It's been a while since I've blogged... life is what happens while you are busy doing other things. Last night, I made a tremendous discovery about myself and the world at large, and I think it might be the perfect solution to what I see as an epidemic. I have discovered that the internet... actually the world at large, is wrong. They are wrong about all sorts of things. Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong.
But the real discovery is that I think it might be my fault!
Now clearly, dear readers, I will not leave it at that. I will not just accept blame for the whole world being wrong and move along with my day. .
In my "stepping into the arena" series, I have talked about the journey from where I was to where I am. I talked about my drive for perfection, my fear of failure, and my journey to overcome those things my embracing by vulnerability. Just last night, I was rehashing some of the things while working on a different work-related project. In this project, I was talking about these walls of perfection that women (generally) put up. The facade of perfection, which is a tricky thing. Very rarely do we cut our grass because we want our grass to be cut... we cut our grass because we don't want the neighbors to think that we are disgusting and lazy pigs who don't cut their grass. A new haircut is almost entirely pointless unless someone tells us they like our new haircut. We build up the walls, brick by brick, with the images of perfection with hopes of approval by others. That is who we are... it's what we do. Sometimes those things are about living within the social contract. Sometimes those things are about making ourselves feel acceptable. Very often, those things are about wanting the world to validate us.
Here is the truth: If I don't cut my grass, it doesn't make me a bad person... so why would I feel like I bad person if I didn't cut my grass? Who I am and my validity as a human being is not gauged on the condition of my front lawn...but I feel like it is.
So, I build these walls of perfection and I search for the world to validate me... and sometimes someone comes along and kicks one of my bricks. This internet is a classic brick kicker. I'll give an example.
I post things on the internet and I wait for the rest of the world to come back and comment. But, more often than not, the internet and in their shiniest brick-kicking boots to tear me down, or worse, not comment at all. My defenses go up and I get angry. I am tempted to write out in long form exactly why I am right and tear down the people who disagree to make them feel as small as they 'make" me feel. Internet-1, me-0. In the past couple of weeks, I have watched a few internet-related activities, and I'm starting to see a pattern. These things, the internet-based arguments, are 100% over things that don't really matter. I'm likely going to have to quantify that.
I have a strong set up social and political beliefs. Equal rights is a prime example. In the deep core of my being resides a conviction that LGBT individuals should have the right to marry whoever they want. It is a cause that means the world to me. If, on the day of voting for Amendment One in North Carolina ( which I clearly voted against), my daughter had taking very very ill and was hospitalized, I would have opted to be with her in the hospital over voting. I'm sorry for that LGBT community, but it's the truth. Equally, if a friend of mine had been dying, or a friend lost a child or a spouse, or some other situation of equal tragedy had happened to someone I love, I would have not voted on that day. I have equally strong beliefs about other things. Vaccination, proper pay for teachers, the rights of the maligned, the improper use of religion in government. I am a person with strong convictions. But if any of those things were to come head-to-head against a tragic loss or a situation that required unimaginable strength in someone I love, I would pick to be there for the person I love. Period.
So, the things that really matter come down to the new test... I'll call it the " If you knew" test. If you knew that the person you were about to engage in an argument with has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer... if you knew that person's mom passed away last night.... if you knew that they were going to miscarry tomorrow....if you knew that their husband just got laid off.... if you knew that last night their boyfriend hit them.... if you knew... would you continue to argue with them over this issue? If the answer is no, than that thing, that issue, doesn't really matter.
So, why is the internet being wrong my fault? It's my fault because what I have done is look to the internet to validate my walls of perfection, which we have established, are bullshit. 100% of the time, when people are getting snarky with each other on the internet, it's because the issue doesn't really matter, but worse, it's because the Original Poster didn't go looking for support... they went looking for a group of people to validate their picture of perfection.
Never...never never never, will you find someone who put on Facebook that their mother passed away and someone coming along with a snarky comment. Never will you find someone who posts on an internet forum that their child was diagnosed with Cancer with nasty comments coming back to them. You would never find a troll comment on a news comment area against a child who was killed because of abuse ( the parents or abuser, perhaps, but not the child). Why? Because when we see real vulnerability, we know it and we open our arms up to it. We know when people need to be supported... but we also know, deep down inside, when they are just looking to be validated. And there is a difference.
What's interesting is that many many people confuse the two. They think that because they believe a certain way and others don't, that means they are not being supported. They are wrong. I didn't breastfeed, and when someone would come to me and tell me that breastfeeding is best, my defenses went up. They were invalidating me... they were telling me that my walls of perfection weren't perfect enough, and I was defending my perfect walls. My response was to say they weren't being supportive... but that's not true. They weren't being unsupportive... they just weren't validating my walls of perfection. They were telling me my grass was too high.. and I was taking it as a personal assault.
Any person who goes looking for support will find it... any person who looks for validation under the guise of support will be inevitably disappointed.
So, the next time the internet is wrong, I'm going to do a few things. First, I'm going to do the "If I knew" test to determine if I really feel the need to engage with this person. Second, I'm going to test the weight of being vulnerable verse the weight of need to be validated... and test it honestly ( likely against the " what would I give up against this" test). Things can matter, but not against the weight of things that really matter. Lastly, I'm going to try to see the difference between to two before assigning blame to others and being so quick to assume that it's someone else's fault.
Because, in that light, the internet has never really been wrong. I have been.
Thursday, April 24, 2014
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Love and other acts of mediocrity
I'm in love.
I don't know how many people are looking at close to 9 years with another human being and say that with great frequency...but I am. I know that those first few month, I wore my newly minted "in love" status on my face... the bounce that new love brings. A few months down the line and for many, it fades...maybe into something slightly business like... you shift from " I'm in love" to "I'm in a relationship". So official!!! Then, you start the process of the contract... I'm engaged.... I'm getting married... I'm the bride.... I'm the groom.....I'm married. And then, you stalemate at "Married" for a while. Six or seven years go by and the enormity of it all settles in...thoughts of scratching the seven-year-itch and you face that you are just young enough to try to get out and move on with your life, but by this time next year, that won't be true anymore. I've watched this pattern time and time again...I've heard the words of others and even wondered if there was something I missed, because I am still in love.
The interesting thing is that there is nothing that is outstandingly lovable ( by conventional standards) about either my husband or myself. We are both a bit thicker than standard definitions of beauty imply ( okay...alright... we are fat. we are fatties....happy now?). We both came readily prepared with enough baggage to fill a corner in a name-brand overstock discount store. We are flawed, a little hopeless, kinda fucked up...and completely in love.
So, what makes our love story different? Well, there are some who might say that we both lowered our standards enough to be realistic. I would argue that we both changed the standard for ourselves and realized that love is realistic for each of us. Nether of us shy away from the work...and it is work. There is no lack of emotion in either of us (this is especially true of my husband, who's emotion resides right under his skin,while mine is a little deeper buried, but not too hard to find, especially if the scratch is deep enough).
In the end, though, the bigger truth is that we are each other's best friend. That sounds trite... the title of a chapter in a book called something incredibly lame like " Rediscovering the Love in Your Marriage"... but trite does not always mean untrue. He knows me better than anyone else on the planet...much better than my parents...better than any other friend.... better than I know myself most times. A friend is someone who you feel safe occupying the same space with, and a best friend is someone that you not only feel safe with, but prefer. That defines how I feel about my husband. There aren't many places I would prefer to be than at home with my husband and my kid, and even places that might rank higher ( a vacation at the beach would be nice) would only be preferable if he was there with me. There have been nights where I feel my age...out at a bar with friends and I feel the urge to go home, where the music isn't so loud and I'm not required to binding clothing, and I start dreaming about my PJ's, my bed, my husband and a podcast. It doesn't take me long to walk into our bedroom and feel the relief of being back where I am happiest. That might actually be my favorite place on the planet.
None of that sounds particularly romantic... but when you have loved someone as long as I have loved my husband ( and as deeply as I have loved my husband), you start to understand romance as something different. Sure, there are times I think about beautiful romantic gestures...flower... dinner... a reason to get dressed up and feel sexy ( and this post is not meant to discourage those things.... really.... David... you heard that, right?)... but the truth of romance is that it is a gateway to a home.
When we leave "the nest" of our parents home and venture out into the world, looking for another person, we find ourselves a little homeless. We have apartments and condos and furniture and all of the makings of a home, but it's not really a home. We are nomads, and we search for a home by way of relationships. In him, I found my home, and it really is the place I am happiest in.
Now, it's not always sunshine and rainbows...we have times that are not that great. We have times that are downright shitty. The interesting part of those times is that they are usually earmarked by the fact that one or both of us has lost sight of the other person's place in our lives. We shut them out or shut them down... we try to take on the world ourselves and don't let the other one come along for the ride. We stop asking our best friend to take part in our lives. This can happen slowly... where we let days on mindless activity slip by without really talking to each other about what is going on, or quickly, where we start handling something big without involving the other person. But either way, we jump on different tracks.... and soon, those tracks are nowhere near each other.
So, what is the great part about my relationship? The moment that one of us realizes we are too far away, we shift gears and immediately start our way back to the other person. We realize we are missing that person- the one standing right in front of us- and that them not being right there with us is exactly what is missing.
The moments we are most in love is actually when there is a problem and we are both in it together. Those are really great moments. The kid is having problems, or work is kinda shitty, and we are in it together as a team. One or both of us can be completely losing it, but we are there together... and the sting of the crappy thing still exists... but there is a relief in the form of feeling great about being in love. My husband and I have both handled the weight of a shitty experience with one hand, and the gravity-defying lift of being in-love with the other. It's slightly insane to say that you have been at your happiest when you where in the fox-hole...but if you are there with someone you love... the fox-hole ends up being a perfectly acceptable home.
The thing about being in love is that it's never going to be those first few moments again...and some people mistake the lack of butterflies in their tummies or face-aching grins across their face for falling out of love. Their error is forgetting why they looked for to begin with. That feeling, the one you get in a new relationship... it's not love, it's nerves. It's the anxiety that comes with letting a new person into your life. It's the physical response your body has in knowing that this could be the end of facing life alone. It is the excitement that your nomadic life could be a thing of the past and you might actually have the opportunity for a home right around the corner.
Last night, I went out to Starbucks to catch up on some work, then came home to my husband working on homework with my daughter. I ate the eclair he had brought home for me ( hey, I admitted we were fatties!) and he beamed as he talked about making dippy eggs for the first time ever. We had a completely boring conversation about how I make her dippy eggs, and we feel asleep listening to a podcast... both of us warm in the thought that we got to fall asleep next to the person we trusted most in the whole world. It's not fancy...it's not traditionally romantic...and most 20-somethings would roll their eyes at the boring, suburban-minivan-mediocrity of it all....and what they don't know ( and perhaps we didn't know) is that it's exactly what we were both looking for 9 years ago.
And,if I'm really lucky, I'll get the chance to do it all again tonight.
I don't know how many people are looking at close to 9 years with another human being and say that with great frequency...but I am. I know that those first few month, I wore my newly minted "in love" status on my face... the bounce that new love brings. A few months down the line and for many, it fades...maybe into something slightly business like... you shift from " I'm in love" to "I'm in a relationship". So official!!! Then, you start the process of the contract... I'm engaged.... I'm getting married... I'm the bride.... I'm the groom.....I'm married. And then, you stalemate at "Married" for a while. Six or seven years go by and the enormity of it all settles in...thoughts of scratching the seven-year-itch and you face that you are just young enough to try to get out and move on with your life, but by this time next year, that won't be true anymore. I've watched this pattern time and time again...I've heard the words of others and even wondered if there was something I missed, because I am still in love.
The interesting thing is that there is nothing that is outstandingly lovable ( by conventional standards) about either my husband or myself. We are both a bit thicker than standard definitions of beauty imply ( okay...alright... we are fat. we are fatties....happy now?). We both came readily prepared with enough baggage to fill a corner in a name-brand overstock discount store. We are flawed, a little hopeless, kinda fucked up...and completely in love.
So, what makes our love story different? Well, there are some who might say that we both lowered our standards enough to be realistic. I would argue that we both changed the standard for ourselves and realized that love is realistic for each of us. Nether of us shy away from the work...and it is work. There is no lack of emotion in either of us (this is especially true of my husband, who's emotion resides right under his skin,while mine is a little deeper buried, but not too hard to find, especially if the scratch is deep enough).
In the end, though, the bigger truth is that we are each other's best friend. That sounds trite... the title of a chapter in a book called something incredibly lame like " Rediscovering the Love in Your Marriage"... but trite does not always mean untrue. He knows me better than anyone else on the planet...much better than my parents...better than any other friend.... better than I know myself most times. A friend is someone who you feel safe occupying the same space with, and a best friend is someone that you not only feel safe with, but prefer. That defines how I feel about my husband. There aren't many places I would prefer to be than at home with my husband and my kid, and even places that might rank higher ( a vacation at the beach would be nice) would only be preferable if he was there with me. There have been nights where I feel my age...out at a bar with friends and I feel the urge to go home, where the music isn't so loud and I'm not required to binding clothing, and I start dreaming about my PJ's, my bed, my husband and a podcast. It doesn't take me long to walk into our bedroom and feel the relief of being back where I am happiest. That might actually be my favorite place on the planet.
None of that sounds particularly romantic... but when you have loved someone as long as I have loved my husband ( and as deeply as I have loved my husband), you start to understand romance as something different. Sure, there are times I think about beautiful romantic gestures...flower... dinner... a reason to get dressed up and feel sexy ( and this post is not meant to discourage those things.... really.... David... you heard that, right?)... but the truth of romance is that it is a gateway to a home.
When we leave "the nest" of our parents home and venture out into the world, looking for another person, we find ourselves a little homeless. We have apartments and condos and furniture and all of the makings of a home, but it's not really a home. We are nomads, and we search for a home by way of relationships. In him, I found my home, and it really is the place I am happiest in.
Now, it's not always sunshine and rainbows...we have times that are not that great. We have times that are downright shitty. The interesting part of those times is that they are usually earmarked by the fact that one or both of us has lost sight of the other person's place in our lives. We shut them out or shut them down... we try to take on the world ourselves and don't let the other one come along for the ride. We stop asking our best friend to take part in our lives. This can happen slowly... where we let days on mindless activity slip by without really talking to each other about what is going on, or quickly, where we start handling something big without involving the other person. But either way, we jump on different tracks.... and soon, those tracks are nowhere near each other.
So, what is the great part about my relationship? The moment that one of us realizes we are too far away, we shift gears and immediately start our way back to the other person. We realize we are missing that person- the one standing right in front of us- and that them not being right there with us is exactly what is missing.
The moments we are most in love is actually when there is a problem and we are both in it together. Those are really great moments. The kid is having problems, or work is kinda shitty, and we are in it together as a team. One or both of us can be completely losing it, but we are there together... and the sting of the crappy thing still exists... but there is a relief in the form of feeling great about being in love. My husband and I have both handled the weight of a shitty experience with one hand, and the gravity-defying lift of being in-love with the other. It's slightly insane to say that you have been at your happiest when you where in the fox-hole...but if you are there with someone you love... the fox-hole ends up being a perfectly acceptable home.
The thing about being in love is that it's never going to be those first few moments again...and some people mistake the lack of butterflies in their tummies or face-aching grins across their face for falling out of love. Their error is forgetting why they looked for to begin with. That feeling, the one you get in a new relationship... it's not love, it's nerves. It's the anxiety that comes with letting a new person into your life. It's the physical response your body has in knowing that this could be the end of facing life alone. It is the excitement that your nomadic life could be a thing of the past and you might actually have the opportunity for a home right around the corner.
Last night, I went out to Starbucks to catch up on some work, then came home to my husband working on homework with my daughter. I ate the eclair he had brought home for me ( hey, I admitted we were fatties!) and he beamed as he talked about making dippy eggs for the first time ever. We had a completely boring conversation about how I make her dippy eggs, and we feel asleep listening to a podcast... both of us warm in the thought that we got to fall asleep next to the person we trusted most in the whole world. It's not fancy...it's not traditionally romantic...and most 20-somethings would roll their eyes at the boring, suburban-minivan-mediocrity of it all....and what they don't know ( and perhaps we didn't know) is that it's exactly what we were both looking for 9 years ago.
And,if I'm really lucky, I'll get the chance to do it all again tonight.
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Motivating the unmotivated
This blog entry might actually be an act of procrastination in the making.
I can't lie... I have about 40 things that I need to do right now, and not a speck of motivation to actually do any of them. I knew this was a possibility.
See, here is the problem with figuring out that your motivation is fear.... you get rid of that, and what are you left with? I don't know how to propel myself, and with my stellar combination of vulnerability and emotional honestly, I am quickly vanquishing the demons of my past and feeling good about life. I am without guilt, without shame, and have rid my life ( at least in the present) of the fear of the dread dropping of the other shoe
(,,,, complete side note... when the hell did this "other shoe" drop and why the hell was it such a horrible experience? I mean... shoes drop... is it really that bad!?!?! Why was one shoe dropping okay, but the "other" was a tragedy. This is clearly a subject for research for another day, since it is likely just sustaining my procrastination...)
SO, here is what I'm going to do. I am making a plan! in 5 minutes ( at 10:30), I'm going to put down the computer, turn on Pandora Radio, walk into my kitchen, and clean of my counter, empty my dishwasher, and fill it back up with dirty dishes. I'm going to get that all done by 11am. At 11am, I'm going to sit down and do the three hardest things I have on my list of things to do. I'm going to get those done- pull of the bandaid- and then, I'm going to feel good about having done those things, and everything else will be a cakewalk.
That's the plan...wish me luck!
ETA: 10:58 EST- I have successfully cleaned my kitchen, done dishes, and even tackled the floors and a round of laundry. I would like to thank those who helped me get through that:
-Usher
- Beastie Boys
- Justin Timberlake
- OutKast
- Michael Jackson
- A special shout out to ll Cool J circa 1995, whose well timed MTV unplugged version of" Mama Said Knock You Out" started off my adventure, and themed the whole excursion nicely.
I can't lie... I have about 40 things that I need to do right now, and not a speck of motivation to actually do any of them. I knew this was a possibility.
See, here is the problem with figuring out that your motivation is fear.... you get rid of that, and what are you left with? I don't know how to propel myself, and with my stellar combination of vulnerability and emotional honestly, I am quickly vanquishing the demons of my past and feeling good about life. I am without guilt, without shame, and have rid my life ( at least in the present) of the fear of the dread dropping of the other shoe
(,,,, complete side note... when the hell did this "other shoe" drop and why the hell was it such a horrible experience? I mean... shoes drop... is it really that bad!?!?! Why was one shoe dropping okay, but the "other" was a tragedy. This is clearly a subject for research for another day, since it is likely just sustaining my procrastination...)
SO, here is what I'm going to do. I am making a plan! in 5 minutes ( at 10:30), I'm going to put down the computer, turn on Pandora Radio, walk into my kitchen, and clean of my counter, empty my dishwasher, and fill it back up with dirty dishes. I'm going to get that all done by 11am. At 11am, I'm going to sit down and do the three hardest things I have on my list of things to do. I'm going to get those done- pull of the bandaid- and then, I'm going to feel good about having done those things, and everything else will be a cakewalk.
That's the plan...wish me luck!
ETA: 10:58 EST- I have successfully cleaned my kitchen, done dishes, and even tackled the floors and a round of laundry. I would like to thank those who helped me get through that:
-Usher
- Beastie Boys
- Justin Timberlake
- OutKast
- Michael Jackson
- A special shout out to ll Cool J circa 1995, whose well timed MTV unplugged version of" Mama Said Knock You Out" started off my adventure, and themed the whole excursion nicely.
Monday, March 10, 2014
The real problem... the parent problem
So, let's review where I am. I'm a little bit broken... I am starting to see how deep my fear and shame really are contained within me, and I am starting to see how my actions are tied into all of this. And then, I begin to see something different...the aftershocks that might actually be more dangerous than earthquake itself.
My child is my life. She is the reason I was born, the reason for everything I do. When she was born, so was I. My job is to make this child's life better than mine...to keep her safe from the hurt and the pain of it all...to fight off those demons until she is strong enough to fight them herself, and to teach her how to fight them in the meantime.
But what if what I have taught her so far is how I learned to fight them...and what if that is the wrong way?
Let's face it, I've learned that my method of coping is not exactly sound.. I strive for perfection, beat myself up over every single failure ( or even perceived failure) and blame myself for not being good enough. Worst of all, I tie all of this into how much I am love by everyone else. Fail, and I am not lovable...succeed and.... well, I'm not even sure there is an option to that, because even success is never really successful enough.
I have been seeing the edges of it for a long time. I have this little girl, my heart in human form, and I can see her struggle with fearing failure. She struggles when we go over spelling words...she takes an uncomfortable stance and even though she knows the answer, seeming scared to answer. She stumbles over things before she tells me that she's afraid she's wrong. I can see her desire to please people...her almost desperate desire to have people approve of her. Worst of all, I can see how badly she beats herself up when she makes a mistake. When she doesn't clean up after herself, or she makes a mistake on her homework, she is sad, and says things that just absolutely break my heart. " I'm a terrible kid".... can you even imagine the heartbreak that I feel when she says those things?
Not long after my discovery about myself, I realized that I had, inadvertently, imposed this idea that only perfection is acceptable to my child. That ranks highest in the growing list of battles that I have to fight.
So, now prepared with some tools, I look toward this idea of vulnerability...the lessons of Dr. Brown.
If you have watched the videos I posted, you know what Dr. Brown says about children... but here is a review.
Children are not packages of perfection, and it is not our job to be keep them perfect. They are, as Dr. Brown says, "hardwired for struggle". When I think about these things, I think about why we set children up for...what I had set my child up for. The truth is that I did set my child up as a mold of perfection. I don't know what it is... maybe the concepts of tabula rosa had let me to this idea. She was a perfectly mold-able blank slate. She arrived into my world as perfection, and it was my actions that would make her into what she would become. Looking at it, it's a terribly unfair thing to do... to her and to me. I see parents struggle with this all the time... wondering why their children can't just be a reflection of the perfection they see in them. We don't mean to, but we tell them that perfection is what they are, and then crush them when they aren't perfect.... and at the same time, we take all of that onto ourselves... another failure to add to the growing list of failures. If I was a better parent, my child's room would be clean. If I was a better parent, my child wouldn't struggle at school. If I was a better parent, my child would eat all their vegetable, hate sugary sweets, and would never ever cry. In my own head, she was perfection, and all of her failures and struggles were a direct result of my failures.
What Dr. Brown says is correct. My child is not perfect. Strange thing is that I agreed with this idea before I was introduced to Dr. Brown's work. I would joke about how children are not 'special snowflakes' and that we shouldn't treat them like that. But, thinking this and internalizing it are two different things. I saw treating children as 'special snowflakes' as setting them up for thinking that the world owed them all the privilege that being special would entail, and that is a dangerous thing. But, this concept is so much more than that. Dr. Browns explanation of children is right- they are not perfect... they are hardwired for struggle..... and they are worthy of love.
Worthy of love is a big concept that I will likely deal with in another post, but here is the basics. Being worthy of love is likely a key to all of this. It is the difference between guilt and shame. It is the difference between " I made a mistake" and "I am a mistake". It is a reason for self-motivation based on worth, instead of based on fear. I think about all the problems I have faced in my life, and if I look at them through the lenses of feeling worthy of love, I wonder how many things I would have done differently.
And, in looking at the struggles my child faces most often... fear of failure...allowing others to treat her badly because she wants people to like her.... thinking that she is a terrible kid... all of these things come back to one idea. My daughter does not feel worthy of love.
Of course, I can't help but take this back onto myself. I've worked so hard to tell my daughter how much she is loved. There isn't a day that goes by where she's not told 100 times that she is loved. There isn't day that passes where she isn't hugged and kissed at least 20 times. My daughter has never closed her eyes to go to sleep where she hasn't been told " I love you". But maybe being told she is loved is different that being told she is worthy of love.
So, we are trying something different. Inspired by some friends of ours, David and I have started telling her that she is worthy of love. More specifically, we say " You are strong, beautiful, smart, independent, and worthy of love." Our new stance on struggles is to teach her how to "cash in" on her worthiness. We talk to her about working hard and not giving up in terms of her happiness being WORTH it. We are teaching her that she is worth the effort, and that what we do everyday is because we know she is worth those efforts.
Our shift in perspective comes with other conversations. I have started talking to my daughter about how she doesn't have to be perfect, and she doesn't have to be afraid of failure. We tell her about our failures... we have let down the walls and allowed her to see us struggling. In my young daughters eyes, mommy and daddy are perfection... the thing she should be like. It's not unusually for parents to hide their imperfections from their children. I can see the reasons. You need your child to respect you... to live by rules and ideas...even if only to keep them safe. When I tell my daughter to stay in the yard and not talk to strangers, I require an amount of " because I said so" in that. The mistake we make is the mistake we make on the larger scale...
..Imperfection does not equal not being respectable.
Again, that's a post for another day, but here is where we are. We are owning our mistakes and talking to our daughter about them. We tell her what we struggle with and why we struggle. We tell her we are going to try to learn from our mistakes, because we are worthy of that...and are acting as models of what we are expecting from her. Our new goal is not perfection...it's not perfect grades or a clean room. Our new goal is focused on one thing... teaching our daughter that she is worthy of love...regardless of mistakes...regardless of things not being perfect... regardless of the struggle.
I'm sure this is not the last post I will make on this subject, but let me end it with this. Parents, be aware of what you are putting on your kids. Be aware of how much you hide from them, and that respect without vulnerability is setting up the idea in your kids that they will never be worthy of respect. Being a child is a vulnerable position...they are smaller, they don't have all the tools, and they are constantly being forced to admit they are wrong. We have choices... and too often, our choice is to take advantage of their vulnerability...leading them to that terrible place of EXCRUCIATING vulnerability...instead of the healthy place of emotionally honest vulnerability. Be careful they you are not teaching your child that perfection is the goal, and that imperfection needs to be hidden away. Be careful that you are not just teaching your child that they are loved, but that they are worthy of being loved by anyone. Our job is to send them out into the world prepared to take on all of the struggles that life brings... and teaching them now that they are worthy of love can change so much for them. Teach them how to handle the struggle..not just how to hide it.
My child is my life. She is the reason I was born, the reason for everything I do. When she was born, so was I. My job is to make this child's life better than mine...to keep her safe from the hurt and the pain of it all...to fight off those demons until she is strong enough to fight them herself, and to teach her how to fight them in the meantime.
But what if what I have taught her so far is how I learned to fight them...and what if that is the wrong way?
Let's face it, I've learned that my method of coping is not exactly sound.. I strive for perfection, beat myself up over every single failure ( or even perceived failure) and blame myself for not being good enough. Worst of all, I tie all of this into how much I am love by everyone else. Fail, and I am not lovable...succeed and.... well, I'm not even sure there is an option to that, because even success is never really successful enough.
I have been seeing the edges of it for a long time. I have this little girl, my heart in human form, and I can see her struggle with fearing failure. She struggles when we go over spelling words...she takes an uncomfortable stance and even though she knows the answer, seeming scared to answer. She stumbles over things before she tells me that she's afraid she's wrong. I can see her desire to please people...her almost desperate desire to have people approve of her. Worst of all, I can see how badly she beats herself up when she makes a mistake. When she doesn't clean up after herself, or she makes a mistake on her homework, she is sad, and says things that just absolutely break my heart. " I'm a terrible kid".... can you even imagine the heartbreak that I feel when she says those things?
Not long after my discovery about myself, I realized that I had, inadvertently, imposed this idea that only perfection is acceptable to my child. That ranks highest in the growing list of battles that I have to fight.
So, now prepared with some tools, I look toward this idea of vulnerability...the lessons of Dr. Brown.
If you have watched the videos I posted, you know what Dr. Brown says about children... but here is a review.
Children are not packages of perfection, and it is not our job to be keep them perfect. They are, as Dr. Brown says, "hardwired for struggle". When I think about these things, I think about why we set children up for...what I had set my child up for. The truth is that I did set my child up as a mold of perfection. I don't know what it is... maybe the concepts of tabula rosa had let me to this idea. She was a perfectly mold-able blank slate. She arrived into my world as perfection, and it was my actions that would make her into what she would become. Looking at it, it's a terribly unfair thing to do... to her and to me. I see parents struggle with this all the time... wondering why their children can't just be a reflection of the perfection they see in them. We don't mean to, but we tell them that perfection is what they are, and then crush them when they aren't perfect.... and at the same time, we take all of that onto ourselves... another failure to add to the growing list of failures. If I was a better parent, my child's room would be clean. If I was a better parent, my child wouldn't struggle at school. If I was a better parent, my child would eat all their vegetable, hate sugary sweets, and would never ever cry. In my own head, she was perfection, and all of her failures and struggles were a direct result of my failures.
What Dr. Brown says is correct. My child is not perfect. Strange thing is that I agreed with this idea before I was introduced to Dr. Brown's work. I would joke about how children are not 'special snowflakes' and that we shouldn't treat them like that. But, thinking this and internalizing it are two different things. I saw treating children as 'special snowflakes' as setting them up for thinking that the world owed them all the privilege that being special would entail, and that is a dangerous thing. But, this concept is so much more than that. Dr. Browns explanation of children is right- they are not perfect... they are hardwired for struggle..... and they are worthy of love.
Worthy of love is a big concept that I will likely deal with in another post, but here is the basics. Being worthy of love is likely a key to all of this. It is the difference between guilt and shame. It is the difference between " I made a mistake" and "I am a mistake". It is a reason for self-motivation based on worth, instead of based on fear. I think about all the problems I have faced in my life, and if I look at them through the lenses of feeling worthy of love, I wonder how many things I would have done differently.
And, in looking at the struggles my child faces most often... fear of failure...allowing others to treat her badly because she wants people to like her.... thinking that she is a terrible kid... all of these things come back to one idea. My daughter does not feel worthy of love.
Of course, I can't help but take this back onto myself. I've worked so hard to tell my daughter how much she is loved. There isn't a day that goes by where she's not told 100 times that she is loved. There isn't day that passes where she isn't hugged and kissed at least 20 times. My daughter has never closed her eyes to go to sleep where she hasn't been told " I love you". But maybe being told she is loved is different that being told she is worthy of love.
So, we are trying something different. Inspired by some friends of ours, David and I have started telling her that she is worthy of love. More specifically, we say " You are strong, beautiful, smart, independent, and worthy of love." Our new stance on struggles is to teach her how to "cash in" on her worthiness. We talk to her about working hard and not giving up in terms of her happiness being WORTH it. We are teaching her that she is worth the effort, and that what we do everyday is because we know she is worth those efforts.
Our shift in perspective comes with other conversations. I have started talking to my daughter about how she doesn't have to be perfect, and she doesn't have to be afraid of failure. We tell her about our failures... we have let down the walls and allowed her to see us struggling. In my young daughters eyes, mommy and daddy are perfection... the thing she should be like. It's not unusually for parents to hide their imperfections from their children. I can see the reasons. You need your child to respect you... to live by rules and ideas...even if only to keep them safe. When I tell my daughter to stay in the yard and not talk to strangers, I require an amount of " because I said so" in that. The mistake we make is the mistake we make on the larger scale...
..Imperfection does not equal not being respectable.
Again, that's a post for another day, but here is where we are. We are owning our mistakes and talking to our daughter about them. We tell her what we struggle with and why we struggle. We tell her we are going to try to learn from our mistakes, because we are worthy of that...and are acting as models of what we are expecting from her. Our new goal is not perfection...it's not perfect grades or a clean room. Our new goal is focused on one thing... teaching our daughter that she is worthy of love...regardless of mistakes...regardless of things not being perfect... regardless of the struggle.
I'm sure this is not the last post I will make on this subject, but let me end it with this. Parents, be aware of what you are putting on your kids. Be aware of how much you hide from them, and that respect without vulnerability is setting up the idea in your kids that they will never be worthy of respect. Being a child is a vulnerable position...they are smaller, they don't have all the tools, and they are constantly being forced to admit they are wrong. We have choices... and too often, our choice is to take advantage of their vulnerability...leading them to that terrible place of EXCRUCIATING vulnerability...instead of the healthy place of emotionally honest vulnerability. Be careful they you are not teaching your child that perfection is the goal, and that imperfection needs to be hidden away. Be careful that you are not just teaching your child that they are loved, but that they are worthy of being loved by anyone. Our job is to send them out into the world prepared to take on all of the struggles that life brings... and teaching them now that they are worthy of love can change so much for them. Teach them how to handle the struggle..not just how to hide it.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
My own personal Jesus....
So, I posted about my problem to my fellow Mommies, searching for a therapist. Of course, what is so interesting is that my control-freak nature drove me to search for the PERFECT therapist. Here is how I described my ideal therapist:
So, I'm looking for a therapist recommendation, but I'm looking for something very specific, so please bare with me for a moment.
I need someone very...pragmatic I guess is the word. I have gone to review sites and to my insurance company listings and looked up options, but in the end, none of those tell me the thing I'm looking to avoid, and I don't really want to go once and never come back. I'm looking for help with a very specific ( anxiety related) issue, but I want to avoid things that are ( searching for the word.....) crunchy??? I am not looking for spirituality or eastern philosophy, and if there is a dream catcher, I will head for the hills, even if it's symbolic in nature. I have no problem with emotions or metaphors, but I am looking for someone who doesn't take "sensitivity" to another level where it becomes about the vibrations I'm putting out into the universe....does that make sense?
I know this sounds incredibly nit-picky of me, but my experience has shown me that there are a number of those types of therapists that exist, and while I can appreciate that might work for some people, I do not believe it will work for me. I would like to avoid that, especially since I doubt my insurance is going to pay for 5 or 6 "new patient" visits. Any and all recommendations would be appreciated.
Well, I got a few recommendations, and made a few calls, when one of my mommies tells me that I should look into Dr. Brene Brown, and led me to a YouTube video of her TedTalk.
I can't lie, I'm now totally a Dr. Brown junkie. I spent the next week watching everything I could get my hands on of hers, making my husband and my friends watching these. Some of my vagueness on the subject at hand will make sense after you watch these.
Disclaimer: These are not touchy, feely, embrace-your-inner-goddess videos...they are TEDtalks, and it has completely changed how I see the world
First Video
Second Video
Third Video
Now, perhaps you can see why Dr. Brown is my own personal Jesus. She speaks to me in a way that I crave- practical, reasonable...solutions and tools. You can also see where I got the idea that I am stepping into the arena...I found that through her, and I am grateful.
And, perhaps, now it makes sense why I need to go through this journey publicly...without shame or fear. My chronicalling of this is me being vulnerable...honest...authentic. I am telling the world where I am and how I got here. Through this, I might have struggles...I might need to be called out and forced to be vulnerable.
But, embracing vulnerability is what I am all about right now. In upcoming posts, I'll talk about how this is changing me as a person, a wife, a friend, an employee, a leader, a parent ( that's a big one!) and as a person in general.
Fear and Shame in Matthews, North Carolina
So, I've talked about how I have fear and shame, and it's likely important to talk about what I mean. Everyone is afraid sometimes... everyone is ashamed sometimes... what make me different?
Well, nothing really, except that I have seen how paralyzing mine is. Fear mostly...some shame.
So, this is how I got here:
I am not depressed, and I don't have any other mood disorders. That is not what this is.
I have a very good life- a happy marriage, a great job that I love, a great kid, great friends. I am college educated, smart, focused, determined...I'm know for my determination. All of this was achieved despite some misspent youth ( drugs, mostly coke and bad relationships), but I recovered from that in my early 20's, and went on to be a pretty normal, healthy person.
I had some things happened... again, details don't matter, but here is what does... I've been taught that things need to be perfect...nothing can be out of place, nothing can be even a slight disruption to anyone else. If my purpose is not to improve, I am in the way and I am a to blame if anything is wrong. I'm conditioned, as it would be, to feel that I am the burden in someone's life that they have to survive, and that I'm wholly and entirely undeserving of love.
Fast forward- I grow up into what I THOUGHT is a normal, well adjusted adult. I'm known for being controlled- responsible- and over-achiever. Most people work 40 hours...I work 60. My husband jokes that I can't possibly volunteer for everything, and I "credit" my quick need to drop everything to apologize and attend to his every need to 16 years of catholic schooling and the associated catholic guilt. I pride myself on having packed away the issues my problems with my misspent youth, but about 7 months ago, something changed.
A particular incident culminated in an 8 hour long panic attack on the side of a highway(the first serious panic attack I've ever had in my life). I was left a complete mess. I thought I was going to die. I had been triggered, and saw feelings that I had never been able to identify before rise to the surface.
Since then, with increasing regularity, I am recognizing that "the me" I have become- controlled- reliable- over-achiever...these qualities that I have actually been PROUD of- they are entirely fear based. That my only motivator in life is that I am afraid ( terrified, at times) that I will let someone down. At it's worst moments, I am afraid that people will think I am careless, thoughtless, or stupid. Without these incidents last summer, I don't know if I would have ever connected these ideas, but now I have, and I've realized how broken I really am. Over time, these ideas have become more cemented, and last week, something happened that completely threw my world upside down. A fairly innocuous incident undid me....I was right back there- afraid, terrified really, that my husband would see me for what " I really am"- careless, thoughtless, stupid. I'm realizing that I spend my life like this- and while there are moments of it being worse, I can't really think of any moments when I am not motivated by this fear. I have no self-motivation....there is no sense of self-achievement except that people don't hate me ( yet, the voice in my head says), and good is never ever good enough.
So much of who I am is tied into these things, I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to motivate myself without being afraid...I'm scared of what kind of person I will be if I'm not afraid of letting someone down. I don't even know the "healthy" lines of guilt and responsibility anymore. Because, apparently ( according to my husband and friends) "normal" people don't feel guilty when their husband can't find his pajama pants, and they don't feel bad that they worked late the other night and so they weren't home to put the laundry in the drawers. Apparently, "normal" people don't feel so guilty that they go to CVS at midnight to buy cake mix and make cupcakes for a class event the next day because the teacher sent a last minute email that there weren't going to be enough treats for the class party the next day, even though you've already made the 12 you signed up for. Apparently "normal" people don't feel responsible when it starts raining because your husband wanted to go and play disc golf, and if you hadn't been so careless and thoughtless, you would have woken him up an hour earlier on the weekend so he could go before it started raining. Apparently "normal" people don't feel guilty when someone they know does something wrong simply because they know them, instead of twisting because if you were a better, smarter person you would have found some way of preventing that person from doing the bad thing.
The best way I can put it ( and I put this on my FB wall the day that I realized exactly what this all was): When you walked on eggshells for so long, you think you are responsible for every egg. I think I am responsible for every single egg....even eggs that haven't happened yet....even eggs that exist far outside my reach.... they are all my responsibility, and every cracked egg is all my fault.
Every moment of my life is like that. I don't have these expectations for anyone else, but I turn myself inside out, and I destroy myself over even the idea of failure.... and even exceeding goals isn't enough. I can't continue like this... I'm killing myself slowly by doing this, and it's truly not fair to the people in my life....
..... but I'm scared to NOT be like this.
Like THIS, I found love, success... I found a good life being this way!!! The truth is that I don't know who I am if I'm not this person...I don't even know if I can be a "good" person if I wasn't so afraid of people thinking I'm a "bad" person. Hell, I'm afraid of even talking about this, or posting it on here, and I'm currently thinking about how stupid my problems are and how inconsiderate it is of me to waste your time with my stupid First World Problem. I'm such a mess.
The real thing that messes with my head is that I spent that last 14+ years of my life thinking that the misspent youth of drugs/bad relationships was the "bad result" and that this "regaining control" was the "recovery"...but ( OMG- SHOCKER!) THIS is the "bad result"...I don't know how it took me so long to see it. OR, I'm also really messed up because I've spent years being proud of the fact that I wasn't a "victim"- that I survived despite it all and was able to walk away unscathed, and now there is this ghost ( a ghost I didn't even know was there!) and I HATE the idea that all this time, all these feelings...I've been victimized this whole time... being victimized isn't what I "DO".
So, after sharing all of this in hopes of finding a decent therapist, a fellow mommy pointed me in a direction for which I am wholly and completely grateful for. I think I have found my solution, and all I had to do was watch a TED talk.
Those details will come in the next post.
Why "Step into the Arena"?
There are a few things that inspired this journey, but here is the cornerstone of the reason that this is entitled Step into the Arena:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt
I am no longer going to be the critic, or the person who stands outside the arena... waiting for the day when I am good enough, strong enough, brave enough...something enough. I'm stepping into the arena...daring greatly, without fear or shame.
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