Does it seem to you that Archie is back in spirit all over facebook?
I am blessed to know a lot of people from times in my life when I sought Christianity as a refuge from troubles that seemed too big for me to contain within myself. Death of a parent, trauma from the experiences related to growing up in a home that provided love but also a lot of violence and emotional turbulence. My Dad's brain tumor altered his behavior greatly. A lot of his behaviors that were not good became amplified with the brain tumor and he hurt people. He was violent. My mom tells me she went to our larger extended family for help and that they called her a liar because he was their brother. My mom often said that her parents couldn't help because there were a lot of kids and they were both heart patients. She felt she had no one to turn to until my dad's brain tumor progressed to the point that he was dying. She said that is when the flood of people came in to help him but not her. The priest who was originally sought as a comfort and spiritual guide to my parents developed a romantic relationship with my mom which lasted 20 years. It's my belief that a lot of what happened during those years was not just a little but very abusive and that the priest chose my mom to be his victim because the trauma she experienced in the years before he met her made her easy to manipulate. My mom says he was our savior because he gave our family a lot of money that he had access to from the church. She says it was love. When I was in my twenties and one of my siblings told me to stand up and report the physical, verbal and alleged sexual abuse that was going on in my home, I did. I have not been forgiven for that. I more recently tried to apologize to anyone I hurt during that time if what I said was not my story to tell. I realize now that people can be deeply hurt by well intentioned actions just as much as inaction. I was raised to believe, though that not standing up for a person who is being injured was the worst betrayal you could commit. It was what my mom's closest loved ones did when she was being beaten sometimes with objects like a broken chair or thrown down a flight of stairs. It was what happened when my mom said my dad put me on his lap and let me hug him as he kicked my brother in the head and made him watch what it was like for me to earn his love and know that he didn't have the same love from his dad. These are the stories I was raised with and while I was too young to recognize as a toddler or young child what was going on around me, I did feel later at the age of twelve that I had been tricked into loving my dad who was really a monster. I didn't know at first that what the priest in our lives, (Father Tebes) was doing was as emotionally harmful if not moreso. I still feel the fracture very deeply and it causes me great pain. I don't have allies in my family who understand. I have some who love me even if they don't understand. That feels like an awful lot. Just this week, another sibling posted a picture of our family with the priest on my facebook page. That was something. I've been called a liar and a crazy person and a manipulative bitch. I guess if you know anyone long enough, you know their triggers. Some of the people in my family really seem to like to go after my triggers.
I was proud of myself, though for not reacting strongly to the photo on my page. I simply waited a few days, noted that I thought it was strange and my sister immediately removed the picture without explanation. No 'f' bombs or anything. Maybe we are growing! I no longer believe that she means to hurt me with those actions. She either has such deep denial about watching me be hit, slapped, kicked, spit at and called a 'cunt', 'whore' and 'bitch' by the person whose picture she posted on my wall or she has a deeper feeling that I deserved all that and should be happy to see his face. Either way, I can only pray that by not tolerating that behavior but also not letting it hurt me--she will see that love is stronger. Love from the people in my life now lifts me out of the pain of memories like the ones she triggered with her photo from our past. I believe that's something that should offer her hope and not create bitterness. How she sees it--well, that's up to her.
All of that is background. It is what is triggering my thoughts about Archie Bunker. I bring it up because my sense is that back in the 70's--people didn't care about voicing their bigotry like Archie. That was how people behaved back then. And now? Seems like that sort of behavior has hit a new sort of popularity. People on tv, the radio and on fb seem to embrace the free speaking ways of political candidates like Donald Trump and those who call themselves his trumpeters. It feels like the new bigotry is aimed at the poor, the undocumented workers in this country and those who are transgender or homosexual. I'm finding myself experiencing a lot of the memories from the 70's that made me very much against watching people be victimized. I want to do something to know that I have at least voiced my objections. I voted for Bernie. I will vote for Hillary if Bernie doesn't become the nominee. The only other thing I know to do is challenge people respectfully when I read or hear them proclaiming that they know God wants us to behave in divisive ways toward others. What god wants that?
Lately, the subject of public bathrooms creates concern. I don't think I am alone in thinking that fears about men and women of any sexual persuasion sharing bathrooms take their root in a more general xenophobia. I read a few posts today just as I was waking up from a fitful sleep (insomnia often accompanies my attempts to sleep at night in part because the medication I take for depression causes insomnia as a side effect and I refuse to take sleeping aids because I'm dippy enough already, thank you) that stirred a lot of pain in what I feel is my soul--as dramatic as that sounds. It's true.
So as I feel this intense anger toward people for alienating and trying to shame anyone for wanting to go to the bathroom--I am making connections to what happened in my family in the 70's, 80's and 90's. I realize that the need to defend a person who is being victimized is very deeply ingrained in my core. I've been on the outside. I don't want others to feel that way. Everything political is actually personal. We can't want change for others if we don't feel the injustice around us. If we focus on what we feel we have a right to defend, we lose. There is room in all the bathrooms for all kinds of people. There is room in our country for all kinds of people to find work. There is money enough in our economy to take care of those in need while creating pathways out of poverty. Our love for our neighbors will find a way.
If my Christian friends or other spiritual friends or non-spiritual friends want a better world, my thought is that it will come to us through love. Love the "others" out there in whatever form you see them. Otherwise, you deny that we are all actually the same. You create walls where we don't need them. We really don't need more walls. Please, don't be trumpeters of hatred and division. Love wins when we let it win. Please let love win.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
Visit with a Shaman
A couple of days ago, I went to see a shaman. She was a delightful person. We had exchanged emails for a couple of weeks prior. I was scared to meet her but very interested to learn what her work might tell me about moving past depression.
I have struggled with depression for nearly all of my life. My 45th birthday is right around the corner and more than anything, I would like the next thirty or so years that I might have left to be less ruled by how I feel. I've tried every medication over the years. I've been through outpatient and inpatient programs. I've been through extremely disciplined programs through various Catholic and Protestant denominations to help guide me past whatever might be holding me back. I went through a phase of paying a person ridiculous amounts of money to zap my brain with electrodes only to later wonder if she had actually just been a quack because she encouraged me so strongly to stop taking medication while being treated by her. The end result of not taking the medication wasn't good. So at this point, I don't know if there is anything I wouldn't try.
The core of my belief system told me that I was venturing into a place that might not be where God would lead. I sat down in the woman's large, beautiful home wondering if the crystals and candles and things I saw on her coffee table would be used and if that was okay. We talked some about my personal history and hers. She is well educated and has worked in hospitals and clinics in the area. Her travels around the world connect to the work she does now. From an early age, she knew she had a spiritual gift inherited from her ancestors. When she smiles, her whole face lights up and her blue eyes radiate warmth against her gray and silver hair. I felt at ease even though a part of me felt like I was some kind of rebel for talking with her.
She asked me if I would participate in an exercise to answer the question that really plagues me. What am I here to do? On this planet, I mean. I often wonder if I am doing what I am meant to do or if there is more that I am avoiding or unable to do because depression consumes so much of my time. There are stretches of time when I don't sleep well. I wake up during the night and check on my kids to make sure they are breathing. I sit at the table and read. I watch a lot of tv. I scroll on my phone and read about things I wish I was doing or places I wish I was living in or visiting. When I don't sleep, I don't have a lot of energy to do the daily tasks I would like to finish like organizing the messes in my house. The laundry piles up. The dishes pile up. Just making meals and getting my kids off to school and our dogs fed and taken out feels like all I can accomplish. There are also stomach problems that go with the medication I take to stay healthy. When my body isn't absorbing what food I eat because my medication causes nausea and sorry, diarrhea...I don't have a lot of energy. I start to crave carbs and avoid salads. I started smoking cigarettes after not smoking since the minute I realized I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. 11 years smoke free and I went back and I feel ashamed every time I walk into the garage to smoke. I don't know why, but they help with anxiety. I was prescribed Xanax and stopped filling the prescriptions because it made me so tired, so forgetful and so worried that just having that kind of addictive medication in my home is a very bad thing. Cigarettes feel like a lesser sin. There is a lot of what I go through that is related to thinking that I don't deserve the beautiful children I am blessed with and that I don't deserve the husband who loves me unconditionally and who sees me as beautiful and makes me laugh and think about so many interesting things and who makes me feel cherished. I stay inside away from my community because I feel like I don't belong. I fight every day to feel better and to be more functioning than I am, but for years this is the best that I have been able to be and I want to be more. So I accepted the challenge to try the exercise the shaman suggested.
She handed me a rock that was about the size of my hand and asked me to look into it and tell her what I saw. It was a fairly smooth stone with black and brown flecks of color against a white background. My daughter loves rock classification and from spending time with her I would guess it was an igneous rock. Maybe diorite. I looked it over and saw about five smiling baby faces. We laughed. I asked the shaman if other people see other things. She laughed and said yes, people see many different things in the same rocks. She asked if I saw any animals. I looked it over again but could only see little baby smiles. So she wrote down what I saw and asked me to ask each of these images what I was asking her. I asked the baby faces, "Why I am here? What have I left to do that I should focus on for the rest of my life?" The immediate answers that came back to me through my thoughts were, "You are here to love. You are here to listen. You are here to see. You are here to laugh." That was all.
I suppose that's not bad, but what if I never did anything else? Would my life be wasted if that is all that I did? Is that enough? Am I doing enough to be considered worthy of the gifts that others give to me? No answer.
So the shaman gave me another rock and asked me to hold it with me all week. I am supposed to keep it close and ask the same question about being worthy over and over all week whenever the feeling that I am not worthy crops up. Then at the end of the week, she instructed me to return that rock to the Earth in a place I consider sacred or special and let it carry those feelings with it and away from me. She said the Earth will renew those thoughts the way that it takes all matter and transforms it back into new life.
I am sure there are people who would tell me that all of this is a lot of crap. I get it. Some might tell me that I wasted my time and money going there or that I dabbled in something God would not like. I suppose it only matters that I left feeling really hopeful and lighter. I am glad I went to visit a shaman. I haven't made up my mind about going again, but it is something that I am glad I tried.
I have struggled with depression for nearly all of my life. My 45th birthday is right around the corner and more than anything, I would like the next thirty or so years that I might have left to be less ruled by how I feel. I've tried every medication over the years. I've been through outpatient and inpatient programs. I've been through extremely disciplined programs through various Catholic and Protestant denominations to help guide me past whatever might be holding me back. I went through a phase of paying a person ridiculous amounts of money to zap my brain with electrodes only to later wonder if she had actually just been a quack because she encouraged me so strongly to stop taking medication while being treated by her. The end result of not taking the medication wasn't good. So at this point, I don't know if there is anything I wouldn't try.
The core of my belief system told me that I was venturing into a place that might not be where God would lead. I sat down in the woman's large, beautiful home wondering if the crystals and candles and things I saw on her coffee table would be used and if that was okay. We talked some about my personal history and hers. She is well educated and has worked in hospitals and clinics in the area. Her travels around the world connect to the work she does now. From an early age, she knew she had a spiritual gift inherited from her ancestors. When she smiles, her whole face lights up and her blue eyes radiate warmth against her gray and silver hair. I felt at ease even though a part of me felt like I was some kind of rebel for talking with her.
She asked me if I would participate in an exercise to answer the question that really plagues me. What am I here to do? On this planet, I mean. I often wonder if I am doing what I am meant to do or if there is more that I am avoiding or unable to do because depression consumes so much of my time. There are stretches of time when I don't sleep well. I wake up during the night and check on my kids to make sure they are breathing. I sit at the table and read. I watch a lot of tv. I scroll on my phone and read about things I wish I was doing or places I wish I was living in or visiting. When I don't sleep, I don't have a lot of energy to do the daily tasks I would like to finish like organizing the messes in my house. The laundry piles up. The dishes pile up. Just making meals and getting my kids off to school and our dogs fed and taken out feels like all I can accomplish. There are also stomach problems that go with the medication I take to stay healthy. When my body isn't absorbing what food I eat because my medication causes nausea and sorry, diarrhea...I don't have a lot of energy. I start to crave carbs and avoid salads. I started smoking cigarettes after not smoking since the minute I realized I was pregnant with my oldest daughter. 11 years smoke free and I went back and I feel ashamed every time I walk into the garage to smoke. I don't know why, but they help with anxiety. I was prescribed Xanax and stopped filling the prescriptions because it made me so tired, so forgetful and so worried that just having that kind of addictive medication in my home is a very bad thing. Cigarettes feel like a lesser sin. There is a lot of what I go through that is related to thinking that I don't deserve the beautiful children I am blessed with and that I don't deserve the husband who loves me unconditionally and who sees me as beautiful and makes me laugh and think about so many interesting things and who makes me feel cherished. I stay inside away from my community because I feel like I don't belong. I fight every day to feel better and to be more functioning than I am, but for years this is the best that I have been able to be and I want to be more. So I accepted the challenge to try the exercise the shaman suggested.
She handed me a rock that was about the size of my hand and asked me to look into it and tell her what I saw. It was a fairly smooth stone with black and brown flecks of color against a white background. My daughter loves rock classification and from spending time with her I would guess it was an igneous rock. Maybe diorite. I looked it over and saw about five smiling baby faces. We laughed. I asked the shaman if other people see other things. She laughed and said yes, people see many different things in the same rocks. She asked if I saw any animals. I looked it over again but could only see little baby smiles. So she wrote down what I saw and asked me to ask each of these images what I was asking her. I asked the baby faces, "Why I am here? What have I left to do that I should focus on for the rest of my life?" The immediate answers that came back to me through my thoughts were, "You are here to love. You are here to listen. You are here to see. You are here to laugh." That was all.
I suppose that's not bad, but what if I never did anything else? Would my life be wasted if that is all that I did? Is that enough? Am I doing enough to be considered worthy of the gifts that others give to me? No answer.
So the shaman gave me another rock and asked me to hold it with me all week. I am supposed to keep it close and ask the same question about being worthy over and over all week whenever the feeling that I am not worthy crops up. Then at the end of the week, she instructed me to return that rock to the Earth in a place I consider sacred or special and let it carry those feelings with it and away from me. She said the Earth will renew those thoughts the way that it takes all matter and transforms it back into new life.
I am sure there are people who would tell me that all of this is a lot of crap. I get it. Some might tell me that I wasted my time and money going there or that I dabbled in something God would not like. I suppose it only matters that I left feeling really hopeful and lighter. I am glad I went to visit a shaman. I haven't made up my mind about going again, but it is something that I am glad I tried.
Friday, March 11, 2016
THAT Mom
Today I was THAT out of nowhere, ridiculous MOM.
I confronted a situation that bothered me about how a child treated my child. I did that.
Long story short: things turned out fine. I talked with the parent after talking with a person whom I thought was the parent and turned out not to be the parent about the situation. The parent responded with GRACE and kindness and in a way I will admire until I'm put into the grave. I want to be just the same as that parent.
Was the situation a horrible, huge...a 'must confront' kind of thing? Well, no. It wasn't. It's just that when I first noticed the situation and asked the teacher what she thought...her response was to roll her eyes and tell me that there are cliques. My child is not in the clique. Since she is not within the boundaries of the said clique...behaviors like the one I found offensive are "normal". She said this with a shrug of the shoulders and a declaration that things will most likely get better for all of the kids outside of said clique when they enter middle school and find that the social pool is larger.
Okay. So that one incident is reflective of a pattern nobody feels like addressing. THAT is what bothers me.
My experience tells me that to shrug your shoulders and hope for the best isn't as effective a strategy as the tried and true just telling a kid that you are the adult and adults expect better of kids than to be observers of rude behavior. I hate to drag out the old phrase, "In my day..." but, in my day kids were afraid to act like they had little regard for other classmates in front of adults. Sure, they felt annoyed with classmates. However, they were expected to find a way of behaving like they respected the other kids as people. I'm not saying any behavior displayed in front of me was beyond normal for a kid of that age. Kids are very fallible. Parents are fallible. Teachers, too. I get that. I'm saying that the lack of concern on the part of the adults was shocking. When did adults become so afraid of telling a kid to just, "do better"?
I addressed this at the Catholic school where my kids attended. I was appalled that rude behavior from kids went unaddressed. Some teachers appeared to go about tending to these matters in ways that were annoyingly passive-aggressive and others simply pretended they didn't know bullying was going on all around them. The principal refused to acknowledge the problem even as many families fled the school. The priest said it wasn't his job to address the problem because he didn't like conflict and it wasn't what he considered his strength. My kids were treated fairly well by comparison to others, but I saw that they were learning a way of conduct I could not tolerate. There were kids all around them who were really feeling left out of the social structure of the school and it goes against my faith to sit back and passively accept that. So we left the school. It broke my heart. I wanted very much to give my kids a Catholic education. I loved the idea of them going to mass with classmates each week as part of their curriculum. Then again, learning about Jesus among classmates didn't seem valuable once I realized that the Catholic values were left behind as the traditions were being taught. Traditions are just empty gestures if your heart isn't in it and my heart wasn't after I saw how a few of the kids in particular were treated by other kids and how the bad behavior was ignored by teachers.
In the past few years since, I have loved the education my kids are getting from public school. I do love the atmosphere they are learning in and I feel loathe to criticize except that...I have to because I am a parent and these kids are my life. If I didn't speak up when I know something isn't right, what kind of parent would I be to them? I could speak all day about the virtues of children's teachers and I I really do try hard to be there to do so whenever possible. I have a great deal of respect for the school and the teachers and the other parents. I really, wholeheartedly love my community. It's a blessing beyond anything I could have asked for when I asked for God to bless my family. No joke. It is--we are blessed.
My only gripe appears to be with a particular mindset of the larger community. It's only one thing, but it makes a big impact on our little children. Who am I to say this? Just a parent. Just a person who studied child development and taught a little bit before becoming a stay at home mom. So bear with me. My thinking is that it isn't doing our kids any favors to let them create their own boundaries. We are the adults. We need to tell them when they go out of bounds. We do this with love and without wavering really well all the time. We can't let that stop when it comes to how they treat other kids. That's what we signed on for when we decided to be parents or teachers or caregivers. Just as we didn't let babies throw sand in the eyes of other babies in the sandbox; we can't let our preteens decide to harm other preteens with their words or with exclusion or other 'mean girl' behaviors. We have experience with this. We just tell them, "No." We explain why we are saying, "No." We give a hug and tell them we know they will do better next time. We get over it. Hopefully, if they are not sociopaths, they learn. I honestly don't think any of them are sociopaths. If they are, we can help them at this stage before they are incarcerated, right? My husband may be a defense attorney, but he doesn't need the business so bad that he hopes to see any of your children in his office any time soon, hee hee.
More seriously, I don't understand why setting boundaries or teaching appropriate social skills with kids is something that apparently, more than a few parents and even some teachers don't feel empowered to do. When I was a nanny or teaching in Americorps and even when I tutored with Chicago Cares with Cabrini Greene kids~I was considered a slouch at this stuff. I was considered a softie. Nobody wanted to leave the kids with me because I wasn't much of a disciplinarian. How is it that these days as a parent...I'm the bad cop?
I don't get it. I don't. Please tell me what I'm missing.
If my children are ever rude, obnoxious or ill mannered and I don't see this happening...please tell me. It's an open invitation. I don't want to raise that sort of child. I want my child to learn early what her expectations from me and her dad are...(and we are pretty lax about those standards, to be sure) so that she will be able to function in the larger world when her time comes. We all want that for all of our kids, right? We are in this together, aren't we?
It's not that I don't appreciate all of the great things that I see in the community or in the school. I absolutely see that I am in a place where people are good. I see how hard teachers and parents work to instill good values, a great education and appreciation in the kids they spend time nurturing. That's a given. I think it is, anyway. It's a given because I do my part. I show up. I participate as much as is allowed. I do whatever I can to make the work of the community better. I don't know if I'm a jerk for thinking this way, but I kind of hope that this means we are working together. We can count on each other. I don't think teachers get paid enough to inspire the kids they way they do. I wish they were better compensated. However, as a stay at home mom, I don't get a salary. I go without. I am one hundred percent sacrificing everything to be all that is possible for me to be for my kids so that they can grow up to be productive members of this society. So can't I ask for something in return?
I mean, because...all I am asking is that we might work together in this. That's it.
I know I am from another place and I wasn't raised in this community and that I'll never be one of the people who really matter around here. That's what I came to realize as a price to be paid for the quieter street and the lower crime rate than where I'm from and the lower cost of living and the wide open spaces and the beautiful sounds of birds and the polluted but still mostly pretty Lake Menomin and the proximity to the Stout campus and the beautiful Mabel Tainter.
My husband's firm pays taxes that flow into the community. My family pays taxes. Isn't that something?
Why can't I expect that not just my kid but every kid at my kids' school will be treated respectfully by kids and teachers alike? Not hailed as a wunderkind...but just treated respectfully. Not left out. Not sitting alone on a buddy bench or just left to fend for herself while teachers look on?
I love both my kids too much to think that they deserve less. I may not know your kids well, but I have enough love in my heart to want more for them that to experience isolation and rudeness day after day while their minds are forming and their personalities are developing. It isn't any hardship for me to want to promote kindness toward them. Not one of them seems undeserving to me.
So my question to the community is...don't you love ALL of the kids of this community enough to think that ALL of them deserve the same? Not just mine. Mine are treated pretty well when you compare to some of the kids. They aren't from here and we aren't rich and our family doesn't have a lot of weight to throw around...but still...I mean, don't they matter to you?
You matter to us. You are what we want to be here for and why my family is choosing to put down roots here. We left what we knew to be here with you. Doesn't that say something?
Maybe I'm off my rocker. If so, I apologize. Maybe I'm too sensitive. I'm working on not being so thin skinned. Just please, accept that if you want anyone to be there for you--we are there. It's all we want to be and all we know how to be. We aren't perfect and our kids are not saints. We just want very much to see them grow up to be productive and contributing and we have to ask for the community to support that because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. We aren't asking for anything we aren't willing to give.
Peace and love to you. xo
I confronted a situation that bothered me about how a child treated my child. I did that.
Long story short: things turned out fine. I talked with the parent after talking with a person whom I thought was the parent and turned out not to be the parent about the situation. The parent responded with GRACE and kindness and in a way I will admire until I'm put into the grave. I want to be just the same as that parent.
Was the situation a horrible, huge...a 'must confront' kind of thing? Well, no. It wasn't. It's just that when I first noticed the situation and asked the teacher what she thought...her response was to roll her eyes and tell me that there are cliques. My child is not in the clique. Since she is not within the boundaries of the said clique...behaviors like the one I found offensive are "normal". She said this with a shrug of the shoulders and a declaration that things will most likely get better for all of the kids outside of said clique when they enter middle school and find that the social pool is larger.
Okay. So that one incident is reflective of a pattern nobody feels like addressing. THAT is what bothers me.
My experience tells me that to shrug your shoulders and hope for the best isn't as effective a strategy as the tried and true just telling a kid that you are the adult and adults expect better of kids than to be observers of rude behavior. I hate to drag out the old phrase, "In my day..." but, in my day kids were afraid to act like they had little regard for other classmates in front of adults. Sure, they felt annoyed with classmates. However, they were expected to find a way of behaving like they respected the other kids as people. I'm not saying any behavior displayed in front of me was beyond normal for a kid of that age. Kids are very fallible. Parents are fallible. Teachers, too. I get that. I'm saying that the lack of concern on the part of the adults was shocking. When did adults become so afraid of telling a kid to just, "do better"?
I addressed this at the Catholic school where my kids attended. I was appalled that rude behavior from kids went unaddressed. Some teachers appeared to go about tending to these matters in ways that were annoyingly passive-aggressive and others simply pretended they didn't know bullying was going on all around them. The principal refused to acknowledge the problem even as many families fled the school. The priest said it wasn't his job to address the problem because he didn't like conflict and it wasn't what he considered his strength. My kids were treated fairly well by comparison to others, but I saw that they were learning a way of conduct I could not tolerate. There were kids all around them who were really feeling left out of the social structure of the school and it goes against my faith to sit back and passively accept that. So we left the school. It broke my heart. I wanted very much to give my kids a Catholic education. I loved the idea of them going to mass with classmates each week as part of their curriculum. Then again, learning about Jesus among classmates didn't seem valuable once I realized that the Catholic values were left behind as the traditions were being taught. Traditions are just empty gestures if your heart isn't in it and my heart wasn't after I saw how a few of the kids in particular were treated by other kids and how the bad behavior was ignored by teachers.
In the past few years since, I have loved the education my kids are getting from public school. I do love the atmosphere they are learning in and I feel loathe to criticize except that...I have to because I am a parent and these kids are my life. If I didn't speak up when I know something isn't right, what kind of parent would I be to them? I could speak all day about the virtues of children's teachers and I I really do try hard to be there to do so whenever possible. I have a great deal of respect for the school and the teachers and the other parents. I really, wholeheartedly love my community. It's a blessing beyond anything I could have asked for when I asked for God to bless my family. No joke. It is--we are blessed.
My only gripe appears to be with a particular mindset of the larger community. It's only one thing, but it makes a big impact on our little children. Who am I to say this? Just a parent. Just a person who studied child development and taught a little bit before becoming a stay at home mom. So bear with me. My thinking is that it isn't doing our kids any favors to let them create their own boundaries. We are the adults. We need to tell them when they go out of bounds. We do this with love and without wavering really well all the time. We can't let that stop when it comes to how they treat other kids. That's what we signed on for when we decided to be parents or teachers or caregivers. Just as we didn't let babies throw sand in the eyes of other babies in the sandbox; we can't let our preteens decide to harm other preteens with their words or with exclusion or other 'mean girl' behaviors. We have experience with this. We just tell them, "No." We explain why we are saying, "No." We give a hug and tell them we know they will do better next time. We get over it. Hopefully, if they are not sociopaths, they learn. I honestly don't think any of them are sociopaths. If they are, we can help them at this stage before they are incarcerated, right? My husband may be a defense attorney, but he doesn't need the business so bad that he hopes to see any of your children in his office any time soon, hee hee.
More seriously, I don't understand why setting boundaries or teaching appropriate social skills with kids is something that apparently, more than a few parents and even some teachers don't feel empowered to do. When I was a nanny or teaching in Americorps and even when I tutored with Chicago Cares with Cabrini Greene kids~I was considered a slouch at this stuff. I was considered a softie. Nobody wanted to leave the kids with me because I wasn't much of a disciplinarian. How is it that these days as a parent...I'm the bad cop?
I don't get it. I don't. Please tell me what I'm missing.
If my children are ever rude, obnoxious or ill mannered and I don't see this happening...please tell me. It's an open invitation. I don't want to raise that sort of child. I want my child to learn early what her expectations from me and her dad are...(and we are pretty lax about those standards, to be sure) so that she will be able to function in the larger world when her time comes. We all want that for all of our kids, right? We are in this together, aren't we?
It's not that I don't appreciate all of the great things that I see in the community or in the school. I absolutely see that I am in a place where people are good. I see how hard teachers and parents work to instill good values, a great education and appreciation in the kids they spend time nurturing. That's a given. I think it is, anyway. It's a given because I do my part. I show up. I participate as much as is allowed. I do whatever I can to make the work of the community better. I don't know if I'm a jerk for thinking this way, but I kind of hope that this means we are working together. We can count on each other. I don't think teachers get paid enough to inspire the kids they way they do. I wish they were better compensated. However, as a stay at home mom, I don't get a salary. I go without. I am one hundred percent sacrificing everything to be all that is possible for me to be for my kids so that they can grow up to be productive members of this society. So can't I ask for something in return?
I mean, because...all I am asking is that we might work together in this. That's it.
I know I am from another place and I wasn't raised in this community and that I'll never be one of the people who really matter around here. That's what I came to realize as a price to be paid for the quieter street and the lower crime rate than where I'm from and the lower cost of living and the wide open spaces and the beautiful sounds of birds and the polluted but still mostly pretty Lake Menomin and the proximity to the Stout campus and the beautiful Mabel Tainter.
My husband's firm pays taxes that flow into the community. My family pays taxes. Isn't that something?
Why can't I expect that not just my kid but every kid at my kids' school will be treated respectfully by kids and teachers alike? Not hailed as a wunderkind...but just treated respectfully. Not left out. Not sitting alone on a buddy bench or just left to fend for herself while teachers look on?
I love both my kids too much to think that they deserve less. I may not know your kids well, but I have enough love in my heart to want more for them that to experience isolation and rudeness day after day while their minds are forming and their personalities are developing. It isn't any hardship for me to want to promote kindness toward them. Not one of them seems undeserving to me.
So my question to the community is...don't you love ALL of the kids of this community enough to think that ALL of them deserve the same? Not just mine. Mine are treated pretty well when you compare to some of the kids. They aren't from here and we aren't rich and our family doesn't have a lot of weight to throw around...but still...I mean, don't they matter to you?
You matter to us. You are what we want to be here for and why my family is choosing to put down roots here. We left what we knew to be here with you. Doesn't that say something?
Maybe I'm off my rocker. If so, I apologize. Maybe I'm too sensitive. I'm working on not being so thin skinned. Just please, accept that if you want anyone to be there for you--we are there. It's all we want to be and all we know how to be. We aren't perfect and our kids are not saints. We just want very much to see them grow up to be productive and contributing and we have to ask for the community to support that because it doesn't happen in a vacuum. We aren't asking for anything we aren't willing to give.
Peace and love to you. xo
Sunday, March 6, 2016
Love Note
Have you seen Maria Bamford perform stand up? She is hilarious. I have never seen any other comedian perform in the way that she does. Even if I didn't know what it is like to experience anxiety, I would think she is hilarious. The fact that she makes her experiences with anxiety so funny makes me like her even more. It lifts the burden of shame a little to be able to laugh with her. I just love her work.
I listened to a podcast of the New Yorker Radio Hour (episode 18) that she was featured in and was struck by how she responded to a question about her work and how it reveals sometimes embarrassing things about her family. I'm paraphrasing, but I understood her response to mean that she and her family understand that her portrayal of her experience of being in her family has everything to do with her and not really very much about them. It is easy for her family to laugh with her because they know they are not being laughed at by her even when the material seems very personal.
This is what I wish I could ask for somehow and receive from my family. I have never been able to write anything that didn't in some small way draw from my own experiences. This doesn't mean I am some Harriet the Spy with her little notebook trying to capture and record embarrassing things about other people. I studied English in school because it was the only thing I could really focus on over any length of time. I kept taking Creative Writing courses because I got good grades in them. I graduated and veered away from submitting any writing anywhere because the stories that were fiction and somehow got published in my school's literary magazine made people in my family feel bad. I felt really ashamed. There wasn't a whole lot that connected the stories to anyone, but there must have been enough. Nobody said I couldn't write anymore. I just put it all aside.
Each time I sit at the computer to write something, it is because I feel buoyed up by some remembrance of praise from people like my husband or my good friend, Meg or former teachers who told me, "You have so much talent. You should be writing!" and each time I back away from doing so it is because a louder internal voice is saying, "YOU are a jerk. You will hurt people. You can't write without making other people think you are criticizing them. You can only see things through a lens that nobody wants to look through. Just be happy to be a mom. That should be enough."
So I am thinking of asking in some sort of love note for permission from the people who are close to me whether by birth or by choice to write what is in me. Yes, that means some of the things we experienced together may look like something a character appears to experience in a story. However, at no time would it be to exploit or harm anyone.
Does that sound reasonable? I mean, chances are strong that nobody actually reads any of this. Chances are strong that nobody ever will. I may never actually finish anything I have started outside of these unstructured blog entries. It isn't like anyone has a whole lot to lose. It is something that helps me to feel like I have some purpose other than filling up facebook with daily posts (sometimes hourly posts) and pictures of my kids.
Maybe if I did that, my family would understand that I love them. I know that whenever I write anything, the person I am leaving exposed is me. I wish they knew that. It would have been great if I could have been a different kind of daughter, sister, niece, aunt, friend, wife or mom. For whatever reason, this is all I've got. Just this. I wonder if I wrote that kind of a letter if they would agree in advance to remember that whatever mirror I'm holding up in front of anyone else ultimately reflects me.
I imagine that Maria Bamford's ability to work with so much freedom has a lot to do with the support she receives from the people she loves. I wish I knew how to ask for and receive that. She's a very talented comedian and probably would be as talented and successful either way. It's just different when you are given permission. Maybe I need to give that myself. Maybe that's really the only way it works. Maybe I need to write that kind of letter to myself. "Dear me, just write, dammit. Who cares if you aren't any good? So what if people don't like what you have to say? They won't like you any more for keeping quiet. Do what you were put on this Earth to do. It's not about making people happy." Just feels so selfish and scary. Am I ready to do that?
I listened to a podcast of the New Yorker Radio Hour (episode 18) that she was featured in and was struck by how she responded to a question about her work and how it reveals sometimes embarrassing things about her family. I'm paraphrasing, but I understood her response to mean that she and her family understand that her portrayal of her experience of being in her family has everything to do with her and not really very much about them. It is easy for her family to laugh with her because they know they are not being laughed at by her even when the material seems very personal.
This is what I wish I could ask for somehow and receive from my family. I have never been able to write anything that didn't in some small way draw from my own experiences. This doesn't mean I am some Harriet the Spy with her little notebook trying to capture and record embarrassing things about other people. I studied English in school because it was the only thing I could really focus on over any length of time. I kept taking Creative Writing courses because I got good grades in them. I graduated and veered away from submitting any writing anywhere because the stories that were fiction and somehow got published in my school's literary magazine made people in my family feel bad. I felt really ashamed. There wasn't a whole lot that connected the stories to anyone, but there must have been enough. Nobody said I couldn't write anymore. I just put it all aside.
Each time I sit at the computer to write something, it is because I feel buoyed up by some remembrance of praise from people like my husband or my good friend, Meg or former teachers who told me, "You have so much talent. You should be writing!" and each time I back away from doing so it is because a louder internal voice is saying, "YOU are a jerk. You will hurt people. You can't write without making other people think you are criticizing them. You can only see things through a lens that nobody wants to look through. Just be happy to be a mom. That should be enough."
So I am thinking of asking in some sort of love note for permission from the people who are close to me whether by birth or by choice to write what is in me. Yes, that means some of the things we experienced together may look like something a character appears to experience in a story. However, at no time would it be to exploit or harm anyone.
Does that sound reasonable? I mean, chances are strong that nobody actually reads any of this. Chances are strong that nobody ever will. I may never actually finish anything I have started outside of these unstructured blog entries. It isn't like anyone has a whole lot to lose. It is something that helps me to feel like I have some purpose other than filling up facebook with daily posts (sometimes hourly posts) and pictures of my kids.
Maybe if I did that, my family would understand that I love them. I know that whenever I write anything, the person I am leaving exposed is me. I wish they knew that. It would have been great if I could have been a different kind of daughter, sister, niece, aunt, friend, wife or mom. For whatever reason, this is all I've got. Just this. I wonder if I wrote that kind of a letter if they would agree in advance to remember that whatever mirror I'm holding up in front of anyone else ultimately reflects me.
I imagine that Maria Bamford's ability to work with so much freedom has a lot to do with the support she receives from the people she loves. I wish I knew how to ask for and receive that. She's a very talented comedian and probably would be as talented and successful either way. It's just different when you are given permission. Maybe I need to give that myself. Maybe that's really the only way it works. Maybe I need to write that kind of letter to myself. "Dear me, just write, dammit. Who cares if you aren't any good? So what if people don't like what you have to say? They won't like you any more for keeping quiet. Do what you were put on this Earth to do. It's not about making people happy." Just feels so selfish and scary. Am I ready to do that?
Bloviations
It has been a long, long time since I sat down to write anything here. I was listening to the Moth on the radio the other day and heard a story about a man who was a celebrated teacher and who went through a terrible ordeal because words from his blog were misrepresented and taken out of context and distributed to people in his community.
Oy. How disturbing, right? Well, it turned out well in the end. People who cared about him or who cared about what was the right thing to do in that situation actually read through his blog and discovered the content was benign. It did leave him with a new appreciation for being careful about what he wrote.
I have been stuck in a place of not wanting to write anything that offends or disturbs anyone for a long time and so the message of the radio program resonated with me. I don't write with every audience in mind. I tend to write thinking that people will assume some sentences are meant to be heard with a joking voice and some are more serious.
Anyway, that's why I have been putting off writing anything here. When I say I am a stay at home mom who is stuck in small town WI...I don't mean I hate my small town. I mean that I am doing my best to figure out what I have to contribute here. It could be worse. I could be in some small town in the Deep South with my Chicago accent. I could be in a remote village of the Ukraine. I would be just as lost but not as close to my hometown.
Not that my hometown is so much better. It's full of crime. It's a murdery place. It has rats running through alleys. People honk their car horns all the time. There is stifling traffic. Everything costs more there than it does where I live. I know all of that, but it is where the people I grew up with live. It's where my parents met. It's where my grandparents met. It's where I think of when I think of home.
I don't actually see myself as being stuck here. I just feel disconnected sometimes. I'm working on that. It's going along fine. I don't know if things are improving because I am less concerned with fitting in than I was when I had such high hopes of becoming something other than what I am or if I just added enough positive into my life to push away the negative. Life sometimes feels like it is understood in hindsight. Maybe I will understand later.
For now, things are just fine.
Oy. How disturbing, right? Well, it turned out well in the end. People who cared about him or who cared about what was the right thing to do in that situation actually read through his blog and discovered the content was benign. It did leave him with a new appreciation for being careful about what he wrote.
I have been stuck in a place of not wanting to write anything that offends or disturbs anyone for a long time and so the message of the radio program resonated with me. I don't write with every audience in mind. I tend to write thinking that people will assume some sentences are meant to be heard with a joking voice and some are more serious.
Anyway, that's why I have been putting off writing anything here. When I say I am a stay at home mom who is stuck in small town WI...I don't mean I hate my small town. I mean that I am doing my best to figure out what I have to contribute here. It could be worse. I could be in some small town in the Deep South with my Chicago accent. I could be in a remote village of the Ukraine. I would be just as lost but not as close to my hometown.
Not that my hometown is so much better. It's full of crime. It's a murdery place. It has rats running through alleys. People honk their car horns all the time. There is stifling traffic. Everything costs more there than it does where I live. I know all of that, but it is where the people I grew up with live. It's where my parents met. It's where my grandparents met. It's where I think of when I think of home.
I don't actually see myself as being stuck here. I just feel disconnected sometimes. I'm working on that. It's going along fine. I don't know if things are improving because I am less concerned with fitting in than I was when I had such high hopes of becoming something other than what I am or if I just added enough positive into my life to push away the negative. Life sometimes feels like it is understood in hindsight. Maybe I will understand later.
For now, things are just fine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)