Weaving Reality and Imagination

At the last Moth Story Slam I told about being twelve and imagining what the new boy coming into our class would look like, how he would behave - based on the one fact that our teacher had given us - that his family had just moved to Louisville from Hawaii.  I told how I fell in love with this imaginary boy before I ever saw him, based on my limited, and very romantic, ideas and experiences.  And I told how devastated I was when he finally showed up - only an average, pale, allergic, boy who was surely scared to death to be transferring schools in seventh grade.  My story ended with the consequences visited upon me for being so caught up in my fantasy that I couldn't see that in reality Kevin, that was his name, had positive qualities.

In too many ways to go into here this scenario - creating a fantasy of who people would be and how they would respond to me, then experiencing supreme disappointment when my imaginings weren't even remotely related to reality - illustrates how I was in the world for many years.  Long after I'd "grown up" and ought to have been more comfortable with reality, I still preferred imagination and fantasy.  This preference has given me no end of trouble - staying in dysfunctional relationships I imagined I could turn around being only one example.

I've often wondered what life might have held for me if I'd faced what was in front of me and dealt with it rather than living in my fantasy world - a world in which no real person or situation could ever be good enough, could ever measure up to my imagining.  In this, my sixtieth year on the planet,  I'm experiencing a shift in that wondering.  You see, these musings about what might have been were always deeply and tightly connected to the part of me where imagination and fantasy live.  I've only just begun to understand that lately, as I've allowed the reality of being an older/elder woman to affect me.

And I can see more clearly, as I feel the physical and emotional and other affects of moving into this stage of life, the value of what my life has held, what I have experienced, even what I've survived and learned through - by using my capacity for imagination and fantasy.  Before, when I wondered what might have been I'd wish I had not sought refuge from reality by immersing myself in fantasy.  Lately I understand that it was imagination and fantasy that helped me live in (to be honest, to endure) the reality around me.  And I believe I've come to that understanding now, at this stage of life, because I've been weaving reality and imagination together - in storytelling.

Not just standing on the Moth stages either.  I've been participating in a storytelling group - in which we bring personal stories, and respond to those told.  I've been writing the stories of my life - frequently only for myself, but more and more often, to share.  Opportunities for telling my stories seem to abound recently.  And I think somehow it has been - in large part - reaching this stage of life that has both encouraged and enabled me to apply my capacity for imagining and fantasy to my "true stories, told live."

Makes sense.  At this stage of life those moments or situations I've remembered with a cringe now seem to me merely funny, or even, sometimes, touching.  This is, after all, the stage of life in which we view what has been from a distance, and - voila! - find unexpected gifts in both the past and in ourselves.  The unexpected - life just never ceases offering that does it?

Occupy - an Idea

Occupy an idea, live with it, sleep with it, inhabit it until it becomes a kind of "gnosis," or genuine knowing. Occupy a place because you love it or because it needs loving attention or simply because you need a place to be. Find something that feels and smells authentic and occupy it fully in order to bring back life's natural state of diversity and abundance. In the midst of all the change, confusion, and chaos, occupy your own soul; for without soulful presence even momentous events can become hollow and be reduced to political in-fighting and the seeds of change can fail to take root.

Michael Meade.  

These words, written by a man who was my teacher for a grace-filled weekend in late 2007,  showed up in an article on Huffington Post about the Occupy movement.  Yet they struck me personally.  And I’ve tried them out, tried keeping them in mind – as well as in sight, printed and stuck under a refrigerator magnet where I saw them each time I went to the freezer for ice.
I needed words that reminded me to simply be still recently, as I approached what was for me a singular event – my 60th birthday.  Along with selections of meaningful poetry and fiction, I needed words like Meade’s, regardless of context or theme, for sitting with the anxious beliefs swirling in both head and body as I approached this milestone.  I needed reminders that my anxiety had a flip side, if only I could occupy it, “live with it, sleep with it, inhabit it . . .” until the crawly-skinned feeling could lessen.
In the midst of the change that I imagined was coming because a page on the calendar would turn I tried a literal occupation – something that’s worked for me before.  I established my bed as the site of occupation – brought to it warm drinks (on occasion, alcoholic also), yummy snacks, books, the journal I began in December when the first pricks of anxiety made themselves known, my laptop for writing, watching movies, listening to music, extra pillows, baby dolls and bears.  And I allowed myself to spend all the time there that I needed to.  It was, I see now, an occupation of soul and spirit, or psyche and mind – an inhabiting of what was going on within, while simultaneously allowing my insides to be affected by what I brought to the occupation.
And it helped.

I only understood how much it helped when, three days after my actual birthday a dinner I had been told was siblings-only revealed itself as a surprise party celebration– complete with friends and gifts and trick candles in the birthday pies.  [Yes, birthday pies – I highly recommend this alternative to cake and ice cream.]  Before spending time with my anxiety, my surprise at walking into the house where so many unexpected people were gathered would have ramped up that anxiety – made me feel as if I had to ‘perform’ somehow – resulted in internal expectations that I should be the ‘perfect’ honored guest.
I know this because it had been my reactive response to similar situations over the years.  It’s always been a conflict for me – being the center of any attention that I did not seek, did not bring on myself by my own efforts.  Unsought attention would immediately trigger an inner sense of “what do these people want from or of me – what’s my role, or job, in this situation?”
Occupying the uncertainty and fear of what it might mean to be sixty – to become what I’d previously defined as “old” – had in fact peeled away another layer of my thinking about self in this “what do they want” manner.  I’d sat with those habits of self-definition, that really came from old messages, long enough to know them for the burdensome weights on my soul that they’d always been.  I had spent time with my somatic and spiritual desires – taking them easy and pampering them from my bed – allowing myself to accept that I didn’t have to DO or BE or TRY anything except what felt right to me.
And the result was that I could simply enjoy my surprise party – move around to interact with the people there, drink my wine and enjoy the food and the pie (especially the coconut cream), open the gifts, give and receive the hugs – without worrying or stress.  And the result of that was that, not only did I have fun, feel loved and special – but everyone else did as well.

So here’s what I’m thinking:  I’m gonna keep Michael Meade’s quote up on the fridge a while longer.  Wedged under a magnet (one that was part of a gift from the surprise party) that says “I believe in a world where chickens can cross the road without their motives being questioned” the printout of Meade’s words shares space with my ticket for The Moth tomorrow night, alongside pictures of me and Sarah and Josh acting silly at a wedding.  I’m gonna keep the idea of occupying what calls to me for attention where it can remind me, when the next anxious time comes along.

PERMISSION TO BE HUMAN

     You’d think that by this age I’d have learned better than to ask “why” questions – I mean, those are ‘god’ questions, right?  But, wait, hold on to this beginning, this avoiding-getting-started-moving-in-the-totally-wrong-direction statement.  Don’t lose it while I start over.  You’ll see why shortly.

Why is it that the deepest aspects of us, the parts of mind or body or psyche or soul that we absolutely cannot change because they’re hardwired or fixed, the characteristics, traits, qualities, and attributes built in to us from birth and honed by experience – why do we struggle so in giving ourselves permission to be (or do, or whatever) these things?
     You’d think that these built-ins, these things that make us who we are, that serve as our definition in the dictionary of humanity, would serve us kind of like a safety net or a warm blanket as we move and act in the world.  But, in truth, the defining things, the unalterable aspects of us are those that we seem to fight against the most ruthlessly.  Giving oneself permission to be, and be comfortable being, who we are at our core feels, most of the time, nearly impossible.
     Even Jung acknowledged that the most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.  In our terror we project those aspects of self we most hate onto others.  Much like what seem to be the motivations behind the actions of prominent Republicans these days – an obvious determination to grab power and control over our society even if it means the destruction of that society – we’d rather punish our own nature, punish too those on whom we project the hateful, than permit it to show.

     Which circles back around to the self-critical statements I began with.  Asking “why” is human.  Though there may not be an answer, at least not an answer we can understand in our human limitations, asking why is important – to our continued understanding of both self and others.  In asking “why” we become vulnerable, open to experiencing reality that may arouse fear, sadness, shame.  Thus the rationale for not permitting ourselves to ask, to not open to the inherent vulnerability of our humanity.  I mean, who wants to volunteer to experience those affects?
     Without experiencing that which hurts, the affects we’ve had-enough-of-thank-you-very-much in our lives, we cannot experience how those affects can become capacities which encourage and feed us.  Only through feeling the fear do we encounter courage, through opening to sadness we discover compassion.  Only through getting to know shame can we come to know its opposite – dignity.
Why sign up to do something so difficult?  Isn’t life easier, don’t we ‘get along’ better, if we just keep pushing away what doesn’t feel good, blaming someone else for what we experience?  There are those, obviously, who think so.

     Some years ago a friend’s mother died after a prolonged battle with cancer.  His relationship with his mother had been a source of profound conflict and intense need – on both sides – for all his life.  Experiencing the death of the parent on whom we most depended will engender, for most of us, a struggle with choices.  We can choose to accept that now whatever we wanted from our parent will never come our way; or we can choose to keep looking for what we wanted from those around us.  We can grow up, become who we are meant to be, or we can remain a child, trying still to be mothered.  My friend chose the latter.  Since I couldn’t, and certainly wouldn’t, be a mother figure to him; our friendship ended.
     Ending our friendship felt worse to me than the ending of my marriage.  Yet I learned so much in grieving that loss, lived so completely with the sadness, the anger, and the fear that I came to understand both more about myself and a great deal more about myself in relationships.
     The signs were all there that he wasn’t capable of living with what was difficult, that this was who, and ‘where’ he was.  I’d seen them, and from who and where I was, chosen to ignore or explain them away.  In the grief I later worked with at the loss of this friendship, I understood that I am a human who loves unreservedly, goes beyond the call, hangs in with relationships when others would quit.  And I roiled around in the muck of self-punishment – because of this aspect of my humanity – for a long time.  Until living with feeling a fool for how I’d been, and sitting in despair at my own stupidity became transformed, through sharing and writing, into appreciation for the depth and capacity for love my behaviors exhibited.
     Permitting my humanity, dwelling in the places where I most hated to live – in the seeming foolishness of my response in relationships, in the palpable sadness of loss, in all those hurtful and hurting places – I learned greater acceptance of me.  I’m more open in the world when I allow the difficult and painful to manifest, rather than try to push them down or project them out.
     Maybe we don’t ask the ‘why’ questions because we can’t control what answers we’ll get.  Following the difficult and uncomfortable feelings into our own interior, allowing them to inhabit and teach us, means we don’t control what will come back to our exterior.  And as perfectly imperfect humans, we just hate it when that happens.

Oh, the Things You will Think

A few months ago I stopped seeing my therapist on a regular basis.  For several months before I’d been looking at our time together, considering what work was still to be done.  I couldn’t help but see that, since we’d begun, four years earlier, much of the growing up I’d needed to do had happened.  Terry and I had talked about this, and the idea of stopping was broached, several times.  Then, as I prepared for that last visit in November, I knew it was time.

Almost immediately after that ending new opportunities for expression began showing up in my life.  I’m just now realizing that one of them was, and is, to express my fixation on becoming sixty.

It makes sense that, having attained a modicum of maturity through the work with Terry, among other things, I now have greater capacity to see myself as I am.  I do see much more clearly what my reality is.  And that reality includes grief – a deep and profound sorrow about all the years before I began this journey of awareness, the years I couldn’t, or wouldn’t see myself truly.

My reality isn’t all grief of course.  Seeing myself truly includes knowing myself as “one of the juiciest women I know,” - according to a friend of mine.  What’s true of me is also that I’ve discovered my voice, gained appreciation for my body and appearance, learned it’s ok to say “no” as I need to.  What is true, and real, for me is that I like and care for myself more than ever.  Yet I also truly wish I’d learned how to do all of this earlier – wish I hadn’t used up all of those earlier years trying in vain to be who others wanted me to be.

It’s a paradox really.  For this journey of self-knowledge began because I’d spent all those years in the boxes of others’ creation.  The years I grieve over were my teachers, as much or more than Terry, or the deep learning from my California experiences, or even my heart attack.  Those years of actively pushing myself down, smoothing myself out, making myself small so others could feel more comfortable or ok – those years in the dark enabled me to see the faint shining light at the core of me as it flickered, determinedly.  Once I saw it I couldn’t abandon it.

It’s the fact that that didn’t happen until I was fifty that I grieve, especially now, a decade later.  I wonder, if I’d awakened to an appreciation of myself sooner, would I feel less anxious about becoming an elder now?   Would I have the capacity to love, rather than simply accept, the entirety of my life’s reality if I’d made the move earlier?  Yes, it’s navel gazing.  I wonder too if I’d do so much of that now if I’d begun this journey years before I did.

I’ve been seeing sixty as something I’m not ready for, much less ready to be or be defined as.  Yet, in writing about my grief over those ‘lost’ years I begin to see this age differently – as another opportunity for expression.  From here I can view the entirety of my life true.  From this stage of life I can realize, as in the words of a prayer for Yom Kippur.

From grief to understanding, from fear to faith.

From defeat to defeat.

Until, looking backward or ahead, we see that

Victory lies not at some high place along the way,

But in having made the Journey, stage by stage.

Having made the journey is what matters.  The when and how and where matter less than that the journey is undertaken.  Here, at 2012, at nearly age 60 (17 days and counting), with what I have in my purse and my life – is what’s real.  From here I can look backward and peek ahead, rest and take in the view.  And I can tell you – it ain’t really all that bad either.

Not Done Yet

A coworker married recently.  In telling about her wedding she spoke with strong emotion about her disappointment at the job the (non-professional) photographer had done.  My coworker (we’ll call her L) repeated several times that, “It’s OK.  She [the photographer] is a friend.  Nothing to be done now, I guess.”  Well into the conversation L finally admitted that she was angry at not having the pictures she wanted, that she felt angry every time she thought about it, and that, even though she knows it’s the marriage that counts, more than the wedding, she’s still mad.
     L has been angry for weeks about this, telling herself she needs to let go of it, but feeling unable to.  Another participant in the conversation (call her M) said, “When I get angry over something I can’t do anything about, I just let myself BE angry for 24 hours.  Then I let it go.”  L replied that she wasn’t sure she could do that.
     In the silence that followed I knew what to say, but hesitated, not wanting to appear like a mother or counselor to these young women.  Yet my knowing wanted to be offered, so I told her, “The trick, or the key, if you want, is to truly feel your anger, to live with it, and allow yourself to release it – punch pillows or holler or cry – talk about it.  Let yourself know just how mad you are during those 24 hours.  You’ll be able to let it go if you do that.”
     In sharing this story I’m not bragging about my helpfulness.  Rather this story needs to be shared because I need to remind myself that I do possess knowledge and wisdom that can make a difference – but only if I share it.  The gift of age, I am coming to understand, is a body of knowledge – if we have sought it out over time – and a plethora of experience – ditto – that makes us wise.
     To become an elder is to have understanding – a combination of knowledge and experience gained over time.  We must have lived through and with our experiences and learned from them – even, especially, the difficult ones.  AND we must do something with it all – speak, or act, or in some way share what we have learned.
     It’s this last part that transforms us into an elder.  Hanging around on the planet for six, or more, decades simply makes us old.  Owning our experience, our learning from it and learning generally, intentionally spending time and energy weaving knowledge and experience together, and offering the resulting wisdom to others – in whatever ways we can – we become an elder.
     I’m at the beginning of learning this – of learning that my upcoming sixtieth birthday doesn’t just, or even necessarily, symbolize becoming old.  Since I began facing my belief that 60=old I’ve received numerous opportunities to learn that this stage of life holds gifts – if I dare risk opening them.  Sharing what I know to be true – as I did with L (who appeared, at first, surprised, but then interested in the idea) – as I do when I sign up to tell my story at The Moth Story Slam – as I do, more and more often, even in random encounters with others – sharing both validates my experience and encourages others to do the same.
     It feels scary to me – opening up and risking like this.  Yet I see only two options available to me as I approach 60:  to disappear into the accepted cultural view of a dried-up and pitiful old woman, or, to embrace the vibrant, juicy, experienced, and perhaps wise woman who lives inside.  The first feels like only existence, while the second feels of life.
     I’m reminded – quite often recently – that, when I experienced heart attack almost four years ago, in the moment that dying felt so seductive – the moment of understanding that dying meant not having to try any more – there came a clear voice that said, “You’re not done yet.”  And that voice – though I didn’t want to hear it or accept its message – made my body fight to live.
     Now, as then, the acceptance of life includes acceptance of responsibility.  It means I must fight past the fear of opening up and offering who I am, who I am becoming.  Yes, even at this stage life seems to be about becoming.  I choose to become an elder rather than an old lady.  No, I’m not done yet.

Rumination on Changing

     I downloaded this picture, from early in the Occupy Wall Street movement, onto my computer desktop.  Every time I open the computer the image moves me, particularly the disembodied hand holding the sign reminds me – that no matter what we’re supposed to believe, in truth changing the world begins in changing oneself.  Not changing to fit in with greater ease, or even changing so our own life will hold fewer problems or challenges – but changing as an appreciation, changing through greater and more loving acceptance of who we truly are.  In her poem, “The Wild Geese” Mary Oliver writes - “You do not have to be good. You do not have to crawl, on your knees, across the desert.  You only have to let the soft animal of your body Love what it loves.”  That kind of change.

         That kind of change, like the Occupy movement, requires faith.  It means understanding that loving what we love, acting from and on what is authentic in us, we may never know how we have changed the world.  Mostly, changing oneself, opening to what is genuinely and uniquely us – to the darkness as well as the sunny side – gives permission to those around us to make their own changes, live with their own authenticity.  And that’s a pretty good payoff.

         I think of this a lot as I approach my 60^th birthday – in a bit over a month.  I can’t deny that I view this birthday as the beginning of the last stage of my life.  But, more and more, as I move toward this day and consider the ways I want to honor and celebrate it, I notice “what if” thoughts.  They leap around in my head as if they’d been suddenly freed from cages.  And the animal of my body responds to these “what if” thoughts with energy and juiciness.

         What if this could be the most freeing, satisfying, and fully lived part of my life? 

         What if I let go of worrying about failure, or punishment, or rejection and did what I feel to anyway?

         What if the best things about me are the earthy, audacious, loud, sensual, and humorous things?

         What if I just listened to my body and what it wants instead of trying to convince it it’s wrong?

         I don’t yet know what I will DO with or about all of this, but I know that this is changing, coming to appreciation of who I truly am.  Even in the last stage of life it seems there is faith in possibilities – which flies in the face of the conventional wisdom, the norm.  But as Frank Zappa said, “Progress is not possible without deviation from the norm.”  I tried so hard, for so many years, to live according to the norm.  After all those years I’m coming to accept myself – particularly now in the last stage – as I am – not as people want me to be, so they can feel more comfortable. 

         Changing the world begins in changing oneself – and I’m OK with that.  Better than OK really.  Even though it is inconvenient and uncomfortable, we must do it.  At least I must – I need to continue, even in the last stage of life, to ponder the “what if” questions.  I need to live those questions, holding them lightly – not as requirements for being an elder woman but for the opportunities they present to live fully – no matter what stage of life I’m in.

February Fifteenth Twenty Twelve

My - over 60 - cousin Susan & her lovely daughter Kimmy

No matter how I say it or write it, the reality of the upcoming year for me is that it is the year I turn 60.  And that's freaking me out.  Sixty years old - some synaptic process interacts with some idea I picked up somewhere - years ago - and I only think "Old!"  Reality, evidence to the contrary, how others see me, what I see in the mirror, what I feel - none of that matters in the face of this belief - that, at 60 I will suddenly become old.

I suppose it's no different really from the belief I had in adolescence that I'd become "adult" at 18, from considering 30 as the age to "get serious" about life, from feeling, at 46 (don't ask me why it was 46) the entrance to "middle age."  The belief itself - the message I've carried around within me - isn't different, but how that belief has affected my capacity to imagine and consider is VERY different.  For reasons I don't yet understand thinking of 60 as "old" has kept me from planning for or playing with what life might look or feel like, what life might hold when I am old.

So - though I could put it in terms that make me sound more OK with it - the truth is this belief tells me that when I get old, life is over.  God, have I swallowed the Cultural Gatekeeper whole, or what!  Our culture tells us older women are invisible, that we're "done" - no longer desirable sexually or even as customers (which, of course, is the most important thing anyone can be in our culture).  We become overlooked, even invisible, after a certain age.  And because I have held this belief I haven't imagined anything about what life may be, look like, feel like, hold, or bring into being once I reach 60.

I understand that writing this, telling it, confronting it - I'm doing the work of debunking this myth I've given space to in my head for so long.  So that's a good thing.  But I'll tell you honestly that prying loose this belief that 60=old=game over brings up tons of uncertainty, wheelbarrows filled with the rocks of self-doubt I've always tended to throw at myself.  Going against such a long held belief, backed by the cultural dictums, reminds me of the labor of birthing.  The pain of birthing comes from opening - as the cervix widens the entire body loosens to prepare to push - and our core musculature and skeleton becomes more flexible.  We require support - physically and emotionally.

I guess, in allowing my words to flow here I'm finding the metaphors my imagination can work with.  Birth is a good one - and one I have worked with many times in the past ten years.  Yes, it involves pain, and hard work, letting go of trying to control the uncontrollable - but what in life, what that's worth having anyway, does not.  A re-imagining is required then, and now.  And sharing the unfolding story, developing it, getting feedback from those who hear it - this too is necessary.

At least that's how it looks to me as I sit outside in the breeze and sun of this late December day.  Sure as the weather changes so will my consideration of what it means for me to reach 60.   I'll keep writing here as it happens.