I’m emerging from my center
More confident
More curious
Something’s unfurling deep within
A knowing
A joy in being
A releasing of what’s seemed lost
So missed
So welcome
So…mine
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: unfurl
Homecoming
freedom
On Marriage as a Collaborative Art*
Sometimes I really want to be single again.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the man I married.
The Universe brought a man into my life who is almost perfectly designed for me in so many ways. He makes me think: really think. I love talking to him. He challenges me intellectually and emotionally. We both share certain childhood wounds that allow us to have a kind of understanding of the other that is quite exquisite and profound. We “get” each other in a way not many could or would. There is a shared language of our hearts. And there is that physical chemistry as well, that makes for deep passion and sweetness.
But I never planned to marry. To be frank, I always thought I was too f’ed up and so had written it off in my early adulthood.
Then I met the man who was to become my husband. For the first time, I had thoughts that maybe marriage was for me, after all. But I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t in any hurry.
And then, circumstances in my life created some shifts in priority (aka: My own personal Armageddon. My mother and brother died and my whole world exploded.)
And when the smoke cleared, and I was finding my way again through the rubble that was the New World of my life, I found that something in me had shifted.
So when the man-who-would-be-husband made the proposal, I said yes, unequivocally.
But let’s just say that my expectations of what marriage would be were practically non-existent.
I was more than pleasantly surprised. I took to marriage quite well. It astounded me (and still does at times.) It is a mysterious and wondrous thing: creating a home together, a partnership. The closeness. The sharing. The laughter. The tenderness. The challenges. The compromises. The deepening sweetness.
I am also deeply grateful that I have a partner for this part of my life. I have many friends who long for a boyfriend, a husband, a wife. I promise you that I rarely take for granted the incredible gift of this person, this marriage we co-create.
Being an actress, I tend to relate all things back to acting. So for me, marriage is a bit like being in a production of a play you love and care deeply about. You gladly revolve everything around it. You embrace that you are in a collaborative art.
Sacrifices are made willingly for the greater good of the whole. You are willing to live through the hard parts of the process because you know it is all a part of the creation you are making together. You trust in the process. You are diving into the unknown. You expect to feel lost at times because it is in the getting lost that you find something new, together.
You bring your best, he brings his best, and, together, you create something greater than the two of you.
But unlike a production that has a time of completion, a day when you all agree to move on to the next project, marriage is a continuing production. It is an open-ended run.
Those peaks and valleys that are a natural part of it…the moments of feeling lost in the unknown…well, to be honest, there are days when I want to say, “Screw it” and just literally up and leave it all.
Part of the problem is that the Universe was really having a field day when our stars were designed to cross paths. One of the most important qualities that I need and want to have in my life, freedom, just happens to directly rub up against one of the most important qualities that he wants and needs to have in his life. Makes for some critical moments of decision for one or the other of us. And some heated conflicts (aka awful fights.)
I grew up in a household where the father was autocrat. Our world revolved around his needs, opinions and moods. He was a big ‘n tall Texas man with a booming voice. He was intelligent in many ways, but as was true of many of his generation, less so in terms of emotional intelligence.
There was a show on TV in the 70’s, “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home,” a cartoon. The opening theme was a song by the same name, and the visual was of a family anxiously awaiting the father’s return home.
That kind of sums up my experience of our house. But on the TV show, Father was a softie.
Not so in my house. I was always waiting to see whether or not my Dad was mad. He had a mean temper, and a cruel tongue. And he used his physical presence to instill fear in those weaker than he. I guess that means he was pretty much a bully.
Which has always made me wonder what in the hell had happened to him to make him capable of that kind of behavior towards his family: the people he most loved in his life. I will never know. All those who could fill in those blanks are gone now.
I don’t believe it was his essence to be that mean. He learned it somewhere. As is true of many perfectionistic personalities, he was hardest on himself. I’m not making excuses for him. He could be a bastard, and it was not a healthy atmosphere to grow up in, being afraid all the time, walking on eggshells. But I know there is more to the story than just my experience of him.
Having grown up in such an oppressive atmosphere, it is a very high priority for me that for the rest of my life on this planet I not live like that: that I not live on pins and needles, carefully holding my breath around my loved ones, afraid to make a mistake for fear of being shamed and made to feel like I am less than nothing.
Which leads me to value freedom of every kind. Freedom of expression. Freedom to do what I want to when I want to. And that is wonderful, and I honor that about myself. I do.
But. I am in a partnership. And that requires restraint and compromise and taking in another person’s needs and wants and values alongside my own. Sometimes, yes, putting theirs ahead of mine. (No, not in the old-fashioned template of the wife putting her husband’s needs first. But in the way that mature love requires.)
It means being a grown-up. Making The Couple an entity that has a value that is greater than the individual parts that comprise it. Being a kind of parent to The Couple.
Some days, this is easy, cause, well, it’s beautiful. (Remember this song? Well before Mariah’s high notes, there was Minnie…)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94nDCm4NqIA
Other days, if I am especially tired or spiritually drained, or triggered, to consider compromise can feel like I am on the brink of losing everything that really matters to me. Those old wounds have a deep pull. They cry for me to fight for My Life. Run for the hills. Defend my Precious Freedom. (On no, he didn’t!)
I take a deep breath. Give myself a Time Out. (No, I don’t stand myself in the corner. But I do leave the room, sometimes even the apartment, to go get some air, some space, some present-day perspective.) Remove myself from the situation before I go all Beyoncé on his ass and say things I will later regret. (I am from H-town, after all.)
I go off and soothe that part of my heart: that little girl’s longings for a relaxed home and freedom of spirit and unconditional love. I am the only one who can give that to her now.
I parent my self first, attend to the wound. Then I can bring the Whole Mess that I Am back to the production that is Our Marriage. I am ready and able again to consider his needs, the marriage, Our Couple.
Being a flawed human, I am not always successful at this. When I am unsuccessful (aka I act out,) I take responsibility when need be and work to change my behavior, aka Make Amends. That is parenting too. And when he is ready to forgive me, then there we are.
Ready to make art again. Together.
#marriageasacollaborativeart
* Full disclosure: I really needed The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt of “partner” today. Things have been very stressed in my relationship lately. Between our impending new home purchase (and all that brings up and entails) and my “summer of deep change,” we are having growing pains.
So though I wrote this post lsat year, I really needed to re-read it and be reminded of it today.
And though I didn’t think I would ever re-post a post, here I am. My own heart needed to.
Lust Life
Much of my adult life has been about coming to terms with lust.
Having grown up in a fairly conservative family with mainly Protestant roots, I learned early on to deny and repress my lust: for life, for sex, for fame, for love, for food.
So much so that I lived a kind of double life from my teens into my twenties.
I hid many behaviors that all revolved around my various appetites. Somewhere in my somewhat stunted emotional development, I had learned that being seen as having a need (be it physical or otherwise) was weak, unattractive.
And so I learned to pretend I did not have them.
And yet, at the same time, I also had a very strong need to be seen as a sexual object. (See Sexual Healing, my previous post on this issue.) This presented quite a war within me. I desperately wanted to be seen and treated like a sexually desirable woman – that was sort of the ultimate need. At the same time, I had shame and embarrassment around this and had strong messaging that that was bad, and that I should be a good girl with no sexuality, appetites, strong opinions or feelings.
And so I pretended to be one one way while in secret I acted in other ways.
I invested a great deal of time into creating the illusion that I was chaste, a normal eater, and had a very neutral opinion on just about everything. I monitored my emotions and watched myself around people, carefully choosing mannerisms and tones to project a good girl.
Meanwhile, I was living quite another kind of life, a life I hid from my family, my friends. A life of appetite and lust and danger.
There were certainly angels watching over me. I was often in the wrong places at the wrong time. Somehow, I survived.
At a certain point in my twenties, the jig was up, as they say.
My psyche demanded that I heal the split, and I began the process of recovering wholeness again.
Of uncovering my own genuine appetites from a place of love, curiosity and acceptance. Of letting go of the urge to keep my appetites hidden.
I began a process of embracing of my true nature and wants and needs as beautiful reflections of my own humanity. I began the shedding of the shaming nature that I inherited.
An unlearning of the social pressure that happens in middle school to put a damper on enthusiasm, to keep a lid on want to look cool.
I learned to let myself eat as I really wanted to in front of others.
I learned to let myself be seen trying, excited, wanting, sexy, hungry, angry, hopeful, happy, disappointed, frightened, messy, unhappy, empty, full, vulnerable, awkward, lonely, blissful.
I learned to let myself be seen. As I really am.
Today I value the self-honesty that I live from. Truth is of huge importance to me.
Though I am still in awe of the capacity I had within my own psyche to maintain such a dichotomy the way I did – that I could compartmentalize two such distinct worlds at once – I am so grateful that that is just a chapter in my story.
Today, I have one world with many parts: parts that co-mingle and bring me great joy in their diversity.
I celebrate my appetites, I revel in my enthusiasms and passions.
I love my lust. It is what lets me know I am human. And alive.
So today, I try to wear my lust like a smile.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: lust
Unchained Melody
There will be a day
When my choked throat opens, when my tongue can relax
And my breath flows free
There will be a day
When the cacophony of other people’s voices inside my head
Become quiet, stilled for good
There will be a day
When all the many tunes of the me’s within
Harmonize as one, swelling chorus
There will be a day
When my I speak, full-throated, my songs of truth
Authentic arias, free at last to soar
Oh yes, there will be a day
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: harmonize
Call of the Wild
Let’s become savage
Want to leap down from my tower
Unlearn restraint and good manners
And see what will flower
Underneath the polite and the shame
Want to smell my own desire
Bury myself deep in your fur
Throw my human-ness on the pyre
Constant Craving
When I was a girl, I lived for food.
The promise of the after-school snack kept me going through the grueling days of my youth. I’d race home to find sweet and savory relief from the confusion of adolescence.
I’d eat from a box of graham crackers, spreading layers of vanillla chocolate chip canned frosting. Or I’d slice up a Snickers bar the way they did in a commercial on at the time, pretending I was in it. Then maybe some Lay’s potato chips. Maybe a Wonder Bread/Gulden’s Mustard/Kraft cheese and baloney sandwich.
I was on my own, so I could eat like I wanted to. No father home yet to bring tension and self-consciousness to the air.
I’d fill myself, quelling the uncomfortable thoughts and feelings that haunted me at any other time of my day. This was all mine. My time free from criticism, pressure or fear.
Over the years, I became desperate around this intimate connection with food. Protective of the rituals. The private pleasure I found in food and the act of eating it.
I knew something was off about how I related to food. I felt ashamed and like there was something wrong with me, while at the same time feeling like it was crucial to my very existence. That trichotomy created a painful struggle inside me of shame and appetite and need.
I became secretive around it, knowing on some level that I was not like other people.
I now understand that somewhere along the way, I learned to equate food with so many things I needed: love, attention, security, connectedness, relief, quiet, peace, pleasure, a sense of having something for myself, a way to feel like I had control of one thing in the world.
I believe that some of this relationship to food was learned, familial. My mother, too, sought refuge in her treats. She loved candy, and when I came home from school, she was usually lying in her bed, reading mystery novels, eating candy from a stash she kept in her bedside table. She, too, at some point in her life, reached for food to solve and resolve being on this planet.
I understood her for this. I feel such compassion for her. For her huge needs and the dysfunctional way she had developed to cope with getting them met.
It has taken many years of unraveling this connection for me to find a new relationship to food. There’s been tremendous loss in it. A loss of my friend, my savior, my companion, my sidekick.
But it has been so freeing, too. I have been learning how to give myself what I had asked for from food all those years: love.
Sounds easy, and obvious, right? But what does that actually look like?
It looks like this: giving myself The Five A’s of Love: Attention, Acceptance, Appreciation, Affection, and Allowing.
(The Five A’s concept is from the wonderful book How To Be An Adult in Relationships – Five Keys to Mindful Loving by psychotherapist, David Richo, PhD.)
Those Five A’s satisfy the snack craving every time. I’m not saying I don’t still crave and even miss that snack eating ritual. I do. That’s a deeply embedded habit. I got pretty hard-wired around it.
But today, I take the snack-seeking girl inside by the hand, and I ask her what she really needs.
Sometimes it is some appreciation for all I have been doing all day.
Sometimes it is affection. Maybe a bath. Some demonstration of loving care.
Maybe it is the need to be allowed to really acknowledge feeling afraid, or spent, or angry.
It took awhile for that part of myself to trust that my needs could be met in new ways. To trust in something other than food.
To trust life. To trust love. To trust loving myself, in life.
It is an every day practice, this mindfulness of love. I pour the energy I used to hold for food into other things. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t gotten my wires crossed, that food wasn’t so complicated for me.
But it is.
And so I accept this truth as if I were diabetic, and I do what I need to do to care for myself.
Mostly, as I said, I feel free.
I no longer carry that shame I felt around it. I am literally lighter in spirit. That feeling is the prize I keep my sights on. It is what makes it all worth it.
I may no longer “have” snacks. But I have me.
Breakfast of Champions
Sunnyside up
Not just my favorite egg
A way to be in the world
Not pretending, can’t do that
But steering towards the light
Can’t avoid the dark and grey
But I can keep the sun in mindsight
Paper-Thin Skin
Watch how you touch her
She’s open and free
Becoming who she is
Finding out how to be
She lives from her essence
No mask fools the world
There’s no scrim up yet
Just her, unfurled
So much ahead
Her whole life to begin
If you love her, take care
She’s got paper-thin skin.
Cutting the Cord
I am on a quest.
A quest to trust myself more. Especially in the arena of decision-making.
It sounds easy enough, right? I mean, I am me. So it makes sense that I should be able to make decisions and act on them. Easy-peasy.
I have thoughts and feelings. I reference the information stored in my brain and body that I have gained through experiences in my lifetime until now.
I know my values. I have my goals, my aspirations. My action plan. I have one, five and ten year plans in place just like experts tell you to. These are supposed to be the touchstone from which you make decisions. Check in with what they are, and if the thing is in alignment with them, voila, you have your decision. What’s not to trust?
But the process above is not the way it goes for me. I agonize over decisions, major and minor. Whether it be deciding what restaurant to go to for dinner or if I should buy a new apartment.
In my decision-making process, I am riddled with doubt at every turn. There is a constant loop of second-guessing that plays in my head. What “should” I do? What are other people doing? What if I pick the wrong thing and ruin my life forever? What if I regret my choice? What if I could have made a better choice? I torture myself.
I used to explain this away as a Libran “ism.” As a Libra, I am prone to weigh the different sides of things. I can see the value in opposing sides. Fairness is of high importance to me. I can see the good in the bad and the bad in the good. It makes decision-making a tedious mess. I end up feeling torn.
I have also pointed to my being an actress, a storyteller, as part of the issue. When posed with a scenario, my mind naturally starts to put together paths of logic that stem from every possibility. I have a vibrant and active imagination and can envision potential outcomes in great detail. This does not necessarily make for easy decisions.
I have even thought that my difficulty making decisions had to do with being the youngest. Often, as the youngest, you grow up doing what others want you to do and going where you are told to go. You learn to follow your older siblings’ lead. You want to do what they do. You want to be where the action is. You don’t know there is any other way than how the family treats you: as the littlest: you are usually just told what to feel, think and do.
I also come from a Protestant people who I think are quite fear-based, so it is in my genes to be cautious and to fear bad things happening as a result of one’s own actions. Don’t rock the boat. Go with the flow. Don’t make waves. This desire to fit in and to protect myself by blending in is often at war with my other desires and impulses, making decision-making all the more tricky.
I also know that due to traumatic events at a pivotal time in my early childhood, I learned to discount my own experience and sense of truth. To doubt my inner truth in favor of what others’ think. That certainly has messed with my ability to reach within, make a decision and trust it.
Though all of these may indeed and probably do contribute to the problem, they aren’t the root cause of my decision-making difficulties. The root, I have come to learn, is satellite thinking.
Satellite thinking/living occurs when a person makes other people’s ideas and opinions and actions have more meaning than one’s own. To be constantly seeking outside evidence, clues and advice as to what to do.
I didn’t even know that is what I was doing for many years. That I was always looking outside of myself to decide what to do. It is incredibly painful to live that way. It’s exhausting!
I know it now, and I am so grateful.
There’s no fulfillment in that way of living. Ever.
It has been quite an awakening to realize this and to shift into my own core. It has been perhaps the most amazing healing work I have ever done in my life. It has taken patience and tremendous love. I have had to learn to really listen to my own voice within and to discern it apart from those other voices inside my head that have worn their groove into my neuropaths.
And I now feel that I am at the last phase of becoming core-centered. I am at the phase where I actually jump off the psychic edge of the familiarity of looking to the outside to guide me. Where I willingly fall into the unknown abyss that core-centered living feels like.
It is flat-out terrifying. And exciting.
When I think about truly entering into this relationship with myself: asking myself alone what is the next right action; when I think about asking questions of myself such as how do I really want to lively life, and what does a meaningful, well-lived look like to me; what will I feel was a “worthy” life when I am on my deathbed…when I begin to live with these questions, really listening for the answers within underneath the cacophony of those loops, I feel dizzy and disoriented, literally.
It feels like I will become like the astronaut in 2001 A Space Odyssey who is disconnected from the mothership, floating away into black nothingness…
A terrifying image. That is truly how scary it feels. My entire relationship to life is changing. Scary, to be sure. And yet.
It also feels like finally coming home to roost. Like the Eagle has finally landed.
Like I have finally found what I have been looking for and missing my whole life.
Can I ever truly erase that ever-playing loop of doubt in my head? That constant tendency to look to see what is happening “over there,” to ask what are “they” doing in order to decide what I want to do? To question my own sense of reality and defer to what others say is the truth or what I think others would do or what I imagine they want me to do. Can I halt that loop?
Maybe not. But I know it for what it is now. It is just old static. I can brush it away, like a stray hair that is tickling my face.
I can tune the knob and find my own frequency inside. Sometimes it takes awhile to find, but it is always there.
Like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz discovering the power to go home again, I find I’ve had it in me all along.
Turns out, I am my own mothership.
Inspired by The Daily Post Daily Word Prompt: loop
Lasting Impressions
Relieved to find you gone
I relish the space you’ve left
I wander around, plumping out indents your body left behind
Quiet echoes through the house
Bouncing off the boulders of residual angerhurt, weighting the air
And defensive arguments play at high volume on a loop in my head
Maybe someday I will breathe deeply again
And I will hear what my own heart has to say
Beyond the Skinny Branches 