All I ever wanted
was someone to come along
to take my hand
and lead me through the maze.
Short of that, a map to guide my way would be nice.
I used to think everyone else got “the handbook.”
Now I know we are all in the same boat:
there is no handbook. We are winging it.
At the very least, I’d settle for a signpost now and then.
It seems that the whole point
is to find my own way,
and to help those I meet on the path.
Thanks, Universe.
#maze #life
I’m in the middle of a massive shift.
The last time I felt such a massive shift in my life, there were all of these external changes happening.
In the space of three years, my mother died, I planned a wedding, my brother died, I got a mortgage, bought an apartment, my father died, I got married and moved from Manhattan to the Bronx.
By the time I was settled into our new apartment, I didn’t know which way was up. I literally did not recognize the outer landscape of my life.
With so much having changed on the outside, it made sense to me that my internal landscape would need to recalibrate. I was living in a new world. I needed to find a new true north.
This time though, there’ve been no circumstances creating the pressure that precipitates such movement. This time, the shift has come solely from within, a seismic shifting of the tectonic plates of my very soul.
It is terrifying and yet so right-feeling at the same time.
Everything in my life has come into question. A massive excavation. A massive exploration.
It’s as if I have been squeezed out of myself and am born anew, looking around. And the one thing I can see clearly is that my whole life I have been in pursuit of one thing or another. Popularity, academic excellence, talent, money, happiness, fame, career success, love, a thinner body, a better me, forgiveness, acceptance, self-love, a desire to live, a desire to stop wanting to die (they are different,) peace, direction…fame (I come back to that one because that is a huge one)…you name it.
I’ve been running around like a woman with my hair on fire for as long as I can remember, and I couldn’t stop even if I had ever wanted to, and I didn’t. There were times I wanted them to stop, for life to stop, for the pain to stop, for everything to stop, for me to stop being conscious. But I never wanted and could never imagine not being in pursuit.
Until now, that is. Now, I just want to…stop.
That is the seismic shift I am in right now. I am shifting from a life of pursuit to a life of, what? What is the opposite of pursuit? I don’t know.
Is it simply being? I don’t even know what the hell that is. Is that really OK? What will happen? What if I give up the pursuit of pursuit? What will I do with my life if I do not pursue something?
Who will I be? Will I fall I back into the chasm? Will I be falling into the obscurity I have so feared?
And if I fall into the chasm of my own soul, will it be a free fall that lasts forever, or will I land on soft ground at some point? This cannot be yet another pursuit. I have to let it be whatever it is. I cannot fall back wishing it to be one way or another at the other end.
I just have to fall back. And that is terrifying and yet so absolutely right-feeling at the same time.
I’ll either see you on the other side, or I won’t. Deep breath. Here I go.
I was clearing out papers and photos from my life –
An envelope my Dad had given me after my Mom died
She’d saved every note and card I’d ever written her
And the truth staring me in the face
As I read through them was this:
I have never been OK with myself
Always searching for answers – why me, why not, what if this, what if that
Working to improve my self – this dress, that diet, walk this way, talk that way
Every day a struggle, so hard to get through
The bitter pill of life I just could not swallow
It caught in my throat, choking my voice
And I grasped at the ever-dangling carrot of a better me
And wore myself down to nubbins and grace
Today I will Just breathe
I will live in the questions
Stop searching outside for the answers
I will wear life like a loose garment
Listen to the breezes blow
Seek comfort in my own heart
And choose to forget whatever it was I was fighting so hard to be
There are no more truths to swallow
It is time to simply be
I come from a long line of control freaks.
Which is to say, my people, like many, are highly motivated by fear. Highly.
Particularly my father. I will never know why or how he developed into such a fierce perfectionist. I only know that it is a trait that definitely carried over into my own makeup, much to my chagrin.
I am a recovering perfectionist. But a perfectionist nonetheless.
It’s an exhausting way to live. And exacting.
My father was incredibly hard on himself and set extremely high standards of behavior for himself, and for others.
This led to a family dynamic that was often painful, confusing, sometimes dangerous, often maddening, and, ultimately, costly. Costly, because it affected the quality of relationship between us all.
At least that’s been my experience and belief. I am sure everyone in my family could offer their own. But this is mine.
Without wanting to sound like someone justifying an abuser’s bad behavior, I do believe, truly, today, that he was coming from a well-meaning intention. He genuinely loved us as best he knew love to be, and he wanted us to succeed at life.
I can say that today. But if you also grew up with a controlling, perfectionistic parent living from unconscious fear, you know that there are many other feelings that have preceded this place of understanding, this perspective of compassion.
I felt so controlled in my childhood. There are moments still when I can feel the ghosting sensation of a yoke on my neck and shoulders. No, I was not made to wear a literal yoke. But I felt so managed, so handled, that there is a tension, a ‘cautiousness’ in my body that literally feels like an actual yoke.
Granted, I was the youngest child. I think most youngest children feel to some degree that they were expected to just go where they were told to by the others.
But in our family, for me, this went much deeper.
There was an unspoken agreement that everything in our household revolved around my father’s needs and wants.
He had a way he wanted things to be done. A way he wanted our family to be seen by others. He had an idea in his mind of a Rockwell-painting family.
And we fell short. Way short. And I think, on some level, he must have felt tesponsible for our “failure.” Or carried a deep-seated fear that other people would see him as being responsible for his failure.
I am not exaggerating by saying that he was controlling. He once demanded that my brother chew his food a certain number of times, feeling that this would solve his weight gain following an injury sustained during football training.
I saw him become enraged at our dog because she would not “behave.” I feared for her life on more that one occasion, and my own as well.
These were tangible expressions of his attempts at control. But much more affecting in my opinion were the much more subtle ways. With his tone, with his body language, he could command our collective sense of well-being. Depending on the kind of parents you grew up with, you may not quite grasp how this could be so destructive.
He was a big and tall man. Rage in him was quite powerful. Though he never lifted a finger to me (I was spared, I think, being female,) his energy was quite a weapon deftly wielded.
In order to please, I learned to exist, even to breathe, very carefully. I practiced sitting, walking and expressing myself so as to be what I thought would be most well-received. I watched myself, learning to be incredibly self-conscious so that I could, to the best of my ability, create behavior that would be acceptable and not create any negative response from my father. I learned to present a version of myself to my family and to others, to project and maintain an “image,” to try to “control” what I thought (hoped or feared) you thought of me. This, I have learned since, was a way of living I developed in order to feel safe.
Safe. That is a concept I am still unravelling. It was not a word that was on my radar until quite recently. I did not consciously realize that I lived in body that felt unsafe 100% of the time until several years ago. The constant state of “shell shock” felt normal to me. With help, I learned that I had a right as a person to feel this state of being, this “safe.”
I work with my body on that. Catch myself holding my breath and body steeled against attack as I go about mundane tasks wherein there is no perceived threat. But my body doesn’t seem to operate from that knowing there is no threat as its usual state of being. Instead, it is on high super alert 24/7. As I said, exhausting. But this behavior, this conditioning, having been learned (it is not what my body came into this world doing…my true essential nature is not fearful) means that I can learn other behavior and condition myself towards it.
As with all personality traits, there were positive benefits from his exacting and controlling ways. They served him well in his profession. He was, in his career, incredibly respected and successful as a result of his dedication and sheer will.
He built an empire from poverty. Amazing, really.
But the price he paid for it was not worth it in the end, I feel confident saying that. He and I found our way to a relationship at the end of his life. For that I am forever grateful. But as a result of many things, his controlling behavior being key, we lost out on having any real father-daughter relationship early on. A deep loss for each of us, I know.
I am in the midst of doing a deep, deep clearing of all of my belongings. I just found and read a letter he wrote to me when I was in my 20’s. We’d been years into a very volatile relationship. Once I was no longer under his roof and had independence, I began to fight back in passive aggressive ways, using my own finely honed talent for control to withhold and manipulate his attempts to connect.
I don’t recall reading it then. I am sure I was too filled with hurt and rage then to even “see” him in its words.
I do remember my mother telling me at the time it was a huge deal that he’d written it, but at the time, I couldn’t comprehend or appreciate that. He was maybe 10 years older then than I am now. He was looking back at his life and seeing things from wiser eyes. He was aware that his time left to resolve our issues was limited. He was trying to break out of his own exquisitely built shell, perhaps.
Today, I can feel the real man/the bewildered boy he was in those sentences, in the words he carefully chose. It’s funny, he uses the word “ghost” to describe how it feels for him to try to keep trying to get close to me. That it is as if there is some ghost there that he can never meet or see in order to face the problem.
He was so right, though I could not deal with it then. There were several ghosts there, ghosts that I am still living with today.
But I have been befriending mine. Compassion is key. The last thing my internalized father-bully needs is to be bullied. I have awareness, and I have choice. I do not have to live out of control and perfectionism in order to feel OK in the world. I give myself the fathering my father must never have had himself. And I work hard at my relationships with others so that I do not make them feel the way I felt growing up.
It takes work, but like the Velveteen Rabbit, today I am alive and Real and I have real, loving, healthy relationships with other people.
If you are old enough to get the reference of the title of this blog, you may share my opinion on the word “someday” because you’ve lived enough days to have noticed a few things.
If not, here’s some context. Will Robinson was a character on the series “Lost in Space” that ran in the 1960’s. It was long in reruns by the time I watched it: my high school friends and I would watch it on Saturdays, hungover, laughing at the campy melodrama. It had a robot in it, and in one particular episode, the robot warned Will of impending danger. (I also remember one episode where I think the robot actually said “take a chill pill” too, but we might have been playing a drinking game then so who knows if that really happened.) But I digress.
I believe that there are some words and concepts that are dangerous. “Someday” is one of those words.
An adverb, it is defined as: at some time in the future. As in: I know someday my whole family will be together and happy.
It is a word to hang your hopes on. Hopes for dreams coming true: “I’ll be a star someday.” Hopes of people’s poor behavior righting itself: “Someday, they will treat me better.” Hopes of exacting revenge: “Someday, they will be sorry.” (These are completely random examples, of course. Totally random samples.)
Seems pretty innocuous, right? What’s wrong with a little hope?
The problem happens when you start living so much for “someday” that you stop living this day.
I know firsthand that it’s possible to live from a deeply buried “someday” mentality and not even realize it. To live floating so much on that hope of the ever-elusive day in the future that life becomes the way you so desperately want it to, that life becomes a stream of yesterdays that weren’t really todays at all because the siren call of “someday” muted the music of the moment. I couldn’t even see what was because I was so fixated on and attached to visions of what I wanted life to be. I landed shipwrecked on the boulders of la-la-land, which before last year used to be a term that described “a fanciful state or dreamworld.” To put it another way, I awakened to the ugly and hard truth that I was way off course.
Once I realized that I was living from this hidden “someday” philosophy, after the shock wore off, and the anger, I had to forgive myself. After all, I was conditioned to live the world of “someday.” I grew up on fairy tales filled with songs like “A Dream is A Wish Your Heart Makes.”
And “Someday my Prince Will Come.”
I literally took these songs to heart, and they shaped my view of the world.
I am not blaming Disney! (But there is something to be said about the powerful affect of replaying songs hundreds of times. Don’t they use that technique to break prisoners? Isn’t that a kind of brainwashing?) I love those songs.
But they promise. And “promise,” like “hope” and “potential, ” are words and concepts that can be used for the better or for the worse. They are potent. They are to be measured for use.
These days, I watch myself. I steer myself away from using words like “someday.” I practice gratitude for today, this present day. For what is, not what I wish will be. Yes, I have wishes and dreams. But I also have goals and action plans. I am not adverse to a little hope in my heart. I love me a Disney movie and sing those songs right along with the best of them.
But I live in today. My yesterdays are well-lived and appreciated. My tomorrows are what my todays become. They are the result of today, not the point of them.
My “someday” is now.
#livefortoday #carpediem
When you live in darkness and the light finally comes
The dark doesn’t just “fall away” the way the say it will.
It’s still there, waiting for you
like a terrified child awaiting an adult’s comfort.
So there’s that.
But what about what’s in-between dark and light?
There’s all that gray.
Harder to look at than the deep of dark
or the bright of light.
Easy to dismiss what’s in shadow.
But something important that lives there
needs freeing too.
Inspired by The Daily Post Prompt: Gray
One of the more interesting “day jobs” I have had as an actress was selling products on one of the major home shopping channels.
Or should I use the official term “guest product specialist?” Sounds more important, right? “I was a Guest Product Specialist.”
At the time, green and eager, I was thrilled when my agent told me I had booked the gig. It would be a challenge! It would be live television! I glossed over the fact that I was essentially a sales person. I was going to be live on television and that was exciting. (And scary.)
The studios were located outside of a small town in the Tri-state area. I lived in Manhattan, so that meant a 2- 3 hour drive there and back for each airing depending on traffic, but I didn’t mind that. I loved traveling for acting work. It made me feel sophisticated, like a true “working actor.”
So what if some of those airings would be at ungodly hours like 4:25 AM? I was a professional! This was exciting!
I went through the training that the home shopping channel requires of all its potential “guest product specialists.” Some of it was on-line, essentially to introduce us to their approach to sales. The final part was a trial on-camera segment with one of the real hosts. When the trial came, I was so nervous, but the host I was paired with was just exactly how they seem on the channel: she was great at her job and charismatic enough to make me feel like I was her very best friend in those minutes together on-camera.
Described as a kind of dance, the synergy between the host and the guest specialist is very important to a successful home shopping channel sell. As the guest specialist, you are coming into the hosts’s “home,” so they are given the lead, but as the specialist, you are the one with the details and the passion. I felt like I was in a spell under the capable host’s lead. What was an 8 minute segment flew by in a blur that felt like 2 minutes.
After reviewing my taped segment with a producer, I was told that I passed. I was ready to start going on the channel to sell my product live.
And so my home shopping channel career began.
One of the products I sold was used in hot weather months. It was a personal comfort item that was used to help cool the body in the heat. So my sales pitch included a large table, several mannequin heads and some lucite display trees. I brought the heads in a rolling suitcase, as well as samples of the product, but the table and the lucite trees I had to hunt down and borrow from production for my segment. I’d find what I needed and set myself up in the assigned studio, then go to hair and makeup, and then sit in the green room to await my pre-sell 1- 2 minute meeting with the host to go over the features of my product.
Hair and makeup was a hoot. Sometimes I would be in there at the same time as one of the celebrity guest product specialists (think Joan Rivers or someone like that) or one of the top-selling guest specialists who had become the stars of the home shopping network because they’d sold millions of dollars’ worth of their product on the channel. A part of me could not help but be in a bit of awe of these people. Everyone else certainly acted as if they were awe-worthy. These were the homecoming kings and queens of this microcosm, and they knew it, too.
Many of the other quest specialists had worked hard to get their product on the show. I was in awe of them as well. Some had invented their product and this was their shot to “make it.” I could sense that in some cases, everything was on the line for them: all of their hopes and dreams of making a good living at this, and who knows what else?
There was always a mix of us waiting to do our thing. Everyone was jacked up no matter the hour.
I especially loved doing sells in the middle of the night because the studio was being run on a skeleton crew and it felt like I had the run of the place. It was a super high to sell when it was in the selling shank of the day and things were buzzing, but the quiet of the darker studio suited my pre-sell jitters. I could get very grounded and prepared essentially on my own. Sometimes it seemed hard to believe that a sell was actually going to happen, it was that quiet and dark. But just when I’d begun to panic that maybe I was in the wrong location, a camera person would show up, the lights would flood on and at the very last moment, a golf cart would zip the host over from some other part of the studio and we’d start the dance.
I had a demonstration, or “demo” in my sell: a bowl containing one of the ingredients of the item I was selling. I would plunge a thermometer into the bowl to show to the television audience that this item would cause the temperature to plummet, a definite plus in product promising relief in hot weather.
I would come to learn that these demos where key to a successful sell.
I would also learn that the hosts were juggling many different things as they danced with the guests specialist. They were in constant communication (as was I) via an earpiece in one ear with the producer who was running the show. But they also had an earpiece in their other ear and were also hearing simultaneous real time feedback from the line producer. So the host was having a live on tv conversation with me, while also taking information from the producer and the line producer. If there was a caller on the line, that added a fourth dimension to their roster. These people had to be able to be incredibly focused: their ability to keep so many balls in the air in their minds and seem totally present and charming at the same time was quite amazing.
The line producer would be keeping an eye on sales as the sell progressed, and if there was a spike in sales, they would tell the host, so that the host would know what out of what we’d just done or had been talking about had moved people to pick up their phone or get on their computer and buy. The host would then go back to whatever it was in an effort to spike the sales again and again.
Maybe it was the mention of a particular specific use for that product, or perhaps I had painted a picture with a particular word that had ben particularly affecting. Maybe it was the plunge of the thermometer into the bowl – the visual of the digital temperature going down. Maybe it was the host putting the product on and responding with an “Oooohhhh, that feels so cool.”
You wanted those “spikes.” You knew if you were getting spikes you were getting sales, and sales, after all, were the name of the game.
You’d finesse repeating whatever it was that had created the spike, whilst trying to appear in the moment of whatever conversation point you were in. It was a delicate part of the dance, and it was exciting, because you knew those spikes were making or breaking the success of the sell.
When it was over, I’d pack up my product and my mannequin heads and then go back to change back into my street clothes, eager to see how successful the sell had been. The people who hired me would have watched, and they’d have feedback and criticisms for me. What had I not gotten in? Where could I have taken more charge and gotten more of my points in over the host’s lead? That part was a bit nerve-wracking, as I had to abide by the shopping channel’s philosophies and yet serve my boss’ needs as well. Sometimes the two philosophies were at odds and I was in the middle, so I had to finesse the gap.
I was always grateful when it was all over and I was heading back home. It took a lot of energy and preparation for such a short “performance.” But I did love doing it all the same. It was a challenge, and I learned a lot during the year and a half I did it. It definitely helped me learn how to stay in the moment under high pressure. I developed terrific focus and concentration that has served me well for all my other acting work, particularly on-camera.
I look back now sort of in awe of myself. I jumped headfirst into that world, and I was pretty good at it. I was jumping off the skinny branches each time I went out for the dance to sell that product, and even though it was nerve-wracking every time, I have to say I loved the sensation. It was a rush.
But eventually, I got a tour of a musical that would have me away for the selling season. And thus, my career as a guest product specialist ended.
I sent back the mannequin heads and the samples, ready to embark on the next thing. But I carry with me that love of the spike, that desire to feel that jumping-off sensation. Not a bad thing to seek out, that feeling of being totally alive and in free-fall through the air, only to find that you can, indeed, rely on your own wings to get you to the next landing place.
#actorslife #dayjobs #salesjobs #takingflight #spike
There are things that I ruminate on, like the way my tongue cannot keep itself off of the sharp, spiky tip of my left incisor.
One of those things that I touch on again and again despite its spiky sharpness is the subject of being childless. It is uncomfortable terrain, but I go there again and again anyway.
I hate that term, “childless.” As if by not having a child, you are less somehow, than those who have had them.
Some people prefer “childfree.” That doesn’t quite feel right to me, as if children are something that I wanted to avoid for health reasons, like gluten, or sugar.
I love children. I think they are the greatest people on the planet. I have many children in my life.
But no, I am not a mother.
And boy, is that complicated. For me, and for most people in the world, it seems. So I must, in sensitivity to other people who do not have children and have their own personal relationship to this issue, offer a disclaimer.
I, in no way, speak for other people who do not have children. There are many reasons why people do not have children, are not parents, do not give birth. I cannot speak for anyone but myself. And I cannot know what anyone else’s feelings and experiences around this issue are, and would never attempt to represent them.
I am also not writing here about all the experiences I have had over the years around this issue and my decisions. I am not trying to explain or defend in any way my choices. (I actually am not even going into the reasons for my choices.)
I am writing about what still can get to me around the whole “childless” thing.
It is a continually odd experience to be in the world as a person over a certain age, married, and not to have had a child or children.
I have come to terms with my choices to the best of my ability. I stand by them. They are mine, and they make absolute perfect logic for my unique-to-me life.
Usually, I do not feel less than around this given, this fact that I have not had/do not have children. I do not feel odd. Being the one living my life, my choices are perfectly normal to me.
Yet. There are those moments, when people ask me, “Do you have children?” when I admit that sometimes I doubt myself. That self-doubt can be devastating, for it is as if I turn on my self without meaning to because of my own social conditioning. Let me explain.
Someone I am just meeting or have been getting to know asks me if I have any children. I calmly say “No.”
Well, today I calmly say “No.” There was a time when I would be so uncomfortable leaving it there out of such fear of what they might say, that I’d make an attempt to avoid it by sort of explaining without explaining (as if I owed anyone an explanation!)
“No, no kids. Just didn’t…um…nope.”
(I learned in time that that seemingly small abandonment of my self to avoid the discomfort of answering the question carried way too high a price. That it actually chipped away at my soul. I learned that tolerating the discomfort that followed my simple “No” was a far better choice.)
Back to the story. To recap: they ask “Do you have children?” I say, simply, “No.”
Then it happens.
You see, there is always a small pause before they say something polite, like “Oh.”
In that pause, I can hear the wheels of their mind turning. I know that they are quickly scanning for possible reasons for my lack of children and that they then jump to conclusions and judgements about this fact, this given.
In that pause, a part of me suffers a little as I sense one of three experiences they are having around this information they’ve just been given.
In scenario one, it is as if they are considering I may be/have been barren (what a horrific word) as in there may be a biologic reason for not having had children. I can often detect a hint of pity and sometimes even shame on my behalf. If there was a thought bubble above their head it might read, “Oh, poor thing. She was defective in some way and could not conceive.” “Oh,” they say, in a somewhat reverent tone.
Ahhhh. Message received. So I am less than a woman – a normal woman, a woman who’s able to bear a child – a mother. I am not that. I am somehow not able to be THAT, to be a whole woman. I am lacking. I am deficient. I am tragic.
Scenario two. I sense in that pause that they jump to the conclusion that I chose my career first, because why else would a perfectly healthy, “normal” woman not have had a child? The bubble might read, “Oh. You were too busy putting yourself first to have a child. Hmmph. Yep. Selfish.”
Ahhhh. So they think I am self-absorbed because I did not procreate as expected. I did not do my part in populating the world, in completing God’s will for me as a woman. I am hard, selfish, self-absorbed, self-involved. Perhaps it is better than I did not procreate since clearly I am missing the mother gene. Tragedy averted – perhaps I am not fit to have been a mother, since I clearly lack the generosity and the ability to put someone else first ahead of my ambitions.
In that glance after the voiced “Oh,” I sense a subtle aggressive relief. They are glad that they have put this together and can “place” me in their minds. Now I make sense. I am one of those career women. Hmmph. They can relax again, calmly feeling their own subtle superiority over me. Again, I am somehow deficient. Some genetic aberration made me not want kids enough or at all. Again, I am not a real woman. I am someone to perhaps forgive for her unwomanly ambitions, like a quirky aunt or an eccentric character.
Scenario three is the worst of them.
In those instances, they say, “Oh,” with a quiet tenseness, a slight narrowing of the eyes as they size me up. In their “Oh” is the sneaking suspicion that there is just something wrong with me, not biologically, but morally, ethically, mentally. That I am some sort of deviant.
The bubble reads simply in those times “Oh.” And I literally feel them slightly withdraw physically from me, as if what I have may be catching. I am categorized as a kind of leper, a social misfit. I am not to be fully trusted as I must be off in some way that is perhaps even dangerous because these people cannot fathom my “otherness” without finding it wrong on some level.
I have experienced all of the above multiple times on my own, and as part of a couple, in the world. Nothing is ever spoken aloud. But the messages are there, nonetheless. And they are affecting.
I find it interesting that it is rare that anyone goes beyond the initial question – pause and “Oh” response to actually ask me or me and my husband “Why not?”
To me, that is proof of the social stigma placed on people who choose, for whatever reason, not have children.
In that lack of further questioning – that invisible social moat that is suddenly drawn separating them and me/us – there seems to be an unspoken agreement that this subject is something to be skirted. Further questions are to be avoided. Suddenly, my/our privacy is to be respected, as if I/we have a chronic condition.
It’s as if it’s just been discovered that I/we had recently lost a loved one and it would not be polite to ask how. It is something for people in my/our lives to query behind closed doors but never directly to me/us.
Worse than my own self-betrayal that can happen in the moments of these interactions, is the fact that I am guilty of this stigmatization against myself and others, sometimes even simultaneously as I am a victim of that same stigmatization.
In my own mind when I meet people who have not had children, I find myself making the same search for reasons to explain their status, the same judgements and conclusions to be able to categorize them in my mind.
I am guilty of judging my own relatives who fall into this category in the same ways that I have felt judged. How disturbing is that?! I find myself thinking of them what I hate feeling others think of me.
I hate this most of all.
But I know that this is a result of deep, almost cellular, societal encoding that I, like all of us, have been surrounded by and immersed in since birth. These aren’t conclusions that I have come to, they have been absorbed by me from others and nurtured via cultural messaging on every level. So through no fault of my own, I am pre-disposed to a bias, even against my own self.
And I have come to understand that those who respond to me the way they do have also been born into those same pre-dispositions.
When I wanted to select a graphic to include in this blog, I could not find one. All that I could find were either pictures of couples or singular women looking down as if sad and shamed being without children. Or oddly aggressive attempts at someone’s idea of humorous art: an image of a child in a red circle with a line drawn through it. Or that yellow yield sign for car windows that says “Baby on Board” re-drawn to read “Baby Not on Board (so you can destroy my car!)” A very sad-looking empty nest. “Child-free by choice!”
None of these images reflect my truth. I cannot find popular culture that reflects my story. I don’t fit any stereotype. There is no club to join.
And so I ruminate. I soul search. I practice forgiveness of my self and of others for our lack of expansive vision.
And often I am able to see the Truth that is beyond the narrow expectations of the social norms that so shape the world. I can see who I am and know that I make sense and that there is nothing lacking in me, no aberrant gene or deviant peculiar twist in my making.
The truth is that I love my life and have no regrets. I mother other peoples’ children as an aunt and as a friend. And I mother the world as best I can.
The question, the “Oh,” and its aftermath gets easier and easier as I get clearer and clearer.
I am whole and healthy and as normal as anyone, but I am not the norm. That is all.
#onnotbeingamother #wholeandhealthy
In response to Daily Prompt: Ruminate
When I was a little girl, I took dance lessons. From the age of 4 or so, I took, tap, jazz and ballet. I have vague memories of doing some kind of moving across the floor and the teacher saying “Jeté, jeté!” as we stepped from foot to foot.
I loved those lessons. There was a big dance recital, where my mom made costumes for me: I played a bumblebee and a munchkin.
When we moved to Dallas when I was 5, for some reason, the dance lessons stopped. It was a hectic year, and the business venture that my Dad had moved us there for failed, so after the year, we moved back to Houston, to a different part of town and a different set of circumstances. Finances were tight, so extras like lessons were put to the side.
But. I did not stop dancing. I would put my parents’ albums on the record player and dance my little heart out. This was way before MTV or dance videos. The only references I had were old Hollywood musicals, which I adored. So my dances were my own versions of what I had grown up watching: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Doris Day, Audrey Hepburn moving dramatically across streets and fields in passionate, emotive and song-filled scenes.
I had plenty to be working out. In my young life I had already suffered a great deal. But my trauma had been locked away tight in a safe room of my psyche, so I wasn’t consciously trying to tell any particular story through these dances. My body-mind just needed to move and my soul just needed to express through that movement.
Favorite songs were Wings’ “Live and Let Die” and most of the album “Whipped Cream” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass Band. But I would dance to just about anything.
The dancing stopped somewhere around age 11. By that time, I had discovered food and TV and they became a kind of narcotic, a way to numb out the confusing feelings and thoughts that made life difficult. They became my number one coping mechanism, and saw me through until the teen years when other substances became available and appealing to me.
Did I dance again? Sure. At dance clubs in the 80’s and 90’s, where alcohol and often drugs were a part of the mix. At weddings, always somewhat self-consciously. There were a few attempts to go back to dance lessons so that as an actor I could be more marketable for musical theatre. I’ve danced in musicals and loved every moment. But the kind of dancing that I did in that living room back when? Nope.
Through my 20’s and 30’s, I had pics of me from that recital in my costumes, beaming. I think I even still have a bumblebee wing. Over the years, I have often used those pictures as self-reference, proof that there had been a time when I had been confident, happy in my body and free-feeling. I looked to those pictures to try to find hope that perhaps one day, I could find those ways of being again. Through much healing over the years, I have made a lot of progress. I go deep in my work as an actor and singer, and work from a place of a great deal of freedom often. But it has always still seemed to me that the girl I had been – with her total lack of self-consciousness, innocence and creative freedom – was to be forever out of my reach no matter how hard I worked for it.
Then. Last week, a young director reached out to me and asked me to do his film. He’d had me in mind for the Woman in the script, he said, and he really, really wanted me to play her.
In the script, during the character’s most private inner moment, she transports herself through fantasy from her home bathroom to a gorgeous copper bathtub in a tiled tunnel in Central Park by the Bethesda Fountain. She is wearing a beautiful dress and a sax player is playing music in the background as she has this very free, very private, very joyful moment.
From the moment I read the scene, I imagined the woman dancing around the fountain.
I asked the director had he imagined the Woman staying in the tub in her private moment. He said yes, but that it was my private moment, and he wanted me to have complete freedom. (What a wonderful gift he gave me, that freedom. So grateful for his desire to collaborate.) So I had imagined my moments in the tub and was excited and curious for how the shoot would go.
I had not seen the location, so did not know that the tiled tunnel was a beautifully lit space that had arches in the background and copper hues, and that the tub would be placed in it, not near the fountain.
So that morning, as we arrived on location, when I saw the actual scene – the brick tunnel and the beautiful space that was surrounding the copper tub – and then heard the song the saxaphone player was to play, I knew that I had to dance out of the tub and around that beautiful tunnel.
And so on the first take, as the camera began to film, I began my private moment, made my way out of the tub, and I began to dance.
It was one of the most magical experiences I have ever lived. In the moments of my improvised dance, with the sax player playing for me and with me, the sun beginning to come up behind the fountain in the distance, hearing only the music and the echo of my own laughter, I felt myself dancing simultaneously as the woman I am right now and the little girl I was then. The tunnel and that living room became one across space and time. The joy that bubbled up through my body was total and whole, and it was such an honor to be in those moments bringing the Woman of the film and the director/writer’s vision to life.
Afterwards, we did more takes, and they were each wonderful but different in their own ways. There was no way to repeat that first take, and that was perfect too.
But I walked away from that shoot forever changed.
There are moments in life where you feel that you are in the exact right place at the exact right time doing exactly what you were meant to do. In those moments, you can see that every other moment of your life has been a part of the making of this one magical moment. Every thing you’ve lived, every person you’ve met — the good, the bad, the ugly — it all makes total sense in those moments.
Those moments are astonishing. They are when I know I am a wondrous creation, a part of the whole that is this incredible Universe. I know in those moments that my life has been intricately designed, just as a rose has, or a peacock, or snowflakes. That nothing in my life – from the worst trauma to the most brutal pain – has been for naught. That it has all led to this moment in time, to this me that I have become.
That dance is forever in my heart now. It lives inside me, and it is the beginning of a whole new level of personal and creative freedom. I do not know what will grow from it, but I know that I have re-awakened something important inside, and I am so very grateful for that role finding its way to me, for giving me back the Dance.
#actorslife #danceforever #theheartremembers #itsnevertoolate #TheDanceoftheHeart
When I was a kid, something very traumatic happened to me. The details are not important. Suffice it to say that it was something soul-shattering.
As in, as it was happening, parts of my soul literally broke off and went somewhere else because the pain was too great. Being so young, 5 years old, I simply had no way to cope with what was happening to me.
So my psyche did what it had to do in order to survive. It translated parts of itself. It sent the most vulnerable parts of itself to safer places and left the parts of me that could withstand the trauma better behind to live through and manage.
That’s pretty amazing I think.
Now, at the time, of course, and for decades afterwards, I had no idea that this had happened, that parts of my soul had translated to other climes.
I went about my life, growing up, maturing as best I could as a person with crucial parts of themselves off somewhere else. I cobbled together a way of coping, and moved through childhood into adolescence and into adulthood.
I managed to make a life. A life held together by skewed logic and broken-hearted, suppressed pain, but a life nonetheless.
My pieced-together life was less than ideal. On the outside, it may have looked pretty good. I had a loving family, friends, education, opportunities galore, and the resources to live well and pursue my dreams. I do not want to minimize my gratitude for these.
However, my soul was missing core parts, so my experience of life through all those years was lacking in ways that are hard to explain. I was always feeling slightly off. I had generalized anxiety all the time that I could not define or understand. A seemingly bottomless well of sorrow and a constant sense of an inner hysterical feeling just below the surface accompanied me through even the happiest of experiences.
Suffice it to say that when your soul parts have translated elsewhere, and you don’t even know it, there is an internal confusion that can be terrifying, complex and, at times, overwhelming. It can feel like you are suffocating or in danger of disappearing into nothingness, into the void.
Until I understood this, I did my best to drown out this overwhelm. This led to some pretty messy behavior and a great deal of “lost” time.
Thankfully, I was lucky.
One day, in a voice lesson with a very wonderful man, I happened to mention to my teacher that I thought a part of my soul had been destroyed by what had happened to me. He told me that the human soul could never be destroyed, was beyond human touch.
Something in his words struck me to my core. I literally felt as if I had been gently punched in the gut. And though my mind was cynical, my body resonated the truth of his words.
My journey was forever altered for the better that day. I eventually found assistance and came to understand what had happened to me. With that assistance, I have been able to heal the wounds from the trauma. And grieve. Not only for the original trauma, but for the lost time and the years of moving through life as a kind of ghost of my former self. That kind of loss is real, too. And worthy of grief.
I have learned how to create, over time, a strong and loving core from which to invite those missing parts back. And in time, they have come. Not all at once, but bit by bit.
It is an astonishing thing to actually feel a part of your soul fly back into your psyche.
For me, there is a rush of sensation within my heart and solar plexus accompanied by a kind of flutter of excitement in my belly, followed by a warmth that spreads throughout my body along with a rush of intense emotion, a blend of ecstatic bliss at being reunited and tremendous grief for having missed it for so long. I imagine it is like being reunited with a long lost parent or child.
I cannot adequately express the sensation. Maybe it is what being touched by an angel feels like.
I am left with a sense of wholeness. In time, the new part integrates with the rest of me. I feel more and more like who I really am meant to be. These parts that have returned contain elements of my spirit, my soul, that I haven’t lived with in forever: bubbling joy, innocent playfulness, open curiosity and more. The difficult parts have come back too: rage, terror. But I’m equipped to handle them, unlike the child I was. I can honor those parts too and find compassion and healthy ways to address them.
It is like I was living with 3 crayons and now have 98 to use. I was a walking sieve and now I feel like a whole, flowing, glowing mass of life. I was a lone prisoner in my own skin, and now I feel connected to all of Life. I was blind but now I see. It may sound mystical or hokey, but it is my truth. I do not believe that I am alone in having experienced this, either.
I have come to view the human psyche as an intricate and miraculously brilliant thing. It has the power to survive the unimaginable and come through the other end with even more depth and richness than before. The soul cannot be destroyed or even truly touched by human hands. But it can translate. And return again. And for that, I am truly grateful.
#thebrillianceofthehumanpsyche
Beyond the Skinny Branches 