The Locked Room 2: Everything I Am and Nothing I’m Not

I’m still looking at my locked room, which I wrote about in my last post. I’ve had some interesting conversations about that post.

My emotional intelligence coach (who has now retired) used a phrase years ago when I was working formally with him: “I want everything you are and nothing you are not.”

It touched a deep, lifelong longing in me to be loved, accepted, seen in my entirety, though I know I would never allow myself to be seen in my entirety.

Through the years since, I’ve carried that phrase with me as I love and interact with those around me. Depending on my mood, it’s a ridiculous, impossible-to-achieve sentiment for any human being, cruel in its false hope, akin to rom coms. Or it’s something to aspire to, a reminder to be softer with my rigidities and expectations, quicker to forgive.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago about locked internal rooms, it suddenly struck me in all the years I’ve been thinking about that phrase I never once said it to myself. I’ve been focused on my grief and shame about never being good enough to find that kind of love from another human being, or on my suspicion that none of us can honestly say that to one another. Not day after day in the long term.

Photo by Ryan Moreno on Unsplash

Over the last decade or so I’ve slowly, agonizingly, stopped hoping a prince on a white horse would show up who would love everything I am, or even love part of what I am unconditionally. (But, honestly, I wanted him to love everything!) I’ve turned more and more towards meeting my own needs for intimacy and connection, realizing the pain of disconnect is from within myself, not external. I want unconditional love. It’s not a feeling I have any power to make others feel.

Unconditional love towards myself, however, is a minute-by-minute challenge in which I have all the power.

Now, that’s a thought.

Extending unconditional love to myself is hard. I would a thousand times rather love someone else and dream of Mr. Right, except I know how that ends … and frankly, I’m bored with it. In fact, it occurred to me a couple of days ago I’m really not interested in Mr. Right anymore. Or Mr. Wrong. Or Mr. Anybody, romantically speaking. I’ve been smiling about that realization ever since. It’s oddly freeing. I watch women in my age cohort with their husbands/significant others where I work in a pool rehab center and think, “Better you than me, sister!” And smile some more. An enigmatic lifeguard smile (I hope).

The whole idea of romance doesn’t fascinate me anymore unless it’s strictly fantasy. Repairing and healing my relationship with myself is far more interesting. This refocus may be the greatest gift of menopause. I know some women grieve over it, but for me it’s freedom from what was frequently an overwhelming, stressful, and complicated biological imperative. Whew.

Is it possible for us to love ourselves unconditionally? Is it possible for me to do so?

What a question! A question leading straight back to my locked room.

Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash

I can’t love everything I am and nothing I’m not if I don’t know everything I am. If I don’t want to know. If I refuse to find out.

(Item: in my last Tarot spread for Imbolc I drew the Sea: Plumbing the Depths card.)

Now, like all of us, I have acceptable (to me) qualities and traits and unacceptable ones. I’m a mishmash of genetic inheritance and learned behavior. I’m a hot mess and I’m reasonably competent and effective. Sometimes all at the same time!

And I’m supposed to unconditionally love that?

Well, yes. That’s what unconditional love is, right?

I have a varicose vein popping up. I’m deeply insulted. WTF? I’m supposed to love that? I’m supposed to love the genetic inheritance/sun exposure/years of chronic pain that caused me to be sedentary/and other factors in the tired, bulging, blue-violet vein in my lower leg? What about the foot I’m pretty sure I’m developing a touch of arthritis in? What about my aging neck? What about my age-spotted hands (more sun exposure)?

And that’s just the beginning. I’m supposed to love the roots of my perfectionism, my speeding, my anxiety? Well, not the roots, but the child who was traumatized and developed those mechanisms to survive? (And did survive, let’s not forget.)

Romantically speaking, it’s easy to love white horses, roses, diamonds, champagne, sexy exotic vacations (none of which I find especially romantic, but you know what I mean!). I can love my competence, doggedness, creativity, integrity, ability to support others, and many other fine qualities (if I do say so myself). But the aches and pains, sleepless nights, endless loops of anxiety, tendency toward depression, rigidity, fawning, inept healthy boundaries and self-advocating – these are not lovable. These are a pain in the ass.

I am a frequent pain in my own ass.

Can anyone relate?

As for mistakes (I turned out the ladies’ locker room light while someone was still in there last week when we closed the pool!), shameful thoughts and feelings, dire deeds I wish I could forget, habitual catastrophizing, hurt I’ve inflicted on others, parenting mistakes, and a host of other miserable dead bodies in my locked room, unconditional love means I love those, too. It means I love my fallible, aging, flawed, exceedingly human self. All of it. All of me.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

It makes me want to permanently lose the keys to my locked room.

Then there’s the “nothing I am not” part of the equation. Boundaries again. I’m so tired of working on boundaries. On the other hand, having no boundaries makes life not worth living, so I persevere. “Nothing I am not” includes what I was taught about myself and my role in my family as a child; false and limiting beliefs; my endlessly carping, nitpicking, internal critic; fear; despair; depression; anxiety; etc., etc. We carry so many burdens, and many of them never belonged to us in the first place. We took them upon ourselves, or someone forced them upon us, or we accepted them in order to ‘help’ someone else. Some are simply old coping mechanisms allowing us to survive our hard times but now outdated and useless.

At the end of all this, I wonder if our locked rooms are just another challenge in love. How much of ourselves do we shut away because we can’t love all of what we are, and we’re certain others couldn’t love us if they knew what was behind the door?

In the case of storing experience too horrific to manage, such as deep trauma, grief, or guilt, don’t those feelings need unconditional love most of all? The locked room itself, however we envision it, however we envision its door, is surely deserving of love too. It allows us to continue to function in life in spite of terrible experiences. It gives us respite, a way to pause, a way to give ourselves time to gain distance, wisdom, grow into new skills and learn how to help ourselves if and when we do crack the door open. It allows us to stay safe and sane.

For me, a choice to practice loving everything I am and nothing I’m not means I’ll be opening the door to my locked room and poking around in there. Now I’m curious. Could I at least consider loving what I find?

I’m considering it. Carefully.

Questions:

  • What do you love about yourself?
  • What do you have to do, be, or stop doing to earn your own love?
  • Do you think more about finding someone to love you or practicing self-love?
  • What if finding “true love” is impossible unless we love ourselves fully first?

Leave a comment below!

To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:

 

The Locked Room

A couple of weeks ago a discussion I was involved in touched fleetingly upon the idea of an internal locked room, where we keep our most private thoughts and feelings. I’ve been thinking about the concept ever since, fascinated by the metaphor.

Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash

What’s in my locked room?

I don’t know. I don’t want to know, and I don’t want anyone else to know. That’s why I lock that stuff up!

But what’s in there?

I can’t let it go.

As a storyteller, I immediately recognize this common theme running through oral stories and folklore from all traditions. Something is locked or hidden. It’s forbidden to look. Lovers make a bargain. Authority demands obedience. The consequences of looking are not fully revealed, but it’s forbidden to look!

Someone always looks. Remember Pandora? Consequences ensue.

I’ve never really thought about an internal locked room until now; never considered how big it might be or what’s behind the door. I haven’t realized whatever my room contains is locked away from me as well as everyone else. All the memories I don’t want to remember. The hurts, the fears, the terrible thoughts, my unforgiveable deeds. The things about myself I can’t love.

Is it unhealthy to have a locked room? I assume everyone has one, but maybe not. I’m not uncomfortable about the presence of mine, but I question the wisdom of locking myself out. The road to self-love is long and arduous; can I practice it if I still don’t want to face (and accept or forgive) parts of who I am? That doesn’t feel like self-love.

Is a locked room adaptive or maladaptive? Could it be both? Does size matter? (You know what I mean. The size of the room!) Maybe the size is irrelevant and it’s the contents that count.

Why do we put things in our locked room? Why did I put things in mine?

Well. I’m ashamed. Or I’m afraid of emotional pain, conflict, or of hurting others. Maybe it’s something I’m not ready to forgive myself or others for. Maybe I lock it away to fester?

Ugh.

So is the locked room about keeping me safe or others safe?

Both, I think. Others safe from me and me safe from others. But it’s also a holding place where I keep things I don’t want to deal with.

I’ve read Radical Honesty by Brad Blanton. It gave me the horrors. I’m unable to see radical honesty as a pathway to healthy cooperation and collaboration. For me, privacy is a need, not only in an external sense of spending time in solitude, but also in the internal sense. This is unsurprising from a highly sensitive, empathic person who has experienced emotional trauma and abuse. I need my privacy and I’m intensely protective of the privacy of others.

I think a locked room is an essential piece of healthy functioning.

However, we as a species have a dreadful propensity for carrying things too far.

Not me, of course. I never do that.

How do we decide what’s appropriate to share and what’s not? Working with patients and patrons at the pool facility where I’m employed, I constantly feel battered with oversharing. People, especially seniors, are lonely. They have a lifetime of memories and experience. They have health issues that frighten them. They need to talk. My team and I do our best to be compassionate listeners.

But sometimes I wish I could forget what I’ve heard. Secrets are safe with me, but the feelings that come with them are burdensome; as an empath I’ve struggled all my life to avoid taking on the emotions of others. Mostly not very successfully.

Does everyone need some privacy? Is it a continuum? Do I need too much privacy? How much is too much? Who gets to decide? Is there such a thing as being too open, too un-private, if you will? Or does everyone have a locked room, even if it’s only the size of a mousehole?

Rooms. What happens in private rooms? Clutter. Dust bunnies. Cat hair. Hoarding. Loneliness. Despair. Death. Birth. Love. Sex. Creativity. Cooking. Self-care. Self-harm. Sleeping. Using the toilet. Distraction. Playing out addictions. Violence. Weeping. Exercising. Entertainment. The human activities of daily living we all engage in.

A locked room could be a dark and bitter dungeon or a light and airy penthouse. What kind of a locked room do I have? What kind do I want?

I hate clutter. Is my locked room cluttered? Surely not! Well, maybe. There’s 60 years’ worth of stuff in there! It’s spring. I kind of want to unlock it, open a window, air the place out. Maybe tidy up a little? Let go of some stuff? Sort? Organize? Would that be so terrible, so impossibly painful?

I have a sneaking suspicion some of what’s in my locked room is not even mine, but things given to me. Or imposed on me. I inherited toxic beliefs, experiences, and feelings from generations before me and believed it was my job to carry and preserve them.

Why am I storing what doesn’t belong to me?

Perhaps my locked room contains parts of myself I tried to get rid of and now need. Treasure, if you will. Maybe exploring it could be in part an act of reclamation.

Maybe if I open the door a tower of horror will fall on top of me and I’ll be smothered. Maybe if I don’t open the door green slime will ooze out from under it.

What’s in there?

I have some answers. My relationship with a cat named Ranger is in there, and no, I don’t want to talk about it. Every room needs a cat, in any case.

Health struggles (not serious) I’m largely unwilling to share are in there, although I have recently cracked the door and let some of them out. Carefully. Nothing bad happened.

My relationship with my children, one in particular, is in there. Now and then I’ve let a small amount of that out, too, but not often, not much, and only to my most trusted female friend.

My locked room is filled with passion. Passionate feelings of all kinds I’ve been hiding and repressing all my life. They’re strong and intense and I’ve been brutally taught they’re ugly, frightening, and obscene.

This has lately become a problem because rage is finding its way out of my locked room with disturbing results. Having escaped the room, it has no intention of being stuffed back in there and restrained. It’s a daily challenge at home, at work, and in the most unexpected contexts. It has stories to tell and I’m listening, reluctantly, but it frightens me and I’m ashamed of it. I thought I would always be able to keep it locked up and controlled. It appears I was wrong.

What else? I don’t know. These are the only specifics I can come up with. I’ll probably become conscious of more, now that I’m thinking about it.

I won’t fling the door of my locked room open and do a thorough cleanout because it’s the wellspring of my creativity, any small wisdom I’ve gained, and my empathy. As a gardener and a writer, I believe in compost. Something wild and primal in me, nurtured by Baba Yaga, loves the stink, the rot, the death, the blood, because these are the cradle of life. Nature does not waste. It’s all recycled. My experience of pain and passion empowers my writing, power I would not lessen in spite of its high price. Such power is born and rooted in fecund darkness, in muck mixed with blood and tears, in the edge of chaos, not in a bright, shining, passionless, well-aired room.

Yet I fear the passion the most. It feels like too much to release or keep contained. I fear its power to tear me apart, which is why I locked it away in the first place, and I fear its potential to hurt others. Much of it fuels my writing. I bleed some off with exercise, especially dance. But those are safety valves rather than open doors. Part of me wants to set my passion free. But for now most of it will stay in my locked room.

Questions:

  • Do you have an internal locked room? How do you feel about it?
  • Do you believe emotional privacy is essential, or do you think it’s unhealthy? Is it a need on a continuum?
  • Are you familiar with the concept of radical honesty? What do you think about it?

Leave a comment below!

To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:

Vacation

Years ago I came across a tip somewhere for getting to know new people in a meaningful (versus social media, digitally-altered images, and dating apps) manner with good questions, one of which is “What would your ideal vacation look like?”

At the time I thought it a great question and I still do. I tried it once without success. Not only was I not asked in return, I received a kind of non-answer along the lines of “I don’t take vacations …” (I wondered why, but it felt intrusive to ask) which didn’t help me get to know the party in question any better! Connection dead on arrival, the story of my life. I retired, abashed.

Photo by Quino Al on Unsplash

Ever since then, I’ve thought about my answer to the question nobody has ever asked me!

I’m thinking about it again because I just picked up Drinking the Rain by Alix Kates Shulman for the first time. It’s a memoir about a woman, about my age, who spends a summer alone in a primitive cabin on an island off the coast of Maine. Primitive means no telephone, no running water, no electricity. She has no transportation aside from her own legs. She finds the experience so satisfying and remarkable she begins to spend all her summers there, for the most part alone.

It also happens to be school vacation week here in Maine, and I hear lots of talk at the pool where I work about planned trips right now. A good friend is taking the week off with her daughter and partner to go to Florida.

Online Oxford Dictionary defines a vacation as “an extended period of leisure and recreation, especially one spent away from home or in traveling.”

Hmmm.

I looked it up because all my life I’ve heard people use the word ‘vacation’ to describe trips and adventures that sounded exhausting and stressful rather than like ‘leisure and recreation’. Of course, it’s not a one-size-fits-all definition. That’s why it’s such a great getting-to-know-you question.

I cannot remember a single vacation I’ve taken with others as a child or adult that wasn’t fraught with tension and stress, and from which I didn’t return far more exhausted and burned out than when I left home.

When people talk about vacations, I shudder.

But once I had a perfect vacation. An incredible period of leisure and recreation away from home. I’ll never forget it.

I was a struggling mother of two school-age sons in an abusive marriage, living in a small town about three hours’ drive from my sons’ father, who was too busy and important to drive to us. For the sake of my boys I therefore drove to their dad twice a month for years and years. A six-hour round trip. This effectively took care of two full weekends a month. I had chronic pain and was always exhausted. My husband had isolated me socially and controlled our finances. My mother and adoptive father had just moved to the small rural town where we lived so I was once again caring for her and my significantly older adoptive father. As Mom was also abusive, I had no respite childcare. I did not trust my husband and tried to keep the kids away from him. I solved the childcare problem by working at their little school, so we had the same schedule.

Photo by Hailey Kean on Unsplash

A friend of mine had a family cabin in the mountains west of town and she offered it to me one summer. I carefully planned for a period of time when the boys would be with their dad, and I went.

The cabin was in an isolated community, mostly of summer places. Here in Maine, it would have been called a “camp.” It had been built on a hill amidst pine trees. No road or other building was in sight. It had running water, but no electricity and no phone. These were the days before cell phones. My friend’s family used oil lamps and candles for light. The hot water heater ran on gas; I had to light the pilot light. The cabin consisted of one large room and a bathroom, with four twin beds in the main room, a fireplace, and a simple open-concept kitchen. The small fridge was also gas, as well as a rudimentary stove. Outside was a large outdoor fireplace and seating area.

I packed a couple of books, a journal, some food and minimal clothes. Nobody but my friend knew the exact location. I was alone.

I was alone! No one could interrupt me. No one could make a demand, tell me I was doing it wrong, hurt me. No one could telephone. No one could have a crisis that only I could solve. I did not have to be responsible for anyone but myself. The relief was indescribable.

It was a beautiful Colorado mountain summer. No bugs, clean air, cool nights, dry weather, abundant sun. I lit pilot lights, unpacked, put a chair in the sun, and undressed.

Yes. I undressed. I wanted to soak up every bit of sun and privacy I possibly could. I got myself a cold drink and went outside with my book, naked as the day I was born. I read for a while. I was reading Elizabeth George at the time, the author of a magnificent mystery series, each book big and fat and long.

I got sleepy in the sun and realized I could take a nap!

I went inside, chose a bed, opened it, cuddled down, and slept for almost two hours. When I got up I was hungry, so I ate. Then I went back out, moved my chair into the afternoon sun, and read some more. When the sun went down I put on clothes for warmth, lit candles, ate again.

It went like that for three blissful days. I took a shower once, and brushed my teeth when I thought of it. I ate and drank when I wanted to. I paid no attention to the time. My hours were bounded by the sun’s movement across the deck. I slept naked and spent the days naked, dressing only in the cool early mornings and evenings. I wrote and read and slept around four hours a day. When it got dark, I slept again. I had never slept like that before and I haven’t since. There seemed no end to my exhaustion and my relief at knowing I was somewhere they couldn’t find me. Nobody needed me. I didn’t have to respond. I was safe. I knew my friend would never tell my husband where I was. The kids were with their dad. It was the first time I’d ever been inaccessible to everyone.

Photo by Cristian Newman on Unsplash

No amount of money could have given me such a respite. No exotic destination could have suited me better than the utter privacy of that old cabin in the pine trees. I have never again experienced that kind of freedom to do nothing, be nothing, and know I would not be interrupted. For me, the word ‘vacation’ will always mean those three days.

I suppose some people would find this pitiable. The thought makes me smile, as it was one of the peak experiences of my life. And that’s my point; that’s why imagining (or remembering) an ideal vacation is so interesting to share with others. Such an exercise points to our longing, and what we wish to escape. I know people who love to travel and go on adventures, enjoy getting away with friends or family. I listen to their plans and stories and marvel at how different we all are, how unique our ideas of fun and what we choose to do with our leisure.

I know other people who are perfectly content at home, who have no desire to get away at all. That’s not me. I love my home, but I’d go somewhere like that cabin in a flash. I’m not so exhausted now, but I’d welcome the same feeling of being out of touch, unavailable, free of the necessity of emotional labor, not because I don’t love my friends, my job, my cats, but because I also love my solitude and one can’t do things like sit naked in the sun and read all day in company! I couldn’t, anyway. I’ve never been able to be all of what I am unless I’m alone.

Questions:

  • What would your ideal vacation look like?
  • What’s the best vacation you’ve ever had?
  • Do you return from vacations rested and renewed or exhausted?

Leave a comment below!

To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:

Echoes and Ghosts

For me, February 1st is the first day of spring. I know it’s early. I like it that way. I like the anticipation, the half-intuited first stirring of life under the soil, under last year’s debris, the slow, cold wakening of seeds, stiff in their dormant shells but quickening, murmuring, “Is now the time …?”

The birds are the first harbingers for me. Here, in this place, a small city in central Maine, it’s the crows, the jays, the cardinals, and the little tufted titmice. The crows and jays complain in harsh voices of salt-encrusted pavement, tired snow over lumpy ice, the steely cold. Cardinal pairs flit in my bare, bedraggled forsythia, and visit the feeders, a startling splash of color in the grey and bone landscape.

The titmice sing. Joyful, bursting little songs of nests and eggs, of green growth and warming light. The first spears of bulbs, the budding lilac, the luscious magnolia petals are in their song, though those things are only memories and hopes in the February garden.

(As I edit this, the first goldfinch outside the window.)

(On the morning of the day I publish this, at dawn, the chickadee’s two-note spring call.)

Photo by Ales Krivec on Unsplash

I have been feeling quiet. I’m burning down the last two Yule candles, gradually bringing out those of white and ivory, scented with lavender and herbs. Midwinter festivities are packed away, red table linen and warm-colored throws washed and folded for another season. I’ve been spring cleaning, making glass shine, mopping the scarred old floor, washing cupboards and doors. I walk to and from work bundled up in wool and fleece, the cleats on the bottoms of my boots clicking on the bare pavement and keeping me anchored in the ice and snow. The cold makes my eyes water, my nose run, and my ears hurt. At night, after closing the pools at 6:00, I drop a fluorescent sash around my backpack and chest and hold a small flashlight in the hand closest to the traffic, a white LED light shining ahead, a red flashing light showing from behind.

At times sleep has been thin and wrinkled this winter. In other periods of ebbing sleep I’ve felt frantic and exhausted, but this time I don’t mind. The long cold nights are restful whether I sleep or not, lying comfortable and warm in my chilly room, cocooned in linen sheets and a down comforter. I think of stars overhead, the moon on her path, ebbing and flowing, the tides lapping against the stony coast not so very far away. The hot water pipes in the radiators pop and click reassuringly.

I remember ice skating as a child, gliding smoothly over frost and snow, soaring over magically transformed water, cold biting like the crystalline sound of the sharp-edged skate blades, but warm in body from the rhythmic thrust of my legs. I haven’t skated in more than 50 years, but I remember it now, the freedom, the rhythm, the pleasure, the sense of inconsequence, as though nothing mattered, all was easy and graceful and flowing.

As the old year and winter inch over thresholds into something new, I am companioned by memories. This time last year is a constant whisper in my mind, because this time last year my mother was dying. I am not preoccupied with any time before that. After a lifetime of striving to understand and repair family history and relationships, I have surrendered to what was and what is now over. My battered empathy lies tranquil, not ravaged and torn but manageable, docile, turning over the pieces of last year with gentle intention.

In the clarity of cold winter, in my internal peace, I am alive, aware, receptive in new ways. I learned much in the last year, but intellectually. There was not time for more. The intensity of the situation, the constant crises, the long distance management, the anguish, the helplessness, the impossible tasks, the planning, demanded everything I had. I did not have time to process, to think long and deeply. I did not have the strength for it.

But now, now the past year echoes within my bones and flesh and memory. The ghosts of my feelings and experiences are miraculously without anguish, without horror, whispering a half-remembered story from childhood in which everything works out in the end.

Mom herself does not haunt me. She wouldn’t come back to me in any case, but even before that thought has formed I realize she wouldn’t come back to any person. If she is in a place we can call somewhere, she’s with her animals. No one who knew her well or loved her could doubt it. She wouldn’t come back to anyone, not just me. I knew it before, but now I feel it, and the feeling is gliding, no friction, just freedom and clean, cold air. I can picture her face, laughing, joyful, with manes and tails, paws and shining coats, flopping tongues and pricked ears all around her. And I’m happy for her happiness.

A year ago I was home again after my first trip back to Colorado. I wrote on the ice, on the surface of things. I think without that I might not have stayed the course. It was my lifeline. I was surviving.

A year ago I noticed but did not feel the presence of the birds. The first weeks of Spring came and went; I was focused on the next trip to Colorado, on arranging an estate auction, on supporting my brother in finding renters for Mom’s home, on maintaining communication with Mom’s community, her caregivers, and family. I had no attention for anything but calls and texts as her condition and behavior worsened.

I was not here in April when the magnolia tree began to bloom. I did not kneel in the cold mud of the garden, rejoicing in the chilly sun as the bulbs first thrust up through the softening soil. We were dismantling Mom’s life in Colorado, reading the intimate stories of her history, her loneliness, her fear, and her private struggles. Revealing and releasing stories she never meant anyone to know, casting her life’s possessions and debris into the world, one way or another.

My brother was heroic. The community was stalwart. One step at a time, one item at a time, one mile and minute at a time, we got through it. Somehow.

Home again in May, and back to my life, but only in the motions. Some intuition kept my focus narrow, looking only at the next task, the next step. I gave myself time in the garden, time in the sun. I moved my body. I ate, and worked, and showered, and wrote, releasing my razor-sharp feelings and experience gingerly in words, like so many chips of ice. Now and then I found a moment of peace, a small oasis in between calls and texts, in between Mom’s querulous voice and caregiver check-ins, in between broken nights. But I did not try to plumb the depths of myself. I knew it was not time and I hadn’t the strength to stay safe.

Photo by Christopher Campbell on Unsplash

Summer bloomed fiercely and slowly withered as Mom did, until she was released in August.

She was released, but the work of wrapping up a life went on and on, the majority falling on my brother’s shoulders. He soldiered on. We signed and notarized papers, transferred ownership, sold the house, thought about taxes. I dealt with family jewelry and wrote an obituary, and chose a picture for the local paper.

Autumn came. On Halloween, I thought a year ago today she fell and broke her hip and it all began to end …

Winter came, and passed.

Spring is on the threshold. It feels like my first spring in this new house of ours. And now the ice begins to melt. Now I am not skating on the surface of things because the surface softens and melts, warms into depth and movement, into living water, cleansing and healing. The broken edges, the shards, blunted in the sun before melting away.

Water has ever been my strength and my safety. I take off my skates and float in my depths, my memories weightless, my ghosts drifting quietly, the echoes of the past fading away into peace as I allow them to brush against me, perhaps not for the last time – who knows? I will not be afraid if they visit me again. They are familiar now, and will melt again, as winter melts into spring.

“Ice holds memories … great islands of ice … hold many stories, but they’re just the fragments. Most of the stories are gone.”

James Roberts at Into the Deep Woods

Questions:

  • What signals spring to you?
  • What intense experiences have you had to unpack slowly, over a long period of time?
  • How do you manage your intense feelings?

Leave a comment below!

To read my fiction, serially published free every week, go here:

Wandering Mind

(Due to a technical glitch, most of you were not notified when I last posted. You can follow this link to read the post if you missed it. I think the problem is fixed now!)

As so often happens, several threads came together to weave this post. The first was a suggestion from Seth Godin to follow our wandering mind, as that’s where our heart might be.

On first read, I smiled and thought “of course,” because following my imagination is one of my greatest pleasures.

As I considered it over a period of days, however, noting where my mind wanders, I discovered something.

Photo by John Salvino on Unsplash

I happily follow my wandering mind as long as I feel undisturbed about where it goes. The minute I start to get uncomfortable, however, I shackle it. Brutally. This might be with distraction, compulsive productivity, or starting to speed. A lot of people eat, overexercise, or get trapped in substance abuse. Let us count the ways!

I have rules about where my mind is allowed to go. I enforce my rules without mercy, in collaboration with draconian internal voices. My rigidity is not so much about my thoughts wandering as it is the feelings I have about my thoughts. This is emotional intelligence 101, and I’ve written about it before.

Thoughts and feelings are not the same thing.

In essence, then, I’m putting a lid on my feelings. Again. Still.

Sigh.

It doesn’t work. It never works, and I know this, but I do it anyway.

I do it for the same reason we all attempt to avoid painful feelings. They’re painful! Avoidance is easier than allowing ourselves to feel them, find healthy ways to express them, and let them go.

How many thoughts do we have in a day? I suspect most of us chew on the same preoccupations day after day, whether our thoughts engender feelings of rage, grief, fear, or shame, or a combination du jour. Uncomfortable territory. Also highly addictive territory. I’m chagrined to admit my own attraction to struggle. It’s so easy! Which is ridiculous, because it makes everything much, much harder than it needs to be, physically, emotionally, and generally.

Maybe what I mean is it’s so familiar!

As humans, we have an irresistible compulsion to notice, emphasize, and dwell upon the negative rather than the positive. That’s why so many people find relief in a gratitude practice, including me. Switching from a negative to positive focus requires mindfulness and mental effort, but the relief from anxiety and stress is immediate.

I should do it more often. Like ten times a day.

Understand, I’m not suggesting we avoid our feelings. I’m suggesting we take control of our thoughts, especially the negative kind. Feelings rise and fall inescapably. They’re biochemical messages from our physical bodies. We were made to have feelings. What we do with them, of course, is well within our control. Thoughts, however, are ours to steer.

Feelings, though arising naturally, are contagious and easily manipulated. That’s why advertising and social pressure work so well. Our feelings can be deliberately manufactured to serve those who would control our money, our votes, and our humanity.

On the other hand, this means we can to some degree manipulate our own feelings with our thoughts.

I came across an article by writer and speaker Rob Henderson, who I follow on Substack. He wrote a piece listing lessons he’s learned during a challenging life, beginning in the foster care system. One of the lessons is “you are what you do.” Not what you feel, but what you do.

I thought immediately of my writing community on Substack, where each of us struggles with what it means to be a writer. I don’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve called myself a writer ever since I began writing. Writers write. That’s what I do.

I like to keep things simple (even though I often don’t, which is a perfect example of what I say versus what I do!)

Photo by Alex Iby on Unsplash

We are what we do. I agree. We are not entirely defined by what we think and feel. I’ve known that ever since I went through emotional intelligence training. We’re also not defined by who we say we are, or who others say we are. We are not our highly polished and desperately maintained identity. Our true thoughts and feelings, the private stuff no one else can see or hear, steer our choices and actions, and those are what truly reveal our most authentic selves.

It follows if we want to change, we must do things differently. As many others have discovered long before me, true change comes from the inside out. If we manage our thoughts and feelings in healthy ways, our actions change. That’s why short-term strategies like diets often fail. A temporary diet does not address our broken relationship with food, a much harder proposition to tackle.

We seem to be on a giant rack, ever widening, between who we think we should be or must be and who we really are. The struggle and tension threaten to tear us apart, yet we cling to our rack, desperately holding ourselves together, too afraid to relax into who we really are and make peace with our true selves.

In a constant state of tension, we don’t let our minds wander. We can’t afford to. We don’t have access to the peace and quiet or even boredom a wandering mind requires. Our technology has erased the fertile ground of boredom, particularly for our children. We feed our hearts a diet of distraction, manufactured drama, busyness and productivity; a hunger for more, bigger, better, newer things, and expect it to be satisfied. We ignore or numb our feelings, or turn them into destruction of ourselves and others.

I often think of this Chinese proverb:

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.

Toxic positivity is not an effective coping mechanism. Nor is a state of deep depression and withdrawal, as in addiction. I want to find a path between the two.

Perhaps my wandering mind knows the path and will point the way if I allow it to. Perhaps our minds know exactly where our hearts are but we’re too afraid to know.

Questions:

  • When your mind wanders, where does it go?
  • How do you feel about where your mind wanders?
  • How do you think an inability to focus (distractibility) might in some cases be connected to a refusal to follow the guidance of mind and heart?

Leave a comment below!

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