Confronting Fear

September 9, 2018 by

It isn’t always comfortable or easy – carrying your fear around with you on your great and ambitious road trip, I mean – but it is always worth it, because if you can’t learn to comfortably travel alongside your fear, then you will never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic.

I have a hard time with fear, mostly because I have a lot of it. I find that unfortunate as I believe it is one of the two primary emotions. And if I am fearful, if the majority of my thoughts are fear based, how much capacity can I have for love, the other primary emotion? Is a person’s emotional capacity finite? Does a person who feels a large amount a fear handicap themselves from being able to feel large amounts of love?

I want the answer to that question to be “no.” I want to sit here (in fact I have already tried) and say that I think that a fearful person is as capable as a less fearful person to express, receive, and process love based thoughts. And the best that I can do is to acknowledge that it might be true for some people.

It is not true for me.

I do not travel comfortably along side my fear. We are not road dogs. We do not have a working relationship. The secondary feelings my fear produces are not helpful. It does not energize, motivate, provide productive adrenaline, or excite. My fear is in no way functional.

I can recognize fear when it presents itself in the “normal” ways in response to the “normal” things I am afraid of. That is typical fear and, for me, falls more into the instinctual “fight, flight, or freeze” dynamic that I think is normal and appropriate for most people. It is the less obvious instances that create journey difficulties. In those situations, I am learning to recognize when fear is the dominate force. If I am feeling overwhelmed, indecisive, melancholy, or distracted, I am more than likely operating in fear. Unfortunately in these nuanced situations, I am still only able to assess this truth outside of the moment, after behaviors have been decided and choices made. Not ideal.

But I think I have discovered a strategy that may help in becoming less fearful – at least for me. Funny thing about it, it’s super scary. Let’s see if I can coherently walk you through my thought process…

Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.
~ Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

In all the things that Brene has ever said or written, this one point has resonated with me the most. I have found it to be 100% true and I have successfully employed it a number of times. My ability to handle shame laden feelings has become quite proficient if I do say so myself.

In Brene’s research on shame, she has created a definition that I think works: Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.

She more simply states it this way – Shame is the fear of disconnection.

So if shame is the fear of disconnection, then I can deduce that shame belongs to the primary fear and not the primary love. And if speaking shame works to neutralize it, then maybe the root emotion fear has the same Achilles’ heel.

*Note – I originally wrote “dispels” instead of “neutralize.” I think recording that edit is important. Shame, fear, are never dispelled. They always exists somewhere in some form. It is unrealistic for me to set the goal as “I will never be fearful.” I do not need to find a way to make fear nonexistent. I need to find a way to remove its influence in my decision making. The better goal for me is to transform fear into a decision neutral force.

In considering this thought it occurs to me that fear rarely gets named or called out. We hear the questions “are you okay,” “what’s wrong,” “is everything alright” and the like. What if the question was, “What are you afraid of right now?”

In considering areas of my life where I know I need improvement, time management is a big one and has been for quite a while. I sat with that one this morning and couched the idea in the new “what are you afraid of” strategy. The issue sprung open like seedling that was just looking for the right path to the surface. The obstacles were obvious. I suck at time management because I am afraid of choosing the right priorities. I am afraid when I do choose, I will execute the choice poorly. I am afraid that my choices will inadvertently reveal some actual truth or misconstrued truth about me that cause others to feel negatively about me. I am afraid that I will fail in following my schedule and appear incapable, undisciplined, lazy.

That’s a lot of bullshit going on when all we are talking about is taking a pencil to my calendar and deciding whether I want to put my gym hour at 0800 or not.

Let me say that to myself again – all we are talking about is where to put my gym hour, in pencil.

Let me say that again – a penciled in gym hour creates fear that I will be unloved, judged, disconnected.

Seriously? AYFKM?

And now the time blocked doesn’t seem so scary.

Understand I am not sitting here feeling a rush of “Tada!” I understand that this is just one thing and it feels successful right now. It has also taken about 72 hours of occasional idea rolling and three solid hours of Thinking Chair sitting to deduce that I will not lose the love of my life, my family, and my friends if I pencil in the gym on my calendar. That’s not exactly efficient. But it is a start. It is a step. This morning, I’ll count it a win.

Filed Under: Chrysalis Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Unused Creativity is Not Benign

September 4, 2018 by

Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes. It turns into grief, rage, sorrow, shame. ~ Brene Brown

I am fighting the urge to close the laptop and do something – anything else. It’s not that I don’t want to write; I absolutely do. I am just not sure what I want to say. That’s not accurate. It would be more honest to say I want to write all the things, say all the things, do all the things, and catch up on the every minute of time I have ever wasted before I have to wake the house up in an hour.

Just for clarity, that’s impossible. Because it is impossible, I have the overwhelming urge to just throw up my hands and do nothing – again. Never mind the ridiculousness of the expectation.

Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the intersection of Doubt and Sabotage. It’s a seedy little part of town where no one like to be seen so there’s a quick little cut through to Keeping up Appearances. The shops there are cute but the food is horrible.

There’s is also a pretty good bit of self talk going on that says “FFS, are we really talking about this – again? You are seriously starting to sound like a hack. For over 30 years you have put words on paper, lose consistency, talk about lost consistency, put words on paper – wash, rinse, repeat. Same with running. Same with food. Same with the gym life. Same with your housekeeping. Same with time management. Same with your parenting. Same with your ability to maintain relationship. I am noticing a pattern here and Ape, the verdict is you just suck.”

If you are thinking that’s a little harsh, you’d be right. If you’re thinking it’s a bit overwhelming, you’d be right again. If you think I am unusual in this assault on myself because you yourself have never had thoughts like this, that’s where you’d miss the mark.  This kind of asinine self talk is more common than you think.

So I am here again. Talking about it again.

About a year ago I discovered Gary Vaynerchuck. For those of you familiar, yes, I know I’m late. For those of you that don’t, might I suggest him. While I am not actively attempting to build an empire, Gary’s content regularly resonates. I have found quite a few parallels between growing as a business and as a person. The most recent example has been between Brene’s work on shame and Gary’s suggestion that documentation is just as powerful as creation.

Brene ~

You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness…Our brains are hardwired to protect and that often means wanting to run or fight. At work that can look like rationalizing, hiding out, and/or blaming others…The most difficult part of our stories is often what we bring to them—what we make up about who we are and how we are perceived by others. Yes, maybe we failed or screwed up a project, but what makes that story so painful is what we tell ourselves about our own self-worth and value.

Owning our stories means acknowledging our feelings and wrestling with the hard emotions—our fear, anger, aggression, shame, and blame. This isn’t easy, but the alternative—denying our stories and disengaging from emotion—means choosing to live our entire lives in the dark. It means no accountability, no learning, no growth.

Gary ~

Documenting your journey versus creating an image of yourself is the difference between saying “You should…” versus “my intuition says…” Get it? It changes everything. I believe that the people who are willing to discuss their journeys instead of trying to front themselves as the “next big thing” are going to win…just start talking about the things most important to you. Because in the end, the creative (or how “beautiful” someone thinks your content is) is going to be subjective. What’s not subjective is the fact that you need to start putting yourself out there and keep swinging.

Starting is the most important part and the biggest hurdle that most people are facing. They’re pondering and strategizing instead of making. They’re debating what’s going to happen when they haven’t even looked at what’s in front of them.

Therein lies a pretty solid road map for avoiding the traffic jam at that Doubt and Sabotage intersection. And that’s all I really need. The truth is most of my journey is going to have to go through that intersection – avoiding it is damn near impossible. Going through it is fine – getting hung up there is the killer.

Interestingly enough another thought just occurred to me – getting hung up there is a killer. That’s what I tell myself. But that’s not really true either. It’s not a killer…I’m still here. And so are you.

Filed Under: Chrysalis Tagged With: , , , ,

The REAL Thing Confident Women Do

July 17, 2018 by

I’m about to let you in on a little secret. Caveat: if you have ever been to my house, watched me work, or know me at all, this is not a bombshell. I lean decidedly towards the “dis” side of the “organized” spectrum. My intentions, however golden they may be, have never quite been enough to tip those scales. As such, I attempt to, as regularly as I can muster, take a bite of the clutter elephant and put order into the chaos.

Today the task was to go through all my “saved” posts I had clipped on Facebook. It really is quite the handy feature. I save all sorts of things: recipes I’ll likely never make, videos I’ll forget to share, articles I probably won’t read, and topics that I intend to, at some point, maybe, write about.

I can only assume that “22 Things Confident Women Don’t Do” falls into the “articles I probably won’t read” category. But, because I needed to decide whether it was a delete or keep, I clicked through.

I have decided the article would be more accurate if titled something like “22 Things Imaginary Woman Don’t Do” or “22 Unattainable Ideals” or, my personal favorite “Hey Chica, come here and let me kick you in the teeth you inadequate, less than female”.

The list is full of bumper sticker declarations that have the same shallow effect that messages of this type typically have – on the surface they are simple and concise lending the appearance of noble, healthy, and appropriate, but taste all of it for just a minute and it’s just over processed non-food.

In order to maintain perspective (I am prone to knee jerk in these moments of self doubt), I sat with it a while. I am still sitting with it as I do not know the writer and it is not my desire to assume her intention. I have understood for a long time that once you put nouns and verbs together and release them into the world, the intention you insert into the blank spaces may or may not be the intention received by the reader when they, in their own place, encounter those spaces.

However, I have also understood that the responsibility in preserving your message by the surrounding nouns and verbs you choose to couch it in is a real one. Since the author chose to launch her list with “See how many of this list of pitfalls you avoid and how you measure up as a confident woman,” the blank spaces are filled with judgement, condescension, and beratement.

I am currently sitting here contemplating the desire to go through each of the 22 things on this list and refute them. They are ALL refutable; not in the base idea necessarily, but in the absoluteness of the structure. I think that is what a confident woman can do when confronted with the idea that someone’s uneducated opinion of personal behavior is summarily judged and condemned without perspective.

The debater in me wants to follow that path so bad I literally had to step away from the computer to consider it without my fingers poised on keys.

However, I respectfully decline to go that route. Should the course of any conversation that results lend itself to discussing the particulars, so be it. Today, the confident woman in me has a different hierarchy of priorities. Because that is real life. That is how real shit goes. I am not everything everyday. While I may not be consistently immune to self doubt, worry, or the need to people please in my behavior, I am consistently confident as a person.

And there’s the realness of my confidence and the confidence of women, people, I know. I am not ashamed of my vulnerability. I do not judge harshly my base behaviors that I work out in safe spaces with those who know me well and allow me to be safe and vulnerable and real. I am confident in me and confident in them. I hope that is what you find in these blank spaces.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , ,

My Schedule is Shit and I have Little Idea What I am Doing (Normalcy and Worthiness)

July 16, 2018 by

May 18, 2018

I’m going to be super honest up front and fess up to that post title being a bit misleading. My schedule currently is shit, AND I have little idea what I am doing. But, those are two separate ideas. My schedule is currently shit, but not BECAUSE I have little idea what I am doing.

As is par for my current course, the past seven months have brought about exponential amounts of change. I quit a seriously well paying job with copious amounts of benefits just because I hated it (well, that and he said our family finances could handle it and I always trust him). I found myself unemployed (yes, I know being the supportive partner, primary caregiver of children, and general house CEO is a job – you know what I mean) for the first time since I was 14.

That, in itself, is enough. There’s more obviously. But
***************

July 16, 2018

But, once again, I have no idea where I was going with that little revelation up there. I can’t for the life of me remember what little gem I had stumbled upon in my own brain that compelled me to the keyboard. Neither can I remember the fact of life that took me from it. Sitting here this morning on this back porch, I have the most wonderful peace of realization that what I do know is that I do not care.

It isn’t that I don’t care to remember what the things were or that events in my normal day to day aren’t important to me – they obviously are. It is simply that what I do remember of that small bit of writing time is the feeling of listlessness. The feeling, once again of being too much and not enough. That in my being there was something purposeful and I in my inability was not living up to the occasion and the occasion was important.

Here, on this back porch, I realize that none of those things are true and that is a better insight than anything I had discovered on that day. Understand I am appreciative of that insight, whatever it was as it, no doubt, was a piece of the path. And there is a small part of the writer in me that wishes I had the words from then if only to have a better view of the picture now. But not so much that it disturbs me. And that is progress.

There are those who are always one goal post away from “being there.” A job, house, a spouse, a goal – then, then they can experience happy, there they can find joy. Until then, they are head down, easily agitated, and sacrificing the joy in the now for the joy in the future. Because joy doesn’t work in that way, the goal is accomplished and they don’t find what they are looking for. Instead of adjusting their understanding of joy, they create another goal post. Rinse. Wash. Repeat.

There is me. While this cycle is not one I typically find myself caught in, I have recently wrenched myself out of a small bout with it. It was abstract so I didn’t recognize it at first. But I had created two goal posts in my brain – normalcy and worthiness. If I could achieve those two things, then I could relax just a bit.

Normalcy and worthiness. At least I picked small things, amirite?

In my brain, I had convinced myself that those around me deserved these things. They deserved consistency, they deserved stability, they deserved a person that could create these things for them and present them as whole and easy. My life is so utterly amazing, I needed to do these things to be worthy of the love I receive. I needed to be good enough to deserve this life, to deserve the love.

In my appreciation of the wonderful, I had forgotten to keep perspective of the journey. And the journey is only “normal” in that we are all on one, both with ourselves and with those we love. And worthiness? That’s just like joy. It comes from within not from without.

Filed Under: Chrysalis Tagged With: ,

Making a Home, to Live, in the Now

April 19, 2018 by

The Thinking ChairMy Thinking Chair is the gift that keeps on giving. I bought it and introduced you to it in 2016. That was the year I turned 40. That was the year I did a lot of things. My Thinking Chair comforted and inspired. Consoled and protected. It is the space where I am able to continually create new space.

We have talked about one of my Thinking Chair activities where I go through the things I wrote in the time from ago and evaluate them in the light of the now. I finally came across the piece where I described buying and living in my Thinking Chair. I shared the actual dictionary definition of the word “live” and explained how I remain alive in my Thinking Chair choosing that definition of “live” as more appropriate for the feelings at hand.

That piece came to me again in its due time. The second definition was untouched in that previous piece written in the time ago as it held little to no resonance for me then.

make one’s home in a particular place or with a particular person

This idea did not feel attainable for my life during much of my 30’s. In fact, in that last year of my thirties I was far more active in tearing down the facade of a home I tried to build as it had become Munchkin Land crushing to a heart that was feeling unrecognizably more like the Wicked Witch everyday.

For a moment I thought that was what I was becoming – bitter, unhappy, cold, unrecognizable, distant. That isn’t my skin. That isn’t my way. That isn’t my heart. That isn’t my home. It had to become the time from ago or I would lose the person I was always supposed to be. I decided I would rather be homeless than live in a home that wasn’t mine.

It isn’t lost on me that I chose to leave the definition I would not acknowledge in the time from ago only to happen back upon it in the now when my heart is open to it. I appreciate the wisdom of my past self even if I wasn’t always the best at paying attention to all the smart things she had to say. The gift finds me in 2018, in this life, in the now, that I live with my love and heart in tact. I see the rest of the definition.

make one’s home in a particular place or with a particular person

First off, if you have read any of this with the “home = house” disposition, stop and read it again without it. Accept my apologies that I didn’t mention it sooner. Accept then again that I do not feel compelled to edit this to put that little clarifier higher up in the reading. I can’t pinpoint the reason I refuse to do that edit. It just feels wrong some how and I don’t particularly feel compelled to question it any more than that.

Now that I can see this definition of “live” in concert with the capability of feeling a real sense of home, the word “or” smacks me in the face. I don’t like it. I don’t want to choose place or person to describe this freedom of “live” or this comfort of creating home. Then I realize it’s fine. While it only takes either to fit the dictionary definition, who is to say you can’t have the “and”? Maybe because I feel I am filling both qualifiers, the bigness I feel in the “live” is understandable.

A lot of work has gone into the achievement of skin comfort. I am proud of it. I relapse far less often than I use to. Exponentially so. It is a powerful feeling to understand and appreciate ones worth and to honor the self just as she is. I now live in my skin in a real way. I enjoy the home I have created in that place. It no longer feels foreign or unfamiliar.

I have made this home with the love of a man who is more supportive than I ever could have imagined another person being. I realize there is supposed to be some sort of self creation and self propulsion in this era of “I can do it all my damn self”. I have addressed that already and I still make no apologies. I found the one for whom my soul was made before either of us were smart enough to know what to do about that. Our paths did what they did and I am forever grateful that we were able to find our way back to this place of home.

He once told me that during the years we were apart, he would call my name in the moments before he fell asleep. He didn’t know why he did it, but he had developed a method for putting me back into the box that my memory escaped from when his mind was trying to find rest. For all the times I have now fallen asleep in his arms, I have never once heard this happen. Partly in jest, partly in earnest, I suggested to him recently that maybe he was making that story up during the early days of our reconnection. No, he insisted without hesitation. “I think that was just my soul calling out for yours and now it just doesn’t have to do that anymore.”

make one’s home in a particular place or with a particular person

And now in my skin, in his arms, in the comfort of my chair, I live.

 

Filed Under: Chrysalis, The Thinking Chair Tagged With: , , ,

Writing and Keeping Receipts on Myself

April 9, 2018 by

Recently I came across a writing folder that contained my earliest works. I mean like 30 years ago early. I experienced a whole range of emotions flipping through the pages. That is a topic for another day. But I mention it because that feeling of holding a piece of you that you had long since forgot about is a part of why this text from a friend struck me as holding way more meaning than she probably considered.

I looked at a few of the pieces. It occurred to me that while they really weren’t that good, maybe they could be. Maybe that could be a long term project of idea mining and rewriting into something that is actually readable. Maybe I could tap back into the spirit and rework the attempt and make it better.

Then I realized I couldn’t remember writing any of it. I know that it was me. I recognize the format, the paper, the typeset. My name is on them. But I don’t remember the act of actually writing them. It occurred to me how different that was from the project a few months back when I went through all the Turn Around Tuesdays I had written. I could remember all of that. Sometimes I could remember too much.

Then this text came through. “Envious” and “appreciate” jumped out at me. The feeling was a bit overwhelming and it has taken a minute to sort that all out. The text, and my feelings towards it, hold a lot of truth, some of them seemingly contradicting.

First, I am appreciative, both of the text and my writing. I appreciated my friend and her willingness to be a positive influence on my life. I know she is a regular reader of my words and it gave me a sense of pride that she sees growth in it. I do appreciate all the bonuses and benefits that come with being a writer. Much of who I am as a person, who I am able to be, comes from the fact that I can put words together in a way that makes sense to me and untangles all the thoughts. It also allows me to taste ideas, experiences, memories, lessons, in a way that I just can’t any other way. I am supremely appreciative for all those things.

I understand envy as well. I have friends that are accomplished in ways I really want to be but haven’t quite figured out yet. I watch people deal with situations, employ a mental flexibility, that I haven’t quite mastered. I am familiar with the want of that not yet obtained. It is interesting to find that my writing catalog has provoked that, especially when the this huge blessing, like most, has a tiny bit of curse hanging around.

Curse probably isn’t the most appropriate word choice. But it is something akin to that. There is somewhat of a burden that comes with having a great deal of your thoughts manifest themselves in a real way so that later, when you are investigating thoughts, you have this tangible thing from the time before. In essence, I keep receipts on myself.

Today, sitting here, I am more appreciative than I am burdened. As I close this one thought, I am already bursting at the seams to begin another. That, my friends, is a good day indeed.

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , ,

April on Quora: Cheaters, Pregnancy, SAHM, and Marrying Bipolar

March 27, 2018 by

I have to tell you, as the first post to catalog my answers over at Quora, I don’t know about how I am doing the titles. I mean seriously, look at that – “Cheaters, Pregnancy, SAHM, and Marrying Bipolar” – really? This could be a trash afternoon talk show.

But it isn’t. I think you’ll see by the answers.

Why can’t I leave my husband when I know he won’t stop cheating?

One of two things are true. Either you don’t care that he cheats or you do. Either answer is fine. It’s your vagina. You are grown and are allowed to do with it what you want. It’s your marriage. You are allowed to exist in it the way you want. That isn’t anybody else’e judgement call. You’ll find lots of people who expect you to live your life according to their expectations. Those aren’t your people. I would be careful what advice you let into your headspace. The last thing you need are other people assaulting your worth.

However, from the way you stated your question, I am going to assume you do care and you would rather he didn’t.

You can’t leave him because you just don’t want to leave him. And because no one is likely to tell you this, that is just okay. You may want to want to leave him, but you aren’t there yet. I get it. You probably didn’t meet him and marry him the same day. It is fair deciding you don’t want to be married anymore takes time too. Take the time.

In truth, you may not even want to get there. Many marriages survive infidelity. Many don’t. Guess what? None of that matters because we are talking about your marriage particularly and personally.

We all have the capacity to be a strong, fierce. amazing people. Whether we decide to act within that capacity is a constant choice. Some days that is easier to harness than others. That’s just okay.

The question I would ask you is what did you do today to love yourself? How did you honor your greatness as a person? In what ways did you do things that felt in line with who you are at your core? That’s where all the answers are and that’s where the path to your best life is.

What should I buy my wife as a gift for the birth of our first child?

This answer is going to probably found by paying close attention to her pregnancy journey. And if I am going to beg you not to judge, or protect her from allowing others to judge, her coming into a new momness. She is entering into the most supportive, wonderful, potentially vicious group on the planet.

If being the mommy is super cool to her, a gift that reflects that would be special. Think something that would be appropriate on Mother’s Day.

If she is feeling a bit overwhelmed, think about something that would bring her comfort. The spa idea is great, just remember she won’t be real capable of enjoying that fully during her recovery.

If she is feeling a bit taken over, a gift that is specifically for her would probably be well received.

Whatever you decide on, remember that she was your sexy, desired, loved wife first. In fact, always remember that and make sure she knows that’s still what you see.

Delivering a child is the most beautifully gross thing ever. I came out of each of my deliveries feeling like the strongest badass on the planet. I also felt gross. My body looked and did less than stereo typically attractive stuff in the process of bringing each new life into the world.

The truth is honoring and loving all the parts of her, being in awe of what she is doing, is the best gift you could give her. But something in a pretty wrapped box is an excellent idea. Just the fact that you thought enough to ask the question suggests you are going to do just fine. Congratulations to your family.

Can a stay-at-home mom be fulfilled?

Outside of some rare characteristic, I believe all people have the capacity to be fulfilled.

The journey to finding that usually starts with a reframing or a solid truth acknowledgment of the question in the first place.

Your question – Can a {insert personal label or characteristic here} be fulfilled?
Answer – Yes

The flow chart next step is, “Do I currently feel fulfilled?”

That is where the magic starts.

I can only assume your current answer is “no.” Otherwise, there would be no question.

As a people, we are inundated with assaults to our authenticity. Moms are, in my opinion, the toughest hit targets (For the “Other” Moms) In that collective, it is easy to lose sight of what we actual feel in exchange for what we think we ought to feel.

Capacity for fulfillment happens when we understand that achieving it comes from the sum of our whole, not a sliver of ourselves to which we have attached a label. Especially one that is, by nature, temporary.

How is it to be married to a bipolar person?

It’s the same as being married to anybody else. Seriously. I’ll explain.

Rarely are people blessed with perfect health throughout their lives. If your spouse has high blood pressure, cancer, hemophilia, diabetes, whatever, they have to take that into consideration with their diet and medical choices. That is exponentially easier with a higher rate of success when the spouse is supportive.

Communication is key in a marriage. You have to talk, understand, be patient, assume the best intentions, remember that you love the person standing in front of you.

Boundaries are essential. Regardless of condition, we are entitled to create and maintain boundaries concerning how we will and won’t be treated as people. If you are married to a person who tests those boundaries often, you have to make a decision on whether the relationship is a healthy one. This truth does not change based on a diagnosis.

All marriages have characteristics that make them different from other marriages. But in all of them, it takes support, communication, love, boundaries, effort, and intention.

Filed Under: The Thinking Chair Tagged With: , ,

Finding New Inspiration Writing on Quora

March 26, 2018 by

Look, I get it. I am super late to the Quora game on this one. The truth is, I wasn’t paying attention to the game, didn’t care that there was a game. So I missed this one. Honestly, I would play here even if I wasn’t writing again.

I know, I am getting ahead of myself.

Quora is a question and answer website that has been available to the public since 2010 and currently is estimated to have somewhere around 190 million users (told you I was late to the game). I can’t describe the site better than they can so here it is:

The heart of Quora is questions — questions that affect the world, questions that explain recent world events, questions that guide important life decisions, and questions that provide insights into why other people think differently. Quora is a place where you can ask questions you care about and get answers that are amazing.

That’s the background on the thing. So here’s what happened:

I alternated my audio between Ann Patchett’s fiction work Commonwealth on Audible and Gary Vaynerchuk’s podcast. I finished Commonwealth and was so late to the Gary Vee game (again) that there seems endless material. I needed another book.

I always have to be careful when I pick books. My mood so affects the variety of title I settle on.

Anyway, somehow or another I came across Jordan B. Petersons, 12 Rules for Life.

As an aside, I am only on the second rule and I am hooked. He had me at the lobsters in Rule 1. Seriously, this is a great read.

Peterson mentions Quora in the first few pages of the book. I become intrigued by the narrative. I pause the audio and sit down at the computer. Within the hour I created a profile, asked a few questions, offered a few answers, and exercised great discipline to stop there and get back to my schedule.

It is an amazing site if I can remember to time block, prioritize, and retain the words I put there. It suits my need for direction and focus. I just scroll through questions, wait until I see one that triggers an emotion. Trust me, you won’t have to wait very long. The topics cover everything you could imagine…seriously, everything. Then I click the answers, evaluate whether or not I have something to add, and proceed accordingly. It’s ordered with just the right amount of chaos, it’s functional with just the right amount of drama. It seriously sparks all my words.

So you’ll see those posts pop up here. I am not quite sure how I’ll do that yet. What I do know is that I am not making the same mistake I did in the beginning with TAT and not cross posting stuff into a place where I can archive it for myself.

Additionally, I think some of the questions are great conversation pieces. And, while I have a pretty fair amount of confidence in what I think when I think it, I am open to the idea that there is a perspective out there that I haven’t considered. That’s where you come in. And the wider my perspective, the greater my capacity for empathy. And, I am becoming increasingly convinced that empathy is a cornerstone of my happiness.

Filed Under: The Thinking Chair Tagged With: , , ,

For the “Other” Moms

March 21, 2018 by

I’m just not that kind of mom.

Even as I said it, I knew that it was both true in the context of the conversation and that I wished there was a different way to explain it. I really wished it didn’t have to be explained at all.

While I understand the mom role naturally changes, I have felt an accelerated shift for myself.  The children are getting older the way children do. They are becoming more self sufficient. They are beginning to have their own pre and new adult situations. Situations that, while somewhat similar to my own coming of age, have enough notable differences to be nearly unrecognizable.

21st century parenting, my friends, is not for the weak.

Next school year will find the baby in middle school and two more high school graduations. My Pinterest feed suggests that I should be an endless fount of tears and runny mascara.

I am not.

Our children are co parented and loved by multiple sets of people. My Instagram and Facebook wall suggests that I should defend my position, stay in my lane, feel guilt over the situation to begin with, and celebrate the putting of oneself first.

I do none of these things.

I am just not that kind of mom.

I am a mom advocate. I absolutely love moms. All different kinds of moms – young, old, helicopter, tiger, free range, formula, breast, co sleep, cribs, empty nester, adoptive, birth, borrowed, stay at home, working, organic, boxed, single, attached, woke, tired, balanced, frazzled, together, hot mess, bowed, laced, legging, designer – whatever. I. Love. Moms.

Outside of being a kid, I am of the opinion that being a mom is arguably one of the hardest things to be in cyberspace. I am hard pressed to think of another group who’s collective is, by nature, amazingly personal and infinitely varied, while simultaneously expected to live up to a complex set of changing, unattainable, and contradictory rules.

To this end, I am becoming super comfortable giving the whole “good mom/bad mom” idea a big “whatthefuckever.”

I have known since the early days of my motherhood journey 21 years ago that, while this little creature was completely dependent on me at the moment, it was neither the way it was going to be, nor the way it was supposed to be for long. This child was, and all the children that came after her were, going to leave me. They, if I was ever so lucky, were going to grow and want, and do, and be. All that would come with a change of phone number, a change of address, and a roof and mailbox that were not mine.

In the meantime, these creatures were not programmable. I could not order them according to specifications. They were not given to me to create in my own image. God had already done that. They came into this world people in their own right. It was my job to provide them the safest, healthiest, resource rich environment where they could feel the freedom to learn who they were in their own skin. I failed routinely. I still fail. But that’s part of the deal too. I cannot be perfect and my children cannot be perfect. In our flaws, we feel grace and compassion for each other. We are in this thing together.

Because of this awareness, I have never felt an ownership over my children. They do not validate or define me as a person. I am infinitely thankful for them. I will defend them with ferocity and would sacrifice my breath happily for theirs. But that is because I love them unconditionally, not because of some uterine relationship I may or may not have.

My mother and I are extremely close. We always have been. I also have always had a variety of strong women in my life who love me and I love in return. My mother never restricted those relationships, made me feel guilty for loving another, or suggested that she felt threatened or betrayed – because she wasn’t. Nothing about any of those relationships changed who she was and who I was. What those relationships did do was give me more experiences, more confidence, more perspective, more love, more more.

I was also able to see a bunch of women mommying differently. Not right, not wrong, just different. As I joined their ranks, I saw more variety, more emotions, more preferences. What I have only come to realize recently is while the outside looks different, I think the source is the same.

Mommies love their babies. And we know, on some level, they are going to leave us and be their own people. The emotion that creates in each of us is different because we are different. I don’t cry on the first day of school. That’s not because I don’t care, it’s simply not an event that makes me feel that kind of way. I know moms who are completely distraught on the first day of school. I love that. It makes me feel better when I think about the time the baby, who I knew would be my last baby, lost her first tooth and I sat on the floor and ugly cried.

I don’t get all up in my feelings when my kid makes a poor life choice. I don’t feel like it is a personal reflection on me or my parenting skills. I do get irritated when they play stupid or become overly self-deprecating and I scold myself for not having more patience. I use my strength in one to encourage moms who are feeling less than and my weakness in the other to remember I am thankful for the moms who mommy different and have my six.

We are all the “other” mom. We are all that kind of mom and not that kind of mom. We are tasked with one of the greatest responsibilities on the planet and that path has an infinite number of options. Sometimes I am not super sure I took the right turn at Albuquerque. But today, I trust myself and I trust my tribe. And I am thankful.

Filed Under: Chrysalis, Family, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

No Lobby, No Money, No Relationship

March 1, 2018 by

Our little town, like so many other towns across the country, found itself investigating a threat left on the wall in one of the bathrooms at our high school.

I was angry. Irritated was probably a better word. I learned about the situation via Facebook. Postings led me to the local police department’s page. It was evident that the information had been circulating through the community – kids, schools, law enforcement – since the previous day.

From the school proper, I could find nothing. No email, no text, no post. Parents get regular texts from the schools – late buses, fundraisers, events, etc. But nothing concerning this. I responded to the Facebook post asking if there had been updates, if anyone had heard anything from the schools and was there any information on why they had been silent. There had been nothing, but many parents felt the same way I did. If we had not checked social media, if our kids hadn’t said something, we wouldn’t have known one thing about the threat to the school.

I made the decision to keep my children home. All of them. It made me feel better to be able to look at them all day while the school and the authorities figured out what they were going to do. Do I think they were in actual danger? No. I trust the work and, more importantly, give a shit of our police force. Have I been wrong before? Lots. It’s just a few days of school and it made me feel better. I was good with a bit of extra.

For the record, the school did send out the “there has been a threat identified and the school system and the police department are handling it” notification – an hour after I would have normally dropped my kid off at school.

Mid morning I was contacted by a local television news reporter. She saw my comment on Facebook and would I be interested in meeting with her for an interview on the parents’ perspective. I originally agreed. She would find someone to talk to, might as well be me. After a lot of thought, an unsuccessful attempt to contact the school principal for guidance, and a successful attempt to hash it out with a friend, I declined. The reporter asked if I was concerned about anonymity. I obviously am not. I am concerned about being, at best, useless and, at worst, harmful.

I explained to her that I didn’t think I was the right person. I didn’t really know a whole lot except what had brought about my frustration (the time of the notification). And even that, I doubted but admitted, may have a good reason. I just didn’t know. I didn’t know anything except I knew where my children were and I was super thankful for social media that morning. In a highly emotional situation like this, what could I possibly add that was of value in a news segment that would be short, constructed by someone other than myself, and out of my control when edited and produced? Nothing. I just wasn’t interested.

But I decided I would write about it, if only to sort my own thoughts, document the events, and maybe start a conversation that goes further than the divisive 24 hour news cycle flag planting and party protection.

Let me be clear. The loss of life is tragic. I can’t even begin to imagine. I won’t even being to imagine. The idea rips my heart out. I don’t have any answers, I only have wonders and opinions. I happen to think that’s an okay start. I am smart, thoughtful, and fallible. I am far from a perfect mother and I do not have perfect children. None of that is lost on me.

I am not discussing guns per se in this post. If the conversation afterwards goes in that direction, I am fine with it. It is a topic I rather enjoy. But as long as gun ownership remains inextricably tied to violence among our children, the children lose. They don’t have the lobby or the money to gain priority in the discussion. They are merely used as pawns on both sides of a debate that is exploiting their position as cherished and expending them as emotional capital.

I am not discussing mental health as a diagnosis or health care accessibility. Mental health is supremely important and has been bastardized as a buzz word by those who care little about health and more about excuse, justification, and vindication. Healthcare, a natural follow on to the mental health discussion, is important as well. However, I refer back to the gun paragraph and you can substitute “healthcare.” The truth is the same.

I am not discussing parenting, the lack thereof, the definition of a snowflake, who’s momma needs to beat who’s ass, which church prays the best so that God will come down and fix it, which video game, movie premiere, actor, rapper, heavy metal, satan worshiper, or Elvis, sent morality into the toilet, screentime, organic foods, role of teachers, the competency of the police force, school uniforms, family dinner time, reading time with children, organized playdates, bad moms, absent fathers, failed education system, the current or past administrations, or helicopter, tiger, free range, attachment parenting strategies.

Then fuck April, what are you going to talk about?

I am going to talk about understanding nothing happens in a vacuum, it isn’t just one thing. It is dangerous to ignore the damage we are allowing our children to shoulder while the grown ups fight about god, guns, discipline, and government, feeling better and all comfy in our righteous indignation.

One of the most eye opening and soul crushing things I did yesterday was read the hundreds of comments posted by folks concerning the threat at our school and schools like it. They ran the typical gamut of all the things I said earlier that I am not talking about. If I were to believe what I read, my little town is filled with torches, pitchforks, and people who believe that the systematic forcing of religion solves all woes. What I actually chose to believe is that parents are simply scared for the safety of their children.

It also became clear that there were two distinct camps present. The Everybody Sucks group and the Circle the Wagons crew. Everybody Sucks had plenty of blame to go around – the school administrators, law enforcement, parents, etc. Circle the Wagons defended these same entities at all cost and offered them up as blameless and holy, unable to be questioned or considered. Both evoked the cause of the children on their behalf. Neither acknowledged that they both had value to bring and ideas to learn. We were all looking for one thing, one reason, one virus that we could cure and make the whole thing go away. Most of us were not engaged in discussion. That’s not the way any of this works.

Look, I am well aware that every single generation has claimed differences from the ones before and after it. “Back in my day” is a thing because it is a thing. That’s called life. That’s called progress. But if we continue to insist that all kids today need is a good dose of everything that we got back in the day, we are deluding ourselves.

Seriously, unless I got to keep all my knowledge and experience, you couldn’t pay me to go back in time and be a teenager again. However, I would do that shit for free and with bells on before I would agree to be a teenager today.

This is just my personal experience but I can’t imagine it is so very different than most. We had cliques, popular kids, nerds, dolts, mainstream, outcasts, over achievers, slackers, jocks, and all the rest – just like the generation before and just like the generations after. We had the rumor mills and bullies. You got talked about. Everybody got talked about. Some folks got picked on. All of this happened in the confines of our community. This happened to your face or close behind your back and the fire eventually died because honestly, kids attention spans haven’t changed much. You got to home, hide in your room, maybe ditch school, let the shit die, and then go on about your business. Maybe you had to take it to the next level and meet in the DCT parking lot after school to knock each other around a bit. And it sucked because you’re a kid and you don’t know all the things you don’t know and growing up is just hard.

Today, there is no quarter. There are no geographic borders. There are no identifiable whispers. The onslaught is relentless. One thing, one misstep and your kid in Tampa is getting harassed from snot nosed teenagers in Spokane. And it never goes away. It gets shared and reshared and retweeted and reposted and instead of people getting bored and the fire fanning out, these kids are working in time zones shifts to stoke that sucker so that it stays ablaze.

The expectations are higher. That prank you pulled when you toilet papered the teacher’s desk? Super funny in your little town. But what do you have to do to compete with the 5 billion YouTube videos watched every. Single. Day. And sure, you teach your kids that competition isn’t important, that the internet is a virtual playground of fiction and bad ideas. But they are children. I can’t begin to tell you how many bad ideas happened when I was a kid because one guy’s truck did a thing and so the other guys had to figure out what to do next.

The ability to find the thing that makes you special is harder. And teenagers need to feel special. It was hard enough to achieve that in a school of a couple thousand. These kids are now trying to figure out how to make it when they are in contact with hundreds of thousands. As parents we do the best we can, but we have been sucked into the same damn thing. Every mom I know has had that moment where she has compared herself to the chick she found on the internet and spent days questioning if she was even worthy of a uterus. How do we expect our children to do any better?

Being a kid is just harder. That isn’t anybody’s fault. It just is. As such, being a parent is harder. Again, no fault, it just is. And there’s no handbook for it because our parents never came close to anything like this. My mother thanks baby Jesus in earnest that all her children are already grown. That woman is one of the best mommas on the planet and even she doesn’t want the job today. She is a great listener and we talk about stuff, but she will be the first to admit she has no real advice for me because she has no clue where to begin.

Nobody is discussing the fact that we are the first generation of parents that are tasked with both navigating who we are in relationship to all the technological advances while simultaneously having to raise children to be able navigate it as well.

And the truth is, the adults aren’t doing it very well. We are real assholes online. From dogging the mom’s outfit choice to the dad smoking while waiting in the car line, and all manner of judgement, name calling, rhetoric engaging, bullshit memes, and satire articles posted as fact and proof, we are a generation of cyber assholes.

The problem with that is that there isn’t a kid internet and an asshole adult internet. It is the same internet and our kids see us. They see us unable to engage in intelligent conversation. They see us resort to bullshit made up facts, rumors, and irrelevant character assassination. They watch us judge people we don’t know and assign motives to people we have never had a conversation with. They watch us. And they imitate us. And they hurt people.

Our children are dying trying to find real connection, real belonging, real fucking real. They aren’t mature enough to understand the nuances of fact and facade. They aren’t experienced enough to separate the genuine from the charlatan. They are looking for us to show them how to create real relationships. But we are so busy protecting our scared cows and condemning those who don’t think exactly like us, that we have forgotten how to do it ourselves.

Look, I am not saying we are bad people. We aren’t. We’ve just forgotten how to have conversations or that they are even important. We have forgotten that thoughts go deeper than a headline, bumper sticker, or squirrel meme. We pimped out our MySpace and got the idea that somehow substituted for having coffee with a real person.

But I have faith in us. I have faith in our ability to build relationships that accomplish positive progress. And I really believe in coffee.

Filed Under: Current Events Tagged With: , ,