Report Card

This pitching and packing up party is just about over. I promised I would check in on the results of my big purge and moving exercise.

And I am doing this update on a Monday, instead of the Saturday when I thought I would. The truth is, I wasn’t far enough along.

This has turned into a two-phase project. Part now and the rest next Spring or Summer or sometime in the as-yet-undefined future.

Two shipping containers were emptied during this process as was a storage barn in my backyard. Boxes and boxes and boxes of paper are tucked away in a tidy storage unit. For future reference. And review. How often have I said that over the years?

Clearing out the back shed meant effects only made it as far as the back deck. I learned my stuff was sharing house with a dazzling assortment of critters. Raccoons mostly I determined upon checking the stool samples they left behind.

Sometimes I think I am just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

But maybe not. The 23 yard dumpster sitting in my driveway is full to the brim and will be hauled away tomorrow to make way for a smaller dumpster. For those things I have yet to toss.

There were some sad discoveries. Beautiful Italian leather shoes ruined by dampness. I would never have worn them again anyway. Random papers and receipts congealed and stuck together. At least it was an easy decision to throw those out.

Tomorrow the “deep” cleaners arrive. I can hardly wait. These are cleaners of the “I do windows and baseboards” variety. They are a dying breed and I’m lucky to have found them.

With all this detritus leaving my life, I am both relieved and a little scared of what will replace it. Naturally we all hope there will only be good things ahead which is unrealistic and unwarranted optimism.

But among the lessons I am taking forward from this hideous sorting, tossing and packing up exercise is that I will not have to face at least half of this ever again.

It was too much to hope that I could clear out every corner of my boxed up life in one go. But I got this far and I made real progress.

Maybe real progress is enough.

Fleet Footed Fame

I often wonder how a publicist would portray me if I ever became even a little bit famous.

They would dredge through my past accomplishments and elevate them as bona fides to justify my by then elevated station – me being famous and all.

I am curious about the fiction of it. I have done some pretty cool things in my life. I have a curriculum vitae of degrees and scholarships that I earned back in the day. But I have also done many bone stupid and horrible things which I pray never come to light. They diminish me and the person I feel I am and wish to keep striving toward.

I look at my life after it evolved from an ill-considered and ill-fated marriage. Interwoven with alcoholism and riddled with fear and anxiety, so many of my choices and actions in my life after that union evaporated was simply show. Most of the world simply doesn’t care.

Like an empty Waterford crystal vase, as long as I looked professional and presentable on the outside, the world need never know I was emotional hamburger inside.

There are many chapters in each of our lives. They often have dramatically different qualities to them. Those chapters are shaped by your particular pursuits of the time, the people you hang with and where you live. Each of these influences shapes your character. Each character handles life’s up and downs according to who they are and what they learned along the way.

Today is novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald’s birthday. Famous, of course, for The Great Gatsby, Tender is the Night, The Last Tycoon and others. He didn’t live long. Dead at 44 from a heart attack exacerbated by the ravages of alcoholism, he became another of history’s legacy of troubled artists who died young.

So I am moved to ask what keeps us upright and moving forward when we are in agony inside? When life has let us down badly and we are a million miles from any of our goals. Depends on who you are and how those influences have shaped you.

It can be argued that “creative” types are more susceptible to life’s insults and can more easily be undone by them. They feel more and more deeply, it might be argued, so they have more difficulty keeping pain at bay.

Oddly, I harbor an unreasonable anger at Philip Seymour Hoffman for the heroin addiction that took him out. He seemed smart enough to “know better.” Yes, I know that is a ridiculous statement in the face of fighting an intransigent addiction. But I feel robbed that Hoffman checked out so early. He was brilliant and had so much more to offer. I needed him.

Then there is the infamous “27Club” which started with Jim Morrison’s death at the age of 27. Several prominent 27 year old rock stars died between 1969-71, solidifying the myth. Morrison was soon joined by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Brian Jones. Later, music legends Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse followed.

It is hard to pin down what this death predilection is. The pressures and expectations of fame foisted upon vulnerable and sensitive artistic personalities may be a partial explanation. Life is difficult enough. The emotional self-regulation that may have saved them from suicidally driven forces might be the very element that allows superstars to perform at the level they do.

Fitzgerald wasn’t alone in the realm of doomed literary luminaries. Ernest Hemingway took his own life at 61. Sylvia Plath stuck her head in a gas oven to check out. Virginia Woolf put rocks in her pocket to weigh her down as she elected death by drowning. For all of their creative output and fame, it didn’t mitigate whatever internal pain and emptiness they were dealing with.

For me managing emotional pain and mitigating emptiness has been a key marker of how well I am managing life. I keep pain at bay these days largely by not engaging in painful activities. Or actions that will invite negative consequences at any rate. Seems simple enough. But it wasn’t always that straightforward and some days, it still isn’t. It has been a tough learning and a discipline and a decision of the “don’t go there” variety.

In about two weeks, I will celebrate my 24th anniversary of sobriety. In its place, I engage in all of the “healthy” coping mechanisms that life offers: yoga, meditation, exercise, reading, writing, time in nature, “talk therapy” and if I’m completely honest, “retail therapy.” Except for the last one which causes its own distress, these modalities are pretty effective most of the time.

So I renew my commitment to writing for me, myself and I alone. I like putting my thoughts and feelings and opinions out there for no one but myself. If I attract and find fellow travelers to walk on this path with me for a while, that’s a bonus.

But I abhor the notion of fame for fame’s sake. I know marketing is essential in today’s brand-soaked social environment, but hey. There are thousands and thousands, maybe millions out there, who are happily seeking out and eating up the fame bandwidth. I hope they all know how fleeting and fickle fame will be to them when it matters. If they don’t know now, one day they will.

Fame doesn’t need me, nor I it. I plan (with God’s complicity) to live to a ripe and healthy and sober old age. I have made headlines and bylines in my short turn on this planet. That’s been plenty. It is important to know when is enough.

Holding the Line

Soldiers likely understand this concept inherently better than many civilians do, I figure. When it is your job to work with your mates to hold the one spot that keeps the enemy at bay, they will (and many have) lay down their lives to “hold” it.

To push back hostile forces. To protect their homeland. To keep their loved ones and themselves out of harm’s way.

Single parents often know this dynamic intimately. They keep the proverbial wolf from the door every day. They protect their children while caring and nurturing them. All under the sometimes withering gaze of society who doesn’t get that keeping your family safe meant getting out.

Parents, generally, are like the plate spinners at the circus. Job, daycare, car, house, health all up in the air and kept up there by the skillful ministrations of the acrobats below. It ain’t work for sissies.

As a traumatized child, frequently abused in various ways, holding the line became a revelation in adulthood at various points in my healing. “I have the right to say no? Really?” “Other people protest or refuse when they are asked to do this?” “I am not a bad person for standing up for myself?”

These were real questions that I frequently asked. When I recently made a return visit to property I had entrusted to someone else, I felt the old familiar stirrings of: “Am I okay with this?” “If not, why not?” “Do I have the right to express my distress and concern?”

The answer in my rational mind is yes. Someone entrusted to take care of something for you who lets you down does not deserve praise and accolades. They deserve a strong talking to.

“What were you thinking?” (I learned she was thinking only of herself and her own needs.) “Why did you make those choices?” (Because I needed the space/comfort/independence to do things my own way.) “Do you have any idea how much you have cost me in time, wasted effort, upheaval and money?” (No idea whatsoever. She’s never owned a house or been there so it is a blank slate to her. And it shows.)

I quickly started making decisions to shut down her purview and influence in my private sphere. I started hearing every possible excuse from her for why what was done was done the way it was – all gauzy and whiny and self-interested.

I am all about celebrating the independence of the individual. But here is what I’ve learned that means. Being an adult and acting accordingly means recognition that you are part of a larger whole – a relationship, a family, a religious tradition, a community, a country and so on.

All of those social constructs have their own inherent contracts. You accept and act in mutually beneficial and cooperative ways if you wish to keep moving forward.

Break the rules and pay the price. Cheat and you threaten a marriage. Treat parents with neglect and disdain and you may find yourself disinherited. Break society’s biggest rule by murdering someone, the price you pay may be your own life.

To move forward individually, we need to cooperate with and acknowledge the wider forces and context in which we operate.

“No man is an island,” said John Donne. Not in a functioning society at any rate. I observe huge slippage in the rules of the social contract these days. Teenagers are alienated and confused.

The YM/YWCA, and similar institutions, has gone the way of the Dodo bird as a meeting place for young people to physically develop and learn healthy ways of working and competing with each other.

Individuals such as celebrities are elevated to such dizzying heights that the ground they sprung from – just like all the rest of us – is disregarded. Until they hit a brick wall, of course.

But no worries, life’ll learn ya. It always does. If there is one consistent rule in life, it is inevitable ups and downs and reversals of fortune, whether health, wealth or love, that rise up and often define us.

When the chips are down along with your luck, hope to be in the company of good others who will walk the steep and rocky parts of the path with you and not just the open grasslands.

A person requires the company and support of others and society as a whole in order to thrive. The line is from John Donne’s Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, published in 1624. “Look, I know you’re very proud man, but you need to let other people help you if you’re in trouble. No man is an island, Dan. It’s when our communities rally around us in times of tragedy that we truly appreciate that no man is an island, entire of itself.

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/no+man+is+an+island

Good Fences

A daily blog I subscribe to posted this timely reminder about keeping healthy boundaries in relationship to one another. I was so bad at this for such a long time.

As an unformed person with a weak to nonexistent ego – a child say – then boundaries are pretty meaningless. And while we are called to dissolve our own ego in spiritual traditions,
the teachings never say to let go of the space you hold for yourself or the space you allow others.

As we mature and get older, part of “growing up” is recognizing healthy boundaries and learning to respect them – in others and your own.

Maintaining healthy boundaries is about recognizing the point at which our principles, and those of our loved ones, no longer overlap.

As relationships evolve, lives gradually become entwined. We tend to have a great deal in common with the people who attract us, and our regard for them compels us to trust their judgment. While our lives may seem to run together so smoothly that the line dividing them cannot be seen, we remain separate beings. To disregard these barriers is to sacrifice independence. It is our respect for the fact that our lives exist independently of the lives of others that allows us to set emotional and physical boundaries, to explore our interests and capabilities even when people close to us do not understand our partialities, and to agree to disagree. Maintaining healthy barriers is a matter of recognizing the point at which our principles and those of our loved ones and peers no longer overlap.

Human beings must relentlessly fight the temptation to follow the crowd. Naturally, we want to be liked, accepted, and admired, and it often seems that the easiest way to win approval is to ally ourselves with others. When we assume that our standards are the same as those of the people close to us without first examining our own intentions, we do ourselves a disservice. The barriers that exist between us are a reminder that our paths in life will be unique, and we must each accept that “I” and “we” can coexist peacefully. Our reactions, our likes and dislikes, our loves, our goals, and our dreams may or may not align with those of others, but we should neither ask others to embrace what we hold dear nor feel compelled to embrace what they hold dear.

As you learn to define yourself as an emotionally and intellectually distinct individual, you will grow to appreciate your autonomy. However much you enjoy the associations that bind you to others and provide you with a sense of identity, your concept of self will ultimately originate in your own soul. The healthy barriers that tell you where you end and the people around you begin will give you the freedom to pursue your development apart from those whose approval you might otherwise be tempted to seek out. Others will continue to play a role in your existence, but their values will not direct its course, and the relationships you share will remain marvelously balanced and harmonious as a result.

Necessary Losses

Necessary Losses is the title of a 1986 book by Judith Viorst. The title intrigued me but the sub-title even more: The Loves, Illusions, Dependencies, and Impossible Expectations That All of Us Have to Give Up in Order to Grow. 

(Grown up children (like mine) will recognize Viorst’s most famous children’s book, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. We loved that book when they were little people.)

When I first encountered Necessary Losses, I was in a period of deep mourning for my life. I’d lost nearly everything. My family of origin. My marriage. My job. My self-confidence and my center. My “promise of youth.”

What Viorst’s book taught me was that we all go through inevitable losses in life. They are unavoidable. We will lose “our childhood.” We will lose our youth. We will lose our parents. And, eventually, extended family. Then friends.

It is how we grow and change through these losses that we are brought to a deeper perspective, true maturity and fuller wisdom about life.

Oddly, it was this book I was thinking about when I was clearing out a storage locker yesterday. The contents of many boxes reflected my life back to me. An agenda for a planning meeting. Articles I’d published. School reports for one or the other of my children. Random recipes and receipts from everywhere.

It was both freeing and unsettling. Clearly, I had hung on too long to too much stuff. As my energy level dropped in proportion to the amount of stuff I had to go through, I understood why. It is emotional and daunting to revisit the past. My past in any case. It is also exhausting.

I saw my survival through line in the detritus. The contracts I pursued to keep body and soul together. The self-help books that acted as guides and friends when I felt bereft of both. The children’s art that I kept to remind them one day of their younger selves. (I honestly don’t think they care all that much. A mother’s predilection, not a child’s.)

Growing older, I can feel myself bracing for the upcoming wave of losses over the next ten years.

When you are younger, the death of a friend or acquaintance is shocking and seemingly random. We celebrate together as a community and memorializing that death is a noteworthy event. We go to the funeral as a community. We share remembrances of the departed and swap jokes they used to laugh at. It is a bonding experience.

Then I remember my mother once went to the funeral of three friends in one day. We are still in the time of “one-offs” when among the condolences, we dutifully deploy “s/he died too young.”

We see ourselves in the remembrances in the obituary. We remember rocking out to Tom Petty in the basement together. Furtively getting high on illicit weed from questionable sources.

We meet their adult children and marvel at how much they look like the parent – our friend – that they just lost. The culling has begun.

It is for the best that the wisdom we gain about death as we get older does not preoccupy us when we are young. Persistent thoughts of death and dying are deemed pathological in our youth. In youth, those thoughts are often treated as symptoms of a mental condition, like depression or suicidal ideation.

In old age, those thoughts can become constant companions. After attending so many funerals and reading so many obituaries, we aren’t surprised by death anymore. If we are wise, we prepare for it every day we are living.

We all know there are “no guarantees” in life. An infant can expire as well as the octogenarian.

I decided some time ago to walk with death. Aware it is there and standing by. But not yet invited to the party. I have too much living and exploration still ahead of me. I think.

This attitude has been both life-affirming and life-changing. I am philosophical about death compared to what I was in my youth. Then the thought of death or a terminal illness could make me white with terror. Looking back, I think my greatest fear was dying before I had actually lived.

No one knows the internal crater of pain and emptiness as well as the recently bereft. It is not a universal reaction, of course. Some deaths bring more relief than sadness. That is a loss for all involved in that particular passing.

I accept death’s inevitability now. I know it will take precious loved ones from me. That constant, hovering possibility focusses me more on living life now. I make the apple galette when asked. I watch a movie I’m not crazy about because he enjoys it.

This is not about suppressing or ignoring my own needs or sense of self. Because what I need most now is for my dearest to live happy and healthy for as long as possible. As that is my ultimate goal, the details of how I get there aren’t as important.

On with the day and dealing with the next batch of boxes. Sifting through memories. Even expressing gratitude for the hideousness of the task.

At least, I am still here and able to go through them – a privilege denied to many.

Pressure Cooking

Officially day one of sorting and tossing and packing up the big hoard.

What miserable work! Not a blessed good thing to say about it except that pinhole of light I currently see at the end of the tunnel.

Or that may be a floater in my eye. I’m not sure. Google it.

It is astonishing to me how in one life you can be the very soul of dithering and indecisiveness at one time.

At another time, you’d swear I’d eaten a full bowl of Wheaties. Today I was an offloading and “get that sorry stuff out of here” machine.

I am already breathing deeper. How about that?

In another glaring confession, I currently own two shipping containers. You know the kind I mean. Long, big ugly boxy things that transport all of the cool merch from China to here in North America for all of us happy consumers to enjoy.

Ugly, yes but boy are they spacious. And dry. And weathertight.

So these two butt ugly shipping containers have served me lo, these past four or five years at a lonely storage spot in the wilds of rural Ontario.

Tomorrow they will be emptied. And moved. And hopefully, some – no make that lots – of the contents will be diverted to a charity or a landfill. That is where the contents of the dumpster will eventually end up.

This is a “check in, along the way” post. I am aiming for Saturday evening reflections when containers will have been offloaded, house scoured and downsized.

My remaining effects will have been tidily arranged and the new locker moved into. Contents of the current locker (did I mention that one?) will be transferred and all tucked away.

This business of your expectations diminishing as you get older is so true. Wheee. A single, tidy, well-organized storage locker.

This hasn’t precisely been Swedish death cleaning but it has come close. The concept of Swedish death cleaning became popular after a 2017 book was published by Margareta Magnussen. It is meant to take the burden of “going through stuff” off of your loved ones after you die.

In practical terms, this means organizing and decluttering your home to reduce the burden of sifting through dozens of objects and trying to decide what’s significant. With Swedish death cleaning, you’ll have already done that for them by only holding onto items you’ve determined to be essential. 

We’ll see if that’s how far I get this week.

Maybe. Maybe not. I’m working on it.

The World’s Happiest Man

I have followed the journey of Matthieu Ricard for many years. He is a French scientist turned monk. He’s written books. He became famous as a Harvard research study subject who underwent brain scans during meditation, proving their efficacy.

One thing you realize as you get older is that people are people are people. Even celebrities and spiritual leaders. I have always found it silly to approach celebrities with great awe and deference. They expect attention and can usually handle it. But they know they are just flawed human beings like everyone else.

So the nervous demeanor of this young-ish reporter that she reports when she approaches monk Matthieu Ricard is a bit obsequious and flagrantly starstruck. Blows up that “objective journalist” mythology. If I’m honest I did that sometimes, too, as a young journalist. It just shifts the power dynamic in the interview in favor of your subject instead of interacting as equals.

It takes time to realize that in the reporter-celebrity dyad, you are both playing distinct roles. They are acting and your job is to report on that. Matthieu Ricard kindly and consistently was having none of that with the young Guardian reporter. He is genuinely authentic in the simplicity of the spirituality he lives.

And that doesn’t take away from the fine intellect of Matthieu Ricard, as this article demonstrates. Give this Guardian article about him a go to explore that mind a bit.

Give it a go especially if you are in a rat race corporate or academic job. If you ever wondered what jumping off the hamster wheel to pursue a spiritual life might be like, read about Matthieu Ricard’s life, for example. An example he is of what it means to live simply and happily.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/18/the-worlds-happiest-man-matthieu-ricard-on-the-secrets-of-a-serene-successful-satisfying-life

Controlled Crash Landing

Tomorrow morning.

Dumpster coming.

Packers coming.

Boxes and bubble wrap bought.

Packing tape up the wazoo

Bring on the dreaded packing task. I’m ready.

There are watershed moments in our lives. This feels like one for me. God, I sure hope so.

A watershed moment is a turning point, the exact moment that changes the direction of an activity or situation. A watershed moment is a dividing point, from which things will never be the same. It is considered momentous, though a watershed moment is often recognized in hindsight.  https://grammarist.com/idiom/watershed-moment/

I may finally be allowing some air into my tightly controlled little chamber of self. I may be ready to let go of things … LET GO OF THINGS. That feels like a foreign phrase to me.

The game-playing I’ve done for decades reads like a laundry list of the “hoarder’s rationale.”

“I paid a lot of money for that.”

“I might need that one day.”

“I could probably use that one day. It’s really good quality.”

“Somebody else could probably use it.” (I confined my rationale to someone I would hypothetically meet one day who in the course of conversation would casually bring up, “Well, yes. As a matter of fact, I have been looking for a package of old-fashioned Pink Pearl rubber erasers for quite a while now. I am more than happy to take them off your hands. And I’ll take those 20 blank VHS tapes while I’m at it.”

You probably think I am exaggerating.

Then there are the projects and crafts I am going to get to one day, for sure, when I’m retired. The balls of yarn. The remaindered fabric pieces. The empty wooden ever-so-slightly-chipped picture frames. All of these raw materials would someday be creatively birthed into magnificent manifestation. Displayed around my home with inordinate pride and humility. (Give my creations away to someone? What? Are you nuts?)

Worth every second of the 20, 30, even 40 years I held on to them.

We are all guilty of hanging on to “some” stuff. What distinguishes normal and neurotic people from the mentally ill is the amount and degree. And the degree of distress that contemplating letting go of “stuff” – mentally or actually – causes them. I have watched Hoarders. It is debilitating and tragic. It is also a very real mental illness in the psychiatric DSM-IV.

I have heard my paternal grandfather was a first-class packrat. I believe I inherited the gene. In truth, the packrat gene kicked in with a vengeance on December 8, 1986. My mother and then-husband took my infant son away from me at suppertime. I was nursing him. My son was not returned to me until the following morning. I was in indescribable physical and emotional pain.

I believe it was at that instant that all forms of rational stress management left me. With their action, they wrested away from me any thin shard of security I had left. I lost my mother that day (at least the mother I thought she was who would love me “no matter what.”) My marriage – already rocky – shattered irreconcilably on the spot.

From that moment on, my whole being was devoted to shoring up myself and my little family. My infant son was followed by a daughter who came to be in the turmoil of my emotional confusion and distress. The details now escape me. She was a straight up gift from God.

I irrationally held on to every little thing no matter its real or perceived value. For one thing, I was dreadfully afraid that in my confusion and distress, I would let go of something I would later regret letting go of.

Tomorrow I begin to tackle the hoard. I start packing and tossing. A dumpster will be delivered to the front door. I hope I can fill it. I hope to give tons away to charity. I hope to recycle or shred a bunch of papers. I’ve already accumulated a bag or two of shredding confetti. I hope to get rid of much more.

The problem in my life has never been a matter of external “lack.” I have been well paid for my services over the years. I have squirreled away an adequate cash stash for retirement (who would be better at squirreling stuff away than me, I ask you?) As a single parent and woman for much of my adult life, I have become pretty savvy with money. Valuable lessons.

The constant “lack” I have always felt has been internal. A general lack of positive experiences that might have come from a more or less normal upbringing. Nothing over the top would have been fine.

Just the occasional “attagirl” and “keep up the good work” from caregivers to whom you matter and who see you. My parents did not see me. They couldn’t. They had too much blocking the way inside of them.

So buh-bye this week to that which has been holding me down and back for longer than I care to imagine or admit. They say that offloading “stuff” leads to a release of positive energy and a lighter feeling inside. I truly hope so. I’ll let you know next week how it went.

This “stuff” and what it signifies to me and my life has been an albatross around my neck for far too long.

Bye-bye birdie!

Sick Stuff

When I was around 5 or 6 years old, I lived in the Sears catalog. I pored through it regularly and marveled at all the stuff on offer.

I remember landing on a pretty little red dress. I still recall it vividly. It was a sheer red fabric dotted with tiny and perfectly symmetrical polka dots. It had a standup collar and short sleeves. There was a long, ribbon-like belt that tied in the back.

I lusted after that dress. Which at six years old was about all I could do. You “normal” people out there might read that and say: “Why didn’t you show it to your parents and ask them to buy it for you?” You would only ask that question if you had a “normal” upbringing. Which I did not.

I now understand the function that clunky Sears catalog played. It was an escape hatch. It was a safe place to hide from the violence and unpredictability between my parents. It helped me imagine a better life than what I was living. One where I had pretty little dresses to wear that would be cleaned, pressed, hung up in my closet and always there. Waiting for me.

The reality I lived in was that there was shit in my ballet costume. I will explain. The parents introduced my sister and I to the normal rites of passage for little girls back in the day. Ballet was one of the biggies. After a year of playing around with ballet moves in a gym at the Y, we would apply all the moves we learned at our annual end of the year recital. Boy did we get excited> excited

In preparation, Mom would take us to a local seamstress to have ballet costumes made. We were measured up and down and across and around. The seamstress would nod sagely and promise my mother a fixed pickup date. I saw the fabrics that would be used to make my ballet costume.

It was to be created out of a stretchy satin fabric and constructed like a bathing suit in a teal-like shade. Green-y-blue (or blue-y green) with alternating layers of green and blue tulle acting as the attached skirt, or tutu.

The straps were a dark green satin ribbon. At the hip, two green leaf shaped appliques were meant to accentuate that a leaf was what I was supposed to be. I nearly fainted it was so beautiful.

Being in a different dance number, my sister had a pretty little white number. It was embellished in blue sequins in two straight lines down either side of her front. White satin straps on her costume. She was a snowflake. That hasn’t changed.

Mom took great pride in spraying our little black ballet slippers silver. I wasn’t ever sure why she did that. Our black slippers seemed fine and the silver an unnecessarily gauche touch. I doubt I was so analytical back then but merely saw the silver slippers as “odd.”

As time went on and the marriage and my parents’ mental health deteriorated, our home environment similarly declined. In around this time period, a new baby sister entered the picture.

She was cute and entertaining. Couldn’t speak right to save her life. As she was learning to speak, my middle sister and I would coach her on the proper pronunciation of words. To no avail. The words would come out garbled. We thought there might be something wrong with her.

One day I started looking for my beautiful ballet dresses to dress up the baby sister. Clothes were not usually hung up or put away in our house. So I headed to the closet, opened the door and started digging through the clothes on the floor. Then I spied it. The strap or tutu or some part of it caught my eye and I pulled it out.

And my nose wrinkled. My beautiful blue-green teal ballet costume reeked. When I looked in the crotch, I saw why. Dried shit. I nearly cried.

I can’t remember now exactly how I responded. Heartsick. Confused. Aghast. How could this happen to something so beautiful? Why was my costume ruined and not someone else’s? Why weren’t my clothes put away? I had no answers.

Turns out that potty training was another victim of my parents’ neglect and addictions. The routine parents put children through to teach them how and when to use a toilet was overlooked for my sister. For quite a long time. It would appear the use of diapers was missing, too. I assume she is potty trained by now. Except her mouth retained the same problem. I only know that, at the time and in memory, I was devastated.

I know how that experience and many others manifested in me as an adult. I am a bit paranoid and hysterical about my “stuff.” I think my relationship to stuff has morphed into an addiction. In an ineffective attempt to control what I have and how much I have and keep it safe, I have gone all together too far the other way.

Amazon replaced the Sears catalog. The wound is so deep I often can’t just buy one quality item, but must buy two or three “just in case.” I am determined that no one will destroy or take my property away from me again, by God! And if they do, I have a replacement. Right here! Somewhere!

That’s turned out to be some pretty dysfunctional and irrational thinking. It hasn’t served me well. Too much stuff. They are only distractions and obstacles to what I rally want. And worse, when I am stressed, my instinct is to shop. Buy something pretty. Make the bad thing go away. Show that I am not as broke as I fear. Spend money! That’ll fix it. Sheesh.

I am on the brink of offloading much of what I accumulated to make me feel safe. Those are the keys words here. Feeling safe. That is a state of mind. It has been hard won for me.

For someone with a trauma history like mine, it was a distorted coping mechanism I am trying to stare down. I don’t feel alone with it. It is a chronic condition for many and the marketing gurus tap into and exploit that vulnerabilty. And are they ever good at that.

I must get good at ignoring them. I also have some work to do to remind myself that “stuff” is not security. Even if you have a million dollars in the bank, if the core wounds aren’t healed, the money won’t matter. I am slowly starting to get that.

But it’s tough. My trauma training started early in life. When it is all you have known in your formative years, it is hard to change tracks. But I must. As I have changed and abandoned other dysfunctional and addictive coping mechanisms – booze, cigarettes, sex, collections.

This road to “perfection” is very long and tiresome. Maybe death is the big graduation party. Who knows? I only know that I have to recommit regularly to deliberately follow a path of peace, harmony and healing.

As my Newfoundland friends are wont to say, life’s a hard pull.

Playing for Change

I watched a music video tonight. It suddenly opened my eyes to something I’d never quite understood before. (Ironically, the song was called “Doctor My Eyes.”) I instantly understood why music (and art) generally is so threatening to power.

Playing for Change (https://www.playingforchange.com/home2) is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music. Though separated by geography, countries and culture, music is a common language that can be shared by everyone.

Last night, a new Playing for Change video popped up. I watched in amazement as American singer Jackson Browne sat in his California studio accompanied by about fifteen accomplished musicians from around the world.

As Browne sat at his piano and sang his 1972 hit song, Doctor My Eyes, he was joined by video links with singers and musicians from around the world playing on sitars, an African grass piano, rain sticks, electric guitars and their own voices. The music was amazing as is the PFC message. “No matter where we come from, music helps us overcome our differences.”

The insight I had is that power is maintained in this world through deliberate separation and compartmentalization. Op. cit. apartheid. It’s easy to understand why that appeals to power. Smaller groups are easier to control.

Staying small and disconnected from each other diminishes the ability for members of different groups to get to know and understand one other. “Fear of the other” kicks in and defines many inter-group relationships.

Simple miscommunication and misunderstanding underpin many interpersonal and global conflicts. Even social conflicts: think racism and anti-Semitism. The more disconnected and separate groups remain, the more isolated and vulnerable they are.

I think back to how naive I was working in a government bureaucracy.

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, trying to change the system from within … Leonard Cohen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_We_Take_Manhattan

I was appalled by the redundancy and waste in so many different branches and divisions. They were often devoted to many of the same tasks without communicating between themselves. This frequently caused problems when one group’s findings or directives or priorities conflicted with another. Yet it went on all the time.

How much more sensible and efficient it would be, I reasoned, if these groups worked together toward a common goal. And that was when I learned about “silos.”

These disparate bureaucratic groups between departments or in departments were called “silos.” Each “silo” is headed up by someone like a director or manager. The hierarchy is fixed. How much time and energy did I waste creating organizational charts!

Silos exist in organizations like a government bureaucracy and they will always be there for a simple reason. There are those who like to be in control. There are others who like to be controlled. They are two distinct personality types.

The two are attracted to each other like moths to a flame. Their respective positions are distinct and well-defined. It gives both of them a sense of certainty and security. The thinking seems to go: “I am the boss and you are my underling. As we both agree on that, we will both get our needs met and contribute to our mutual well-being and security.” As long as we both obey the rules….

But life isn’t like a carefully constructed organizational chart. There is no absolute fixed hierarchy in nature, for example, in which roles remain rigid and inflexible. Roles fluctuate with age and death and the local geography and weather conditions and supply and demand.

Life is actually messy and surprising and random. Usually only as we get older do we come to understand and accept that. There is never going to be an immutable, safe haven. At best, we have all agreed to a tacit and self-serving civility to maintain our stability and security as we know and expect.

From years of travel, I became familiar and comfortable within many different cultures. The rukle was pretty simple: “Treat others as you would want to be treated.” That worked around the world for the most part.

For many years, I eagerly sought out foreign culture and experiences. I have met people for whom this is the very definition of a nightmare.

People regularly travel to foreign countries, but usually in ways that support and mirror the standards and expectations of their own culture. Bus tours. Cruises. Biking adventures. All with people “just like them” and amenities “just like home.” Super structured. Super safe. And sorry, but super boring.

I have happily travelled the rough and ready way. Slept on a dirt floor in a Nepali hut. Camped on the open tundra in the high Arctic. And, my favorite, in a life preserver box on a ferry crossing across the Atlantic. In smelly canvas tents on a horse trek across the Andes. Once had to sleep in those smelly tents in the middle of a snowstorm.

Each of those experiences changed me in ways I don’t suppose I’ve even yet fully realized. I only know I remain open and curious.

Playing for Change seeks to expose viewers to different cultures in less immersive ways than actually being where the musicians are. But this is not a Carnegie Hall concert experience.

Sitar players sit and play on rattan chairs on the edge of a jungle. Black Jamaicans play guitars on the side of a street with broken pavement. In Argentina, an accordionist plays to the rapt attention of two little girls sitting on and looking up from two tiny, little chairs.

Unstructured. Messy. Unpredictable. Each and every one different.

All beautiful. Such a gift to be able to share in that experience.

Play on, Playing For Change. You are doing such a good thing.