Tag Archives: women

~thankful thursday~ all true

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~30 days of gratitude~ day 16

11/16/23

I am grateful for the sun melting into the ocean on my way home from work, and the red crescent moon dipping into the ocean on our way home from date night.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 17

11/17/23

I am grateful for writing, as a discipline and hobby and obsession. One of the things I like about writing personal narrative is that there are constant opportunities to reanalyze, rethink, reassess what I always thought was true. There is a story I tell myself, and then there is a story beneath that story that I have yet to discover, and when I do finally get at that deeper story, it is always more rewarding. Usually the surface story is something I’ve memorized about my life that feels true enough, and has served me well enough, but the story underneath is truer, and will serve me better. The story underneath is always the one with more layers, more complexity, more nuance, and less duality. There is moral certainty in the top story that I have to give up, though, in order to embrace the truer story.

My son required a neonatal intensive care unit when he was born, and that is where my attention has been during the war between Israel and Hamas: the NICU in Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. There is no story I can embrace where 39 babies in critical condition must be used as a shield by either side in a war. There is no justification for infants who require breathing assistance to not be receiving it, for their bundled bodies to be lined up in a row on a bed when they are prone to infections and should be in isolation, when they need warming beds, but the fuel to provide the electricity they require cannot reach their hospital because their “side” might pour it into a tank instead.

I read that 90% of the children in pediatric hospitals in Gaza are experiencing traumatic stress, and 82% of them say they fear imminent death.

I read that parents are writing their children’s names on their bodies—when children’s bodies arrive in the morgue, coroners find the marker writing on their legs and torsos. In some cases this is the only way to identify the bodies.

Women continue to give birth during this conflict, infants are being tended in a neonatal unit where the life support equipment helping children to make it through their first weeks of life has stopped beeping their heart rates, stopped inflating their lungs, stopped warming their tiny bodies. The medicines commonly needed in a NICU like surfactant and caffeine citrate have run out. Because I can remember how it felt to press my face against my son’s sedated body in a NICU cubicle, to wind my arms under and around his tubes and wires to be as close as I could to him, I can recall the comforting sound of beeping, the warmth of the incubator radiating from his body. The story I’ve carried was that I just wanted him out of there, that the NICU was a place of trauma that was keeping us from beginning our mother-son life together. I know that story served me in a way, but I know a truer story now, one in which I feel gratitude for that place and the bridge it provided to help my son make it to the start of that life. I imagine the terror and heartbreak of that comforting beeping going silent, the incubators going cold.

If we give up our moral certainty, can we find an answer that is not anti-Palestinian, nor antisemitic, nor anti-Islam? I do not know what it is, but I believe it precludes the slow sacrifice of babies requiring neonatal intensive care. The solution will not be born from the surface story that has seemed true enough and has served its purpose, but from a truer one that is harder to tell.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 18

11/18/23

I am grateful for a day saturated with writing, reading others’ writing, reading my writing aloud, and hearing others read their writing. And a little lap time with yard kittens.

 

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 19

11/19/23

I am grateful that Rich is at least as invested as me in my gratitude posts, and I cannot go to bed without him reminding me that I haven’t written one yet. Good morning, love, I am grateful for you.

 

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 20

11/20/23

I am feeling grateful for my mom and dad today, and realized I didn’t take any super awesome pictures of them together this summer, so I will remedy that on my next visit. I did take pictures of them separately back in June, Mom and Quinn, heads together as she showed him how to make soap, Dad on the tractor, and there is a snapshot of the two of them blurry and laughing at the dance party following my MFA graduation. I am grateful for the comments on my previous post, appreciating the love between Rich and I, and wondering if we know how lucky we are. I know it is rare, and I do know we are lucky, and I also am lucky to have witnessed another rare pair, all my growing up years.

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 21

11/21/23

I am grateful to have finished work with time before sunset at 4:43, for a walk to the water’s edge, and ten minutes of listening to the ocean.

 

 

~30 days of gratitude~ day 22

11/22/23

Can you find my husband in this photo? I can, because even though I can’t read the name on his coveralls, his sideburns are unmistakable. I am grateful for him (again, I know, ew, but the 22nd is our day). He does fascinating things at work like suspend a very heavy engine on very short straps and move it from point A to point B inside a fishing boat with zero room to maneuver. Sometimes he welds and fabricates, sometimes he operates a crane, and other times he solves impossible problems like the one in this image. Which I’d like to thank his coworker for taking, because sometimes when he tells me about his day, the stuff is barely believable. For the first few years we were together and someone asked me his occupation I said he allegedly welds, because I hadn’t actually seen him do it. I mean, making things out of metal and fire? But then I did see him do it one time. And it was all true.

 

tidepool immersion ~ brooding and homing

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At the conclusion of my 30 days of gratitude, a friend commented, “we see what we look for.” I have to agree that this is true with gratitude. It also seems to be startlingly true in tidepooling. But sometimes I don’t know what I’m looking for when I begin my walk.

In December, tidepooling becomes an extreme sport because the timing of the low low tides overlaps with the early evening darkness. Oh, and winter weather. Tidepooling in the dark and rain is not an adventure for everyone, but as much as I despise cold and darkness, this adventure had my name on it.

The air was chill as we cut across the exposed intertidal shelf, stepping carefully around deep limestone pools in our extratuff boots. Mist beaded up on my purple raincoat, scattering the beam of my headlamp in all directions, so I knelt beside a tidepool. Kelp and fish permeated the air as I leaned closer, focused my camera lens, trying not to block the light my headlamp provided, laughing at the futility of photography in the rainy darkness, but unable to resist giving it a try.

Here’s what I didn’t know I was looking for…

brooding sea anemone

Brooding sea anemones (Epiactis prolifera)

All of them start off life as females. I was looking for females. I was looking for something that holds embryos in her mouth like so many words bubbling up, tumbling down column to pedal disk, to lodge in a fold of flesh and incubate and grow and become. I was looking for someone who encircles herself with her offspring, who knows about the departures as they start to crawl out into the world and live independent lives of their own.

Nudibranchs (Leopard Dorid – aka discodoris! and Monterey Dorid)

Reportedly, nudibranchs are a predator of anemones, and can incorporate the anemones’ stinging nematocyst cells into their own being for defense. I was looking for someone who could quarantine the weapons of others inside, not to continue to be hurt by them, but to repurpose as raw material for something that serves them better in the future.

Fluffy Sculpin Oligocottus snyderi

They swick their emerald fins in rocky pools from Baja to Alaska. They leave when conditions become inhospitable. When we say, “a fish out of water,” we mean someone out of their element, someone who has been befuddled, disabled by displacement. When displaced, when fluffy is a “fish out of water,” fluffy can still breathe. I was looking for that. I was looking for someone who would up and leave inhospitable conditions, and continue to breathe, unbefuddled.

On the other hand, fluffy sculpins exhibit homing behavior. When displaced, a fluffy sculpin can find its way back to its home tidepool. I was looking for homing, too.

Snailfish Liparis florae

A swish of yellow, a tiny apostrophe easily overlooked, soft-bodied and scaleless, a sucking disc for holding onto the rough rocks. I was looking for someone who could be among the roughness but remain soft, someone good at holding on.

Florae, named for Flora Hartley Greene, advocate for children and suffragette about whom I can read almost nothing. Obscure, dusty, writings leech the color and flavor out of both fish and woman, unobtainable references, her name misspelled, her story traceable only through that of her husband, the fish nerd of the family. I was looking for a tiny fish to remind me of forgotten women who fought for my rights: to vote and be my own woman, not subordinate to a man, no matter how wonderful my husband may be.

chiton under black light

Many tiny six-rayed sea stars twinkled white light as they clung to festive eelgrass tinsel flung about in energetic celebration. Baby stars, such a sign of hope after decade-long star famine. Rich surprised us all by pulling a black light flashlight out of his pocket. It belonged to his father. Bob used it to illuminate rocks and minerals, but we shined it into dim tidepools to find out that the night-emerging shrimp trim their fanning tails and waving antennae in glow-paint. We shined it and pastel anemones lit up the pools, brighter than ever they express themselves in daylight. We shined it to find out that hermit crabs are the most colorful party-goers attending the celebration, the algae covering their shells bright red, their claws neon green, Christmas crabs crawling across inky fields of blue and purple. I didn’t know I was looking for psychedelic hermit crabs.

hermit crab

encouragement from crab

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i was tagged in a facebook post by a woman whose friend is having surgery for breast cancer, with a request for sending love and encouragement from one woman to another, so her friend would arrive home to a pile of cards and well wishes. it is easy to ignore such a post, because i think it makes us face our own fears, and what do you even say anyway, and then there is the fact that i don’t even know this woman.

but i do know her on some level, don’t i?

aside from the fact that she is a friend of a friend, we’re all one, when it comes right down to it. so i decided to snail mail it up, sent her a mix cd, a buoy quote in a card that i printed, and some beach sand in a film canister. it felt nice to share, and it prompted me to do a teensy amount of writing as well, which i will also share here, in case anyone else can use some encouragement today.

this crab jumped out of the card pile to come to you and i figured out why. cancer and crab are written together in the stars, but i see another layer of meaning. crab wears protective armor on the outside, and follows the moons and tides just the way all of us women do in the salt water cycle of our blood and tears. what’s inside is vulnerable and soft, but crab is tenacious, knowing how to hold on, clinging to rocks as challenging waves wash over, knowing when the best way forward is sideways. crab intuits what needs to be shed, and though it can be extremely vulnerable when it is exposed, it replaces its armor, a little bit stronger each time, taking what it needs to rebuild it from the healing waters of the ocean surrounding it.

i wanted to send you a little beach sand and ocean healing magic, from one woman to another.

~black and white wednesday~ international day of women

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manger ~ gertrude kesabier ~ 1899

 

on this international women’s day, i want to share some thoughts i’ve been collecting since before the election, concerning the experience of victims/survivors of domestic violence. i realize domestic violence is not a rainbows and butterflies topic, but it is one of the most important topics i write about, and on a day that is all about women, it’s important to me to remember how very alive this problem remains.

there are a few statistics that jumped out at me when i went a-googling, in order to give some context to just how big a problem we are talking about. the national coalition against domestic violence says that in the united states, about 20 people per minute are abused physically by a significant other. also, although we know that toasters don’t make toast; people make toast! it does seem significant to me that the risk of homicide in a domestic violence situation increases by 500% in the presence of a gun. this article portrays the problem in another shockingly succinct statistic: “The number of American troops killed in Afghanistan and Iraq between 2001 and 2012 was 6,488. The number of American women who were murdered by current or ex male partners during that time was 11,766.”

with that i would like to share a friend of a friend of a friend’s words that i saw posted as a comment on one of dan rather’s pleasantly sane facebook essays. to me, it reads as a poem of sorts. it explains exactly how i feel about certain refrains i keep hearing about the current administration.

“Karen Rose says: A few things I’ve heard the last two months:

  1. Give Trump a chance.
  2. Maybe it won’t be that bad.
  3. All politicians are horrible.
  4. He’ll get better once in office.

.
Just a few things I’ve heard from victims of domestic violence.

  1. I’ll just give him another chance.
  2. It’s not that bad.
  3. All men are like this.
  4. He’ll get better once we’re married.

.
Just a few things I’ve heard months/years later from victims of domestic violence:

  1. She’s dead
  2. She’s in a coma
  3. He killed her child.
  4. He’s now beating his new girlfriend. “

this article is probably the one that hit home the most during an election campaign cycle that i personally experienced as déjà vu. many other women experienced it the same way. roughly, i’d say, one in three women, might have experienced listening to one particular candidate as traumatic or triggering, because of how it reminded them of emotionally violent partners. physical violence is only part of the story, of course, and almost always goes hand in hand with psychological/emotional abuse. in my case, the emotional violence was far worse, went on for far longer and was far more responsible for eroding my coping skills and morale than the one physical attack i endured.

 

actress margaret vale howe marching in 1913 for women’s suffrage in washington d.c.

(public domain, found for me by my fiance)

i’ve talked about memory issues that i have, and one of the reasons i write is a need to put my storyline back in order and keep it in order after it was fragmented by trauma. this fragmentation in domestic abuse situations can stem from the way in which the rules of fair discourse go out the window, and the rapid fire pace at which lies, denial, and fallacies of logic are lobbed at you. the shifting of blame, the abuser framing himself as victim (and finding plenty of folks who are willing to assert his victimhood!), the gaslighting (aggressively denying objective truth is a definition i like for this term); the way the subject gets abruptly turned back on you when you try to address an issue; the appeals to “everyone” who is said to agree with him about whatever egregious claims made about you; the use of voice as a weapon (the therapist who mediated between my abuser and me told me privately that he observed me becoming meeker and quieter as he got equally louder and more forceful in his speech); the confusion of being accused of dishonesty by the person who was a seasoned veteran at dishonesty (confusion, because i was receiving these accusations before i knew that he was a cheating liar. my mom saw that coming, and  knew the accusations were a red flag. i now see it in other people the same way she did, and know to avoid them.)

these tendencies in emotionally abusive individuals became normalized during the election. everything i just said is represented in the way the president has spoken and acted these past months. insistent denial of a very clear public record of lying; when confronted on his appalling record with women, bringing up the other candidate’s husband’s past record with women; when confronted on tax returns, bringing up emails; grossly overgeneralizing; making sure his voice is the loudest one in the room. jane goodall, renowned expert in ethology (the study of behavior) calls it like she sees it: he behaves like a male chimpanzee asserting dominance.

the article on emotionally abusive debate tactics didn’t mention physical intimidation (since it’s not a verbal debate tactic) but invading someone’s space and positioning one’s body in threatening ways is another thing survivors are familiar with. i’ve had door frames filled by a man’s bodies who wanted to trap me, i’ve had my own space invaded in order to back me down from sticking up for myself. there is a whole world of women who know what that looks and feels like, along with me.

i’m weary of the way people are treating each other. i’m disheartened by the descent to the lowest common denominator, the name-calling, the number of times i’ve heard people i thought were otherwise decent human beings use terminology such as “libtard” (and much worse) on other human beings. i was condescendingly criticized for my “thinking style” and accused of twisting words by a childhood friend on another friend’s facebook post. i stood up for “lefty liberals” when another friend of a friend slammed “them” for bringing the demise of recreational salmon fishing, since i was able to speak firsthand about my own work to ensure that there are any salmon left for future generations (including but not limited to recreational fishing). i’ve also chimed in when called out for “crying victim” which is how some “friends” would summarize the intent of the women’s march. there is a whole post to be written on the subject of shaming and invalidation of emotions such as fear and sadness, the natural and proportionate responses to things going on in the world.

this violent, careless way of speaking to people is not limited to the political divide. sitting in karate with coparent a few months back, who shares many liberal political views, he passive aggressively spoke about what an idiot his Psych 101 professor must be, because when he asked her to define codependency she failed to respond that it is, “the refusal to take a look at your own issues.” it’s been almost 9 years since i had a restraining order, but some things (victim-blaming) still haven’t changed.

and my situation, as tough as it was at times, reeks of what a place of privilege i experienced it from, and am able to reflect on it from. there are others with far fewer resources and who are therefore far more vulnerable to the effects of domestic abuse. you caught that 98% of domestic abuse cases also include financial abuse when you read through the statistics, right? my case did as well, but i had a way bigger safety net to jump into than many women.

which is why i don’t buy that anything this administration says they are doing in the  name of protecting women is really motivated by actual care for women. this (very current) article sums up how clauses in executive orders targeting domestic violence (of a certain religious bent) are more likely to pose an increased barrier to reporting domestic violence, and more like to threaten the very group of people they are claiming it will protect: immigrants. as if financial hurdles and the common threats of losing child custody and housing stability weren’t enough, these women have to deal with potentially being deported on top of it all if they speak up about abuse.

migrant mother (florence owens thompson, who at the time was a single mother of 6, and worked farm labor jobs during the depression) ~ dorothea lange ~ 1936

“After September 11, 2001, we had abusers from certain communities who affirmatively used anti-Muslim hostility as a tool of abuse… ’If you contact that police, you’re exposing our entire community, our household, and you’re likely to be treated as a criminal as well.’”

any provision to target the violence of only one religious group (and ignoring all the other religious groups with domestic violence issues), is a thinly veiled targeting of immigrants, rather than a source of help for victims of domestic violence. this administration’s threat of removal of funding from all 25 VAWA grant programs makes this case; this executive order is motivated by something other than care for the welfare of women.

which is why when it comes to abusive men, something we all need to learn (i needed to learn it!) is that even if you can’t trust anything they say, you darn well better watch their actions. as maya angelou said, “when someone shows you who they are, believe them.”

i’ve quoted her once, and i’ll quote her again. she and the women in the photos i’ve borrowed to celebrate today, are great examples of women to look towards for inspiration, as women step into the strength that is already ours, but that the world still hasn’t embraced.

~black and white wednesday~ she persisted

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on january 21, women marched in the united states and 57 other countries, on all seven continents (even antarctica!), for so many excruciating reasons. women marched to affirm their own lives. it’s unfortunate that so many people saw the women’s march as antithetical to life, because i believe that in order for babies’ lives to be affirmed, the lives of the women carrying them have to come first.

women did march for reproductive rights. they marched for the women who fought hard to flee countries where their families were unsafe, who now fear deportation because of their muslim faith. they marched for the women who fear deportation to mexico, being torn from their children who were born in this country. they marched for the victims who will have to go back to buying their own rape kits if violence against women legislation is undone. they marched because rape culture is a real thing, (not sure? two words: brock turner. two more words: baylor university. there are a million more words i could say about this if you’re still not convinced.) they marched for kids in public schools, and the belief that they deserve to receive an equitable education, regardless of their income or ability. they marched for the babies in nicu wards who will go back to reaching their lifetime health insurance caps before they ever leave the hospital when the aca is repealed. they marched because our great grandchildren deserve clean air, clean water, and to have public lands left to explore. they marched for the endangered species we stand to lose because they are an inconvenience to big corporations. they marched because no matter how far we’ve come, some men still think they can go around talking about lady gaga’s abs like lady gaga owes them something.

women can diverge from soft and nurturing once in a while to be strong and fierce, and it’s a good thing. we’ve come a long way, baby, and we don’t want to give up any ground.

it hasn’t been that long since women could not own property, and not long before that women were property. the property of their fathers, and then their husbands, a condition that reverberates forward through time in ways we haven’t eradicated. that time spanning between amendments 15 and 19 stands as an awkward pause belying that we value women as much as men as a nation. also awkwardly revealing is the failure of our government to ever ratify the equal rights amendment, to this day.

i phrased all of the reasons for marching in terms of “they” because i wasn’t marching that day. i was selling organic vegetables. although i was wearing a pink hat and directing anyone interested to the venue for the local march, i did not get to attend it myself. i wasn’t protesting the day before that, on inauguration day, either. on that day, i was chaperoning fourth graders who were picking up garbage from agate beach. i would have gladly participated in peaceful protests on those days, but other life affirming callings rose to the top. some nasty woman’s gotta sell the organic vegetables and pick up the beach trash.

nasty woman, circa 2000.

while we’re on the subject of life affirming messages, i want to share this beautiful song, written and performed by girls in a music theory class, who were presented with a portion of hillary clinton’s concession speech “to all the little girls.”

 

 

one of the most poignant and unifying symbols i came across throughout the turbulent time surrounding the inauguration was a gathering of women on a border bridge between the u.s. and mexico who stood with their hair braided together and hands clasped. i really feel they captured the idea of letting ourselves truly feel empathy for the “other” in such a tangible way.

these issues are gnarly to try to discuss, but it needs to be done. it needs to be done in a way that we acknowledge the humanity in one another. it’s tricky and i’m struggling to find the right words, but once again staying silent isn’t the right option for me. as we transition from black history month to women’s history month, i am still hoping that in some way, my words will encourage dialogue to help those of us who disagree to find more and more common ground.

one unbroken line

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“first you go under

then coming up gives you the bends

and when you break the surface

all you can see is your friends

so you grab your purple crayon

and flesh out the picture behind

and finally the whole world is made of

one unbroken line

one unbroken line”

-ani difranco red letter year

 

i went under about 10 years ago this coming fall. i have alluded to that period of time in my life before, but i don’t think i have come right out and said what happened to me. it’s not a time i like to dwell on, but throughout my healing process, i have had a growing realization of how important that time was, and how important it is to my integrity for me to own it, to include it as part of my ongoing personal narrative, to acknowledge that it got that bad, to remember why i committed to never again sacrificing my integrity for anyone else. part of why i blog is to help me curate my personal narrative, to keep track of myself in an ongoing unbroken line that is my story, my understanding of who i am. at first it was a research endeavor, an archaeology dig back into my journals and emails to figure out how the pieces all fit, and i will admit to actually entering key life events into a spreadsheet that i could perform data sorts upon. (card carrying nerd. you can laugh. i do.) now the ongoing note-taking it has evolved into is essentially a maintenance strategy to keep my story intact and refuse to let it fragment as it once did.

in 2005, i was so broken down by emotional abuse that i was starting to dissociate from myself. you have to leave yourself briefly when you lash out in ways that aren’t true to who you are. i was awful to friends, because i was forced to prove my loyalty to my relationship by adopting someone else’s opinions and inflicting them on people who had been good to me. i became increasingly isolated and debilitated, and had trouble with basic tasks, to say nothing of the way i was floundering in my master’s degree program. i started to lash out at the abuser, becoming abusive myself out of sheer desperation. i blocked out seemingly unforgettable moments, such as him lighting my mattress on fire while i was lying on it, and only retrieved those memories years later from journal entries i had shared with no one. he cut phone cords while i talked to the very few remnants of support i had left, he cut my houseplants. my daily experience had so eroded away at me that i began to scratch and kick, and even brandish knives back at the other participant in the suffering.

unable to bear myself anymore, i pondered dying, i wished to die, i craved a way out as concise as death. i wanted it to be all over. i contemplated whether i could pull it off. i despaired that i might not be able to. i was tortured by sleep deprivation and the emotional abuse hit new plateaus of awfulness. i couldn’t bear who i had become, what was “happening to me” (because i did not believe or perceive at the time that i bore any responsibility for the circumstances i was in, nor that i had any choice in exiting the scenario) until one day i walked out the door with a bottle of pills in my hand.

he called the police. they drove up to me and asked if i was carrying pills. i said yes. they asked if i planned to use them and i said i didn’t know.

my answers did not inspire enough confidence in them to let me keep walking, so they put handcuffs on me and drove me to the county mental health inpatient facility.

i spent the night in a chair in the intake area at the county facility. as soon as i was there i was begging to leave. not a pretty place. out of the frying pan and into the fire.

i was transferred to where the other overwhelmed grad students go to have inpatient mental health care, and 48 hours after i was cuffed and stuffed, i was home sweet home. but a home in which i couldn’t rest my weary bones. a home in which i lived in constant survival mode. a home in which i found myself longing for home.

i had committed to a treatment plan in order to be discharged. i had committed to weekly counseling. i think my 48 hours as an inpatient shook me awake.

i followed through on the plan. my counselor was great. she helped me make a self care plan. she listened to me say “he… he… he….” then reminded me, “think about youuuuuu!!!” she got me into a psychiatrist who wrote me a prescription that really helped me balance out my chemistry. she encouraged me to go to al-anon meetings. i went faithfully. i went from one yoga class per week to four or five. i was planting seeds in pots, making cups of tea, eating fresh fruits and veggies, taking baths, remembering other little things i had forgotten i liked to do for myself, and little by little, those self care actions turned into actually caring about myself again. new neural pathways opened up, and i followed them more and more. i moved out of the apartment.

over time, i realized those police officers and inpatient personnel did not do anything to me, though at the time i felt very wronged. over time, i realized that i had been unable to recognize my actions as a loud and clear call for help, and i was fortunate my call was heard and responded to by people just doing their jobs.

as time passed, i learned a lot about what was going on in my brain at the time. speaking scientifically, there were neural pathways i was over-utilizing and they held me in a downward spiral. speaking spiritually, i learned how impoverished i had allowed my soul to become. i have read books like trauma and recovery, by judith herman, which helped me to understand the mechanisms by which trauma triggers a brain to fragment, and how fragmentation is essential, at first, to survival in the face of real threat, but also allows distortion to become the chief way a traumatized individual handles information, even in situations where one is not threatened. i learned how it was possible to overcome this non-adaptive strategy (non-adaptive once one has emerged from survival mode), and i learned why i wanted to: distortion is lying, to oneself, and to others, whereas i had always thought of myself as an honest person. i slowly came to be able to articulate that by committing to “never going back there” i meant “to always maintain my integrity.” i read books like the four agreements, and lots of others, that helped me put my finger on what integrity even meant to me. be impeccable with your word; don’t take anything personally; don’t make assumptions; always do your best.

omitting definitions related to calculus and desegregation, here is how webster defines integrity:

integrity 1. the quality or state of being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness; entirety 2. the quality or state of being unimpaired; perfect condition; soundness 3. the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity.

integrate 1. to make whole or complete by adding or bringing together parts 2. to put or bring (parts) together into a whole; unify 3. to give or indicate the whole, sum, or total of 6. Psychol. to cause to undergo integration; to become integrated.

integration 1. an integrating or being integrated 3. Psychol. the organization of various traits, feelings, attitudes, etc., into one harmonious personality.

as i delved into my research on myself, i strove to leave no stone unturned. i found that judging my choices and being hard on myself didn’t help. it turned out, i needed to be gentle with myself. when i was able to extend myself some compassion, i had an easier time remaining present, instead of dissociating any time the going got tough. yet, i found that i needed to know what had happened, so there could be no further denial. just the facts, without judgment. i waded through old journals and emails, and inserted the fragments of my life story into their places, until the thread was once again whole and continuous, integrated. integrated, integrity.

i let go of the relationship that kept me poised having to choose between it and my integrity. more ani: “i looked up to see integrity finally won over desire.” this did not happen overnight, oh no. domestic abuse, to paraphrase something a friend recently said, is so ongoing you start to not notice your new normal is so bad. it takes time to undo all of that and make a new good normal for yourself. i kept showing up for myself, stayed honest with myself, got more counseling even after several moves and having a baby had made life more complicated. i chose interpretations of my circumstances that felt empowering, that celebrated my strength and resilience in the face of adversity, over interpretations that dwelled on negatives or encouraged self-pity.

there was retaliation in the aftermath. it didn’t go along with someone else’e plan that i was getting so healthy. the aftermath subsided. my integrity held.

year eleven came along, and all the “beyond your wildest dreams” stuff they used to talk about at al-anon? turns out it’s really real.

now i have a man who validates and supports my whole being and loves all of me, containing my feelings by refusing to allow my self-loathing neural pathways to open back up. this is truer to the core of how i see myself (a person of integrity) than any desire to have my self-loathing “validated” in the ways an abusive partner would “validate” it, by encouraging that self-loathing and feeding that monster.

“darling, you will not find

in the well into which you fall

what i keep for you on the heights:

a bouquet of dewy jasmines,

a kiss deeper than your abyss.”

-pablo neruda, except from his poem the well, from the captain’s verses

new lessons have come my way. new opportunities to use what i have learned, or to try to share my experience with friends whose circumstances remind me of mine 10 years ago when i was hospitalized, or 9 years ago when i gave it one more try “for the baby”, or 8 years ago when i was hiding the atm card underneath said sleeping baby to try to keep some money in the account for bills instead of just beer, or 7 years ago when i got hit and walked out with my one year old, or a little over 3 years ago, when i stopped paying my ex’s rent, or whenever ago. i have new appreciation for what i struggled through, because it gives me street cred with people who might otherwise have no use for my suggestions. because it’s true, if you haven’t been through it, it is probably impossible to understand why someone would (and probably will, for a long time) stay. my past connects me not only to myself, to who i was, who i am, and how i got from point a to point b, but also connects me to others in a web that just continues to enhance my life as it expands outward.

new opportunities where i have to choose how to best maintain my integrity come along. i have less and less trouble identifying how it all fits into the one unbroken line of my narrative. i see more and more signs that say “yes” to me, that reinforce the positive choices i make, that affirm life and love and abundance. i recognize them sooner, sometimes even in the moment when i am looking at them, like the morning when an eagle flew along beside our car for about a quarter of a mile, in one unbroken line, as we drove into town. i have more and more success following my intuition, which is better and better calibrated to keeping my path unbroken, unfragmented, connected, intact, whole.

eagle IMG_6771

 

 

 

women

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i had serious envy when i read this post about mothers’ circles in rhythm of the home a while back. it is a nice read and was ultimately very inspiring once i got past the envy… getting past the envy involved realizing that probably every mama who read that article, felt the same way as me, if they didn’t already have something like that in their lives.

on wednesday night, i took a stab at hosting some of my local mama friends at my place. i don’t know whether i would call it a mothers’ circle or not, but the four of us present were all mothers. i certainly don’t feel like any kind of spiritual leader (ack!) so there wasn’t a lot of ceremony involved, and i headlined it as a “crafting night” with the crafting optional and let it all kind of unfold however it would. all i really did was create some space for it (cleaned my house and baked a treat), and give it a spark (sent out an invite) and… unfold, it did!

i don’t know why i was nervous. don’t women, especially mamas, always know how to get past the differences and find the common ground? and don’t we all yearn for community? shortly into the evening, there was uterus discussion. birth, death, midwives, herbs, change, aging, moving, growth, pregnancy, on and on. we talked homesteading topics (chickens, goats, bees, you name it!) and of course, about our kids. i knit about three rows on my sock, in keeping with the ostensible theme. not nearly as productive as my friend who made a batch of coconut butter soap right there in my kitchen!

it was so. very. nice. i want to do it again! i am always one to wish i had a tribal community, where all the women are essentially family they are so close, and there is always support- emotional and physical- within reach. a little network of real live nearby people. i am thinking this small step (which for whatever reason, took so much courage) is the first step from wishing toward manifesting.