~thankful thursday~ navigating transitions

Posted on November 16, 2017 by marybethrew

11/9/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 9

i may have already mentioned a certain man i am thankful for, but recently i’ve been specifically feeling gratitude for his navigational skills. there is just about nothing i’d rather be doing than riding in the passenger seat while he drives me anywhere. it was why we chose to go on a road trip for our honeymoon this summer. we are very happy driving places together! this still blows me away, because there was a time in my life when not only was i expected to do the navigating, i was put down for how badly i did the job. i still claim that i am better with directions at sea than on land, but i don’t think i’d be so bad at land navigation if i hadn’t been emotionally abused so much in that area. now, on the exceedingly rare occasions that rich does ask a navigational question of me, guess what? it’s okay with him if i make a mistake or simply have no idea what the answer to the question is. it’s just simply not a source of stress in our lives.

most of the time, however, nothing is required of me in this department, because rich just seems to always know which way to turn. we drove a different way to portland last weekend, back roads the whole way, until at one point he told me, “ok hang on, we’re going on a new adventure!” and put on his turn signal. it’s amazing how he never has to back track or ask for directions, and equally amazing how he turns off on so many unmarked country roads that seem like they probably don’t go anywhere, at least to my eye. we made it to portland with time to spare for coffee and a burger before the show.

in the state of oregon, his directional abilities have a lot to do with having driven his kids back and forth across the state for years on their way to track meets, basketball games, and other sporting events. he rarely even consults an atlas anymore, when we are traveling inside the state. when we drove across state lines to montana for our honeymoon, he could be found sneaking a peak at various maps. i think it is recreational reading for him to study how the roads all weave together across the terrain. all of this is lovely for me, since it means i get to ride in my favorite seat and photo-document the journey.

11/10/17

~30 days of gratitude~ day 10

today i am grateful for date night, rainbows, and inspirational women!

11/11 and 11/12 and 11/13/17

~30 days of gratitude~ days 11, 12, and 13

i am grateful for forgiveness. i sometimes lose track of days and plans and agendas and schedules whenever the week transitions from life with quinn to life without quinn. i forgive myself for not getting an A in gratitude, and skipping a few days while i regrouped (and worked, and played, and went on a date, and cooked and cleaned.) i forgive myself for putting off writing a holiday to-do list, and i forgive myself for that list being insanely long once i finally wrote it, in spite of wanting to keep the holidays simple, and i forgive myself for not checking any items off the list yet.

i’m thankful for the way ani difranco (who i got to see on friday night, so lucky, so grateful!) has managed to write lyrics that describe my life for several decades running. she had her daughter a month before i had my son (and he was almost a month overdue), and while we were both pregnant she wrote, “you’re gonna love this world if it’s the last thing i do, the whole extravagant joke topped in bittersweet chocolate goo, for someone who ain’t even here yet, look how much the world loves you…”

it feels like an extravagant joke topped in bittersweet chocolate goo to drop off my son only to turn around and get taken on a date. i miss him but i think i appreciate both him and the time alone with my man all the more for the times in between. and then i am overjoyed to pick him up a week later.

transitions are a way of life for my kiddo, who spends equal halves of his life in two separate households. he has grown so much in his ability to transition gracefully, and now he does a better job than anyone. and that’s not to mention developmental transitions that are going on all the time. into fifth grade, into percussion lessons, into packing his own school lunches, into attending theatre workshops, into defying his mama and staying awake to read his book under the covers by head lamp. more bittersweet chocolate goo!

i am thankful for how forgiveness of past hurts frees me from the poison of resentment. i am also thankful for the perspective to know the difference between forgiveness and acceptance of unacceptable behavior. forgiveness is a present i give myself, not a welcome mat for abuse.

i thank my lucky stars that my husband and i don’t venture into areas requiring forgiveness.

like the little creatures in the ocean that bioluminesce, i am trying to generate my own light during this dark time. many organisms are triggered to glow when they encounter disturbance, and transition times are a continuous source of predictable disturbance for me, like waves, like tides. i have always felt like that dynamic position in the universe where air, land and sea coalesce on the edge of the ocean is the most magical, and of course that transition between rain and sun that brings us rainbows is another personal favorite. i am thankful for the magic around the edges of things.

11/14 and 11/15/17

~30 days of gratitude~ days 14 and 15

i am thankful for rainbows in unexpected places and other surprises.

p.s. last night i was thankful for nachos again!

~rainbow mondays~ the colors of silence

Posted on March 13, 2017 by marybethrew

i’ve found the rainbow connection, at least when it comes to potluck dishes. i was assigned veggies for the family st. patrick’s day get together (celebrated early this year) and though i would personally make a rainbow for any occasion, the leprechaun believer in me felt this was a fitting occasion.

white: we’ve been learning about sleet…

pink: but now we are starting to see more very hopeful signs of spring! high up in the plum tree, a burst of pink blossoms really made my sunny sunday. i even broke out the old heart-shaped lens for the occasion.

red: this might not look like a heart-shaped lens photo, but it is the real deal. the sister who made too much dinner for her family on a friday night so she made dinner for mine, too, that kind of heart-shaped lens. also known as providence.

red: said sister had a perfect viewing/photographing spot during our st. patty’s celebration for our hummingbird friends. i may have to do a whole hummingbird post!

red: rich in raspberries, the boy can talk his mama into buying out of season fruit once in a while.

the raspberry

ilse, a childhood friend of mine,

once found a raspberry in the camp

and carried it in her pocket all day

to present to me that night on a leaf.

imagine a world in which

your entire possession is

one raspberry and

you gave it to your friend.

~gerda weissman klein, holocaust survivor; new england holocaust memorial

red: there was a story that went along with the hand gestures…

orange: my fall-planted bulbs are starting to bloom! these little crocuses brightened my weekend.

i sing sometimes

like my life is at stake

’cause you’re only as loud

as the noises you make

i’m learning to laugh as hard

as i can listen

’cause silence

is violence

in women and poor people

if more people were screaming then i could relax

but a good brain ain’t diddley

if you don’t have the facts…

…for every lie i unlearn

i learn something new

i sing sometimes for the war that i fight

’cause every tool is a weapon –

if you hold it right.

~ani difranco

gold: i love this guy, such an individual.

ani also says:

and half of learning how to play

is learning what not to play

and she’s learning the spaces she leaves

have their own things to say

then she’s trying to sing just enough

so that the air around her moves

and make music like mercy

that gives what it is

and has nothing to prove

yellow: first dandelions! so, this week’s rainbow includes a little collection of quotes that kept finding me as i was researching some of my earlier posts. it seems that the theme of silence is a big one, when it comes to threats facing vulnerable people. i have been struggling with finding the balance between “learning what not to play” and letting my silence suggest i’m complacent. i’ve also been feeling like i’m saying too much, and being pulled in the direction of staying quiet, and at other times, have felt that i’m not saying enough. i’m definitely not going to claim i’ve found that balance, and will probably continue to err on the side of verbosity, just to make sure. but for today i’m letting others’ words do most of the talking.

first they came for the socialists, and i did not speak out—

because i was not a socialist.

then they came for the trade unionists, and i did not speak out—

because i was not a trade unionist.

then they came for the jews, and i did not speak out—

because i was not a jew.

then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

~martin niemöller

yellow: a lone skunk cabbage on the new bayou vista, reflecting on things.

green: a couple of old souls

green: this is serious business, the feeders require filling daily during this busy frenzy before they nest!

green: some years i am able to snap a before pic of the green jello… not this year.

green: i had 8 yards of compost delivered to the dragon house, and used my sunny sunday to wheel 20 loads (4 buckets each) to dump into the terraces. it’s really starting to look like a garden in there! handsome fiance overseeing the documentation of progress in the late afternoon.

green: then we went for a walk to the bayou, heart-shaped lens in hand.

green: a thursday afternoon stretch of highway on the way to eugene with my love to see some more live music. unintentional rear view selfie and soggy farmland. more reflecting, while i enjoyed my place on the passenger side.

we must take sides. neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. sometimes we must interfere. when human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.

~elie wiesel

blue: farmland, with trees, more passenger side view.

elie wiesel declined to have his memoir night produced as a feature film. he felt his story would lose its meaning without the silences in between words.

blue: we got to see these lovelies, the shook twins (an oregon country fair favorite of ours) after that lovely ride through farm country and a killer burger. they are some inspiring young women with something to say. they just happen to say it, as they put it, with “the face drum,” the “telephone opera,” and a giant egg. they also play the heck out of their guitar and banjo, but they played an amazing version of the tears for fears song mad world, all just with their voices. very powerful.

they were the opening act, and then we got to see the wood brothers, who were a new band for us.

and if you ask him

how he sings his blues so well

he says

i got a soul that i won’t sell

~wood brothers

purple: miner’s lettuce in abundance at the dragon house! i love the vibrant green mossy backdrop for this purple spring yumminess.

red violet: so much easier to get a non-blurry photo of a primrose when the sun comes out!

black: an exciting blank canvas, waiting for rainbow flowers!

~rainbow mondays~

a splash of color on monday

a photo study documenting the colors of the spectrum: the balance points between light reflected and light absorbed

life imitates art

Posted on February 26, 2016 by marybethrew

i took my time on the weekly photo challenge “life imitates art“. waiting for breaks in the rain and trying to pose daffodils, i didn’t achieve what i was hoping to in trying to to emulate georgia o’keeffe’s amazing flower paintings. an impossible goal, but irresistible as daffodils and plum blossoms bloomed. it goes without saying they don’t do georgia o’keeffe justice. ah, but her art makes me happy. while on the subject of artists i love: “and every pop song on the radio is suddenly speaking to me…” sing along with ani and me if you know the words.

black and white

Posted on March 15, 2013 by marybethrew

i burst into tears yesterday over a passage (no, actually, it was a list in the sidebar) in the book i’m reading on asperger’s and parenting. the heading of the sidebar was behavioral manifestations of anxiety. all sixteen of the listed items applied to quinn. i hadn’t fully understood all sixteen of them as manifestations of anxiety, though, until i saw them all listed in one place like that. it has me experiencing a little anxiety myself, but i’m going to keep breathing and keep reading and see what i can learn. come along with me as i process…

one of the bits i keep hearing from professionals and books is that aspies engage in a lot of black-and-white thinking, and that abstract concepts are hard for them. quinn has his moments of being able to hang with abstract concepts, but he does often take things quite literally, he does often see only either/or options and fail to see the many alternative solutions to a problem, and he expects to be perfect at what he does, which is yet another form of black-and-white thinking. this book (parenting your asperger child, by sohn and grayson) is saying that the black-and-white thinking arises from anxiety, especially that caused by difficulty with understanding the world around him.

the book approaches things from a different parenting paradigm than the one i inhabit. trying to find a frame of reference for what we are experiencing compared to neurotypical children, to determine if quinn is other than neurotypical, i can find very little in the book to help me. when there is a list of motivations behind the behaviors of an asperger child, the afterthought is that these anxiety-driven motivations set the behaviors apart from those that are merely attention-seeking or “just plain misbehavior”; is that what the authors believe is more likely the motivation behind neurotypical children’s problem behaviors? that has never been my worldview. i’m more aligned with a ya-ya sisterhood view of children:

just what if god didn’t intend for everything to be perfect? what if he knew it was going to be a holy mess, and he loved us anyway? what if adam and eve weren’t sinning? what if that prenatal original sin stain on our souls is not even there?

…when my boys were born, i looked at each one of them and said NO to that original sin shit. i looked at my babies and thought, you are pure, holy, perfect, complete and undefiled. and nobody can tell me different, not the pope his royal self. believe it now.

i’m reading ya-yas in bloom, by rebecca wells, to balance out my asperger parenting manual. i believe that children are innately good, that they want to belong and behave and thrive and are driven to do so by their own fully intact inner nature. i have never been a believer in “he’s just doing that to get attention” or rather, when children seek attention, i think they should be given attention. and i couldn’t resist the timeliness of the quote about the pope.

and i wouldn’t be doing my worldview justice if i didn’t mention ani:

when i was four years old
they tried to test my i.q.
they showed me a picture
of 3 oranges and a pear
they said,
which one is different?
it does not belong
they taught me different is wrong

the only other line (back to the non-fiction title now – sorry to jump around) that gives a frame of reference so far briefly mentions that the behaviors in an aspie might be more of the same you’d see with any other child, the difference being a matter of degree, intensity, or frequency. leaving me still searching for a frame of reference, alas.

i have been mindful of eliminating expectations from my life in an effort to reduce my own tendency to be uptight and resentful when things don’t turn out to match my search image. it helps me go with the flow to show up with a blank slate and discover the boy who is in front of me. if i had a real clear expectation in my mind of what a six year old boy was supposed to be like, and could clearly see how we deviated from that set of expectations, i might have a better grasp of this label business. i have a grasp of who quinn is, but not how he compares. i have a really deep sense of what makes him tick, and when i read lists of reasons for rigidity in an aspergian child, and can check off every single one of them for things i see quinn reacting to, i turn the page looking for how this is a deviation from a neurotypical approach. are nt kids never rigid? if they are sometimes rigid, is it because of the same motivating factors like fearing change and not understanding intuitively how a certain interaction is usually done? is it the same as nt behavioral motivations, only more intense? am i just over in some other city in italy, or am i way over in holland? i guess i am looking for the authors to state what must to them be the obvious.

i still think the book has something to offer in terms of strategies for introducing more flexibility when a child becomes rigid, and showing him how to see more middle ground, more gray areas.

let’s say, for example, that you have a list of guiding principles that you have developed together and discussed over time:

safe
gentle
honest (this is a newer one we’ve recently added to the list)
golden rule- treat others as you would like them to treat you.

and say you are working pretty hard on helping your son remember to be honest: even when you think we want to hear “yes” when we ask if you brushed your teeth, we want you to tell us “no” if no is the true answer. however (****gray area alert!!!****), there are things people keep in their head and are not technically honest about, like when you like the store waffles better than your mama’s homemade ones.

the one thing that really hits home for me in the published strategies for handling skill-teaching with asperger’s children is the need to take things step by step and explain even things that seem obvious. the idea is, there are things that are obvious to many of us that are a complete mystery to someone with asperger’s. quinn often needs things spelled out. there are many messages we receive that are subtly implied, things we just “take in”, that an aspergian is not “taking in”- they are not reading between the lines the same way that most of us are. if that makes him sound slow on the uptake then i am doing him a disservice with my words- quite the contrary, he can be told once and have something memorized for life, but if it’s delivered in the wrong packaging, he may never receive it, even if he is told a thousand times.

of course, there are things all children need to be told a thousand times.

it’s working out well for us because one of my conclusions about parenting early on was that it always seemed to help to state the obvious with quinn. i began doing this when he was very young and experiencing strong emotions, and whenever he did cry or get angry, i would name the feeling he was having out loud. “you’re feeling sad. you didn’t want to stop playing with that.” i think this is helpful in building any child’s emotional intelligence, but with quinn, in retrospect, it might be the reason he has an emotional iq at all. it is one of the many ways he doesn’t fit the aspergian mold: he can name his feelings. he still has a hard time understanding what other people are feeling. are there are lot of six year old boys who are experts at this?

sometimes i think maybe he is an aspergian with a lot of neurotypical quirks he has developed from having a quirky mama.

thanks for reading along while i process. i’m so grateful for all the thought-provoking comments and emails i’ve gotten about all of this, and as always would love to hear your thoughts, ideas, further reading recommendations, etc. have a great weekend!

p.s. experiencing driftwood block envy? go here.

which side are you on?

Posted on February 18, 2013 by marybethrew

“it’s about a shifting consciousness that’ll bring an end to war

so listen up you fathers, listen up you sons,

tell me which side are you on, now, which side are you on?”

~ani difranco

send good thoughts our way on wednesday. when our child psychologist called me this past wednesday evening, we joked first about what a good night we had had the previous saturday, when we were at the same birthday party for a mutual friend. it’s a small town after all. then he told me there is a meeting of the inter-agency planning team scheduled for this coming wednesday morning concerning quinn.

i have only a vague idea of what the purpose of this meeting is, and the ideas i do have revolve around the fact that my coparent is not backing down from his false accusations of me, and is instead manufacturing more of them, and making various attempts around town to keep them alive. someone on his “side” has called this meeting, which is basically comprised of representatives from various agencies such as dhs, mental health, and the school district. i was invited as an afterthought, and only then because our child psychologist, who happens to be a founder and standing member of this committee, stamped his foot. he told them he would recuse himself if both parties were not present. but even still, he is the only one involved in the planning who has notified me of this meeting, and he is not the coordinator, nor is he the one who petitioned for the meeting to happen. needless to say, my coparent certainly hasn’t mentioned it to me, but he has been almost completely silent towards me in the past few weeks.

the reason these meetings are held is because of the oft-repeated phrase “the system isn’t working”. the goal of these meetings is to help improve communication among agencies that deal with children’s welfare and when a case comes to the team’s attention, it is because someone has a complaint with the way a case has been handled among agencies.

if i had to guess, my coparent’s version of “the system isn’t working” is that i still have my son in spite of him having provided numerous false accusations that, if they were believed by the authorities, would have lost me my parenting rights. by now, he feels quinn should have been removed from me and i should be paying him an exorbitant amount of child support. i realize it is generally not a good idea to guess at someone else’s motivations, but as i have just received a medical report from quinn’s last doctor visit (the one when he was prescribed an inhaler without my knowledge or consent) that plainly states “dad reports that quinn said mom beat him up,” i have very little ability left in me to give him the benefit of the doubt. and i cringe that this might all have been discussed in front of quinn in the doctor’s office.

at times i myself wonder about “the system” and how it might be more effective, such as our experience trying to suss out evaluation criteria for asperger’s, and the months-long ordeal we have gone through to get an answer of “no” to that question. i also wonder about a system that continues to take a person’s false accusations at face value, repeatedly, and spends tax dollars re-investigating someone they’ve already investigated and found to be without fault.

so this will be the third incidence of walking into a room to face dhs personnel and defend myself against the accusation that i abuse quinn. in spite of a distinct sense of being considered guilty until proven innocent, over and over again, i am striving to walk in and be the farthest thing from defensive. the child psych and others on “my side” are assuring me that i don’t need to drag in a bunch of character witnesses, and that they have a view about this that is inconsistent with me being an abusive parent. for what it’s worth, he does not see himself on anyone’s side, but i think of him that way because he has been quite a support over the past year. the other night he said that while one explanation could ostensibly be that i am abusive in addition to also being schizophrenic, he felt this was not the most parsimonious explanation, and that if it were the case, i am doing the most amazing job of being schizophrenic that he has ever seen in 20+ years of experience. he knows what he is looking at, and is comfortable enough to be able to be candid with his theories and throw in a little tongue in cheek humor to make it fun.

so send me some non-defensive vibes, folks. i know in my heart i have no reason to be defensive, i have always done right by my son. there is a whole world of people who know it, too, and i trust they (you) all will be there with me in spirit.

i received a letter from my coparent, the day after my first date with rich, over a year ago now. in an uncharacteristic moment of acknowledgement, he said he realized that he had spent our entire time together picking me apart. the letter was a last ditch attempt to ask me for one more chance, and i turned him down of course, not only because i had a newly blossoming better offer, but because that ship had already sailed. i did try to be nice about it and also to point out that if he acted on his stated intentions (to start hearing my story from me rather than being convinced he knew my deal) that coparenting should be a smoother sail from there on out.

i wouldn’t exactly call it smooth sailing over here in coparenting land.

on the other hand, i now know what it is like to have someone accept me unconditionally, without picking me apart. i still have to work hard at not picking myself apart (physically and mentally), and after all i have been through in the relationship department, that may take some time to fully heal. in this amazing love i am now in, i am becoming more gentle with myself, inspired by the gentleness with which my love treats me. experiencing what it feels like when someone is truly accepting of all my faults, i am newly able to hear him point out some of those faults when it matters, and hear them without reacting. which opens all sorts of doors to improving my experience here on this earth. he is able to tell me about my tendencies to bristle and become defensive and react prematurely with aversion and negativity to a new idea, he is able to let me know that i tend to interrupt, and i can hear all of that without doubting that he loves me with all his heart. because he spends all of his time loving me and treating me in loving ways, his words come across as protective and caring rather than destructive and mean. they happen to be all of the same flaws i used to be verbally abused over, and so i still do have the ability to be triggered by such feedback, but i am finding that it isn’t generally the way that it goes. i still have those old grooves that i could potentially fall into, but the new patterns of openness have taken over as the default. generally, i am able to listen to his feedback and consider it and acknowledge the truth of it and ponder ways to work at it. not only that, i feel lucky to have the opportunity to improve in some of these areas, with a supportive guy around who will love me through it all. none of these flaws make me a bad person, they just make me normal. he doesn’t see me as any less worthy of his love because i have a few flaws, and it helps that he also freely admits to having a few of his own.

when he told me i have a tendency to interrupt, i did not feel judged or criticized, i just listened. here’s this guy who is completely gaga for me, who has paid attention to what i am like, and noticed this about me, so i’m taking it seriously. i know it is a true statement about me, and have been told so before, but having it said now in such a gentle, kind way to me transforms the experience. this is also the first time rich has said most of these things to me, over a year into our relationship, and he was just talking strategy for this meeting. he wasn’t saying that it annoys him, he wasn’t demanding i change to improve his life, but instead: here’s how you can come across sometimes, so try not to do it in the meeting because we want this to go really well, even though it will be really hard, and no one could fault you for feeling the way you do.

i don’t feel defensive when it comes from rich. and he is so right that i need to watch that tendency when i’m walking into a room full of potential enemies and especially my coparent. rich can say these things and i can be unhurt by them and not jump to my own defense; on the contrary, this room will be full of people who do not make me feel like they are protecting and nurturing and accepting me unconditionally while they make their criticisms. it will be hard work to keep from bristling and wanting to jump in and reply, but i plan to keep my center and wait my turn to speak. and when it is my turn, i plan to speak my truth, with the single-pointed focus of quinn’s best interest at the forefront of everything i have to say. (that focus part won’t be hard.) and by the way, rich isn’t planning on sitting quietly, either.

so i plan to walk in there with as few preconceived notions as possible about the purpose and outcomes of this meeting. it will be hard to pull that off, but i would love for this meeting to become a forum for everyone who cares about quinn to be able to communicate much more effectively than we all have been. in spite of that not being the stated reason for this meeting, in spite of the fact that i wasn’t really on the guest list, in spite of how coparenting has become so adversarial over the past year, it is the outcome i would like to see. all those who care about quinn should be on the same side. i feel certain that quinn himself would be on board with that idea.

p.s. thank you to grammy and grampy for the awesome pre-birthday trip to the zoo! we will have more (and better) photos in a week or so when i get my film developed!

“i like the word heal”

Posted on February 16, 2012 by marybethrew

i like the word heal. ~ quinn

problem: hernia

probable cause: ruptured relationships. strain, burdens, incorrect creative expression.

new thought pattern: my mind is gentle and harmonious. i love and approve of myself. i am free to be me.

~louise hay, you can heal your life

and… how about that new ani difranco album?

so let the way of women

guide democracy

and from plunder and pollution

let mother earth be free

feminism ain’t about women

that’s not who it is for

it’s about a shift in consciousness

that will bring an end to war

so listen up you fathers

listen up you sons

and tell me which side are you on now

which side are you on?

~ani difranco’s lyrics to pete seeger’s which side are you on?

as soon as i read that definition of hernia by louise hay, i was ready to have surgery right then and there. i monitored said hernia through five plus years of pregnancy and breastfeeding hoping to avoid surgery until my baby was weaned. a few weeks ago it got out of control and it became really clear to me that it was this loose end from a broken past that needed to be tied up. a porthole through which the past still crept in that needed to be stitched closed for good. and i’m not the biggest fan of allopathic medicine as i’m sure you’ve gathered along the way here… but to everything there is a season, and i’ve got bigger and better things to be doing now than thinking about old ruptured relationships: i am free to be me.

oddly enough, the old ruptured relationship is still trying to cause strain and burden in my life and yet, recent developments in that department have also given me hope that those other loose ends are also finally being lifted away from me. (it got worse before it could get better and it has been exactly two weeks and three days since i’ve seen or talked to my son… but still. i see divine wisdom in the timing and the way things have come about.) my friend asked me last night how i can keep from feeling angry about what is happening right now, and although i will admit that emotion has not been completely absent, what i feel predominantly is freedom. i feel good! i feel like celebrating that the old shit no longer has a hold over me. the way i see it, i spent years of my life super gluing and duct taping that bridge back together, bending over backwards to keep quinn’s dad in the game so quinn could have a dad in his life. he would manifest a problem, sneak some beams out of the structural supports of the bridge, and i’d haul in some lumber and a screw gun and manifest a solution. but now, oh now… he just torched the bridge. and i no longer feel i have any obligation or desire to use one more shred of duct tape on behalf of bridging that gaping chasm. my resources shall be reserved for the aforementioned bigger and better things. (this just in: the bill of rights applies to me, too!)

wouldn’t it be nice if we had an amendment

to give civil rights to women

to once and for all just really lay it down

from the point of view of women

i know what you’re thinking

that’s just redundant

chicks got it good now

they can almost be president…

…in this amendment shall be

family structures shall be free

we’ll have the right to civil union

with equal rights and equal protection

intolerance finally ruined

and then there’s the kids’ rights!

(they’ll naturally be on board)

the funnel through which women’s lives are poured….

~ani difranco amendment

i love her funnel imagery- it’s all over the album artwork and woven through the songs, and i just want to be a conduit through which emotions (like love) can freely flow. i am finished being strained and clenched and clogged up with hatred and anger. i plan to waste zero energy on hating. i want to let love flow through me, i want to funnel it straight into quinn and rich and the rest of the people who love me and support me until we’re all overflowing. i’ve been humbled and awed by the enormousness of the collective consciousness that is focused on making this right. every flavor of prayer and mother bear energy is being added to the river from far and wide, and i am feeling so much gratitude.

i am confident that the truth is going to shine through to every person involved in this situation. i know who i am, and no lies about who i am have any power over me anymore.

there is something about the timing of all of this… this war i find myself dragged into fighting against my will, this physical manifestation of healing ugly past hurts, and the release date of ani’s album, coincident with the war on women that seems to be raging again/still, if i am to take any of what the media is saying about bishops and birth control, and opposition to the renewal of the violence against women legislation seriously…

really? really?! i became joe biden’s biggest fan when, in 2008, i learned that he had been the guy to originally write that law, that made it possible for me to walk in and get that restraining order that i really, really needed at that time to protect myself and my son. i caught wind of some talk that “women use these things to manipulate and take advantage of men” and even if that had an ounce of truth in it, i just have to ask, did any man ever die from that? do 3 men every day die at the hands of their violent spouses? no, they do not. yes every system is broken, but it is imperative that the system remain in place, it only comes up for renewal so that it can remain in the forefront of our minds and receive improvements, not because there was ever any doubt that it need be in place, and i am appalled that anyone would consider dividing along party lines on this crucial issue. in case anyone was wondering where i stood on that… ok i think a little bit of anger may have found a wee release valve. whoa nellie. stepping down off soapbox.

…so long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
ask yourself: will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

go with your love to the fields.
lie down in the shade. rest your head
in her lap. swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts…

~wendell berry, manifesto: the mad farmer liberation front

i’ve just gotten word that quinn will be back with me very shortly. i can’t wait to hug him for a week straight. around here, we like the word heal.

it’s enough just to stay upright

upright in every single way

and pour your love into your children

until there’s nothing left to say.

~ani, zoo

unclenching

Posted on January 4, 2011 by marybethrew

my life has not been without stress (i hear my girlfriends choking on their coffee at the understatement. hi ladies. hugs.) i don’t blog a lot about stress, so far, it seems, though of course anything is possible and i’m still pretty new on the blogging scene. as i sit here typing tonight, not my usual time of day to type, my son just having fallen asleep for the night, myself just having cracked open a beer (not my usual typing beverage), having simultaneously contemplated having been in a relationship with an alcoholic, as one does every time one opens a beer after having been in a relationship with an alcoholic… i realize that more often than not, i arrive here at the keyboard with my thoughts somewhat distilled down to a semi-polished thought (i’m not referring to my writing skill as semi-polished, just to be clear!), a “what i learned about myself during that experience” rather than a spewing of the experience itself. i have a best friend who receives the better part of the vent/rant/grit/gore/rawness that comes with a life-not-free-of-stress. i have several close mama friends i can turn to for stress-specific-to-mamahood. i have my journal, for those things that are so raw they can’t go anywhere else, certainly-not-on-your-life on a blog. i don’t tend to come here to process, though it does happen that i come here and just due to the nature of writing, some processing happens. all sorts of hyphens insert themselves as a side effect of processing. 😉 but everything i come here with, my friends, is completely authentic. you are only getting a little piece of my truth, but it is most definitely my truth.

“you wouldn’t try to put the ocean in a paper cup.”

when i lay down to sleep at night, at age 32, i go through several minutes of unclenching. the way i apparently have always coped with stress and even minor details of life that aren’t even stressful, is by somatizing feelings. that is, instead of having emotions, i have bodily aches and pains. i store the emotional energy, rather than being a conduit for emotion to just flow in and out of. this is apparently one of a plethora of ways that traumatized people cope with the effects of trauma. i have not really figured out whether i am a traumatized individual or not, but let’s just say, too many of the symptoms fit to not at least consider it. it also seems clear that i am somewhat of an empath, which may seem counterintuitive given what i’ve just said about my lack of emotional iq, but i mean it in the sense that i experience emotions in a strong way, i am sensitive to many external things that bring on those strong emotions… but then instead of dealing with the emotional energy in an ideal way, i pack it up into little toxic pockets in my body. double whammy!

i am eternally grateful for yoga. since i began practicing yoga 5 years ago, i have at least become aware that i store toxic stuff in my body. at that point in time, i began the long process of trying to unclench my aching muscles, lengthen them, open my body back up, breathe, live. the first few months, yoga hurt. sitting up straighter hurt so badly. every night i try to release the new things i’ve unintentionally stored throughout my day. as i lay down, i’m a crunched up practically quivering piece of jangled nerve, almost hovering over the flannel sheets, and as i breathe, i slowly loosen the knots with my mind, traveling around each part of my body, or at least as many as it takes to fall asleep. lying down beside a kiddo who will sense my jangled-ness has also been key to raising my awareness on this. i imagine it is the same for most children- he absorbs what i feel as there is as yet very little barrier in between us, and if i’m hovering off the bed with tension, he is not going to stay soundly asleep for long.

my friend vanessa has a really useful analogy of how she has reduced the backpack of baggage she carries through life to a fanny pack, but sometimes it feels as though she has simply packed it all in tighter so said fannypack is as heavy as lead. that’s my paraphrase anyway, or maybe how i saw my own life for a while, through that lens. i don’t feel my pack getting loads lighter as i evolve, either, but i am liking to think (to riff on the borrowed analogy) that my back pack full of baggage is being converted steadily to a tool pack. if i’m gonna be lugging stuff around, let it be useful tools to deal with potential baggage before it manifests any ugliness or gains any weight or lodges itself in my muscle tissue.

many of the tools i’ve gathered have to do with unclenching my body, unclenching my mind and soul in the process. i have found ways to lull my spirit. “i will go singing as the solitude sets in, in time with the rhythm of everywhere i have been.” i am learning to look at the ugliness, the “beautiful and grotesque” aspects of my past, as little rock cairns that show i was here and by extension, hey look how i’ve grown.

some of the tools are even more awesome, in that they help me actually feel the feelings as they come rather than store them to day’s end or until the next yoga class. i’m very much a novice at emotional awareness, but at least now i’m practicing. it’s like reporting your emotional weather on a regular basis, ideally minute to minute. noticing the feeling, watching it flow on through. bye bye. do not pass go. do not collect $200. do not go into storage in my neck/shoulders/lower back/hips/stomach/jaw/throat…….

i have had a few moments of insecurity recently about my blog, and it’s so funny because i have no idea if anyone is even reading it, beyond you few faithful devotees who seem like you love me even when i am at my ugliest… i have this motion picture in my head (roll camera…) a woman sitting at her keyboard, with gazillions of readers waiting with bated breath for her next droplets of wisdom to go live, and she is blissfully unaware she has gazillions of readers, all of this happening on the screen while ani difranco rocks the soundtrack of course. i also have the more realistic vision of what this blog is: that this is really for me, and my audience is a few people like my bestie, a handful of my mama friends, and maybe my mom, if she has fast enough internet on a given day. ani is, of course, still rocking the soundtrack. speaking of ani, she is responsible for everything in quotes here in this post…

i obsessed a little with my bestie about my tagline and whether it seems too “labelly” and should i revise it. she assured me (as any bestie would) that it is a good balance of telling a little about myself and what i write about, it’s not about being a label, and changing it would be less authentic than (gasp) employing a label. it remains.

i never really set out to blog… it just sort of happened. 2011 just sort of came upon me in the same way. resolutions? intentions? what? where’d that year go?

“hour follows hour like water in a river

and from one to the next

we don’t know what each hour will deliver

we just call it like we see it

call it out loud as we can

and then afterwards we call it all water over the dam…”

when i think about things like trauma, i could easily go the route of being angry. i mean, i could sit here and rage on some people, right? “but you can’t place blame, cuz blame is much too messy. some is bound to get on you while you were trying to put it on me.” we are all wounded in some way, and it’s never done me any good to dwell on who done who wrong. (or is that who done whom…?)

“we make our own gravity to give weight to things

then things fall and they break and gravity sings

we can only hold so much is what i figure

try and keep our eye on the big picture

picture keeps getting bigger”

so, i totally don’t have any specific intentions that are new for right now, at the start of a new year. and here it is, already the 4th! but i look back at 2010 and realize, this year i really learned a lot about what it is like to live with intention on a (more) consistent basis. to me it means living with a design in mind, living with a vision of how i see things going, i hesitate to call it a “plan” but an awareness that each step i take is a decision i make, and i find that the awareness of the ability to make choices is so very empowering. it is really amazing how much things just flow along when i live intentionally. “and you know every time i move, i make a woman’s movement…” ok i’ll stop quoting lyrics now!

{most of the lyrics are from ani difranco’s hour follows hour, on this album. highly highly highly recommended!}

the cove

Posted on July 16, 2010 by marybethrew

“did you, did you do, did you do all you could?” ~ani difranco

this week i was finally able to make it to a showing of the documentary the cove. now that it has won an oscar and all sorts of other awards, you hardly need me to tell you how amazingly well put together this movie is. i am a poor candidate for movie critic, because i never get to see things until they’ve been out for a long while, if then. (my co-worker is always pulling me aside when popular culture topics come up and jokingly filling me in on the background: “so star wars was this movie back in the 80s….”) still, this movie speaks to a subject near and dear to my heart, and i have been processing it all night, all day, and want to put some of these thoughts down.

the cove documents the inhumane slaughter of dolphins in taiji, japan. i am typically very sensitive to graphic blood and gore and even just emotionally gripping (non-gory) movies. ever since childhood when the wizard of oz gave me nightmares, i can be altered for days afterwards, while i process and purge movies from my brain. given that there are dolphins i am on a first name basis with, and that i have spent time with them in the wild, and that i have spent portions of my scientific career working to better understand these creatures, needless to say i was nervous about voluntarily watching them be killed. the footage of the actual killing is stunningly, achingly graphic, but in a way that is as tasteful as i think it could be, when innocent beings are being tortured and are suffering before your eyes on screen. the way the ocean turned completely red was beyond surreal.

i was gripping my seat, holding my breath, biting my lip, crying…. it was very intense. i figured the blood and gore would be the worst part for me but it was actually when the footage would switch to the dolphins free in the wild swimming a zillion nautical miles per hour that i’d get choked up. (i miss them.)

atlantic white sided dolphin bow-riding the schooner harvey gamage off north carolina

i am very, very grateful for the courage of the people who made this film, and to the world for giving it some of the attention it is due.

one thing that i felt was crucial to helping folks understand the big picture of this issue is the connection of this brutal slaughter to the aquarium trade, to the issue of captivity. i’m glad this was stated, but if anything i believe it was understated, and i am not sure how many will walk away from the film understanding that those who support animals in captivity (and that includes me- i have a year membership to our local aquarium in my back pocket as i type this) are complicit in the fact of these inhumane killings. while i have no doubt that most people (if not all) who see the film will feel moved by the “wrongness” of killing dolphins, i do have doubts that the sentiments will extend to captive animals. captivity is such a complex issue, and is certainly a very contentious one, and not one that i feel i have figured out. but i think what this film does do is make the connection that if it was not for the demand for show animals (captive dolphins), it is unlikely that the “fishing” of dolphins in places like taiji would be lucrative enough to keep it going on such a scale. another thing that comes to mind for me is- why don’t all of the aquaria have their fill of dolphins by now? it occurs to me that it is just another type of death sentence, for so many of them. and that of course generates a need for more captures.

for my own conscience’s sake, the animals in our local aquarium are, to my knowledge, all rehabilitated animals that have been deemed unable to return to the wild. that’s still hard for me, but i do see the enormous potential for public outreach value of the aquarium industry.

perhaps my biggest concern about the film is the potential for deepening division along race/class lines. i did not feel the filmmakers were promoting racism by any means, but i fear that the portrayal of the japanese fishers and whalers could easily be seen as a us/them issue because “we” don’t do such things. so i’d just like to remind everyone that although the united states does honor the moratorium on commercial whaling imposed by the international whaling commission (iwc) in 1986, and although japan gets around this international convention via a narrowly legal “objection” and continues commercial whaling thinly veiled as a scientific program, japan has actually done less devastating damage to whale populations than we, the united states, performed in the 20th century. furthermore, marine mammals are killed daily by our own fishers, for many of the same deluded reasons the japanese fisheries present such as the “competition” of marine mammals for the same fish resource. we have firearms, therefore we are entitled to the fish? this unsustainable mentality of “resource use” in our oceans is far from limited to the small island nation of japan.

likewise on the topic of race, i was disturbed by the portrayal of the small caribbean nations like grenada and dominica, and their participation in the iwc portrayed as “whoring” themselves to japan. the filming of their bumbling, under-informed acceptance of bribes from the japanese to vote for the japanese agenda during iwc meetings seemed unfortunate- especially given that the delegates from those small island nations may represent some of the only people of color participating in the iwc. my feeling is, we are all complicit. please, no one vilify one group or race over this issue. a delegate from a bankrupt island nation is between a rock and a hard place i’m sure, and deserves to come through with dignity intact.

i also worry that we run the risk of further alienating an already quite alienated population of people who make their living from harvesting various species in our oceans. i agree that the fishing out of the ocean is devastating, and there is no excuse for the unsustainable rape of the oceans. i also feel that preserving a career, a history, a culture, pales in comparison to the need to preserve an ocean, an environment, a future. here again, it is not all the fault of the people who do the dirty deed.

all criticism aside, this film is phenomenal, and i highly recommend seeing it if you haven’t already.

it’s hard to stomach, but it’s also eye opening and inspiring. i’m inspired to see what i can do to help solve these issues. it’s tough to find the place where i can make the biggest difference in getting these enormous problems somehow turned around. whether through my role as a biologist or simply my citizenship on planet earth, i plan to do as much as i can.

mb

magic & bioluminescence

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