So the other night after I posted that I Can't Cry I felt a noticeable shift. My tears didn't seem quite so blocked and that was a really interesting feeling to have! I watched the movie that I hoped would help me cry, and it did to a degree. And then, even though it was really, really late and I had big things the next day and I could come up with tons of reasons why not- I got out my paper and I painted. Which is big because I hadn't painted in a long time. And what was even bigger was that I finished the painting which has not been my norm lately!
I have been playing around with doing intuitive message paintings for maybe close to a year now. I figure out what question I want answered, or what I want support around, or what I want the painting to illustrate, and I come up with a question to be answered by the painting. I also have a piece of paper nearby to jot down any messages that I hear coming through to answer the question. Then I get in a meditative state and ask the question over and over again with my breath. I often write down the message first, and then move to the painting. I never know what it is going to look like when I start. Sometimes I have a bit of an inkling, but often I don't. I just follow as I feel led- put red paint here, green dots there, yellow swirls here. And when the directions stop, the painting is finished. It's really fun to paint this way, and I have been completely blown away by the answers and images that come through, especially when the focus is on a question for someone else. I'm amazed at the messages that are NOT what my mind would have chosen that end up being completely accurate or perfectly what the other person needs to hear.
So that night I decided to ask a question about my crying, or lack thereof. I asked "Why can't I cry?" and this is the answer that came through-
Tears were the easy way to let it through, back when you had no other way to communicate. But now you do and it's important to let it through in a way that communicates your awareness of it to help others become aware as well. Crying was dumping it so you could move on, get back to life as usual. Painting and writing are letting it through in a way that helps you and others, and the world, and consciousness to grow. Each release in the form of communication is a leveling up instead of a release through tears being simply a crisis intervention, a pressure relief valve to allow things to continue as they were. It is a gift.
A huge weight was lifted once I got that message and finished the painting. And I'm amazed to say that my tears have been flowing easier than ever. Especially when I take the time to write or paint or share my awareness with someone else. It can be so hard to talk about your experience of life when it's far from the one you're "supposed" to be having. It can be so hard to talk about feelings with other people, especially when you're always "too sensitive" about everything. I had come to believe some time ago that my sensitivity is a big part of my gift, of my reason for being here. But I can't say that there hasn't been a part of me that would have been more than happy to dump it for a more "normal" experience of the world. Oh how much easier life would be, right? Except I don't tend to pick easy things, I tend to go for the challenges so it makes sense that I would have picked a life with them. Especiallychallenges that could potentially have a big payoff in the form of helping others be more at peace with themselves and their feelings and beings. I have experienced before that when I am honest about my experience it can really help others find peace with their own. I can see now that it may help me just as much as it helps them.
Thank you tears for refusing to flow until I could understand that. I am so grateful that you stood firm even while I tried my hardest to get you to flow. I am sorry I thought something was wrong with you.
Love and hugs to all of you out there reading this. Thank you for helping me, and I hope I am able to help you just as much. <3
I know it has been a LONG time since I wrote last. I have a couple unfinished posts, an unfinished new website, and all sorts of other things to share with you. But for now, I need to share that I can't cry.
Seems like a dream maybe for some of you. And it was a dream of mine I think when I was younger. I was always crying. And always shouldn't have been. Or at least that's the message I got from others. Especially the lovely "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about." I had no right to cry, no reason. And at some point I turned off the tears. I don't remember when. If it happened when I started taking depression medication when I was 11, or when I was a teenager and had to be grown up, or when I was an adult (because adults never cry). But somewhere along there a dam was built behind my eyes, and the tears rarely leak through anymore.
And it's not the wonderful thing I thought it would be.
Sadness is a valid emotion. In the best cases, we feel it, we process it (often though crying), it moves through, and we move on to the next feeling that shows up. But when you can't cry, it often gets stuck. Or at the least it takes a really long time to feel through.
The past few weeks I have felt really slow, weighted down, depressed even. I'm not really worried about the depressed part. Since healing from the major depression that was the majority of my life until I was 25, I still slide through depression at times. It too is a valid emotion. It's when we get stuck that it becomes a problem. Right now I'm trusting that I'm just moving through it slowly.
I have realized in the past few years that I feel things others don't. Yes, that sensitive word that I so hated growing up does apply. It has its gifts and it has its discomforts. And the past few weeks I have been feeling the discomforts. So much pain has been going on, and I've been feeling it. Recently I've been able to learn to separate what is mine and what is not, but even though I know it's not mine I still feel it. I avoid the news and don't read much about what's going on except the basic facts for major events, but it's still there. And I've had my own things that I need to feel and process and move through, all of which have been felt very strongly these past few weeks as well.
And I can't cry.
I've worked with quite a few practitioners on this very topic, and always we make some headway. But still, the floodgates aren't open.
And why am I telling you this?
Because nearly all of us have been taught that it's bad to cry. Never let others see you cry. Be strong. Be a big girl or boy. Brush it off. But when we don't allow ourselves to cry, we can't move through the feeling of sadness as smoothly. And we can't move on to feeling the next thing, which could be freaking amazing, but we're spending so much time and effort holding the tears back that we can't get there. I can see the freaking amazing things in my life just sitting there waiting for me to pick them up and feel their joy. But I can't yet because first I need to feel through the sadness- it's next in line. Like cars going through a one lane tunnel, sadness has to be allowed through first before anything else can come through.
My plan is to watch a movie that moves me to tears tonight after everyone else is asleep. That's normally how I can sneak around my block. I thought I'd be okay without doing that, but today I was feeling even slower and more weighed down, so I know I truly need to. For whatever reason, the tears flow easier when they're for someone else. The movie allows me to start crying, and then I can move through my own sadness. That's my plan. Because I really want to move on to those joyful things that are waiting for me. I can hear the fun music from the next car waiting to come through the tunnel. I just have to focus on the one that's in front of me right now.
How about you? Are you holding back tears right now? What would make it okay to let them through?
Much love to you all. You and your tears are a blessing to the world.
Birthdays have long been kind of weird for me. Feeling like this is finally a day when I deserve attention, but not knowing how to accept positive attention, feeling like I have to brush it off and make it seem like it's not a big deal so I don't seem full of myself.
Last year on my birthday, as I was reading through the lovely birthday wishes that friends had posted on my facebook wall, trying to decide whether or not to thank each one individually or if that would make it seem like *I* was paying too much attention to the attention. . . I became aware of a curious feeling within my body. It was as if each "Happy Birthday!" was pulling the string of a motor inside my stomach- much like you pull the string of a lawn mower to start it. As I read each loving wish, I felt almost a vibrating, a stirring of butterflies, a light beginning to spin. And then, like a lawnmower that hasn't had its string pulled quite hard enough, it would stop. Each time I read a new wish I would feel this way, and I wondered what that feeling was about?
The right to be happy that I was born.
Really? At first I was confused, and then the understanding started to sink in. On some level, I felt that if enough other people were happy that I was here on this Earth, then I could be happy about it too. Each "Happy Birthday!" was bringing me closer to what I thought was a "tipping point", where I could finally stand up and say "I'm happy I'm here, too!" and it would be okay because enough other people felt the same way- it wasn't just that I was stuck up or thought too highly of myself. But until I reached that tipping point I had to stay unhappy about being here, I had to keep my head down, I had to be meek and modest and downplay all of their happy wishes for me, because I didn't deserve them.
And then a switch flipped in me. Because gosh darn it, what if no one else in the world was happy that I was born, what if they all thought the world would have been better off without me- couldn't *I* choose to be happy to be here? Couldn't I chose to delight in the experiences I get to have, the breaths I get to take, the beauty I get to see? Even if they don't see a single positive thing that has come from my birth, can't I choose to be happy simply because I am alive? And a phrase popped into my head-
It is okay for me to celebrate myself, I don't have to wait for others to do it.
And I went over and wrote it on my white board where I write quotes and things that inspire me. And I felt a little nervous and a little excited at the same time. ;)
See, I'm not a big celebrater. I do pretty well being grateful for things as they come, seeing the awesome in the day-in-day-out type stuff, but celebrations- parties, holidays, etc- tend to make me nervous. I mean, they're fun and all but the lead up is stressful, there are often too many people around who converse only in small talk, food to be prepared, best behavior to be on. . . But I started to see that, if I were the only one who was happy I was here, then I could celebrate my own existence in my own way. Celebrating myself could just mean being with myself in a loving and excited way, to honor my true self and my decision to come here to this planet, to rejoice in all of the amazing things I get to experience because I am on this Earth and I have a body to experience it with! To fill myself with love and joy so fully that the party would be IN me, just me, myself, and I marveling at this existence. And that motor in my stomach that was trying to start before, that
couldn't get going on the love of others, started to ever so quietly and
gently hum under the power of my own love. The only power that could actually get it started.
Looking back over the past year, I can see how I started to slowly, very slowly relax into that possibility, into that realization that I can celebrate myself and the fact that I am here without having to wait for others to do it first. And really, how on earth can other people celebrate my true self when I'm not happy enough with it to even share it with them? My most recent birthday was earlier this week, and the change from last year to this both amazes me and leaves me grinning. Oh, I'm still not fully there, I still look to others to get my motor started at times, but I am at least conscious of it now so it's easier to shift from thinking it has to be an outside job to remembering that it's an inside job. Always is. And I have finally embodied that enough to paint it.
A fantastic thing happened this year- my dear friend birthed an amazing BIG soul into a new tiny body on the same date that I was birthed. I have a new awesome birthday buddy! And while in the past I would have felt sorry for the poor guy to have to share a birthday with me, this year I am overjoyed to get to share such a special day with such a special guy. I'm so glad he's here on this planet! And for maybe the first time, I'm so glad I am too!
Hoo boy this summer has been intense! So much time just riding the waves, or deep underwater, or feeling like the world is turning on it's head that I haven't really had the ability to sit and write here. But tonight I'm feeling it so out some words come. :)
Have you ever heard the phrase "Suffering is optional"? Or been told that you can have and create wonderful things without struggling to get them? That life can be all ease and grace even while you're learning new things? That you don't have to work hard for what you want, you just have to allow it?
Those are common themes in self-help materials, especially those focused towards the Law of Attraction and energy/vibration. I've read and heard those types of things for YEARS. And while part of me has said "Oh yes, that makes perfect sense!" another part of me has crossed her arms and said "Bull S#%t".
I've pondered on this many times, this subconscious dedication that I seem to have to suffering. I've felt for a long time that part of me has actually enjoyed the suffering, not because of how it felt but because of what it meant. It meant that I was getting to see how strong I was. It meant that I was learning or growing or developing a lot. It meant that I deserved any help that others might be willing to give me. And it meant that I was REALLY earning any good things that were coming to me after the suffering was over.
Take someone who appears to have easily gotten everything good in their life. More than their peers, even. They just seem to walk through life with gifts laid at their feet. They tend to be the target of resentment and jealousy, snide comments behind their back about how it's not fair how easy life is for them. But people who have suffered or whose good things have come after a horrible event, they are looked upon with love and comfort that at least they got some good after the horrors they endured. At some point I saw these two patterns and subconsciously (or maybe even consciously depending on how old I was) decided that it is safer to get good things AFTER bad things happen.
And really, that message is prevalent in our culture, too. Bad first, then you're allowed to have good. "No pain, no gain". The idea that if you work hard for 12+ years in school, especially if school is hard for you, then at the end you will have earned yourself the ability to have a good life in the "real world" and then you can be happy. The harder you work, the better your reward. I got the message in church that life was meant to be endured, the more you suffered on Earth, the more you would be given in heaven. "Keep your nose to the grindstone". (Can I say ouch?) You have to punish children and make them feel bad about themselves so they will grow into good, kind adults. You must deprive yourself of the things you like to eat so your body can be beautiful.
I was thinking about this the other day, and some phrases came to mind. I used EFT to work through them, and felt much freer afterwards.
-I must always be working hard for good things to happen.
-If I slack off and do something I enjoy then good things won't happen because I haven't worked hard enough.
-If it's fun and easy then you're not doing enough.
-If you're poor and smiling you're not doing enough, only rich people are allowed to be happy.
-Your life has to be struggle, struggle, struggle until you have earned good things and then you can be happy.
-If I want amazing things in my life, I must first go through amazing pain.
So, in a nutshell, everyone has to start out miserable and working hard at whatever it is that someone else says they should be doing, and then eventually, if you toil enough, someone will come along, tap your shoulder and free you from the pain so you can skip off and be happy and free.
Yeah, I realize it may sound crazy, but subconscious beliefs often are! I really enjoy uncovering these beliefs, because it helps me see with greater clarity WHY I often do things that make no logical sense ;), and gives me the opportunity to chose something different. How do I want bad and good to relate to each other? Do I want to struggle before good things can happen? Can I allow good things to happen without being required to get mired in muck first? It also gives me the opportunity to thank a part of me that has been working so very hard for so very long to keep me as safe as possible. Even if I don't like what has happened because it was trying to keep me safe, I can love it and appreciate its hard work. And find a greater capacity for compassion for myself.
Then again, maybe that belief that I picked up wasn't just crazy old me jumping to conclusions. We talk about how we must finish our work before playing, students in school who have demonstrated extra effort may get to take some time to do something fun that others don't get to do, heck, isn't that the whole concept of retirement? Work hard at something that you may or may not enjoy for 40+ years and then you earn the right to do what you want with your time?
So is there a different way? Is there another option? Is it possible that those phrases at the beginning of this blog post could be true? And if so, how would that look?
Do you have anything that comes easy to you, that you love so much that working at it is more like play? And when other people go on an on about how wonderful and amazing it is, you feel a bit guilty that you didn't work HARD enough on it? HARD WORK should be unpleasant, yes? The more you want to run away but stick with it, the more value it has? The amount of blood, sweat, and tears you put into it determines its worth? A project that you worked on for two days straight is inherently better than one that took you 30 minutes?
What would life be like without those beliefs? What would "work" look like if we didn't believe that we HAD to endure a period of intense unpleasantness before we could get to the good stuff? Sometimes it may happen, yes, and maybe the project we put the most blood, sweat, and tears into ends up being our favorite. But it doesn't HAVE to be that way! It could be that the project that just effortlessly flowed from our fingertips ends up being the favorite, and most impactful, and most celebrated. But we likely won't even allow ourselves to see it that way if we keep focusing on work=amount of uncomfortable effort=worth.
I love this quote, and my level of understanding continues to deepen the more I try to live my life by it-
“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from.”
- Seth Godin
What if my greatest gift to the world, the greatest impact and service and place within humanity is that which comes easiest to me? If I believe that work has to be hard to do any good, I'll likely look elsewhere when choosing my career, to something else that I struggle with more. Or if I do go into the field that comes easiest to me, I will probably undervalue what I do because it is just so much fun. What if we judged our true vocation by how much fun it is? What if the more we enjoyed working on a project the more worth it had?
Oooh, so many "What if. . .?"s! The more I ask the clearer my own path is becoming, the more options and opportunities I see. Yay for getting closer to a life that has new good things without HAVING to have bad things first! Heh, I can feel myself becoming more open to new things in general since loosening the need to have the bad justify the good! Mmmmm, it will be FUN to see where this goes!
I've been feeling the strong desire to run away lately. The type of running away that involves hole-ing myself up in a room and ignoring everyone, and escaping into a book. Or watching a movie marathon (SO wanting to watch all of the Harry Potters back to back!) and not taking care of any physical responsibilities, like cooking or cleaning. Or even losing myself in deep thought. Engaging myself in the philosophical and spiritual world that I've kept separate from my "real" life. The stuff that feels so right and just pours out of me when writing to someone online, but that has a difficult time coming out of my mouth in a way that makes sense to other people when talking face to face.
I know my body can't go anywhere, but my mind and my spirit sure can! I can leave my body here and go play out in the ethers. Oh, it is so fun out there, you know! Spiritual laws are so much more lovely than physical ones, and much more enjoyable. Where love heals all things, creation takes but a thought, where there is no time, only this moment, there IS a purpose and meaning to everything, and we are all filled with this divine light and wisdom. Being in the physical, sometimes it's easy to forget them. Easy to feel like they don't exist, that the only thing that does exist is pain and suffering because that's what keeps popping up. The physical world is so dense, so separate. It can feel imprisoning. The spiritual world is so free and expansive!
I often see physical manifestations of my "inside" world, especially when something is really taking a lot of my focus, or even more when that thing is trying to get my attention so I WILL focus on it so I can work through it and release it. Last week I found this sunflower in my garden. I've never seen a half orange, half red sunflower before. The other sunflowers of this type have red in the center and orange on the outside, or vice versa. I stood looking at this one with wonder for a long time, pondering it's existence in my garden. And then I got it. Split in half. I feel split in half. Absolutely.
Lately I've been wrestling with the question of how to be both fully
spirit and fully physical. It feels like I've split myself most of my
life- I have my day to day physical stuff and I have my "out there"
spiritual/philisophical self. I often feel deep in the "out there" side
when doing things like journaling or looking at the sky or whatever,
and then I get yanked back into the physical side when people talk to me
or my kids fight or I have an alarm that brings my attention back to time. I have absolutely been accused of
daydreaming, "having my head in the clouds", not hearing when other
people talk to me. . . I feel like I can't live the expansive,
spiritual side because there is no proof that it exists, other people
can't see it or touch it or verify that my experience is real. That's
probably why I stopped breathing for a bit and started crying during
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when Dumbledore said "Of course it
is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean
that it is not real?"
This past year I have been developing my "out there" side more, trusting that abilities and feelings that I have are okay, perfect even, even though at points in my life I have been told otherwise by other people. I have also been developing the physical world around me- gardening, becoming the caretakers of 23 guineas and 10 ducks (hopefully more soon!) Making plans for our farm and working to figure out how we can make a living off/with our land. Digging in the dirt a lot. And then there's my paintings that feel like they're a bridge between the two, a chance to make physical that which otherwise only exists in my feelings or mind or heart.
I've had this piece partially done for a few months and was just able to finish it last week. It's called "Out Of My Body". I feel drawn to do a series showing the process of a spirit being as separate from the body as it can be, choosing to be outside of the body as much as possible, then progressively becoming more and more embodied until the spirit and the body are one, fully in balance and harmony. I have no clue what the rest of the series will look like because I feel like I'm here right now, preferring to be out of my body. There have been other times where I have felt like my spirit has been in my body much more fully, but I'm having a hard time seeing that at the moment. I'm just not there right now.
I have been hard on myself this past week about how much I want to run away, how I keep hearing "I don't want to be here!" in my head. How much I want to retreat into a different world, into someone else's life through stories or movies. I normally don't have much "screen time" because I feel like it distracts me from my real life, but lately I've been craving it. We've watched the third and fourth Harry Potter, the first and second Matrix, and John Carter of Mars. And I've been feeling guilty that we've eaten dinner in front of the tv for so many nights in a row, guilty for wanting to enter their worlds instead of staying in my own. Today that dissolved somewhat when I realized that although sometimes I AM running away from my life so I can forget about the pain and the problems and the discomfort, at other times it's about immersing myself in a world of infinite possibilities so when I go back to my world, I can see my pain and problems in a different light. Which can actually be really beneficial! After all, "We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them," as Einstein said.
It's comforting to escape into stories because I have this trust that everything will turn out right in the end. That no matter what the problem is, everything will resolve in a way that feels good at some point. Would I want to actually live Harry Potter's life? No, I honestly don't think I'd be brave enough, I think I'd hide in a corner and cry more than the story allows for. My habits of freezing in fear and digging in my heels just wouldn't allow everything to flow as it needs to. But I love the stories, and the situations don't terrify me as much as they would in real life because I'm coming into the story with this trust that it will all work out. And maybe that's what I'm trying to find by wanting to run away to them right now- the deep and complete trust that everything will be okay in my own life. I do have that trust to some degree, but not to the same degree as when reading a story. So maybe that's the goal- the trust that if I cast off all fear and actually do extraordinary things everything will be okay, just as if I were a character in a book.
Maybe that's the key to choosing to be in my body, to combine both spirit and physical. Trust. Trust that I can be in my body AND be okay even though it can be incredibly painful. I can be okay while it is painful. Trust that I will be safe even though I can't see the big picture. Trust that my spirit and my body can work together as equal partners and neither one will get squelched or suppressed. Trust that my spirit can stay intact in all of it's expansive amazingness while being contained in a physical vessel. Trust that I CAN be my true self while on this planet, I don't have to hide it by trying to run away and never show it to anyone. It is SAFE to be FULLY ME.
It is going to take some processing and releasing to get to that last sentence, but the relief I felt from writing it tells me I'm on the right track! Maybe I don't have to run away anymore. :) It is SAFE to be FULLY ME. I WANT to be FULLY ME. I CHOOSE to be FULLY ME. I AM FULLY ME in this body, on this planet, in this moment right now. Wow. :')
Tonight our whole family watched the new American Girl movie on tv-
I have really enjoyed all of the American Girl movies so far (the Samantha movie is my favorite!) and this one was no exception. The feelings that kept coming up for me while watching, which really had nothing to do with the movie itself and more to do with my own "stuff", were all around how much I missed having a powerful body. Remembering how awesomely strong I felt when doing back handsprings and swinging on the bars and running towards the vault with all my might and then flying into the air. Oh, my body remembers those feelings!
I did gymnastics for a couple of years in middle school, during a break in swimming. I never got "really good", only competed at the first level, and was much taller than most of the other girls on the team. But it was FUN, and I look back on that time fondly.
Being powerful has been on my mind a lot lately, it's definitely something I've been processing through. And remembering how it felt to have a powerful body just brought up a whole 'nother level for me surrounding the power I have and have not had! Growing up, like most kids, I didn't have a whole lot of power in my life. Didn't have too many decisions I got to make, not big ones at least, just had to do what I was told and what was expected of me. I have realized that I learned back then that the only power I DID have was to resist. Going somewhere I didn't want to go? I couldn't say no, but I could make us late. I didn't have the power to create opportunities, but I could break them down, refuse to participate. I had power when I was angry, and that was probably one of the only times adults would actually stop and listen to me (or at least that's how it felt). If I said I really liked something, or wanted something to happen, then it was possible that that thing would be used to manipulate me into doing something they wanted. Those ponies are your favorites? Then they will be the first thing we threaten to take away unless you do what we ask. Really want to go to the zoo? Then you have to do everything we ask leading up to it or yo might not get to go. Eventually I learned to hide the things I truly loved, those that made me come alive. It's been a journey getting to know that feeling again.
And before you think my parents were horrible monsters; really, they were just doing what they were told that "good parents" do. Reward and punish. Make sure your child grows up to be a good person by getting them to do what they're supposed to. Show them you're boss!
This past week I got to watch an aspect of the way we make children powerless during a reptile show at the library. The librarian told us that the guy only picked kids who were sitting very still and quiet, and he didn't pick kids who raised their hands. W tried SO HARD during the show to do just that. Lots of kids would raise their hands, and the guy would say "Put your hands down!" not because everyone would get a turn, but because he didn't care if people WANTED a turn or not, in fact he seemed to delight in calling people up who did NOT want to touch the reptiles. E got picked to hold a snake right at the beginning of the show. She did really well. I was so proud of her, because when the guy asked if she wanted a nose tickle (rubbing the snake's nose on the person's nose) she said "no" because she didn't. He tried cajoling her many times, and still she stayed firm in her "no" and eventually he gave up and she sat down. My mother-in-law (and many others) did NOT stand so firm in their "no"s and he took the wavering as permission to shove the snake in their faces anyway. He seemed to delight in freaking people out, and I was afraid a couple times that he was going to put a pregnant woman into labor because he kept shoving creatures into her face that she was OBVIOUSLY terrified of, but he continued anyway. L ended up holding an alligator, and W wasn't picked at all. He was so sad, especially since he had tried so hard to behave in a way that would make it more likely that he would get picked. Afterwards the librarian said he mostly picks the little cute kids and rarely picks the big ones, anyway. That didn't lessen his disappointment. And it just struck me how powerless the audience was during the show. If you really wanted to participate, there was really no way to make it more likely to happen, and even if you didn't want to participate, unless you stood very firm in your "no" he didn't really give you the choice. The audience was basically at the mercy of his whims.
And really, this is how many of us grew up, and many kids are growing up now. Kids don't have the power to do or change much in our culture. Sure they can choose their clothes (kind of) and maybe what activities they engage in, but for the most part we let kids know that they are NOT in charge of their own lives, they have to do what they are told when they are told, they have to associate with people they many not like at all, have to listen to someone who may be incredibly disrespectful to them, have to spend their time doing things that may not interest them at all, eat what is put in front of them, and live with the possibility that "their" things may be taken away for not doing what someone else expected. Yes, children have power in that they can "choose" to do these things, but what if they don't want to? What if they absolutely hate their teacher? Sorry, hopefully you'll get a better one next year. (An adult could switch jobs, or file a complaint). What if they really want to study the ocean? Or want to take the math equations a few steps further? Sorry, have to wait until those come up in the curriculum. (An adult could change careers, and hopefully would, if the subject matter bored him/her to tears). Really hate what's for dinner? Then go to bed hungry. (If an adult finds him/herself at someone elses house for dinner and what is served is inedible, there is always the option of buying or making something else later). The only real power children have in these type of situations is to "do the right thing" no matter how they feel about it, or resist and refuse. For the most part they don't have the ability to actually create what they want in their lives. And some people may say that that's the way it has to be for children. Even if I agreed with that, the problem is that there is no "magic age" where a person suddenly HAS power, and most of us carry these attitudes of powerlessness into our adult lives and continue to live as if someone or something outside of us is still calling the shots. And for the most part, it's not, we're just caught in this invisible cage and choose to stay there because we don't realize that there are other options.
I've been aware of my habit of resisting for quite awhile. When life tries to head me in one direction I put on the brakes. If I feel like too many things are pulling me in a direction, or in different directions, I refuse to do anything until that pressure has lessened and I feel like I am acting out of my own free will. If someone tells me I have to do something, even if I was headed towards that thing and WANTED to do it, I'll very often refuse to do it then on principle, even though I will then be missing out on something that I actually wanted. These reactions aren't conscious most of the time, it's not until I stop and look outside of the reaction that I notice what's going on.
I realized earlier this year that it feels like the way for me to be the MOST powerful is to resist life, refuse to go where life is pushing me. Ha ha, life! You tried to make me but you couldn't! Look who's in charge now! Um, yeah. The metaphor that life is a river really resonates with me, and I easily see myself clinging to the grasses on the shore, yelling and fighting against the current trying to push me downstream. "You can't make me!" After awhile I may get comfortable and decide that I'd like to move somewhere else so I'll let go and float down the river for a bit until I freak out and grab something and start fighting again. But staying IN the river is just too terrifying. To feel like I'm being tossed about with no control at all, at the mercy of the current. No thank you. I like to know where I'm going, see the big picture!
Because of unschooling I have learned that there is an option when it comes to power and children. Instead of having power OVER children, we can have power WITH them. Having power with them means working together so everyone can get what they want and need out of situations, it means that what children want, what they are interested in, what they would prefer, actually is important and worthwhile, and therefore, what I want and am interested in and prefer is important as well. Expectations and societal rules and "the way it's done" don't HAVE to rule our lives. We DO have the power to choose what we want, where to go, how we live.
So a few months ago, when I was deep in fighting life, it hit me that I could decide to have power WITH life as well. I wasn't exactly sure what that meant, how it looked, but it FELT good. So I decided to paint it. I sketched it at first and wasn't completely satisfied but decided to paint it anyway. The resulting painting felt both good and a bit unsettling, but I wasn't sure why.
It has been sitting on my dresser ever since. Repeating the words feels good, and the colors feel really good, but it wasn't until tonight, after watching the movie, that I understood why it didn't feel quite right. I couldn't figure out how to portray having power WITH life, so I put the leaf there because at least it wasn't stopping the flow of life like the rock was. But the leaf wasn't really having power with life, it was just along for the ride. And while releasing the resistance is a good thing, and the releasing itself is a powerful act, the leaf had no way of interacting with life and directing its course at all.
When I realized that, I picked up the painting, and noticed the one below it. It is a painting that I made while playing around with a children's book that is trying to be written through me. And it hit me that swimming WITH the current would be an excellent way to work WITH life! And how when you get used to moving that fast, it's easier to direct where you're going and you feel less like a ping pong ball being bounced along on the waves. Releasing the resistance and directing attention and intention to what we want. I GET IT now! LOL. And how perfect that the image that brought about this realization is one that I have been called to focus on a couple of times in the last week. So working with life would mean diving into editing the story (that I wrote stream of consciousness) and creating more images. Yeah, I think I can do that. *Deep Breath*
I definitely want to focus in feeling powerful in my body again as well. Because of the movie my kids are interested in gymnastics, and honestly I'd love to be able to do a back walkover again. You know, just for the heck of it. ;) We do have a yoga studio in town, that would help me start using my body and getting flexible again. Flexible, awesome, that's releasing resistance in the body! Hoo boy, there's a lot getting loosened up and moving over here tonight!
How do you tend to react to life? Resist and shut down? Run ahead (or away) as fast as you can? Do you have power WITH life? If not, any ideas of how you can?
This post has been in bits and pieces for over a year. I'd write some and then just not be able to finish it. I feel like I can now!
A year ago we adopted two cats. It turns out that one of them was pregnant. She wasn't much older than a kitten herself, and the poor thing got so huge she couldn't even clean her own bottom! She had five kittens. When the kittens were about three weeks old, I noticed one night that the mama cat (Bubbles) was acting strange- twitching and crying and she had a fever. Turns out she had what is called "milk fever" which is when the mama doesn't have enough calcium in her body for both herself and her babies, and she develops eclampsia, which can quickly lead to paralysis and death. We took her to the vet and got her stabilized, and we were told she couldn't nurse the kittens any more. So we started bottle feeding them, and I would let her in after their bellies were full so she could try to top them off, and more importantly, she could clean their bottoms and help them defecate because I wasn't having any luck with a wet washcloth! At the times when she had to be separated from them, she would sit outside their door and cry, and clean any paw that they stuck out at her, and when we opened the door she would rush in, calling to them, trying to lick them all at the same time, and then settling down to nurse them. She was such a dedicated, giving, self-sacrificing mama. And it almost killed her. And we had to keep her from doing what she
wanted to do most in the world because if she did, she may have gotten past the
point where she had nothing left to give.
Watching this, being the surrogate milk feeder, trying to keep them all
healthy AND happy, had me reflecting on my own mothering journey. And it brought up for examination a BIG subconscious belief- "the more I
sacrifice for my children, the better mother I am". Wow. And I could see
it, in my reluctance to leave my kids with ANYONE (including their
father) so I could take care of myself, or be by myself. There was always
been this knot in my stomach about leaving them, and about doing things
for me, and I didn't know what it was. It was that belief. Because if
I stopped doing for them and started doing for me for a bit, that put me
closer to the middle of the scales that weigh out the good moms and the
bad ones. And I just wasn't comfortable being there, in that wobbly
zone. All the images and voices I had stored in me of what a good mom
is- the one who gives the choicest cuts of meat and best food to her
husband and children, and takes what's left for herself. The one who
"would do anything for her children". I never wanted my children to be
able to look back and say that I didn't care about them. I wanted them
to look back and see how I gave EVERYTHING to them, so whether they're
happy with the way I raised them or not, at least I never held back.
Just recently I've realized there is another piece to this. The desire to have given enough, done enough, sacrificed enough, that NO ONE would be able to look at my life and say that I should have done something else, or didn't do enough, or should have done more. That even if something went wrong, no one could say that it was because I didn't do something I obviously should have. Sometimes there has been this desire to do it "by the book", do everything to the most extreme, to the letter of the theory (this has come up around food especially) so that if the results I'd hoped for didn't happen, it's at least not because I didn't try hard enough. At the root of all of this was the desperate need for others to see me as a good mom, or at least not see me as a bad mom. A desperate need to prevent anyone from criticizing me. Because if I truly "get it right" then there will be nothing to criticize, right?
As much as that may have been true in school (if I followed the rubric and gave the teacher all that was requested, then the teacher would have no reason for criticizing) it's just not true in real life. I could completely sacrifice everything for my children, give them everything they needed, been completely focused on them so much that I completely neglected myself, I could even DIE for them, and if our story ended up on the Huffington Post, there is no guarantee that there would be no hecklers. How many martyrs in history still get criticized? Heck, according to the Bible Jesus died for all the people in the world, but that doesn't stop people from talking negatively. My freshman year in high school, our band director talked about "Joe Schmoe Popcorn Eater"- the guy sitting up in the stands who couldn't have cared less about the band and who quite honestly never may, no matter how dazzling and amazing a performance he saw.
Criticism does not feel good. We are trained to avoid it- if we do the "right" thing we get praised, if we do the "wrong" thing we get criticized. Great behavior modification technique. It has brought many of us to where we are today. Tried something, got brutally made fun of and laughed at, and we decided we'd never do it again. For some of us all it took was someone rolling their eyes at us. Or dead silence after we poured out our hearts. It didn't feel good, so we decided to avoid it. The thing is, it is NOT possible to actually live life in a way that prevents us from ever being made fun of, ever criticized, ever seen by someone else as "wrong". And attempting to live that way is a little bit like living in a cave and just scuttling out to grab something necessary every once and awhile, and completely missing the beauty of the sky and the trees because we're so intent on avoiding getting stepped on. Some of us have tried to carry protection around with us in many forms, but it often ends up slowing us down and we live life inching along at a snail's pace while we long for the freedom to swoop and soar like the birds, but not enough to let go of the shell.
I've known for a long time that it's impossible to please 100% of people 100% of the time, yet part of me has still tried to make it happen. And I realize how much of my life has been wasted trying to live in a way that others will approve of. When my focus has been on preventing others from criticizing me, I've been too afraid to be true to myself and allow myself to embody who I truly am. It's impossible to feel confident, secure, and peaceful in what I am doing when one eye is watching out for the person who is going to pull the rug out from under me. And I WANT to feel confident, secure, and peaceful in what I am doing! A freedom came to me when I realized that no matter what I do, it will never be enough to prevent others from criticizing. I can never get to the point where I am "enough" in the eyes of others so they will leave me alone. There will never be a time when I have proven myself so completely that everyone in the world says "Oh yes, we see you know what you are doing, we will now support and trust you as you finish out your life." And now that I can see that, I can decide to stop even trying as it is a waste of my time and energy and there are fantastic things I am missing by focusing on avoiding the pain of criticism.
Eleanor Roosevelt said "Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway." Wow, there is such a freedom that comes with that! There is no avoiding the possibility that someone else will think I am wrong, all I can do is listen to my heart and do what feels right to me. And if it turns out badly and other people chime in with their "you should have done. . "s I can go back to my heart and ask to be shown what I am meant to learn from the experience, trusting that I did just what I needed to do even though the outcome wasn't as I had planned. Others can never truly know what is right for me. At times it may be right for me to be sad, to be angry, to be in pain. It is my experience, and there may not even have been a way to "do it right" that allowed me to avoid those feelings. In fact, it may have been "doing it right" for me to have felt them, experienced them, moved through them! I can choose to decide that the fact that it happened meant that it was supposed to happen, and let go of all of the shoulda, coulda, wouldas that get in the way of seeing the wisdom that came from the experience.
There is no such thing as being "enough" if the goal is avoiding criticism or uncomfortable situations or pain. And there IS no "enough" to strive for if the goal is being worthy of love- we just are, nothing needed. We need not compare ourselves to any measure at all- we are all completely amazing in our own unique ways, experiencing life as only we can, adding to the variety and brilliance of our planet in ways that can't even be fully described. We just ARE, and no amount of criticism can ever take that away.
