my lawn and gave me advice. And so, when my spirit flagged, I told myself over and over, that if he could support 10 people, I could support 5--my 3 girls, my grandson, and myself--and I did. 

This didn’t mean that there weren’t casualties of mostly an emotional kind, when my girls were young. I really didn’t have the skills or the energy to be emotionally present most of the time. I didn’t know how not to feel abandoned and angry, or how to actually feel those things and not believe what I thought they told me about life. I didn’t know what I know now, and that makes me sad that I couldn’t give more tools to my daughters, because as a parent, I want to give them so many things. 

I have to stop though, and start with now, with today, and trust that the past gave us all enough. The strange thing about emotions though, is that they stay present with us from the past until we sit with them, invite them in and politely thank them for their message, and this takes time. Sometimes the hard truth is that the people we love leave us in places we never thought we’d be, alone and bewildered, and from there, we find a way.  

Be Longing

I find it interesting that the words be and longing together form the word belonging. Because I think that two of our most important imperatives of being human are to be, and to belong. And in belonging, there is the longing to belong. We exist to be and to belong. And this is enough. We may strive for more, for achievements, for stuff, for adventure, but really all we can ever do is be and belong, wherever we are, and when we are not in a state of being or belonging, there is longing. 

From the Trenches

Sometimes (well a lot) lately, I ask myself, “How come I'm not writing?” I stare at the screen and do actually wonder that. It’s not that I’m not thinking about things that I possibly could write about, it’s just that it seems like the things on my mind would take too long to write about, or be too involved to try to explain in a blog post. Things like why I’m frustrated with all the talk (again) about race. I wonder if there’s an algorithm to topics that tend to trend in the news.

 It does take me back to my younger self, who simply just fell in love with someone with beautiful brown eyes, and beautiful brown skin. We can make it more than that, a statement of bravery, or of social activism, but really, it wasn’t more than that. It seemed like more than that, when people asked stupid shit like, “What about the kids?” Before I even had kids. It seemed like more than that when people would look at us together for too long a time, but really, it wasn’t. 

Not that we shouldn't talk about things, about stuff, but that I’ve been in so many ‘talks’ about ‘difficult’ topics that never really seemed to go anywhere, or I end up trying to give my perspective, as a white person living in a white culture, in a non-white family, and this, like the stories I want to tell, seems to be too long and winding a story to tell.

I'm also thinking about poverty and prosperity, and how we want to pull people up out of poverty, but not too much, not too far, not into prosperity, because then they might just somehow end up one of the 1% and then that, we know would be bad, very bad. We have weird ideas about money in our culture, and I don't want to think those weird ideas anymore. I just want to make money and pay off my student loan debt, so I don't have to think about that anymore either. Or if I do think about it, it's with gratitude for opportunity. I don’t want to rail against the system of education that figured out a way to get guaranteed money and put us all in debt. I really don’t. 

That comes too close for comfort to where I was; working at a Catholic university where hindsight affords me some clarity and hilarity at that world. I see so clearly the hierarchy, the way pay correlated (mostly) with advancement of degrees, unless of course you were part of the clergy, and if not part of the clergy, part of the belief system of the good patron saint. So, here I go, into anger and resentment, what I’ve been trying to avoid for the most part, at the hypocrisy of gentle folk. Maybe I can shift it into just sadness and disillusionment, there, that feels better. 

Sort of. I have more stories to tell, but I’m just coasting a bit now. Megan is having free rein to buy and cook whatever she wants and I’m eating like a queen. She makes granola whenever we run out! How amazing is that? I’ve found that I can shop at Nordstrom’s Rack online!!! Again, how cool is it to get new clothes in the mail at a fraction of the cost to pay to fight my way to Mall of America on a Sunday afternoon? I don’t have to experience that creepy “the building is swaying” feeling, nor worry about terrorist attacks to dress well. The world is turning out to be more than ok, I think. And I might just be able to leave the past alone, one day. 

Reckless

Synonyms
1. rash, heedless, incautious, negligent, imprudent.

Antonyms
1. careful.

Maybe there is something in the middle, but lately I am drawn to reckless. Drawn to leaving caution to the wind, tired of careful. Maybe I’ve just used up my allotment of caring. Caring what people think, caring what I should wear, caring what I look like, caring what my home looks like, caring for my mother, caring for my sister, caring for my husband, caring for my children, that’s a lot of caring. 

Wondering how do I care for me, and how did I manage to learn to put myself last, not first? What if caring about all those other things is actually a great act of uncaring for myself? What if I’ve been socialized to care about all the wrong things? What if all the internalized messages that I’ve been acting upon day in and day out have left too little room for me? Perhaps this is where recklessness has raised it’s head, and it is saying, “What is it that you want?” And all the while, I’ve been raised to believe that it is imprudent to want what I want, that I would be negligent to take care of me, first. 

So, reckless calls my name and I answer rashly, “Here I am, let’s go.”

Something to Believe In

Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own. Bertrand Russell 

I have been faithless for a few years now and in the space left, nothing has else has entered in. At first this concerned me, I felt bereft, similar to the anger and angst I felt towards God when my dad died, leaving me more alone than I’d already felt. After nearly 50 years of belonging to a faith community who at the very least believed in a triune god and after nearly 50 years of belonging to both a mother and a father, I was alone, with only myself to believe in. 

My family seemed shattered without my dad holding us together. And my dad was the link to my faith, as well. At first I clung to it, as the gift he had bequeathed to me. In the years following his death, I realized other gifts he had given me, more tangible, more real. Like tenacity, like his ability to grow and reason with age. 

Not having faith is a horrible thing to admit, especially in the United States. We think that people do better in a hierarchy, that we must have someone to be accountable to in order to be good. I know this isn’t true, and that we do our best when we are accountable to ourselves, when we listen to ourselves, when we love ourselves, but we live in a culture of hierarchy, and of crime and punishment. 

So, when I stumble upon this quote by Bertrand Russell, it is with a sense of belonging, and community that says, “See you are not alone in this knowing, this understanding, that great spaces bring their own comfort and awe.” I now exist in and crave these great spaces, and if there is anything at all in this space, it is love. 

Morning Reflection

The day dawned brighter today than it has in a long time. No matter that it is sub zero temp outside, the day looks promising. I could see blue, pink, white reflected on my stainless steel turner in the utensil jar on my counter, I turned to look out my little window, and sure enough the sun was rising peachy pink. 

I’m finally thinking that things just might be ok. Maybe losing the last regular job that I had was a good thing, after all, like people told me it was. I do know now, that I liked working at a university, and being in a doctorate program, because it validated for me that I was smart; something I’d heard my whole life, but really, truly, never knew what it meant. I mean seriously, what does it mean? And interestingly, I don’t feel as smart now, but maybe that is ok, too. I’m trying to feel feelings, not things, these days. 

I miss being a part of an organization that I could rail against, yep, maybe just like me getting kicked out of seventh grade, having something to be against was almost as good as having something to be for. But I do believe the saying, that what we resist, persists, and it does, and it will, and so, really, cutting my losses and walking away was the best thing for me. 

What I love about the passing of time is the clarity it brings. I’m getting wise enough to know that we don’t get all the answers when we want them, but it’s good enough to get some answers, in time. Making sense somehow makes space, and that’s what happening for me now, both a making sense, and a making of space. I’ve found time in my life to take care of me, and it is pretty awesome, actually. Without being trite to say, I’ve lost ten pounds, and I eat at least three times a day. I’ve started doing yoga again. And I’m turning my attention back to my home now, too. 

While I was in school, I told myself I had to just live like a college student, and really, I did. I lived with the furniture I had, even though it was falling apart, I ate on the run, I stayed up late writing papers and barely had time to breathe. Now I want new furniture. I want to savor just sitting around. I want a big beautiful desk to write on. And I want part II of the manga Monster to read. (Part I is fabulous!) Actually, I want a whole bookshelf full of manga and graphic novels, instead of research articles. I don’t know if I’m smart anymore, or if it matters if people see me as smart. I want to feel what I feel, and see what I see, and know that my own reflection matters. 

Christmas Trees on Cars

Yesterday was the Winter Solstice, last night the longest night of the year. I had wanted to celebrate, commemorate it somehow, but I was mostly tired yesterday. This is not only the time of year for gift giving; it is also the time of year when my youngest daughter is cooking and baking and making candy and gifts of homemade granola. Because of that, I am shopping, shopping, shopping. I think I’ve been to the co-op three times already this week, and then throw in going to Lunds, Kowalski’s and finally the hardware store looking for fireplace matches with which to flambe the coq au vin that she is planning to prepare for the family dinner; well, I am tired. 

Driving around town the last two weekends I see cars with trees strapped on top of them. Now that it is nearly Christmas, the signs on the tree lots say “half price.” Lots that were full of greenery a couple of weeks ago are sparse, the white lights dangling amidst the darkness of early evening. Once I became a teenager, I was the one who went out and got the Christmas tree with my mom. It became her story, “I don’t know if I would have had a real tree if it weren’t for Theresa. No one else would help me.” And I don’t know how we got it into her car, but I think she had a hatchback, and we did. We were never “let’s strap the Christmas tree onto the top of the car” kind of people. Ever. And once we got that tree home, my mom had her ‘rules’ for decorating the tree. The smallest ornaments always went higher up in the tree. 

Christmastime was laden with stress while I grew up. One year, when I was only 6 or 7 years old, I remember crawling into an upstairs crawlspace and I found a child’s glass teapot set. I asked my mom about it, and when she realized I had found my Christmas present that she had hidden, she was upset and angry. As I got older, I was often disappointed by the practical gifts I received. It was at Christmastime that I felt the sting of living in a more affluent neighborhood, but not being affluent. The day after Christmas we’d check out each other’s gifts with friends, and I was always amazed at the things they had gotten. Frivolous, shiny things. My daughters still use the metronome I got as a gift when I was a teenager and played piano. 

In the back of my mind, as I drive through town, seeing folks buying real Christmas trees, I think that maybe one day I too, will buy a real tree. Will have a Christmas that doesn’t feel like I’m just driving around buying things, but I don’t know, maybe that’s just me, succumbing to nostalgia, or being bored with shopping. Because my Christmas with my girls is a real Christmas, it’s just not a big family Christmas like I used to have with my mom, my dad, all my brothers and sisters and their spouses, and then our kids, too. Maybe even the tree lots seem frozen in the 1960’s, because of what they evoke, reminders to me of my past, which changed to become my present. 

My mom’s story about me helping her wasn’t just her being grateful, it was also an indictment. She was sad or angry, that my dad didn’t go out and get the tree with her and I knew it. I helped her in a way to take away her sadness, to alleviate her anger, to try to soothe that which seemed to never get soothed. Sometimes we had fun together, but more often, she’d be telling me her same stories, about her life just not turning out how she’d planned. About my dad not showing up, about my dad stopping at the bar on his way home from work. She never talked about her feelings, but maybe my mom was lonely, lonely at Christmastime, and maybe with eight kids, all she felt like she was doing was shopping and cooking and baking. 

life guard

what i once had an  

ink

ling

of

i know more fully

what i once imagined

i now live

once upon a time

i used to believe 

that i could 

protect you

i know now

there is no way

to be there

always

but only 

to love

as much

as i can

to 

day

we must

guard

ourselves

our love

our dreams

row

ing

out

to 

sea

to

dream

per

chance

per

diem

still

i would 

jump

in

row out

to save you

if i could