OR, how to get there from here…I am nothing if not stubborn. But stubborn won’t get me where I want to go. Stubborn is a characteristic of defensiveness. Transformed into determination, however, it becomes a super power. My super power.
True confession: I’ve been in a funk. In case that wasn’t painfully obvious by the last few posts. And I have HAD IT with that routine. Remember, we aren’t havocing it anymore.
“Life can so suck, to use the theological term. It can be healthy to hate what life has given you, and to insist on being a big mess for awhile.” – Anne Lamott
When I am not honest with myself that I am grieving I become a royal pain in the butt. I won’t allow myself the grief, or make time for it. As if I have something better to do. It feels self indulgent, cloying. I judge it, especially if it’s been around for awhile. I judge myself. It gets ugly. For instance, I mention my mother here often. She’s been dead over 20 years. I miss her every day. I simply will never get over losing her. She was my greatest champion. Many days it feels like she was my only champion. Everybody deserves one.
If Doris exemplified anything her entire life, it was determination. She had limitless energy. She was like the energizer bunny. Actually, hyper. I didn’t get that gene. In many respects I’m much more like my father, who was quite the opposite. To the untrained eye most would consider him lazy. He kinda wasn’t willing to do anything he didn’t feel like doing. Least effort possible was his approach to life. In the wisdom of my old age I now understand that he, too, was a victim of trauma. He was always defensive.
I strive to be more like my mother as I am growing up. And therein lies the key that opens me back up – I’m growing up. I’m growing. I’m becoming. I’m a work in progress; a verb. That gets more difficult for me to keep in perspective as I am now in my 70’s. And I believe that I have unconsciously adopted some less-than-useful cultural limitations, such as: I am old. And done. And fully formed. Nope. Not done yet. Still growing. And always will be, right up until my last breath.
My father played the piano as if he were born at it. Mom struggled to teach herself the guitar. He sang loudly and lived defiantly. He had hubris. She was shy and soft-spoken. She had humility. He loved honky-tonk; she loved folk. She would close herself in the bedroom to practice and sing, and I would sneak up outside the door and sit on the floor to listen.
My son’s father is coming to visit this week. I don’t like him. Obviously I loved him once, in a previous lifetime decades ago. But recently my son spoke a minor complaint about him and I replied, “well, yeah…he’s a pain in the butt.” Now I regret saying that, of course. My son loves and admires his Dad. I spent years consciously not bad mouthing him, regardless of how he treated me. But we’re all adults here. I do make an effort to be cordial, friendly, and even inclusive. I’ve now entertained he and his significant other in my home when they are summering in the area. We’re all adults here. As my son was growing up I had less and less contact with my ex-husband, but now he’s ba-aacccckkkkk….retired and vacationing nearby on a regular basis. So I shall enter into the great what is. I’m an adult, right?
What constitutes “a pain in the butt?” Someone who is needy but not aware of it, who has a personality trait spelled D-E-F-E-N-S-I-V-E. Or macho in this case. Passive aggressive. Emotionally immature…I could go on…let’s not. You get the idea.
Look – we are all needy. It’s a given. Far needier than we wish to admit. Also a given. We all have total blind spots in the self awareness vehicle of our life, headed for an inevitable crash into the wall of our defenses, bleeding out our vulnerability. That’s why we practice compassion when we are in control. Because we all want that airbag to deploy. Okay, enough with the vehicle metaphors.
I’ve been listening to Anne Lamott, as I am prone to do from time to time. The queen of vulnerability. Certainly one of my most revered creative influences, I listen to her any time I don’t write for a few days, weeks, months (I don’t do that anymore; I know better.) As she says, it hurts to not write. Stop not writing. Sit down and “scribble and spew…” This blog is testament to that practice. It’s always been a lightly edited journal of my thoughts, both welcome and unwelcome. I let my crazy show here.
I do so highly recommend you attend her workshop:
If you are one of the readers here who write, or draw, or dance, or caretake, or paint, or sing or sew or imagine, THIS IS YOUR SIGN! Don’t wait. Stop not doing it. So whaddayasay, Thursday at 7?
“Perfectionism is the enemy of freedom. How do you let it go a little bit? You write badly. ” – Anne Lamott, and if you don’t have a copy of her brilliant book on writing: https://amzn.to/3Z4i3dJ
Part of me feels like I should come clean about something. All this soap box espousing about raising our consciousness and waking up and becoming more self aware sounds inspiring, doesn’t it? Did I forget to mention that it makes life harder? Yes, that’s right. Not easier. Harder.
When you are committed to personal growth, or perhaps you naively just want to live a more creative life, things are gonna get rough. You’re a boat rocker. You want more than the other people around you want for you, or believe you are capable of. Those people you lived with growing up are not going to like this. The people you work with are not going to like this. The friends you know you can count on aren’t going to like it. They have an agenda, consciously or not, and it is not your agenda. 99.9% of the time it will not leave any space for you to stretch your wings – it will be all about slowing and deferring any change. To the best of their ability.
In an interview years ago, I remember Oprah talking about her friendship to Gayle, saying that she stayed “after the leap,” and that the majority of people will not. But she didn’t know that would be the case when she decided to up her game and strive for success. None of us realized what it would mean to develop healthy boundaries, to speak up when we became aware of dysfunction around us. We didn’t know that it would be so challenging for those around us. We didn’t know.
Heads up: your relationships are going to fall apart. There is a popular tarot deck called This Might Hurt. Haha! While I am not a fan of the artwork and don’t use this deck, I sure love the name of it. Yes. The tarot is a brilliantly designed tool for self development. Practicing with it will open you up and make you more self aware and much more intuitive. And it will hurt; that’s a guarantee. That genie ain’t goin’ back in that bottle.
I remember at one point in my 20’s thinking all my families’ troubles were caused by my father’s alcoholism…and then a decade or two later realizing that some of us are autistic or had ADHD. And then learning about narcissism. And it goes on and on. You see it and you can’t unsee it.
The truth will out. What you think today is the cause of your frustration, or your unhappiness, or your illness will open a can of worms. Today is the tip of the iceberg and it is melting faster than you can imagine. And you are going to have to take responsibility for having started the fire underneath. Oh, and learn to swim…
I was in my sixties when my father died and my four siblings stopped speaking to me. I was recently divorced, grieving and more isolated than I ever could have imagined. My son wanted little to do with me. When I lost my elderly dog I grieved like never before; I suspect it was a cumulative grief. I could justify all of this discord; I had learned through hardship how to set boundaries and they did not like the new me – the person they could no longer gaslight and manipulate. I had been told one too many times that I would never be able to take care of myself. I had better stay. I had better be quiet. I had better be nice.
My darling Mother used to say to me, “It must be lonely at the top, Susan…” It was leveled as an accusation. She didn’t understand why I was so different, so confrontative. Obviously I thought I was better than the rest of them. But that wasn’t true. I saw them as remarkable, brilliant, so very full of potential and settling for so little. I wanted them to join me on this journey. I didn’t want to be lonely; I still don’t. Please don’t leave me…yet in truth, I was leaving them. I had seen through the superficiality of their choices and I wanted deeper connection. I wanted to matter. I wanted them to know that they mattered. Really, really mattered. But they didn’t see what I saw.
Almost every person I have ever loved has struggled with addiction. Eventually I have lost most of them, either to death, or by extricating myself from their insatiable neediness in order to have some semblance of peace. I stopped housing them. I stopped driving them. I stopped working for them for almost nothing. I stopped giving them money. I stopped defending them. I stopped allowing them to use me.
Codependency is my addiction. It is theirs, also, masked by alcohol or drugs or gambling. By the grace of God I have not had those to overcome. But once I realized this and stopped tolerating bad behaviors, I woke up and saw the part I played in the destruction. And I can’t do it anymore. I’ve had to re-evaluate my values, my priorities, my own behavior. And yes, it is lonely at the top. But something deep inside me knows that this is the only dance in town, this seeking for the truth, this prioritizing mental health, this commitment to growing up.
Decades ago in meditation I heard “do not squander your father’s inheritance.” I dismissed that as I knew my father had no money to leave his children. What the heck did that mean? Now I wish I could remember when I heard that, but it still applies today. Today I would write that sentence differently: Do not squander your Father’s inheritance.
“You don’t have to be a genius. You can just be honest.” – Yulia Mahr
Can I? Before I can possibly be honest with anyone, I must be honest with myself. I have so many blind spots in my psyche, so many un-self-awarenesses. It’s not for lack of trying. I do want to grow up before I outgrow this life. Now at this late stage I tend to be repulsed by immaturity, by any lack of humility or gratitude in anyone I meet. The second I sense an inkling of entitlement I am frantically searching for an exit. And yet I catch myself expounding my entitlement in the most unaware statements of idiocy. And cringe.
And so I am drawn to humility like a moth to flame. I also know from a lifetime of experience that false humility is the narcissist’s favorite coat. The wolf has gutted the sheep and stolen it’s skin, and it is dangerous to get too close. As life threatening for me as the dis-eases I have battled these past few months – Lyme, Covid and E.Coli. Deadly.
Yes, I do believe there is an equal psychology to every pathology. The truth will out; which is to say that our unconscious and unresolved childhood hurts will eventually kill us. Every one of us. Even you. Science informs us that the unstressed human body would live far longer than we do, that number being somewhere between two and five hundred years, debated in the higher echelons of biology. But we don’t.
And while I did learn studying Neuro-linguistic programming that “the reason is always a parent.” (- Virginia Satir, Peoplemaking, The Emotional Hostage) we cannot blame our parents for this. They were just as embroiled as we are, perhaps more so. They had far fewer resources and opportunities. That is not meant as an excuse for their hurtful behaviors. But I am increasingly convinced that there is an entity responsible, and it is an unhealthy culture.
There is no actual biological justification for war. Or famine. Or poverty. Or control of any kind. Again: OR CONTROL OF ANY KIND. It is entirely unnecessary and it is unhealthy. Here we are in the 21st century of recorded history just beginning to catch a whiff of the fact that perhaps the indigenous tribes of the world were doing alright without colonial intervention…they lived in a culture of cooperation. What was good for an individual was good for the collective. They lived instinctively, intuitively. They didn’t need weather radar. They sensed inclement weather and acted accordingly. We built defenses.
I am not about to go live off the land at this age. I am unequivocally uninterested in surviving any major disaster, natural or manmade. I fear pain and suffering, not being dead. How do we heal our culture? Hell if I know. I do know, however, that we are not getting out of here intact without exercising our creativity. I know it’s the way. Remember, ultimately, it will be the artists who save us.
“Artists love other artists. Shadow artists are gravitating to their rightful tribe but cannot yet claim their birthright.” – Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
Since I have been ill the past few weeks I have been binge watching a British show called Portrait Artist of the Year. Fortunately it has 11 seasons, each with twelve episodes. It’s so nerve-wracking, and so inspiring. Free to watch through YT. It’s ‘The Voice’ for visual artists; it launches careers. I couldn’t participate in anything like that; I’d fall apart. That is a clue about the psychological pathology I spoke of in yesterday’s post. I simply live too close to the ledge of grief to be so exposed in public.
I do remember one season where they chose to advance an artist who had behaved, to my eye, totally inappropriate in the first round. She was irritable with, and demanding of, the model – to the point of rudeness. She ignored the other two fellow artists who were also painting the same person from other angles. Never mind what they wanted! She micromanaged the group like a herding dog with a flock. The judges must not have caught the bad behavior which showed up in the editing room later. Had I been in that panel of artists I would have told her to sit down and shut up. And maybe decked her, who knows…I’ve never been violent. Yet.
Back in my twenties, going through a divorce from my abusive husband who is the father of my son, I sought counseling. I had experienced it first when a schoolmate in college recommended I see her psychologist sister. It was eye-opening and, of course, I’ve been an advocate since. Counseling is self care. You go to the doctor when you have a health issue, why on earth wouldn’t you get help sorting out the psycho-pathology? Don’t you want to experience your wholeness? If nothing else, this trained professional can offer some objective feedback and tract your emotional health just like a doctor does your physical health. That said, I’ve met some mighty dysfunctional and just-plain-wrong therapists throughout the decades. There are quacks in that field, too. But you don’t give up.
I’ve told this story before, about this talented and insightful therapist I would later study with at Wayne State. When she posed concepts that were foreign to me, I often told her, I need “tangible evidence.” In other words, I wanted proof – preferably in advance – that this crap would work.
Here’s the thing about therapy. And medicine. And art. The evidence takes time. It comes after the healing. As Steven Levine writes in the life changing book Who Dies?, terminally ill patients sometimes die and sometimes recover, and healing has little to do with it either way. Healing means becoming conscious, and it’s an ongoing process. It requires tremendous courage, because no one is coming out of that transformation as the same person they were when they went in. I remember being told that once, when my son was going through cancer treatment. He was going to attend Camp Make-A-Dream in Missoula, Montana. One of the attendant counselors warned me, “your son will not return home as the same person who left.” I was okay with that. I’d have been okay with any part of that bargain, whether I understood it or not. Just keep him alive.
So here’s the deal, McNeal…you have to let go first. You force the exhale before you’re ready…knowing you might run out of air. It’s called faith. That is the main ingredient of healing, of consciousness. Julia Cameron knows it. She calls it spiritual electricity. No lights without it. And it isn’t part of her 12 week process – it’s in the Basic Principles – prior to beginning. Before any tangible evidence that this will work.
You have to consciously decide to trust the process. You pretty much have to be at the point of no return, left with nothing to lose. Sickness will do that for you. Trauma. So will art. They rip you open and lay bare your entire being. Only by being raw and vulnerable do we realize any true healing. ACIM (A Course In Miracles) says it best: In my defenselessness my safety lies. That’s the only place any safety lies.
As far as any art I’ve ever shown, or writing for that matter, it has rarely met with any encouragement at all. I had one instructor who marked my essay “don’t give up your day job.” And a close trusted friend who I showed a drawing to respond with: “I don’t get it. But then I’m not one of your groupies.” I’ve also had some amazing encouragement from other instructors, both in writing and art. A grade school teacher entered a painting into the Detroit News Scholastic Art Awards contest unbeknownst to me and I won. I was in 6th grade. Again in 12th grade a teacher entered a poem into a student contest run by The Atlantic Monthly magazine, and they published it. If you don’t consider that tangible evidence, I don’t know what is.
And yet…here I am, at 70, wondering how and why I never pursued any practice in the creative arts. I couldn’t care less about fame or fortune, but some supplemental income would have been great. Some sense of confidence. Some joy. Obviously I am fragile of ego and easily led astray by others’ opinions.
But this ramble is to attest that the faith comes first, called blind because we have to face the unknown without the evidence. I want to heal my root chakra. And my throat chakra. I will speak the truth as far as I know it, always. And I will TRUST that I am safe – not in spite of my vulnerability, but because of it. I’m not done yet – but I am done living in the shadows.
I had the great good fortune of meeting and taking a class with my favorite artist, Elaine Dalcher. She isn’t done yet, either. A kinder, smarter person you will never meet. Nor a better teacher. Wow, has she got a healing story for us. Visit her website: https://www.elainedalcher.com/
“Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists from what has never existed before.” – Gloria Steinem
Jean Banas seems to be onto something. She has certainly stumbled upon the true fountain of youth. Such a sweet little old lady…hahahahaaaa! Not. Sweet, yes. Old, maybe. Lady, mmmmm, okay, I’ll give her that. I wouldn’t want to mess with her in a scuffle. She began painting in her 70’s.
She reminds me of my Mother, who didn’t live to see the age of 70. She was tiny and soft-spoken and easy going. And a force to be reckoned with. Let’s not assume that “little old ladies” are ever what they seem. I have a confession: when I started watching some YouTube videos about older artists, I expected to find them discovering their creativity in their sixties and 70’s. Retired, children grown. Making cute things in the basement or garage…I was not prepared for the magnificent inspiration of many, many older artists. Even well into their 90’s and over a hundred years of age – and anything but retiring. I feel as if I’ve only just begun to uncover some tantalizing promise of renewal and rejuvenation. Join me!
The last few posts, while on a subject close to my heart, were just TCB. If you don’t know what that stands for, don’t take your youth for granted. I’ve not been well enough to write for the better part of a week. And I’m learning a lot, seemingly all over again, about my body and my health now that I am older. I can no longer get away with plowing through like I did the first several decades.
Those closest to me know that a few months ago I was told that I have a rare genetic disease, called ADA (or Adenosine deaminase deficiency) which destroys the immune system. I’d gone through another bout of Lyme and two sets of blood tests, and the doctor’s office called me in for a “consultation.” They wanted me sitting down to explain this anomaly. Apparently they had never heard of ADA either until getting the results back from Mayo and they were quite stumped by my response when they told me: I laughed out loud. A big guffaw. It wasn’t that I don’t take it seriously, but think about it – I’m halfway through my 71st year and they are telling me that I have a rare, life-threatening disease that might kill me – AND that I was born with it! Helllloooooo…..I WON!
Honestly, I suddenly felt like I had superpowers. But it did explain a lot, and I am just beginning to grasp the consequences with this last week, because what I am experiencing may be no more than your common cold. I tested negative for Covid and influenza, which is great to know; I’m not contagious. I was told it probably began as allergies and became a sinus infection, and I was prescribed antibiotics. But the past few nights have been pretty scary. Incessant violent coughing keeps me from sleeping, so I count the minutes on the clock adding them up to make hours, in an attempt to get to morning without having to call for an ambulance. The validating part of this diagnostic information is that I know that I am NOT exaggerating the pain or the seriousness of the symptoms. I record every medication I take at what time. I line them up on the dresser just in case I’m making a mad dash for help, or worse, that my son would be.
And for the record, I freaking hate drama. I do not want to be this person who is always sick and needy. I’m far less afraid of death. So that’s the other thing I do – I write love notes. I document my thoughts and feelings. I’m getting my things in order. I updated my will fast, and bought a final wishes planner called I’M DEAD, NOW WHAT? to record instructions for my only child. Last year my brother died in his sleep after a few days of “feeling under the weather”. He was 62; I was 70 at the time. It is entirely possible he also had ADA, and that a seemingly minor cold or flu was not taken seriously. We’ll never know.
Here’s what I do know: I’m not afraid of dying. It certainly wouldn’t be my choice at this time, but que sera sera…I AM, however, afraid of losing my sense of humor. It’s been elusive this past week. That’s when I know I’m really in trouble. When I become snarky with the people I love. Because when all is said and done…
Get a new toaster already! This one looks good from my Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/46BPdDg, and for God’s sake, get yourself a final wishes planner: https://amzn.to/3LOyp26 Don’t leave it to your loved ones to have to figure out. That isn’t fun or funny.
Yesterday’s post seemed a bit preachy about what I don’t want. I beg your patience. What I DO want, and have always wanted, is freedom. Peace of mind. That’s my measurement from here on out for the rest of this incarnation, which I hope will be many more years. As Mimi would say, “good Lord willin’ and the crick don’t rise.” Do I need more exercise to pull that off? I certainly do. So thank you to my dear, dear friends and family who do continue to entice me out to share in activities. I have to pick and choose wisely right now as I am still recovering from a debilitating, albeit invisible, disease. Thank you for not giving up on me.
This delicate balance I seek to find this summer includes what feels like a huge psychological shift. Now in my 7th decade I seem to be just discovering what freedom means – specifically, to think freely. To dig down into the depths of my true being and find out what it is that I really want. Who I truly am. To stop using life energy to flail against what I don’t want. To stop protesting, to stop feeling put upon and pulled at by those around me.
Two or three nights ago now I woke, as I always do, between 3 and 4 a.m. I “heard” the voice in my head, seemingly out of nowhere, stating very clearly: “THERE IS NOTHING AGAINST YOU HERE.” Intuitively I knew that by HERE it meant, in life, on earth, for all time. There is nothing against me. There never has been. And as my old mentor Jack Boland would have said, “therefore, as night follows day…” that means that everything is FOR me.
This concept may take a minute or lifetime for me to grok. I’ll have to get back to you on this…this is what I mean when I say, “on the road to enlightenment, I’m taking the local.” I mean to get it with every cell of my being. Don’t rush me.
Please indulge this idea with me: what if everything is for you? Another long time mentor is Rob Bell. Young as he is, he is onto something. Several years ago I went to listen to him speak in his home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan. He left the evangelical mega church he was pastor of because they wouldn’t let him teach enlightenment. There’s something I might do if you asked – I’d go to hear him speak again. He leads you out – out of the restriction of your personality into your natural state of freedom. He gets it, or as he says, there is no exit strategy here. “This is not an evacuation theology…”
It’s true that I don’t want to go anywhere with you. Because I want to be nowhere with you, as in nowhere = now here.
Today I feel about 150 years old. It’s summer time here in Michigan, in the little beach town where I live. I’m less than a mile from the beach, and just a mile or two from the national park, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. It is magnificently beautiful. And…what is that new buzz phrase? Um…overtouristed. But many relatives and friends come this time of year to visit, because – let’s be honest – it’s a bear in the winter.
So this morning relatives staying in a nearby resort called and suggested we meet at the beach. I hesitated…but I said okay. Not a resounding yes, but okay. We are old. We are in our seventies. WHO goes to the beach in their 70’s? Turns out, people from Florida. They are READY! Wow. They have the fancy beach chairs in the spiffy carrying bag and the cooler with the sparkling water and the big umbrella with the spike that goes in the sand…I didn’t even know these things existed until this morning. I’m as ready for a day at the beach as I am for the slopes in January. Which is to say: not.
Time for true confessions. I’m an indoorsey kinda gal. Nature terrifies me. Never mind the ticks are trying to kill me, it’s HUMID PEOPLE!!! The sun is so bright. Is that really necessary?! There are people everywhere. Bugs. Poison ivy. Alewives. Eeeewwwwww….it’s mighty uncomfortable for starters. And it stinks. I just don’t get it.
Humans invented air conditioning for a reason. Do you have any little IDEA?! how COMFORTABLE my BED IS?! Why would I ever want to go to a beach?!
I don’t belong here. I am a city girl. Born and raised in the suburbs of Detroit. And I loved it there. The architecture is some of the best in the country. The Detroit Institute of Arts is truly one of the premiere museums in the world. Before I could drive I used to skip school and hitchhike downtown to spend the day in the museum. Or on the 13th floor of the J.L. Hudson building, the furniture floor, moving from vignette to vignette, imagining how I would change the room if it were mine. In junior high and high school I worked downtown for Saks and walked the tunnel under Second Avenue to the Fisher Building for lunch and a manicure. I was in my element.
But life had other plans for me. For reasons I won’t bore you with today, I moved to my “2nd home,” up north, when my son was young. So he grew up here, and he loves it here. And so, here we are. And I do love it here, too. I probably would not choose this rural location if I were deciding today, but I’m here now. In an ideal outdoor playground. They call it Pure Michigan for a reason.
So off I go to meet people at the beach. We didn’t go to any of several close beaches, we drove to an isolated beach miles down a dirt road through the woods, attempting to avoid the crowds. At the mouth of the path from the road’s end down to the water stood a wooden board announcing that you must have a park pass to continue. I had not realized before that this was within the boundaries of the National Park. I don’t have a pass. But I can scan the Q-code with my smarter-than-me phone and buy one online. Except I can’t. It requires you register an account using your email. Okay. But then connect to the purchase app via email. Well, no. I don’t have email on my phone! It’s on my computer at home – WHERE I SHOULD HAVE STAYED. And does the park let you buy a day pass? No. Pay as a guest? No. It seems to me that nothing is user friendly for we old folks who are electronically disadvantaged. And fear federal prison.
Anyway, I’m back home now. I am never going to leave again. I do not want to meet you at the beach. I do not want to go for a hike. Outdoors isoverrated. Neither do I want to go to a crowded concert venue, or a movie theater, a loud bar, or the symphony. Been there, enjoyed that. Decades and decades and…decades of that. I’m tired. I like to remind my friends that not all of us here are on vacation.
You are aware, I trust, that they make fabrics now that feel like bunny fur? You can buy slippers and you can also wrap yourself up in it’s goodness in the form of a blanket. And stay warm. In your icy, air-conditioned room with a QUEEN SIZED bed, and a tv with a REMOTE!
A Painterly Home 