Barnmaven

Eye of the Hurricane

On reading it, I realize my last post sounded sad.  But really, I wasn't sad when I wrote it.  I was thinking what a positive experience I'd had, reclaiming my inner foster baby.  I had spent years thinking of that little girl as a separate person from me.  She had a different name, a temporary set of parents.  I separated her off and regarded her as a distinct individual who had nothing whatsoever to do with me.  As it turns out, that wasn't really true, and changing my perception of that was a very powerful thing.  There is more work I have to do, integrating and healing so that I can leave the past behind me and get on with the important job of living in the now. 

I'm remarkably calm right now.  I have a million things to do, and now that SG has hit the road, I've got no one to help me do it.  But I know I can do this thing called living my life because I've done it before.  I'm capable.  I'm strong.  And I have lots of support, both near and far, including SG, who is always just at the other end of the phone if I need him. 

Getting everyone out the door this morning was remarkably easy.  I made myself a checklist for every evening and every morning.  Lunches.  Meds.  Dogs, horses, chickens, cats.  Coffee.  Laptop.  All the essentials - and I still had time for makeup (thank you short hair for taking only seconds to be done).  And I was so relaxed I had to keep double checking myself to figure out if I was still me.  Because this is not the me I remember being before.

The me I used to be would have created so much drama around her man leaving her for an extended period of time.  I would have clung and cried and wailed.  His leaving would have been so stressful and miserable for him because I would have been all undone.  It would have been all about ME ME ME ME ME.  And sure, some of its about how I'm feeling.  Sad, missing him.  Lonely sometimes when I want to feel his touch and I know I will need to wait.  But its also about how HE feels and what HE needs.  No guilt, he's not leaving me, he's heading to his job.  He deserves to have a smile and a kiss and a loving sendoff, not a crap bunch of emotional mama drama.  My children (especially) deserve to have a mother who isn't sobbing in a corner because oh God I'm going to have to be alone!  They need a mother who is fully present and engaged. 

I don't think I'm feeling this way simply because its the logical way to be.  I think it has to do with love, faith, letting go of fear and the need to control the things that scare me, trust, and a whole lot of healing.  And its not that fear and hurt aren't there - of course they are.  But we can let go of our fear when we understand that we don't really have any control of the things that we are afraid of anyway. 

Fighting things, trying to make everything go the way we need it to is a terrible waste of our time and our energy.  It depletes our spirit, steals our joy, saps our strength.  Buddha said, "The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly."  If I am worrying about situations I cannot change, how can I live in the moment?   If I am afraid of how certain things are going to make me feel, how can I recognize the small joys of just being where I am right now?

In the hurricane's eye is stillness.  In the center of yourself, there is stillness as well.  Sometimes you have to stop listening to the rest of everything else, get out of the wind of your angst and your troubles, to find it.

It takes work, but it is so worth it.  My life isn't perfect or easy, but it doesn't have to be as hard as I used to make it.

My own worst enemy

Last summer I found this great book, How to Be an Adult in Relationships - Five Keys to Mindful Loving.  Ironically, I bought it for myself well after my ex and I split.  I found it on a shelf at the Maryhill Winery tasting room/retail shop.  (I'm not sure why they carry self-help books in a winery retail shop - after all, the last thing we really want people coming to a winery doing is thinking about self help.  God forbid they should then move on to the 12 steps and stop buying our product.  Annnnnnd I digress.  Shocked, aren't you?)

So I bought this great book and I started reading it.  The author, David Richo writes about these amazing and enlightening things people really need to receive from those they love, which are also the same thing a mature person is able to give in a relationship.  Of course, I was thinking of what I was learning in terms of "I'll use this to improve my friendships and family relationships" and, "Someday, if I ever relish the thought of being with someone again, this will be useful."  But now the rubber has met the road, and I'm reminded in some rather humbling ways that my work is FAR from over.

After my ex and I parted ways, I did a lot of work in therapy, I did a lot of twelve step stuff.  And I know I made a lot of progress.  But I am arrogant in that I assume just because I'm doing better means I won't have the same problems again in the future.

There are days when I do well. Days when I do exceptionally well.  Days when I know that the relationship I am in isn't the end-all, be-all of my existence.  I had a life before S, I will have a life after S (in the sad event that someday down the roads things go south), and even while we are in each other's lives, he and I each have things that are our own, lives that we live independent of each other.  That's how its supposed to be. 

I'm worlds better at the "fixing" part of my codependency issues.  Frankly, I don't see anything about S that needs fixing.  He's pretty awesome just the way he is.  I wouldn't change a thing (unless its the occasional leaving up of the toilet seat - but mostly he's very orderly in that regard).  Where I struggle is in my need to control things or to be constantly reassured in order to push away the fear of being left. 

Most of the time I am OK.  But there are days that come along when I start to feel lost, start to feel needy.  And I forget that it is not someone else's responsibility to make me feel OK.  I forget that being OK is MY job.  Perhaps part of is being selfish, self-absorbed.  Part of it is forgetting who I am, forgetting that another person doesn't "complete" me, another person is...another person.  Someone I like being around, someone who I feel happy just thinking about, someone in whose presence I am filled with a sense of peace and love and safety.  I forget those things in the absence of them, if time or circumstance prevents togetherness...and I succumb to fear. 

Not always, no.  But sometimes. Richo calls it the "F.A.C.E. of Ego" -- Fear, Attachment, Control, Entitlement.  We become afraid, become bound in the shallow pool of entitlement and begin trying to control the other person in order to feel relief from the pain these characteristics embody.  When this happens to me, I begin to feel insecure.  I act as if another person's actions or words can make these feelings dissipate, I become anxious for them to do the things I want them to in order to feel better, and ultimately my words and actions become a wedge between us. 

In a healthy relationship, I'm not possessive of my partner.  I know he is not an extension of me, and I know that the only way to be nurtured and cared for is to provide those things for myself.   I don't need to manipulate or push him into trying to make me feel OK, because I already am OK.

And so I work to relearn, reteach myself those things which I know but somehow continue to forget.

Confidence in ourselves grows when we feel the immense joy of
fulfilling our capacity to love. In addition, we can be comfortable in the real
world that exists beyond our wishes and manipulations. We can be cocreators
of relationships in which love is more and more cheerfully and
generously given and received. We can love the moment, all we have, and
love in the moment with all we are.

-David Richo, How to be an Adult in Relationships

Its all party of my journey, I suppose.  I'm blessed right now, by my work, my relationships, my family, my life.  I'm challenged too, by my children, my circumstances, by my self.  And that's perfectly OK. 

When you simply remain faithful to your own reality, you evoke the
creative forces in yourself that lie just below the permeable surfaces of your
psyche. There you find abundant possibility.

- David Richo, Shadow Dance: Liberating the Power and Creativity of Your Dark Side

 

S:  Thank you for patiently accepting my limitations and supporting me gently and lovingly in the face of them.

More than Mommy

Last Thursday and Friday I was in a meeting room at a hotel that faces the waterfront in Portland, Oregon.  For two days I was sharing ideas and planning goals with our operations team.  Its a group of exceptional people, all very smart, all very good at what they do.  Listening to us collectively I was once again struck by how much I like each and every one of my peers and how well we collaborate. 

For a couple of days I was free as a bird, even though I was working.  S took care of the zoo, the kids were at their dad's for a couple of nights. No one was calling my name, needing to be let outside, demanding a snack or requesting my presence.

 

Even after things in my marriage got really bad, the thought of separation was terrifying to me.  It wasn't being on my own, it wasn't fear of falling into a financial black hole.  What I imagined I would not be able to cope with was spending nights or weekends or even longer without my children.  Merely considering being away from them made it hard to breathe.  So when the end of the marriage inevitably came, as much as it was a relief, fear remained.

The first night my children stayed with their father felt like the longest night of my life.  I couldn't concentrate on anything, sleep eluded me, and when I finally did sleep I had horrid dreams.  I'd already given up the role of being my husband's wife; now I felt like I was abandoning, however briefly, being my children's mother as well.

Throughout those first months, Friday nights were a struggle.  Mondays weren't so bad, I always had work to keep me busy and so much to do with taking care of animals that I didn't feel the emptiness of the house until almost bedtime.  But Fridays into Saturday mornings -- too many hours alone.  I didn't even consider going out or socializing.  For a few months, I immersed myself in the computer, playing games, the same place I'd escaped from an unhappy marriage became the place I hid from the bitter pain of missing my children.

Winter was long and it was dark.  It wasn't until spring came that I began the slow crawl out of that hole.  My friend had our trainer out for a clinic at her place, which got me out of my house and back on a horse.  That clinic led to weekly trail rides, led to me finding my dream horse, led to friendship and laughter and fun.  Fridays and Saturdays began to take on a new shape, no longer looming on the horizon as time to be endured but as something to anticipate.  I was not only finding a role for myself outside of mother, I was building a friendship, meeting other people who shared my interests, being outdoors.  Outside of my job I was meeting other people whose first impression of me wasn't that I was somebody's mom or somebody's wife.  I was ME. 

I started fostering for the rescue, and staked claim on another role for myself.  I began to understand that although being my children's mother is the most important job I have, even though its a job I will hold until I die, it also won't be as encompassing forever as it is now.  Someday my children will grow up and start lives of their own.  Between now and then, they will become more independent, finding their own roles in life, and they will need less of me.  As that gap widens, if all I have been is "Mom," who will I then be when they don't need me anymore? 

Women with children often get pigeonholed as being little else than mothers.  Women without children often get pigeonholed as women who are "missing" something in their lives.  Our reality can be - truly is - so much richer than that. 

I believe it is important for anyone, but especially for women with young children or careers to carve out space in their lives to do the things that interest them.  Music, photography, crafting, cooking, gardening, creating artwork, writing, carpentry, car repair, remodeling, horseback riding, karate -- whatever those things are that make you feel truly alive when you do them.  Find your groove and go do that as much as you possibly can. You will not always be your job, you will not always be herding children from school to dance to basketball games.  There will come a day when you will be at loose ends more than not, and if you don't have something to fill that void, I guarantee you will feel a greater sense of loss than the person who has already discovered their passion outside of work or parenting.

I'm no longer bound by fear of losing my role as a parent.  I realize that mothering my kids is something I will do to varying degrees throughout my life, but it is not the only thing I will do.

When I'm free of the responsibility of my life, for a few hours or a few days, I'm no longer stumped for ways to fill that time.  I'm not spending countless hours interacting with other characters in an online game -- I'm spending rich, immensely satisfying hours interacting with my animals and with other people in real life, taking part in activities that bring me tremendous pleasure.  It wasn't until I learned to honor my own needs and find my own niche that I was able to outpace the fear of loss that was holding me hostage.

I am a mother.  It is the most important job I have  - FOR NOW. 

I am also:  horsewoman, animal rescuer, singer, writer, musician, friend, bibliophile, manager, someone's love...and for a few more weeks, puppy chew toy.

I shouldn't post today

But I'm gonna anyway. 

Never fight when you're mad.

Never drink when you're mad.

Never, EVER blog when you're mad.

Instead?  Wait a few hours until the hot fire of mad dulls down to icy rage, reconsider doing all of the above, sleep on it and mull it over a bit longer until the icy rage melts down to a sad understanding that you've been played, the same way you've been played for years  by someone with control issues, and resolve that the last vestiges of the codependent crap you've continued to foster must - simply must - go.

If the last year or so has taught me nothing else, it has taught me that I can be my own person.  I don't need permission to make decisions for myself.  I don't need someone's approval or agreement to know when I'm doing the right thing.  Yes, I'm going to make mistakes.  I'm going to make decisions I'll look back on someday and wonder which cues I missed, how I failed to see the outcome.  That's my right as a human being, a right we all share.  But I have children.  Smalls who depend on me, and, the ripples I make when that decision hits the water overlap lives other than mine, so I'd better be careful and I'd better be right.  And I'd better not make decisions in anger.

I know, this is cryptic.  I'm sorry.  One of the purposes of this blog is to provide a way for me to understand my own thoughts and feelings. Its serving that purpose right now, as the words flow from my brain to my fingers to the screen.  I compose, I consider, I erase, rewrite, reword, rethink.  I begin to understand.  And after that's all said and done, people toss their comments in the mix, and those often give me yet more perspective. 

Still, I have to be careful what I say here, in this public space.  My words affect others, but most importantly my words have the ability to affect the two most important people in my life.  Being angry with their father isn't a good enough reason to hurt my kids by writing unkind things about him here.  But know that were I not restrained by those self-imposed rules, this post?  Particularly if I'd written it yesterday?  Searing epistle of rage. 

I guess its human nature to think that we are different from everyone else.  We are special.  We often don't recognize when we excuse ourselves from the expectations we carefully thread around others.  We all do it.  I do it.  And maybe we don't like it when people point it out to us.  Who knows? 

Another thing that is natural for people is the need to be heard, to be listened to.  To have our feelings acknowledged.  One of the biggest challenges of my life as a young girl was living with a father who was equally as emotional - maybe even more so - than I am.  And my dad, when he would get upset at something, he'd go silent.  I suspect now that he was burning, icy hot, and couldn't bring himself to talk about what was making him mad or didn't want to talk about it for fear of saying something he'd regret, but quiet he would go.  And when he was mad at me, that quiet was unnerving.  Nothing I did or said could make him talk to me about it until he was ready.  That was his way of handling it - and his right to do so - but the residue of that within me is a sense of utter desperation when I need someone to hear and acknowledge me and they refuse.  Its usually followed by blinding rage at being ignored. 

Some people know that about me.  And I think when they don't like something I've done, they use it against me.  Or maybe I'm giving too much credit - maybe not acknowledging me is simply the way they handle conflict and its a simple accident of fate that I somehow managed to marry the one person who could evoke that helpless rage of my childhood.  However, whatever.  Somehow in my recovery the one lesson I still need to improve on is the ability to sense when I'm too emotional about something, when I need to let go of having expectations of others, when I need to release myself from the expectations others put on me,  when I need to remember that nobody is responsible for how I feel and what I do but ME. 

I'm deep in that right now, and its uncomfortable as hell. 

I have some decisions to make.  I can't make them lightly.  They affect my kids too, and therefore every move I make must center around how to make a bad situation as good as it can possibly be FOR THEM. 

And while I strive to protect them as much as I can, I still have to honor myself.  I have to stand up for myself.

And so I type and read and erase and reword and backspace, go back and reread, and I ponder.

Its hard to understand how we go from the harmony and ease of the holidays to the current state, but here we are.  One thing changed, I met someone, and I suspect that's the biggest factor affecting the events of the last few days.  Never underestimate how hard it is for your ex to see you move on, even if they already started dating months ago. 

What you think of me is none of my business

Really, its not.  So I continue to remind myself, with ever-increasing frequency.

The post about the incident with my nutsack-punching daughter garnered a lot of comments when BlogHer picked it up, so I was curious to see the reaction from a larger pool of perfect strangers when TodayMom's picked it up.  As I expected, it caused a stir. 

The biggest part of recovering from codependency for me has been to learn to see myself through my own eyes and not the eyes of others.  Other people are not mirrors of my self - not my partner, my parents, my children.  Other people are separate and discrete and while its affirming to have people agree with me, like me, its not realistic to expect that to be the case.  My sense of self-worth can't be dictated by public opinion, and the moment that it is I might as well slink back into the morass of codependent self-loathing that my life used to be.

So I'm not over there commenting back to the commenters on my post.   I did over at BlogHer where the forum was smaller, more select and more comfortable.  It is easy to have a discussion with people when even where the opinions differ, they are offered with a coating of respect.  We can talk about anything in the world as long as we remember, you and I, that we don't have to agree with one another.  What we need to keep in mind is that as human beings we have differences and similarities - we probably have many things in common - and that our opinions are shaped by our experiences.  Just because you have a different experience than I do doesn't mean we should not treat one another with dignity.

Ultimately, I'm not going to change anyone's mind with the things I blog about.  This isn't a political blog or an activist blog.  Its just me working on making the words come out and seeking to make sense of my life and my world.  Its an outlet for my particular creative drive.  Some people paint, some people make music, some people sew and knit and craft.  Some of us write.  Not for profit, not for a living, but simply to engage in the act of putting together words and sentences to set free a thought that is begging to be expressed.  I have no expectation that the thoughts I share here are going to be universally agreed upon, nor that they will, in contrast, be praised.  But I realize, more so today than ever, that when by placing my words and my thoughts in the public domain, I am inviting people to respond.  To affirm or to negate.

Over there, on the TodayMom's blog, I'm not responding to comments.  I'm letting the dialogue happen without me.  There are some thoughtfully written opinions over there, both for and against, and there are a large number of trolls.    About halfway through the day yesterday I discarded my curiosity about what was being said and I stopped reading.   Really, its all happening in a delightful cacophony of words and opinions that don't need my presence to pollute the water.  Its a big bucket full of what makes the internet such a fascinating place to inhabit. And considering that in the not long ago past I would likely be wringing my hands and letting the negative voices be the loudest voices I hear - and letting those voices dictate my state of mind and sense of self-worth - I realize how far I have come and how grateful I am for my recovery.  I'm able to just exist side by side with this controversy.  I realize that more than ever, I KNOW who I am.  I don't need other people to be mirrors of myself.  With the knowing that I am both perfect and imperfect, that I exist as a child of God, loved regardless of anything I or others might do or think, I can choose my level of engagement with the controversy based on what I feel and need, not on others expectations.  (Ouch, that was a long sentence).

The journey to release my fear so that I could stop trying to control others in order to cope with it has been, second to being a mother, the most amazing journey of my life. 

 

.....

 

Note:  While I don't have any editorial control over at BlogHer or at TodayMoms, I DO have editorial control here.  I have never moderated comments on this blog and I hope that will never be the case.  I delete comments from spammers, but to this point have never deleted a legitimate comment from a reader, positive or negative. I welcome dissenting opinion, provided it is delivered with respect. Trolls will not be ignored, they will be summarily dismissed and, if overly persistent, blocked, not because anything they say might hurt my feelings but because attack without the expectation of reasonable dialogue isn't useful.

 

Honor thyself

It is fifteen degrees out this morning.  As I type this, three horses lean up against the pasture fence, blowing steam from their nostrils, wondering why I haven't shown up with armfuls of hay yet.  Hang on boys, I'll get to you in a minute.  I have something to say first.

There are lots of things I don't write about in detail on this blog.  They're off limits.  And I really don't like it when people are coy and they tell you they're writing about something they can't really talk about.  And now I'm a hypocrite because that's sort of what I'm going to do right now.

You see, I've changed.  I'm not the person I was ten years ago.  I'm not the person I was five years ago.  I changed, and yesterday I proved it to myself.

One of the biggest problems with being codependent is an frightening tenacity when it comes to hanging on to something even when its totally not okay, and sometimes even when its literally destroying you.  I have hung on to people and situations in my life so hard that by the time they finally exploded, there were pieces of shrapnel and body parts found hundreds of miles away.  And of course, in that kind of aftermath, I'd be simply unable to function for weeks and months.

I am so proud of myself today, and so grateful for my recovery.  I know I still have a very long way to go, but when I am able to look at a situation in my life and say "this isn't the right situation for me" and simply step out of it, without anger and without blame, I can honestly say that I've made progress. And yesterday, I did just that.  I was sad, and it hurt, but for once the fear of dealing with my feelings didn't stop me from making the right decision for me.  For me and me alone.

Today, while we celebrate the things we are thankful for, this is going to be pretty damned near the top of my list. The top slots are reserved for the usual sappy things, my children, my family, all those things in life that I am so fortunate to have and should never take for granted.  Somewhere floating around in that list,though, is a box next to the phrase "One step farther away from bat-shit crazy."  And it is checked.