Neither Here Nor There

Moving past the 1950’s marketing era, we have got lives that are supposed to be lived like 30 second commercials, like sound bytes, like a brief bio. I don’t know how to do that. For a while, I did actually worry about what my bio would read like when (if?) I got my writing published. I am not a young mom living with her husband and young children in Portland, I am not a graduate of Harvard, and I’ve never worked at a major corporation doing something incredibly amazing and prodigious. 

So, once again I am at a place in my life where it’s the turning point, the place in between the places that you would want to share with people when asked, what’s going on in your life? There are amazing things going on in my life, but on the career/financial front, everything is in a state of flux. My bio could read: Theresa lives in her tiny one bedroom condo in a neighborhood populated by thirty-somethings with her youngest daughter and no pets. She longs for more room and financial freedom, yet loves the location.

I would leave out the part about just losing my day job, about being told about it months ago, and about how no one announced it, but I kept getting invitations to participate in Lasallian formation, and community conversations about justice. Invitations to watch untold stories about people across the world who were victims of injustice. In between trying to build my practice, and apply for part-time jobs, I researched getting on state supported health insurance, wondered if I could get food stamps? Wracked my brain, sell the condo? Cash in retirement? Will unemployment, if I qualify, get me through until my practice sustains me? People at work coming up congratulating me, the rumors were that I’d left of my own accord, and requested no cake, no goodbye. 

All totally untrue. I did not leave of my own accord, my practice is building, but not to the point of sustaining me. Becoming a private practice therapist is an endeavor for those with resources, and I knew this going in, but you know me, always trying to beat the odds. And the truth is, cake had been banned years ago at this place. So, I lived with the strange incongruence which is working for a religious institution. Where we all kinda kept waiting for the action to catch up to the belief. Where in naivety, co-workers asked me to write to the vice-president about the lack of community and safety in the organization. They were sure, since he was a religious man, if he knew, he would do something, you know, change things. 

But I know a thing or two about religion and religious folks. I know that they live constantly in a place of polarity. Of good and evil, of black and white, of holy and sinner and they mostly seem really ok with this, and the evil they fight is usually overseas, not over there, across the aisle, across the desk. We have separation of church and state, we have the politics of religion, and the religion of politics, and saving yourself is sometimes the only way to be saved at all. Can I have my cake now? 

Looking back, I wonder why I stayed so long? My parents, too, were religious, Catholic, and my job felt at times oddly like my childhood. The values were the same, frugality and fear. And I was caught up in this truth, that there is not enough, and you better be grateful for what you have. As I worked there, my faith evolved, actually, reversed, to the things I believed in my most best childhood moments, that I am safe, that I am loved, that I am valued, that I am valuable, more valuable than anyone there could see. And that there is more than enough for all of us, that there are no untold stories, just colonialism, still rampant. 

So, this is what this heathen is doing now, I am throwing up into the air the entire deck of tarot cards, I am letting them lie where they land. I am caught, frozen in my own thirty second frame of colorful, bright, life scenarios, head back and laughing, believing in an abundant universe, in a gentle goddess, in warm summer breezes, amazed at the bright glints of color on card, wondering what it all means, and where am I now, and where am I going? 

Trust & Love

I feel like I need to write an addendum to my last post. To write about my parents, and my family of origin isn’t always easy. I was brought up to hide my emotions, and to hide my parent’s emotions and emotional outbursts. Not too many kids show up at school the next day and say, “Whoa, my dad brought out his belt and whipped the ____out of us.” But this happens, and we hide it. We protect our parents, as kids, and even sometimes as adults. 

But angry, or sad, or helpless feelings states don’t define us. My dad was mostly angry, he was a WWII vet who never had counseling, but he also worked two jobs to support his family, and he was there. There is some research now that says abused kids fare better than neglected kids. Neither are going to facilitate emotional attunement. My mom, as I’d said, was whiney, she didn’t know how (or didn’t know it was possible) to have a strong voice, and I’m sure living with a man who hit her children didn’t help. But she too, never left us, she cooked and clothed 8 kids, no small feat, and has a heart for those in need. 

Our feeling states don’t define who we are as people, we all have our shadow selves, but what our feeling states do, is define how we move through our lives. When my parents retired, their stress lessened and their feeling states were much more positive, they were able to make sense of their own lives and make amends for their behavior as parents. I’ve had to do the same. This is why it is so important to me to be able to learn and share what I’m learning about feeling and expressing emotion. Our emotions are not something to be ignored, they are powerful parts of ourselves, and we need to attune to them. 

There is grace in life, and in and through this grace, we love ourselves and each other. There has never been a doubt in my life of my parent’s love, and knowing that they both did the best they could. I tell my stories out of love, trying to make sense and share what I know.  

Some Thoughts on Trust

Trust

1trust noun \ˈtrəst\
: belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc.

I think it’s all coming down to this, trust. Either you do or you don’t, either you will or you won’t, or sadly, you can’t. For most of my life I couldn’t trust my parents, they were not evil when I was growing up, they were just not reliable or to be honest, effective. My father was always, always angry. He would swear under his breath on the way to church, and then on the way home again, even Holy Communion did not soften his angry thoughts. My mom was like a resentful child, alway whining, always complaining, always worrying and saying things like she had no one to help her. She was lost. When there was some trouble, with school or friends, she’d get defensive and mean. It was horrible life lessons for negotiation of any sort. If a friend would hurt my feelings, she would more or less tell me they weren’t a good enough friend and I was foolish to, well, trust them. Trust that they might like me, trust that they might care. 

And then I met the guy I would marry, I thought I could trust him. I finally let down my guard that someone could love me, and he too, proved to be less than reliable, honest, or effective at creating a safe relationship with me. How was I calling this into my life? He, I believe, was actually looking to me to create safety for him. I think that neither of us knew how to do that for ourselves, and so we could not do that for each other. So, I had to keep figuring this out. I learned to trust God, as many who don’t know how to trust people do. When God let me down, it was a mystery, and when I lost my trust in the whole system of Christian belief I became curious about how we hold faith? What is trust and how does it work? How does it uphold us and create the energy we need to forge good lives? 

Over time, I realized I could trust my children, implicitly. It was a beautiful realization. This understanding became confirmed by new research that children are altruistic. This was in direct contrast to my understanding and indoctrination that people are born sinful. My life experiences lead me to look into the history of the beliefs that I thought I held true. Buddhism asserts the wholeness and holiness of each of us. So, it felt a little weird to not be Christian anymore, in this American Christian culture. But I’d rather feel weird than disillusioned and not know why. I believe the Christ prophet did and said some beautiful things. Like Luke 17:21, “Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” How can we not be holy, then, if the kingdom of God is within us? 

I came upon this passage, on trust, a couple of weeks ago, and it is sitting with me so well, serving me to remember that, “. . . giving trust is the fuel that makes others trustworthy. . . . How do you hold trust? Do you begin by trusting someone absolutely, or do you wait, expecting that your trust must be earned first by specific deeds? Realize that your approach and expectations have enormous power over the outcome.” (From: Your Authentic Self: Be Yourself at Work, by Ric Giardina.) 

It affirms that what we expect, we will look for, it affirms that we need to offer a place of trust for someone to be trustworthy. It means that we need to also be able to trust ourselves in how far we will put ourselves at risk to trust someone else. First and foremost trusting ourselves. Trusting sometimes means saying no, having faith that we will have what we need, and that we are deserving of all good things. For me evidence of this trust is not so much in what I can’t see, but in what I can see. The fact that the earth give us spring each year, that people continue to love and support each other, the fact that our food (if not money) does indeed just grow on trees, and in the ground, and from the ground. And that when our bellies are full, we can look up and gaze upon the stars. I trust that life is good. 

Give and Receive

A lot of stuff has been happening in my life lately. My daughter Erin and her partner Andy had a wonderful honeymoon in Hawaii, leaving their car on the wrong side of the street while a snow emergency was in effect. I drove over and moved it; they were bright enough to leave me a set of keys. I drove two hours in the horrible early morning blizzard a couple of days ago to pick up and take my beloved grandson to a TEC (teens encounter Christ) weekend. These are the things I do when I’m not at my day job or seeing clients, or trying to keep up my own home. I’ve also been dating (again) on an online site. I’ve met 7 guys in 7 weeks and still there is no one that clicks. 

I’ve also had a chance to connect with a good friend of mine who does work in recovery from childhood abuse. One of the things she shared with me was her realization that in good love relationships there really isn’t give and take, but give and receive. The difference might seem subtle, but the concept is not. No one wants to be taken from, which is what often happens in relationships of unequal power. In mulling over this nuanced difference, I’ve realized how hard it is for some of us to receive. I find that I can be very good at giving, but not very good at receiving. How then to find the balance to both give and receive? 

How do we sift through what we want, what others want, what others want of us? Do others demand through silent manipulation, through years of unspoken rules about what we must do to be loved, to be accepted; or do they model giving and receiving? How do we move through our lives leaving uncritical space for others to be in and just show up? 

I am sifting through the person I became to survive in a culture of silent manipulation, that felt comfortable enough to me because it validated my need to be both needed and seen as smart. I have also been making more space in my life to be the mom and bubbe to my children and grandchildren that has always felt very much like my purpose, but now, I also want to express my gratitude for all I’ve received from them. We can never totally show up for only one person, we can have all of ourselves accepted and reflected back when we find community, and in this way feel whole. The more we are seen, the more we have to give, the more space we allow, the more we can receive. The more we move through life this way, we are connected and supported, seen and lifted up in our autonomy and our belonging. 

Sitting in this space, waiting for more community, waiting for that one connection that will rock my world, offering space and learning the art of receiving, practicing gratitude. 

Emotions Concealed

Where have I been? Traveling the small perimeter of my world between working at a midtown, small Catholic university, driving to the Western suburb which holds my new office, to the Eastern edges of Minneapolis where my older daughters live with their loved ones. I am traveling, traveling, traveling way too much. And now, now I am trying to slow down and hear my own heart beating, so I can follow the rhythm it is beating out. 

I have been immersed in education, completing two graduate degrees, and forcing myself to regurgitate knowledge I already have in a doctoral program, pretending to be learning, so as not to seem too proud. Hoping to retain a position in the precarious state that the university is in. For all of that, I’ve been told that I won’t be offered a contract after the end of May. Restructuring. 

Most of my friends and loved ones have seen that I’ve been way too busy, and have urged me to slow down. I’ve replied that I’m waiting on the universe to move me. And so now, it has. I have to trust that all that I’ve built has not been built on sand, or if it has, it is ok that the ocean will pull it back into the sea. 

I have to trust the sand, and the stars, and the wind, and the clouds, and find myself back a child of the universe who belongs, no matter my credentials or bank account. I have been chasing and chasing away the ideology of success and belonging, wanting to belong, not wanting to personify difference, wanting wisdom, not a degree. Wanting resources, not to build walls, but to feel safe and to create. To create a place where all of us belong. 

I am sitting with my own not belonging (shame) to creating my own belonging, and in this place of my own belonging, a space where all of us, and all of our emotions have enough space. We have a conundrum of having created shame around even having emotions at all. We are born with emotional competence, which our shame based culture devalues almost immediately after birth. 

Reading this this morning, (listening to Julie London sing Sway): 

The relation between social bonds and emotion was developed by Helen Lewis (1977). In her analysis of infant-caretaker relations and adult relations in modern societies, she made explicit what was implied by Cooley and Goffman; that shame and threats to the social bond are interdependent aspects of the same reality. Shame is the emotional aspect of disconnection between persons. 

Lewis proposed that there is a universal human nature, one that unites biology and culture. She suggested that studies in infant development have demonstrated a biological initiation of social competence. (From Scheff & Retzinger’s Emotions and Violence, 1991.) 

Love Arises

We fall in love with the stories we tell ourselves and fall in love with the parts we play. In this way, there is no chance, no risk, that we ourselves might love another, and so have our heart touched or broken. 

We move in and out of day and night, pushing loneliness aside, secretly feasting on pain, resentment, envy and fear, but move back to the story, in which we are always center stage. 

The story is about how we are more important that we are, or less important than we are and how we will never be like all the others. We look through the glass and it seems that others are more happy, more connected, more real, somehow, but we ourselves, we hold to a higher ideal. 

If we are lucky, the stories fall apart, and life tells us something different. If we are lucky, the stories tell us to choose one day, between the story or the reality, and if we are wise, we let the story fall behind, holding onto nothingness. And out of this nothingness, love arises. 

Buying Time

It is nearly the last day in February, and it is six degrees below zero, that is not counting the windchill. That, I don’t want to know. It has been the longest coldest winter that I can remember and we are driving ice packed tires over ice packed roads and daily see cars that went too fast, turned too close or just sadly hit that patch of ice and ended up in various conditions of crash. My nerves are fraught and I am tired. We are still expected to show up for work, to buy food and to go about our business. We don’t add up the time that we have lost to slow traffic, to needing more sleep, or to making ourselves another cup of tea to warm ourselves up. We are in this gogogo world and I’m just tired. We are not supposed to say we are tired, we are supposed to be happy and filled with passion for our work and our lives, and if we are not, well, just don’t bring it up. 

So, I’m adding another layer to my life in trying to keep it together, when I don’t feel very together. Who to tell the truth to? When to smile, and when not to? Why care about my hair when I’m just going to wear a hat that smooshes it? Why care about my clothes, when I’m wearing long-underwear, yet again? I want to just carry a blanket around, really, and have a hot toddy instead of a hot tea. I am waiting, waiting, waiting for spring.  I am angry when a co-worker tells me well, we are not out of this yet. I want to scream, let me have my fantasy that it will warm up in a couple of days, and what are you now, a meteorologist? But I don’t, I smile, she has more power than me, sits higher up in the hierarchy, and my place is precarious enough. Smile, smile, smile; tiredness and anger have no place in the workplace. They are not just buying our time.