strength training

i have been avidly strength training for five years. while i like what it does for my appearance, i train mostly to counter my arthritis and connective tissue issues. my body refuses to hold itself together on its own, so i have had to train my muscles to do the job of keeping my joints in their proper place.

when i first started, i was sore almost all the time. it was an effort of will alone that kept me committed to the process. but soon, i began to look forward to working out. i began to enjoy the way my new found strength accompanied me through my daily activities. as i progressed through training, i moved from simple muscle firmness to muscle definition. as my muscles got stronger, they started to take distinct shape under my skin, differentiate from one another. as my muscles got stronger, i gained a new appreciation for their specific function.

in the past year, i have been also training my emotional muscles. when i first started, the work was arduous and exhausting. i had many old, bad habits that i had to overcome before i could even think about claiming to be "healthy." however, as i've progressed, the work has become easier and more enjoyable. my growing emotional strength has changed the way i move through the world. just recently, i have had several occasions to realize that strength has developed into definition. work that began in with a general intention to be well has resulted in a finely toned emotional physique. i am becoming stronger and more well defined.

particularly conspicuous is the absence of obsessive self-doubt; the tape loop of condemnation is no longer present. i no longer spend time worrying over people's judgments of me. when marta's friend's mom came to pick her up for a sleep over, i didn't feel the need to justify the state of my apartment (i had been painting). i didn't spend time afterwards wondering what her impression of me might be: a negligent mother, a terrible housekeeper, eccentric. i enjoyed our brief exchange, wished marta a pleasant night, and felt firmly satisfied that the meeting had gone well.

i have also reclaimed a healthy ability to accept criticism without calling my whole person into question. i recently had my first review at work which included some concerns about my rapport with our volunteers (i am far more no non-sense than my predecessor, taking a critical eye toward systems and organizational structures). i accepted the feedback, analyzed the issues, and agreed to make reasonable changes. all this without once feeling like my ability to do my job was at stake, without being drown by former fears of failure.

i am really enjoying watching these muscles in motion, knowing how much work went into their development. my emotions have grown into the job they were meant to perform and i am healthier for it. i am enjoying moving through the world with strength and grace.

and when i stumble, i always have killer biceps to fall back on.

guarding the borders

i have been learning a lot about boundaries these days. it seems i am in a constant state of sorting my feelings to uncover my motives, determine my responsibility. with A this work is easier. for all intents and purposes he is a hostile party; defenses seem natural and healthy. with the kids it is more difficult to draw the line.

the apartment we are currently living in has only 2 bedrooms. while i am really grateful to have gotten it (rentals are rare in our school district), i am without a bedroom for myself. every night i pull out the futon and make up my bed in the living room. apart from the fact that the futon gets less comfortable every night i spend on it, i am really tired of not having my own space to escape to when it is necessary. and with three kids, it does become necessary. there are some days when we just get all tangled up and cranky. i send everyone to their own corners to cool off, but i sadly lack my own.

more difficult are those times when my kids are asking for time with me (watching a movie, playing a game) and i am just too preoccupied, too tired, too busy to engage them. they more or less lay siege to my attention in the living room. i have no fortress to retreat to. the other night will and marta wanted to watch a movie that i had borrowed for them. i had promised that we would watch it over the weekend, but they had it set in their minds that weekend = friday night. i explained that i was too tired, too sad, but they are kids, so they kept pressing. finally i caved, but the evening was a disaster of frustration and resentment. it was a good example to me that boundaries, even when they seem restrictive, are actually more freeing in the long run. i have daily clashes with piper. she is our only extrovert and requires an amount of attention that exhausts all of us. i am constantly guarding against her intrusions, trying to make her understand that if she grants me the space i need, i become more available, more giving to her. still it's tiring to be endlessly policing my borders.

last week however, when will wanted to settle in for an episode of joan of arcadia and i made a face of reluctance, he said "mom, it's okay if you need time off. just say so. i'm not offended." when marta arrived home from school yesterday in high dudgeon over something or other, she caught herself mid-lash out: "mom, i need some time to myself. i'm going upstairs to read for awhile." it's good to know that by enforcing my own healthy boundaries, i am teaching my kids to respect their own boundaries and respect those of others. i look forward to the day when the need for policing is lessened by our growing sensitivity to one another. we will keep our borders peacefully, while keeping them nonetheless.

leaving the best for good

when marta was a baby, it quickly became apparent that she was not a breastfeeding natural. i had had a wonderful experience breastfeeding will and i had no reason to expect anything but the same with my next child. wrong. knowing as i did that breastfeeding was better for the baby both developmentally and nutritionally, i agonized for weeks before deciding, enough was enough, gave up and gave her a bottle. i wanted so badly to make it work, but in the end i had to face the fact that my desperate desire to have it work wasn't getting me any closer to success; in fact, it was prolonging a bad situation, possibly even making it worse.

i didn't want my marriage to fail. we invested 15 years of our lives in one another; it's not an easy investment to walk away from. i am also painfully aware (although people feel the need to remind me often) of the way divorce potentially makes my children more vulnerable to depression, drug abuse, etc. i spent the weeks before i finally left making horrible calculations: which column of variables added up to the least amount of damage? then finally, there are the moral considerations. i have a few things to say about gender and the church (and marriage in particular), but i will not say them here. the fact remains that we exchanged vows and we meant them and it sucks that we broke them. i held onto these things to the very last second, hoping to pull things through. even now, i have been reluctant to give up on the idea that we can have an adult relationship, a truce played out on the field of shared parenting. sadly, it is becoming increasingly clear to me that this wishful thinking on my part is perpetuating (even creating) bad situations.

i don't remember who suggested that we take the kids to the movies together. it may have been me, recently feeling strong enough to stay free from his personal intrigues and innuendos. it may have been him. i won't venture a guess at his motivations, but i have recognized some of the therapist's work in him lately, so maybe he was feeling strong too. more likely, it just happened organically: the kids want to see so-and-so, i want to see so-and-so, you want to see so-and-so; let's all see so-and-so together. apart from the merits of movie so-and-so, i thought it would be great for the kids to see us cooperate on something as innocuous as a matinee.

i'm not interested in recounting a record of every wrong that took place that afternoon. it is enough to say that his behavior suggested to me that by going on this outing i was participating in his still viable illusion that our marriage is somehow in tact, that my being on my own is the deviation, that my belligerent insistence that our relationship is unhealthy is in fact the only thing preventing that relationship from flourishing. when we parted ways that night, i had five minutes of real panic in which i was dishonest with him about my feelings, praying only to get him out of the door before things escalated. i hadn't felt my safety trammeled on like that in months.

it only took me about fifteen minutes to regain my equilibrium. part of coming back into balance, into focus, included the realization that my deep desire to have things "work out" between us was in fact jeopardizing the long term working-out project. despite my best intentions, we are still far, far away from having a relationship that can manage anything but the barest details. at this point, we can't have casual conversations, only formal data transfers. and this is disappointing. however, not coming to terms with its reality, only perpetuates the problem.

for the record, marta turned out a-okay despite being bottle fed. in turn, my experience with marta helped me more pragmatically cope with piper's serious milk allergy. sometimes our aspirations to do the best keep us from engaging the good. 

and surrendering our dreams to engage the good can't be all bad.

my kids and i painted this together. "listen" has become our family motto. by listening carefully to each other and to ourselves, we create space or make creative space. when we finished, they were a little disappointed that the letters were not more prominent, but i thought it was apt. listening doesn't eliminate all the other noise in our lives; it just creates on opportunity to reengage it in a more intentional way.

i'm sure little projects like this are going to be fodder for a lot of family dinners when they are older. "do you remember when mom made us paint our family motto?" general hilarity to follow. but for the moment, i love that they are willing to engage in these exercises with me. i'll take what i can get.

mucking through

realizing i began this blog with a forward thinking premise (to chronicle our new experience of family), i have spent the last couple weeks back-tracking and rehashing, stumbling and struggling. in some respect, it is a positive thing: i would not be able to give myself permission to wrestle out these vulnerable issues if i didn't really truly feel safe and stable.

in counseling, we have already performed triage on the worst of my wounds from the ugly disintegration of my marriage. we have now moved on to addressing my own underlying issues. i knew we would get here and i've always been eager to engage in therapy. self-ignorance and self-deception have never held any attraction for me. i would rather know myself right through to the spine, good, bad, and ugly.

but truth be known, i'm not so good at bad and ugly. as a girl i was very affirmation dependent. to begin with, key adults in my life communicated to me that some of those characteristics i inherently valued about myself were inappropriate. my intelligence, my appearance, and my passionate personality were among those things that were judged to be "too much." as a little girl i didn't have the emotional acumen to question the motivations behind these judgments. all i understood was that my own self-assessment was untrustworthy. if i wanted to remain loved and accepted, i needed to trust other people's opinions concerning my expression of myself. i skimmed the cream off the top of my person and served milk to those around me with trembling expectation. 

and if i managed to spill any... well, there was no crying about it, at least not on the outside anyway. 

i tried desperately to minimize mistakes. when my failures were more obvious, my audience (it was a performance after all) would immediately insist that i would overcome, move up and on. i was never left alone to sit in the low spots in my life. always, i would have to motivate myself to pull it together, to demonstrate that it had only been an aberration; i had been always ever been on a successful trajectory. again, i didn't have the wherewithal to question this narrative. the end result is that i felt that my personal performance was responsible for providing peace and stability to the people closest to me.

it's certainly obvious in the above that i have some fluency with these themes. i have been in and out of therapy most of my adult life. i have touched many of these places before. but much like moving from confronting the pain and hurt in my separation from my spouse to addressing my issues, i am now moving from identifying these root causes to ferreting out their lingering presence in my day to day life. i have already dealt with the more obvious and most destructive behaviors, but now i'm after very subtle subconscious programming. it's extremely difficult to uncover my genuine self again. not just the confident little girl who was injured so badly, but the woman she is now. it's taking a great deal of introspection and imagination.

so as i've engaged this work, i've had to give myself permission to exhibit the bad and the ugly. i've determined that right now i can't really waste the energy on the appearance of having it all together (and for the record, that appearance was never really maintained for my benefit). i've made some bad choices as far as coping is concerned. they are choices, not something that is  happening to me, something i'm going through, etc. and as my dear JH says, "honey, at least you're coping." right now it's important for me to let my scratch work show a little, let the raw edges hang out some.

and my counselor and i agree that i'm making good progress. 

even given that i'm doing it badly.

poem--AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE

AN OPEN AND SHUT CASE

 

my suitcase is finally empty,

a crackerjack box

without a prize at the bottom.

all my tricks have been unpacked,

i am left holding the bag,

no longer able to appeal

to ignorance,

disorganization,

forgetfulness,

(it must be in here somewhere).

i have searched out all the corners,

my pockets are turned out,

my hat, a black-eye zero

without rabbit at the ready.

 

to make something

appear from nothing

is the kind of magic i need now,

to knit the next moment

from unseen fiber,

a string of handkerchiefs in rainbow colors

without so much as the suggestion of a sneeze.

i can afford no excuses,

hesitations,

capitulations

to avoid a poverty of the imagination.

having nothing up my sleeve

is not the same as being empty-handed;

i  firmly grip the possibility,

get a handle on the situation,

that i can conjure what i need

without assistance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

on the importance of rituals

when i was younger, i had a distaste for rituals and ceremony. i found conventions irrelevant, inauthentic and insincere. of course, this conclusion has everything to do with an adolescent mind-set that holds 100% relevancy, authenticity and sincerity as an achievable standard.

as i've gotten older (let's say more experienced, rather than wiser), i've lost faith with the idea that it is possible to be 100% anything. at least at long stretches. actually, the word stretch is really appropriate here. i think most people are constantly in flux between their best selves and less than. there are times when we heroically stretch to face a crisis, passionately respond to beauty, selflessly engage suffering in others. and then there are times when we shrink back into doubt, guilt, hurt, and cowardice. it is not hypocrisy to believe one thing and do another. it is humanity.

in my theological work, i'm very concerned with the problem of self-righteousness which is related to hypocrisy and closely tied to the idea of idolatry. according to the philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion, idolatry is a distraction from the divine. our gaze, aimed at the Invisible, exhausts itself in the visible; an idol is born. but the point of our fascination is much less the object on which it falls, but its ability to reflect our own faces back to us. therefore, idolatry is primarily a self-obsession, a self-obsession that at the same time claims to see god. 

religious trappings and ceremony are definitely used by some people to bestow upon themselves special access to god and therefore power over others who would seek god out. but ultimately, it is the presumption of power that defiles the performance and not the performance itself.

in my faith practice, ceremony (liturgy in particular) has become very important to me. studying theology and philosophy significantly changed the vocabulary i use to express my beliefs and continues to challenge those beliefs regularly. i began to struggle with a religious experience that demanded, dare i say, relevancy, authenticity and sincerity every time i walked into church. there were days when i was too disillusioned or skeptical to make that happen in the way that was required. liturgy however is the same no matter what condition i greet it in. i can enter it believing or disbelieving, struggling or at peace. the liturgy holds in trust for me the things that i believe, giving me the ease, the give, to sort out my relationship to those beliefs at any given point in my life. because it is fixed, i am free to move around  it. and i do.

so i think rituals and ceremonies are important in that they remain a touchpoint with our best expectations while our lives ebb and flow. rituals are the way we orient ourselves to true north, even when our intention is to go southwest.

i had some trepidation when my kids came back from vacation. i was wondering if what i had to offer them would compare. there is no denying that i have less than what they are used to here. i sometimes feel guilty about this. it hurts just a little when i hear them say to one another "but you know mom doesn't have any money." there is quite a bit of humiliation built into being poor in america, but my shame is more about my fears that i am not adequately providing for my kids.

however when they came back, they immediately set about engaging all our private rituals. piper lit the incense and marta suggested we take our walk even though (especially because) it was dark and foggy. will wrote this all down in our family journal when we got back. i read a poem in french, then english, then french again. then we all rubbed our family talisman, a "great adventure" stone, before heading to bed. 

these are the things that they believe in. these are the things that they value. these are the things that they will touch when they think back on these tumultuous years of their lives. and i think, i believe, they will be comforted.