Tag: love

Yay Me, Yay You

“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” – Henry David Thoreau

Here is what I am learning these days about a theme I have explored before. I write for myself and only myself. If it hits a chord out there in the world, that’s good. Not essential but good. Welcome aboard.

I believe in the sanctity of the individual and exploring inside ourselves to find out who we really are. What we think, believe, care about, fear, love. Not because we are all that on our own, but because we as individuals are all there really is.

What is in your brain is your life. Full stop. Not a bit more complicated than that. Don’t believe me? Remove your brain from your body. See how that goes.

I hate to go all Henry David Thoreau on you, but I am going to. Collectively, we like to step-to and mind our ps and q’s to fit in and enjoy our perception of being “normal.” Being “seen” as normal in whatever society we are in is an important prerequisite for living a “normal” life. In other words, in larger society, to feel like a person “just like everyone else” and in smaller groups fitting in with people “just like us.”

We gauge our social success by the degree to which we have engendered the regard of our fellows. We spend a great deal of time in our youth preparing ourselves to become our version of what we believe a normal person is and should be.

There was such a brouhaha around Thoreau’s seminal book Walden, Or, Life in the Woods when it was published in 1854. He wrote a lot about being self-sufficient and celebrating himself. He was accused of all kinds of unseemly personal characteristics and hypocrisy and humorlessness. Mostly he was regarded by many as selfish for stepping outside the normal bounds of society. Even for a short two years.

For some reason this scared the living bejeezus out of good folk. Many branded him a narcissist and ne’er do well. But I see Thoreau’s attempt to elevate himself as an individual as a call to all of us to respect and nurture our unique individuality. He urges each of us to respect the dictates of our individuality for indeed, without that, we ain’t got much.

It is funny, in retrospect, that Thoreau contributed so many great one-liners and dorm room poster fodder to our culture. March to the beat of your own drummer, for example. Celebrating myself, another. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you’ve imagined.

What I like most in reading about Thoreau is that he didn’t seem to give a fiddler’s fig about what others thought of him or his odd lifestyle choice. He hied himself off to a cabin in the woods where he lived a sparse life for a time devoid of most creature comforts back in the days of mid-1800’s sensibilities. This bothered some people and marked him as distinctly odd.

But I liked that Thoreau subverted the expectations of people around him. He essentially said with his choices and musings: “Let others think what they will. This is what I am doing and how I choose to live my life. Deliberately. There is a price to pay for marching to the beat of a different drummer and I am paying it.” (He didn’t say any of that. I am writing what I think he might have said and thought. How presumptuous is that.)

However, it was Thoreau who said: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.

It is a reminder and an invocation to explore our own inner dreams and pay attention to the directives of our “small, still voice.” It is a tall order. Swishing around in society’s daily routines and taking care of a hundred chores and necessaries every day, that voice is often hard to hear. Dead silent for many people. But it is always there. Small and still though that voice may be.

As fragile human beings who choose to act on the prescriptions inside each of us for each one of us, in the face of overwhelming odds by society to push down and push back our individuality, it is really all we have.

We don’t really need a cabin to figure that out and pay attention. Modern life is full of homilies and advice about getting in touch with that directive through meditation and mindfulness. But it is a wonderful occurrence when you and the voice connect occasionally and for the more attuned, regularly.

For that voice is ours and ours alone. Rare. Unique. Original. Just like we are. I feel it best to constantly listen for that voice and to remind myself that it is always available to us whether we can hear it at the minute or not. I celebrate myself. You celebrate you, too. The voice inside you will get louder.

Love Takes Time

A spiritual author and writer I follow reminded me today that things take time. I sometimes forget that. A counselor once said to me: “It took 25 years for you to get messed up. You can’t expect to undo that mess overnight.” Understatement of the century.

First, we have to recognize what is wrong. With us. With our environment. With how we were raised. That takes time to parse out. What is wrong with us usually manifests in unwelcome or uncomfortable feelings. Too anxious. Too scared. Too jumpy. Too intense. Some form of “too” that somehow doesn’t seem “normal.”

Dozens of jokes are made about “normalcy.” It is laughed at and derided. Unachievable say others. It is a definition that seeks to make us humans seem or be “all the same.” As if that were even possible. We all live life in our own way. We all learn how to love in our own unique way, too.

But when we feel too much inappropriately, it can hold us back from fully feeling the very emotions we want to express. Joy and love and peace. I remember a horrible feeling I had as a little girl. I would pick up a puppy and want to “love it” so much I was afraid I would crush it in my arms.

So I would look at it stupidly trying to mentally convey to it how much joy it brought me. I was paralyzed. That was weird but later I learned not so unusual when feeling big emotions. Remember the wild rush and uncontrollability of emotions around a “certain someone” when you first fell in love.

You stammered a little in trying to talk to them. If, in fact, you could even summon the courage to talk to them. You would blush like fury when they caught your gaze. Your stomach would turn over with butterflies so manic it would take you to the point of discomfort. If this was “love,” it felt like it was more trouble than it was worth.

And if that wasn’t enough distraction, in would wander unhelpful self-talk. “S/he is a dreamboat. I could never speak to her/him. S/he would never give me the time of day. S/he is much too good for me.” Talk about romance buzzkill.

Rockstar Tal Bachman – son of rock band BTO’s Randy Bachman – summed it up pretty well in his 1999 hit: She’s So High. Bachman’s lyrics play out entirely in his head as she idlizes the object of his affections with hyperbolic comparisons to Joan of Arc and Cleopatra and even, the Greek goddess of beauty, Aphrodite. When she wanders over to talk to him, he silently screams: “I freeze immediately.”

Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman – arguably one of the best all-time country and western love songs ever written or performed – has a similar theme. He is convinced the gorgeous woman he sees walking by will have nothing to do with him. It turns out he is wrong.

Most of these love and acceptance and belonging neuroses are afflictions of the young. But not always. I remember a colleague of a certain age uttering breathlessly how much more he loved his wife and childhood sweetheart now than he did when they first met. That buckled me.

So I am reflecting on time as my awareness grows of how long it took me to learn to love in a mature and healthy way. I was given an inadequate deck of cards with which to play the game of love. It took hard lessons to finally make my way to a place where it feeds my soul daily.

Not in a noisy, “take out an ad,” “plaster his name on a billboard” kind of way. It is quieter and deeper. I long to be where he is. I touch him at night just to feel his heat and energy. I am awash in tenderness whenever I look in and see the kindness and wisdom in those deep, blue eyes.

Then behold. I sense he is feeling the same for me. Changing from what was and who you were into something you want to be is not easy. It takes time. They say it is the journey that is most important, not necessarily the destination.

I would alter that only in this regard. When you arrive at the destination of your beloved, you can set off on another journey but together. That is the loveliest place of all to land.

A Healing Path

A young lady named Nicole recently asked me a simple question in an online forum I belong to: “What is a healing path?

That question gave me pause. I hadn’t heard the question put so simply before. So this is what I told her.

“My healing path started in earnest when I hit the proverbial brick wall. Everything I believed about my mother’s “love” for me was shattered when she went to bat for my husband in the wake of our divorce.

I went through what is best described as a “dark night of the soul” as I tried to make sense of her betrayal. I was in a very dark place for many years. I was living in an emotional and spiritual shitestorm.

My personal life was a mess. Recently released from my job contract. A new baby was on the way. Marriage breaking down. Mother’s defection.

I sought out a therapist at that time because I simply had no one else to turn to. I could not make rational sense of the many mistakes I had made and was making. I tried to drink away the pain. That stopped working long before I finally quit drinking for good.

My mother’s explanation for my acting out was that I was – possibly – a ” bad seed.” She skilfully omitted the neglect and abuse I experienced in my childhood in her summation of me. The bad things in our childhood were never discussed. It enraged her on the occasions when I tried to bring it up.

My next steps toward healing were because I desperately needed to protect my son. I had previously sought out counselors from time to time before but with the presence of my son on the planet, I was incentivized. There was nothing easy about making the choice to heal and get healthy. Nothing.

When I first started to confront my past and upbringing, everything got progressively worse before it got better. I clung to the belief that life would eventually change and improve. It took a lot of sheer faith to just keep going.

I was driven by my love for my son and the need to create a better, saner life for him. That was the carrot that kept me going. I recognized in those awful early days of my infant son’s life that if I went under, he would go under, too. It was sometime around then that I took full responsibility for my life.

Today I am comfortably estranged from my family of origin. They were not helpful to me and completely devoted to my mother and her narrative.

I realized the decision to create my own life and work through my pain was up to me and me alone. That totally sucked. But it has finally paid off in a certain peace of mind and internal calm that greets me every morning. I stopped drinking almost 23 years ago after several failed earlier attempts.

I am in no way suggesting that my healing path is or should be everyone’s path. But here are some questions to ask yourself to light a fire under the choice to embark on a healing path.

Am I happy with myself and where I am in my life? If not, why not? What’s in the way or holding me back from being happy? Are there patterns I can identify in myself that keep me unhappy? Am I comfortable in my own skin? This is hardly a comprehensive answer.

This is only an anecdote about one person’s path. You know you are on a healing path when you start acting every day in your own interests. Your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are progressively more in alignment with your core beliefs, wishes, desires, and goals. When this is happening, you know you are moving closer to yourself which is the ultimate goal of healing.

I don’t know if this answer is at all helpful. It is a profoundly personal journey. But good on you for asking the question. Ask others. Keep seeking. Failure is a given only when we stop moving forward.

Being confused about where you are heading on a healing path is not failure. Confusion is a legitimate place and an integral part of transitioning to a healthier way of living.

Good luck to you and I hope you do pick the healing path. Not everyone does. It requires a considerable amount of emotional heavy lifting and for quite a long time.

You may one day discover the healthier you are, the better role model and inspiration you can be for others in the world you live in. You can be a better friend, a better parent, and a better champion of your own good self. In short, a better human being. I hope this was of some use to you, Nicole, and wish you well if you elect to set out on your own healing path. It is so worth it.” 

Sayin’ Ain’t Doin’

My beloved daughter just returned home after visiting for a week. So many feels.

I write this blog primarily to share what I’ve learned about personal healing. And to eventually capture all of that learning in a book, of course. Intellectually, I know a lot. But navigating fraught emotional waters with actual human beings is a whole other ongoing challenge. I still have lots of trauma and triggers inside me. Turns out, so does my daughter.

She is at a different age and stage than me. Duh. It is the way it is supposed to be. She is a smart, ambitious, accomplished, and interesting adult. But she is a much younger adult who has had an entirely different life experience than me. Kindly, she backs me up when I say she has a much better relationship with her mother than I had with mine. Frankly, it wouldn’t have taken much.

I started early on the healing path in my children’s life. The marriage to her father broke down in fairly short order after their arrival. The consequences were devastating and endure. When I moved my two young children (6 and 4 y.o.) from the East Coast of Canada to the West Coast over thirty years ago, I immediately enrolled them in a community program for children of divorce called, Caught in the Middle.

I didn’t like that their conversations with therapists were confidential. I believed that knowing what they were talking about with those strangers would help me better meet their needs as a mother. That hope was quickly shut down. Session disclosure was against the rules and ironically, it helped break down my habitual patterns of triangulation.

At some point in my academic studies, I learned that “triads” were the most stable – if dysfunctional – of social relationships. Three individuals involved in a triad – I learned – are the “perpetrator,” a “victim,” and a “rescuer.” A perpetrator would somehow “hurt” a “victim” who would then run to and disclose that hurt to a “rescuer” who would then comfort and validate the “victim’s” hurt feelings that the perpetrator caused. Then the “rescuer” and “victim” would form an alliance against the “perpetrator.”

So the pattern of issues or hurts went round and round and was rarely resolved. I have learned resolving issues is best handled by working it out with the person you hurt or who hurt you. Triads prevent this by deflecting the energy and the issue to someone not directly involved. So the wheel of hurt keeps going around and around.

The most public (and tragic) example of a triad in my generation was the relationship that Bill Clinton’s young paramour Monica Lewinsky had with her so-called friend, Linda Tripp, about her “boyfriend” troubles. Triads in normal daily life rarely generate such widespread interest or put a Presidency on the line. However, triads that play out on a smaller scale can be just as hurtful and damaging.

[It amused me that a Google search on “triad” revealed a more common usage of the word today for “polyamory” or “throuples” (a three-person romantic relationship). Gotta tip my hat to them who can manage that. It was everything I could do in my romantic career to keep one relationship on the rails. But I digress.]

Love is action. I was desperately confused about that for the longest time. Of course, I was desperately and generally confused about what love was, period. The sexual component was fairly easy to operationalize. But all the other love stuff intimidated and confounded me. Caring for someone by actually “taking care of them” and putting their interests above my own was a stretch for the traumatized child I was, dealing with my own history of inadequate care.

Then my babies came. Words are inadequate to explain how profoundly one’s life changes when a baby comes into the picture. In their earliest days, I was utterly unprepared and overwhelmed by the experience, and beyond. Motherhood has been a step-by-step, learn-as-you-go proposition. My beliefs about love were upended after having children.

It wasn’t made any easier for me by my discovery that I had married an incompatible partner with his own set of unresolved childhood issues. When I was a little girl and into adulthood, my parents frequently said, “I love you.” But their actions did not consistently match those words. I became wary and suspicious about the utterances of love and was careless about using them myself.

During my daughter’s visit – which was largely fabulous and filled with joy and gratitude and fun – we had a couple of glancing blows on triggers we didn’t – okay, I didn’t – even know were still there. With both my daughter and my son, I have tried to mobilize actions to back up words of love. Her visit – and her presence on the planet – reminded me that there is always more work to do in a loving relationship that wants to heal, grow and be truly loving.

My brother-in-law put it best: “Parenting is unrelenting.” No matter how old they or you are. Duh.

Do Your Work

I’m doing it again. Occasionally I stumble across other authors’ posts with a message so simple, resonant, and true, I have to share it.

Meet Gina Caruso Hussar. (https://www.ginahussar.com)

After she published the post below, Gina explained on Facebook that she wrote this in a fit of pique over approaches from men. Apparently, it was controversial. You decide for yourself.

Gina articulates what it is that makes a man attractive. Her message applies to women, too. I will deliberately twist her intention by editing her post ever so lightly to answer the universal question: what should I do to become an attractive and lovable person and find the love I am looking for in life?

This is Gina’s answer.

“Do you want to know what turns me on? What makes me burn for you?

What makes us breathless? What awakens every passionate instinct and unwraps every layer of fiery feminine sensuality?

Go to freaking therapy.

Do your work.

Heal yourself.

Lead yourself.

Be brave enough to get uncomfortable for the sake of wholeness and depth.

Be willing to build your emotional muscle so your arms are strong enough to hold the fire of an awakened woman.

Be open enough to lean into a level of depth you’ve never experienced.

Talk.

Be humble enough to admit that you don’t know everything.

Go deep.

Get real.

Stop hiding behind surface-level sex.

Evolve.

Confront what you need to confront so you can move forward without the shadow of your past.

Stop thinking that vulnerability is a weakness. It takes a GIANT of a wild man to get vulnerable and it’s HOT.

Stop running from magic when it’s exactly what you need.

Stop telling yourself “She’s too much” when the reality is you’re just afraid to be enough.

Lead yourself so you can lead ME.

Believe that you can handle it. Act accordingly.

Be the safe space. The strong ground. The calm for her storm.

Do this and you’ll find your Goddess. Do this and you’ll be taken to a place of wholeness and ecstasy you didn’t know existed and likely wouldn’t have found on your own.

Do this… and you’ll be home.

P.S. Women – do the same. 😉“

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Thank you, Gina.