Today I am going over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Okay. It just feels that way. Going to a meeting that will change my life. I am an emotional creature. Prone to mild, if controlled, hysteria, under pressure. Mostly I grin a lot when I’m stressed. Me and Adrenaline are old, long-term buddies.
Me and Adrenaline have an implicit, if unspoken, agreement. You keep me moving forward, I tell it, and I will do my level-headed best not to screw things up. I will not do anything to sink this ship we call a body or beach it on some desert island without water, shelter, or hope. Deal?
I grant you there is some hyperbole in my metaphor. But not a lot. I have another object lesson I am living through about managing stress and keeping cool. I have little control over the outcome and that makes me a little nuts.
My husband is a former commercial airline pilot. He is the very definition of cool. Nothing rattles him. Not even me. I guess when you are at the helm of a 747 with 300 souls in the back of your bus trusting you with their lives, you learn to chill. I can imagine no scarier image than an airline pilot with a bad case of nerves. It is their job to keep us calm. Not the other way around.
So it probably won’t be as bad as I imagine. It might, in fact, even be quite civilized. The chicken little types out there in the world make a fortune out of capitalizing on our fear of almost everything. Body odor, as an example.
The profit numbers around products and packages that are designed to keep us “safe” are staggering. The insurance industry is a multi-billion dollar behemoth. Fear is an inherent and instinctual survival tool. In moderation. But here we are.
I wonder what our Neanderthal ancestors would make of us now. I imagine they would long to go running back to their caves and dirt floors rather than face the daunting maze that society has become.
For my part, I’d rather be making preparations for the slaughter of a good-old fashioned sabertooth tiger than trying to navigate modern bureaucracy. Sharpen the spears and the flint arrowheads. Make sure the loincloths are well-secured. Wrap your feet in enough banana leaves to safely stalk the elusive tiger through an ancient jungle. It was so much simpler then.
There is a separation in my emotional life now so far removed from how it and I used to be. This fascinates me. I have lived through many rough patches in my life.
There were times when money was scarce. People were unkind and unfriendly. Doors shut when I desperately wanted them to open. At each and every challenge in the past, I was convinced “this was it.” Whatever state of distress I was in, I convinced myself that was my life forever. Thankfully I was wrong.
A friend and I were talking about childbirth the other day and all of the unnecessary drama that often surrounds it. No doubt childbirth is a dramatic life event. But I was somehow attuned to the messages of unbearable pain during labor, so intense, in fact, it made women wonder why anyone would undergo it more than once in a lifetime. Which is ridiculous when you think of it. Pioneer women and Catholics thought nothing of going through childbirth a dozen or more times.
Here’s what I learned about all the doomsaying around labor. It is a natural process. It was set up that way. By no means necessarily pleasant for mothers, it is a universal experience. Nature sets up most women to get through it successfully if they are lucky.
Childbirth is fraught with risk, I realize. But the “ain’t it awful” mantra around childbirth’s unimaginable pain is largely fictitious. Nature prepares women. At a point, nature takes over. Babies are rarely “willed” into being by any individual mother though I must say, it kinda felt like that at the time.
I was thinking something similar thing about having a painful past. From my present vantage point, all of the painful events of the past seem almost dream-like. As if I were being led through circumstances I needed to stare down and get through. That is not to say I can’t remember them vividly. I do.
What they no longer have the power to do, however, is to buckle and derail me. I can’t fully say how I got from a place where shame led me to wish the earth would open up and swallow me. Or how anxiety and insecurity would cause me to tremble with fear before opening my mouth or speaking up for myself.
It was a process of facing head-on and facing up to the demons that were resident inside me. I drank to excess. No one forced me to. No one forced me to stop. I fought the addiction until I was driving my own life and not the other way around when it was driving me.
There were dozens of helpers and guides along the way. My other insight is that I never stopped looking for answers or relief. I am what you would call a “seeker” I guess to the extent that I know what that is. I haven’t quit. Slowed down my pace a little but never quit.
That would have been the greatest failure. It is often said that it is not so much the things you have done in your life – even bad things – that you regret on your deathbed, but the things you didn’t do. That is arguable but I do know that pursuing what moves and drives you to the fullest extent is usually better than doing nothing.
I did not have what most would call a “conventional” career with thirty years at a desk and ending with a pension and gold watch. I traveled to many far-flung places in the world when I was fit and strong enough to do so. There are very few places today that call me strongly enough to actually pack a suitcase for.
I have culled through and chucked enough of life’s flotsam and jetsam to appreciate what I have. To live comfortably with what I don’t. And to put experiences of success and failure in perspective.
Rudyard Kipling said about reaching a goal of maturity in his classic poem, If: “If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two impostors just the same.” “If you can fill the unforgiving minute, With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
Well, I do that most of the time these days. I figure that means I have finally become a man.
There are a million ways to share the truth. Each word, each book, each song, each play, each speech (well, that’s a little iffy). The human race is saddled with certain “inalienable truths” that are repeated repeatedly as we motor along in life.
As each songwriter discovers a new truth and writers about it, we learn anew what matters should matter to us as humans. The lesson is then again released into the world in a new form.
Personally, I think this is the messaging strategy of the great communicators. One who comes to mind is the late Joseph R. Smallwood of Newfoundland. When Smallwood was angling (and he was always angling), for the admission of Newfoundland to the Dominion of Canada in 1949, he gave speeches. Later, when Confederation had been achieved, he gave speeches galore in his bid to become the first Premier of said newly admitted province in the firmament of the Dominion of Canada.
Smallwood had a rule about speeches (likely others had the same rule, too but I actually heard Smallwood say this): First, tell the people what you are going to tell them. Next, tell them what you want to tell them. And conclude by telling what you told them. Repetition and consistent messaging were his secret. He hung on to power as Premier in Newfoundland for a long time. (Some might argue for too long but that is another post and too political for the point I want to make.)
But he nailed the device. Humans can be slow learners. And even when they learn lessons, they only retain them if they repeatedly hear them. Take the Bible, for example. Those messages have held sway for eons through their repetition at once-weekly (or more) church services for the devout and civic-minded.
Look at advertising. Who among us has not thrown aside their vow of paucity for the various enticements slung at us by commercials on the “boob tube.” (Remember when that was what TVs were called. These days calling television that would belabor the obvious.)
Successful TV shows are formulaic. The cast gets established and performs their roles consistently. We love that we humans do. We form relationships of sorts with them and we think we know who they are. This certainty appeals to us humans at some level. Think of Grey’s Anatomy, NCIS, Law and Order, The Simpsons, even.
And while it happens less today, think about the tragedy of typecasting. Poor Shirley Temple could not sustain an acting career once she outgrew the persona of an adorable cherub and became – as it were – a real live girl.
Actors have complained for years that their gender, looks, physique and public presentation have consigned them to similar roles for their entire careers. Take poor Rock Hudson, for example. Woefully miscast as the hunky lover of women for years until AIDS outed him.
We long for order. We fight for order. We spend money on boxes, bins, baskets, labels, label makers, file labels, file folders, file cabinets, cupboards, closets, containers, crypts, efficiency experts, and efficiency systems. All to create to order.
We despair when order eludes us. I sure do. I think this longing for order and certainty is a metaphor for fighting against life’s inevitable outcome. We all disappear and dissolve into chaos eventually. We depart this world. This is non-negotiable. Not knowing what awaits us after death (if anything) has been the subject of speculation for centuries.
Still, we often negotiate like crazy against impending darkness and often do so right up until the very end. For all the good it does us. I think I have devised a way to make friends with death. Well, my own death anyway. I have lived so many realities in my time on this planet and have never settled all that comfortably into any of them.
When your early life begins in chaos, you learn to distrust order. You long for it but when it is upended and taken away so often, order becomes suspect and sterile. People living in peace and order – went my dysfunctional thinking – live in denial and delusion. Not only that, their lives are undoubtedly dry and boring. This was my comfortable justification for something I did not have and was uncertain I could ever achieve.
It is true that on this planet, order is essential to success. That is why we have a gazillion systems and products and recommendations for how to achieve it. To play the game of life successfully (in our culture, at least), you must have your ducks in a row. At law school, I met earnest young lawyers-to-be who were not particularly intellectually gifted, but I was consumed by suffering and envy for the order in their course notes.
My cousin Pat Good is a quilter and more generally, a fabric artist. Quilting requires order and an ungodly level of patience and stick-to-it-ism. As do any of the creative arts. Would you read this if my thoughts and words were helter-skelter all over the page and disconnected? I didn’t think so.
Writing has been a discipline of self-imposed order on a chaotic environment. Mom betrayed me? I wrote down exactly what she did (supported my ex-husband over me) and how I felt about it (confused and devastated, naturally). I don’t trust my memory more than anyone else should. But when it is right there, written down in blue and white (my preferred inkpen color), years later, I can still read and recall the truth of that moment.
That has helped me in many ways. When I was being gaslighted by my mother or ridiculed and dismissed by my mother, the journals I kept took me back to my truth as it had been in that moment.
There was one particularly telling exchange with my mother. I told her I kept a journal and had written down the details of our many confrontations after they happened and her decidedly unmotherly actions: “You could have made all that up!” she chortled. But I didn’t.
There is order I see and believe in daily and that is in nature. Unlike humans, nature doesn’t busy itself with running around changing its’ environment willy-nilly exclusively for power and monetary gain. The path of nature unfolds in some kind of divine order that I am never going to fully get in this lifetime.
We are born but let’s face it, we don’t know where the hell we came from. We know the biology and have fiddled with that dramatically in recent years. But where does the spark of creation come from? Damned if I know.
What I do know or believe is in “ashes to ashes and dust to dust.” we came from the great formlessness and to it we will one day return. I am slowly getting this. In our writer’s group the other day, the ethereal and spiritually evolved Anrael Lovejoy said words to the effect – lest I misquote her – “We are formless before we are conceived and after death, return to formlessness.” Ever insightful and a thinker of deep thoughts is my friend, Anrael.
Everything we do – from birth to grave in the middle – are finger-tapping exercises. Best then that we have fun with the time we’ve been allotted.
The Thirty Day Blog Writing Challenge’s organizer Frank Taub says linking to a video we love counts as a post. Was happy to stumble across this one by Randy Rainbow while wandering around the Internet.
Like Randy Rainbow, I am sick to death of the mealy-mouthed “thoughts and prayers” that are uttered by public figures and followed up with no valuable action.
Rainbow speaks my mind. I am sure he speaks for what used to be the “silent majority.” (I won’t take time here to sing the praises of Randy Rainbow to the rooftops as I want to. One day though, I well might.)
Sending “thoughts and prayers” is facile. It accomplishes nothing. You want to express your genuine concern and distress? Change something. Do something. That’s what will have meaning and value in the face of outrageous acts of tragedy and injustice.
Otherwise, you are just another well-mannered, insipid, do-nothing automaton in society. Heaven knows we have more than enough of them already. Many of them are politicians.
I would never publish something that is not original and written by me personally unless I tell you first. So I am telling you. I am a little shaken by the origin of this post. I asked ChatGPT for a three-minute article on the healing power of fairy tales to address past trauma. I have a lot of strong opinions on this based on my own personal experience, myth stories, Jungian psychology, and the repetitive and universal themes that fairy tales touch on. But holy heck.
What follows below is the result of a query ChatGPT produced in well under a minute. If there is any comfort to be taken from this alien’s ability, it is that if writers use it, they will at least have to read it before they publish it. I did. But wow. This is one slippery slope, especially for those who are not as ethically constrained as others. What may be worse is that there is nothing in this text I can disagree or take issue with. I would have been funnier though. I’m hanging on to that.
Take it away, ChatGPT…
Title: Harnessing the Magic of Fairy Tales to Heal Past Trauma
Introduction: Life is a journey filled with joyous moments, but it can also bring forth painful experiences that leave lasting scars on our hearts and minds. Healing from trauma is a complex process, and there are numerous therapeutic approaches available to support individuals on their path to recovery. One surprisingly powerful tool for healing is the enchanting world of fairy tales. These timeless stories, with their magical landscapes and archetypal characters, have the remarkable ability to provide solace, understanding, and empowerment as we navigate the difficult terrain of our past traumas.
Unleashing Imagination and Symbolism: Fairy tales have captivated our imaginations for centuries, weaving tales of heroes, heroines, monsters, and mystical beings. These fantastical narratives often mirror the struggles we face in our own lives but in a metaphorical and symbolic way. By immersing ourselves in these tales, we gain a fresh perspective on our traumas, viewing them through the lens of fiction. This distancing effect can be remarkably therapeutic, allowing us to explore our pain from a safe and detached space.
Identification and Validation: Within fairy tales, we encounter characters who embark on transformative journeys, facing adversity and triumphing over challenges. By identifying with these characters, we find solace and validation for our own struggles. Seeing how they navigate their trials and emerge stronger, we realize that we too possess the inner strength to overcome our past traumas. Fairy tales provide a sense of shared humanity, reminding us that we are not alone in our pain and that healing is possible.
Symbolic Resolutions and Catharsis: Fairy tales often offer symbolic resolutions, where the characters find closure and transformation. These resolutions can offer us a sense of catharsis as we witness the characters’ triumphs and discover parallel pathways for our own healing. Through the symbolic elements, we can explore and process our emotions, fears, and desires in a way that feels safe and non-threatening. The magical elements of the tales create a space where we can reimagine our own narratives and rewrite the endings to better suit our healing journey.
Empowerment and Resilience: Fairy tales are not mere escapism; they are vehicles for empowerment and resilience. These stories inspire us to believe in the power of hope, love, and courage. As we internalize the lessons learned from fairy tales, we begin to cultivate a stronger belief in our own abilities and resilience. We recognize that even in the face of adversity, we have the capacity to rise above our traumas and create a brighter future.
Conclusion: The healing potential of fairy tales is a testament to the enduring power of storytelling. By delving into these magical realms, we gain insight, validation, and strength to confront and heal from past traumas. Fairy tales provide a sanctuary for our wounded selves, where we can reimagine our narratives and find solace in shared experiences. So, let us not underestimate the transformative magic of fairy tales and embrace their enchanting power as we embark on our healing journey.
Has anyone ever thought about what they would think about if they were not completely surrounded by sensory-stimulating come-ons? What would they crave and desire? We are so thoroughly drenched in money attractants out there.
I have spent thousands of dollars on manicures, pedicures, and hairstyling in my life, among several other vanities. And on shoes and clothes. The truth is that as I write that confession it makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Like I drank the damned Kool-Aid just like all the other good little followers.
I have said before and believe that society doesn’t have much interest in individualism or creative thinking. What is preferred are functionally literate automatons who will dutifully sign up for and carry out the same duties as all of the other automatons.
Even creativity in the “creative arts” is a stretch. Look at Hollywood. The greatest movie franchise of all time is that of the Marvel Comics characters. A seemingly endless stream of ways to showcase and replot the same storylines with increasingly whizzier graphics and special effects.
I swear that there are so many car chases and blowing up of massive oil tanks and aircraft and whatever is to hand that I am never entirely sure there is any dialogue in films at all.
Not putting down the Marvel Comics genre or the franchise. Just saying they are all a few million miles away from the plot lines of Casablanca or Gone With the Wind.
Here’s something to think about, I thought. For much of my life, I created many of what you might be inclined to call “castles in the air.” I’m not alone in this I’m sure. (Well, I hope I’m not.)
That tendency started early in my childhood when “anywhere but there” would have been preferable to my actual home life. It is beyond tempting to live in your head when what surrounds you is unstable and unpredictable.
I remember how savagely my mother fought me in adulthood when I tried to bring up some of the more dreadful childhood issues. She had a mantra. Several actually. “Everyone has heard about YOUR pain, Margot!” “That happens to girls all the time. That’s life.””This is what your father did to me!! She would then proceed to tell me a horrendous story (or several) about my Dad …. And most of all: “We don’t need to talk about “the bad thing.”
The bad thing would be the life-altering, wrist-slashing event Mom had when I was 11. After that, Mom ended up in a mental hospital. My sisters went who knows where. And I ended up with Dad.
It was around that time the wheels of my life pretty much flew off the bus as opposed to simply falling off. At least then, you might have had time to slow down the inevitable crash that was coming. The parents’ multiple businesses had failed. The bank was calling loans. As a result, not only was the family rent asunder, the money dried up.
The accusations flew thick and fast between my parents as to who exactly it was who was responsible for the downfall. They engaged their children as sounding boards and referees.
In early childhood from about 6 to 11 years old, we were awash in activities: piano, horse riding lessons, swimming lessons, Y membership and summer camp, and birthday parties galore. After “the bad thing,” those activities soon became distant memories and were now unattainable.
I was desperate even in early childhood for escape and order. I desperately wanted to attend the Netherwood School for Girls in Rothesay over an hour away from our home. The parents once took us on a drive to a nearby village called Codys where a seven-bedroom mini-mansion was up for sale. I would have moved in that afternoon. My heart sank as we turned around to drive back to Fredericton to head back to home, home.
The “castle in the air” never really materialized. My life has been marked by a series of moves and course-altering events. I have to come to understand that everyone’s life path might be marked by some chaos and drama. However, chaos and drama were my entire life experience.
When a counselor told me I was raised in a “void,” that both shocked and helped me tremendously. I didn’t feel safe or seen or protected or highly valued as a child. My life began to take greater shape in my head dreaming up impossible goals than into creating my actual life. When you have nothing, even anything is something, if only in your head.
Today, I have come to a fitful peace with the “void” I was raised in. I’ve been diligently seeking to replace unrealistic “castles in the air” with more tangible and grounded dreams and wishes. Looking back, my happy life experiences have now been distilled into a montage of sorts. The void was real and so were the happy memories I gathered along the way that sustained me.
I still nurture and appreciate the memory of little things that I found or devised in those troubled environments to bring me hope and joy. It kind of gives me a lift as it was a real accomplishment when I think back on it. Especially now that I can think back on all of it from a much better and happier place.
I have a special affection for the ancient walled city of Carcassone in France though I have never been there. There is an apocryphal legend about Lady Carcas (French: Dame Carcas) and the origin of Carcassonne‘s name. What follows below is borrowed from Wikipedia, complete with a picture of the bust representing the great Dame Carcas herself. After you read her tale, I will tell you how that possibly fictional lady embedded herself in my imagination and my affections. And how she may have possibly saved my life.
The legend
“The legend takes place in the 8th century, during the wars between Christians and Muslims in the southwest of Europe. At the time, Carcassonne was under Saracen rule and Charlemagne‘s army was at the gates to reconquer the city for the Franks. A Saracen princess named Carcas ruled the Knights of the City after the death of her husband.
The siege lasted for five years. Early in the sixth year, food and water were running out. Lady Carcas made an inventory of all remaining reserves. The villagers brought her a pig and a sack of wheat. She then had the idea to feed the wheat to the pig and then throw it from the highest tower of the city walls.
Charlemagne lifted the siege, believing that the city had enough food to the point of wasting pigs fed with wheat. The gesture lowered the morale of Charlemagne’s men who were also suffering from the long siege and a shortage of supplies.
I first made the acquaintance of Lady Carcas as a child. She was featured in a volume of the Childcraft books I practically lived in at the time. Her story was colorfully illustrated.
As I recall the story back then, it involved a cow, not a pig. The cow was let out through the gates of the walled city and not thrown from a tower. The waiting hordes were in flagging spirits themselves. The sight of an actual fatted calf (as it were) robbed the marauding hordes of all lust for battle and they disbanded.
Lady Carcas’ story came back to me as a struggling single parent, navigating a difficult divorce. For reasons the book I am writing will detail, I was intractably estranged and at loggerheads with the maternal side of my family. More to the point, my mother.
So as I surfed the tempestuous waves that beset me in the wake of my failed marriage, a career setback, and a teeny, tiny alcohol addiction, I played the Lady Carcas card.
I was hurting badly in the early years of my babies’ lives, emotionally and financially. But I would never let on for a second how badly to my mother or her side of the family. Sadly, this freezeout eventually included my only two siblings who were firmly planted in Mom’s corner. Me and my sisters had been intermittently close off and on growing up. But the connection after my marriage ended became easily strained and tenuous until it finally snapped.
My survival strategy in those lean and tumultuous years was to act as if I was managing all of my injuries and responsibilities without a single care. I worked. I socialized. I moved about in society as if I hadn’t a trouble in the world.
Those whose eyebrows might raise a little whilst reading about the extremity of adopting such defensive tactics within one’s own family were no doubt raised in nice, normal, supportive families. Those who were not – like I was – will recognize and relate to my experience in a heartbeat.
In a mixture of what sounded like utter frustration and despair, my mother once shrieked at me: “You don’t need anyone!” That only proved my ruse was working. If I had continued to display my pain and vulnerability in front of these flying monkeys, they would have torn me into pieces. More than they already had.
I feel a quiet debt of gratitude to Lady Carcas and her tactics of deception for a good cause. I learned much about protecting my heart and soul in the face of hostility from family rivals and about healing. The goal was to survive my family of origin long enough to emerge and stand in my own truth and certainty. It was like holding my breath underwater for a very, very long time.
When I was finally able to consistently take a full breath, then another, and yet another, it prompted me to utter a silent response of gratitude to a young French noblewoman from many centuries ago who may, or may not even, have existed.
You know the feeling, right? You just want to hide under the covers, call in sick and disappear from society for a while. It’s a pretty normal feeling.
What amazes me is what gets us up and out of bed every day and into the world. Survival is a great motivator, of course. And validation. And money. Essentially keeping yourself and your family alive. Pretty big carrots.
I am having one of those days. I don’t want to write this post in spite of my daily commitment. I sometimes fantasize about what it would mean to disappear altogether. I think that is called death.
At one time, I felt I was so important that I was sure my absence would cause the moon to shift its appointed course. When that didn’t happen, I was frankly gobsmacked. And annoyed by the insult. Stupid god.
It seems we all have a built-in stress thermometer, however well it functions. The shoulders go up. The teeth clench. The heart beats faster. Our breaths are as shallow as fish. (I don’t know that for sure. I just assume fish aren’t particularly deep breathers.) Some people tolerate higher levels of stress than others. I’m not sure it is a good thing but I know my tolerance has always been pretty high.
Today I had cataract surgery on my left eye. My right eye was done last week. I was pretty calm given they were sticking all manner of intrusive instruments into my eye at very close range.
“Look at the light,” I was instructed which seemed to belabor the obvious. With an eye propped open by a plastic expander, and the machine right up against my eyeball, my choices were limited.
The upside of surgery these days is the happy drugs they give you. Talk about disappearing. As a doctor gets up close and personal with the only existing camera you have been issued for this lifetime, it is nice to have soothing drugs to enjoy instead of thinking about the potentially devastating consequences of a slipped scalpel.
So all in all, I was pretty stress-free throughout the procedure. I deployed the arsenal of stress management techniques I’ve learned. Deep breathing. Visualization of a happy place (of anything but what I was going through.) The happy drugs trumped all of those natural techniques to diminish my stress I am ashamed to say. But happily of course.
I have learned how to manage stress pretty well. Just as I’ve learned to manage physical pain. Many women do. Constant prep for the exertions of childbirth I expect.
A recent dentist visit caused his assistant to visually flinch when I refused the anesthetic normally used to numb the jaw. For me, tolerating a second or two of pain from the drill is far better than nursing a sore and numb jaw for several hours afterward. It even hurts where they stuck the needle in once the numbing wears off. Not everyone would agree with my methods, I realize, but it works for me.
I think an exaggerated ability to tolerate pain might be a questionable response to childhood pain. If no one pays attention to your pain and coddles you when you are little, you get good at handling it on your own.
So though I was having an “I don’t wanna” day, I eventually did what I always do. I did it anyway. The emotional discomfort of not meeting my commitments is far more difficult for me to manage than whatever comfort may be derived from sliding under the covers for a few more hours.
Expressive Compulsive 