Monday, December 15, 2014

The Ghost of Christmas Present, Rage, and Ferguson

As I head into the last sprint before the week of Christmas, I find myself thinking of Carol Kane  as the Ghost of Christmas Present in the movie Scrooged.  She is one of my favorite comedic characters...I have such a soft spot for physical comedy  - Molly Shannon as Mary Katherine Gallagher, Gilda Radner as the Girl Scout.  Carol Kane's Ghost's  utter silliness and punching the crap out of Bill Murray totally cracks me up.

Here's one of my favorite clips, in case you haven't see it:  http://movieclips.com/U2oH-scrooged-movie-the-truth-is-painful/

Physical comedy does two things...it demonstrates absolute absurdity that is part of this human life and it has the energy of rage.  It's something I get.  I don't know where the rage in me comes from sometimes.  I don't know if it's in my DNA, I don't know if it was born of my work with abused kids (I felt deep despair and later,rage, after hearing the stories of dozens of young girls who'd been sexually abused).  I don't know if the injustice of different parts of life just builds up in all of us over time.  But, I get rage when I see it, and I get why the energy of it is overwhelming.

So, Carol Kane's Ghost tells Bill Murray - "Sometimes the Truth Is Painful, Frank!" and I realize just how much this resonates with the message that I've gotten from two different community/racial dialogues I've attended in anticipation of and after the grand jury decision in Michael Brown's death.  These dialogue's are called Mother 2 Mother and they are modeled from community and healing work that was done in Northern Ireland with Catholic and Protestant mothers.  Here in St. Louis, the two I attended were at churches. They were well attended - the last one had over 240 people present.  Black and white women and even some men sat first to listen to black mothers tell their stories - what is it like to be the mother or grandmother of a young, black man in St. Louis?  What are the honest and very sad messages that parents feel they must impart to their black sons about the way society is more likely to see them as suspects and perpetrators?  How or why should they NOT stand up to authority?  The second part of these evenings was conversation and sharing.

What I vividly understood from these talks was the feeling that black mothers express:  that white mothers absolutely don't understand the fullness of their experience.  Perhaps a feeling that black mothers could not tell the truth, speak freely, with their white friends, neighbors, colleagues, because white people did not want to listen.

It seems to me that we in St. Louis are in a Ghost of Christmas Present a la Carol Kane moment - sometimes the truth is painful. 

When I feel anger, rage, the weight of what is unjust...I know what I first need is to be heard.  Then, I need to feel validated.  Then, I need hope.  I need to have the feeling, the hope, that whatever is the root of this injustice will change.

The truth is painful.  It is painful to see what's been in front of us the whole time - whether it's Frank seeing his brother or his assistant, or even himself, or it's us - white people and black people, finally seeing and talking about the way things are.  Despite it's ugliness, there is truth in most rage.  That's painful too - both for the person experiencing the rage and for the world that witnesses it.

As a therapist, I think that in the end, rage is TOO painful to sustain and often brings with it more hurt than help.  But, I think it is a seed of something necessary.  It is a spark of energy to give attention to.  We have to look it in the eye, we have to open our ears to it.  It will hold up to us what is utterly unfair and cruel.  And when we see that clearly, we can begin.

I think the beauty of Carol Kane's Ghost of Christmas Present, is that though she punches Frank square in the jaw, she is not enraged.   Maybe annoyed and impatient, but not enraged.  This is why she can be both silly and effective - she doesn't do him any real violence, but she does, metaphorically, help wake him up to the way his world is and the impact he has in it.

I think it's ok for us all to be willing to metaphorically slapped and to wake up.  Whether it's about racial injustice or about some aspect of our own lives.  The truth is painful, but it will also set you free (shout out to one of the Apostles, I think it was John).

In this life, I've found that I have some purpose that has to do with being willing to change.  I have found that life again and again calls me to change.  I have to learn a new skill, I have to grow my patience, I have to be willing to be vulnerable, I have to be myself, but that's not entirely the person I was yesterday and that's okay.  In fact, that's good.  That's hope.  If I were in Scrooged, I'd want to be the Ghost of Christmas Present (that looks fun!), but I'm probably more Bill Murray - and my guess is that we're all more Bill Murray.  And that's okay too - if we see the truth (even if we get  knocked over the head with it), it's never too late to change.




Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Sharing My Imperfection (I hope I spelled it right!)

It's 1988 in suburban, St. Louis.  A warm and clear Spring evening at my childhood home - the windows are open, the crickets are chirping.  All should have been at ease.  But I was 16.

I don't remember what the fight with my mom was about, but given my age, it was probably about me spending time with my boyfriend.  If you know me, you know that I wasn't much of a rebel in high school (maybe I was 0% rebel in high school - how boring!), so I didn't usually fight with my mom.  But this night we were arguing - and I raised my voice to her.  "Keep your voice down!" she whispered in one of those really loud whispers that mom's use when they're mad, but in public.  I strode over to the window and yelled out,  "What?!  Don't you want the neighbors to know that the FRIEDMANS HAVE PROBLEMS!!!" (my maiden name was Friedman).  I was ashamed of being mean but also kind of proud that I thought I taken a stand.  It wasn't like I was a teenager who went around feeling disgusted by my family.  I actually was very proud of them.  But on some level, a message had seeped into my consciousness that is was a big no-no to let on to anyone else that we were imperfect.

Especially now that I am a parent, I don't feel angry at my parents for conveying this message.  I understand the pressure to appear, at the very least, like you have it together.  Sometimes, it can feel like you have to look 'perfect' - i.e, my house is perfectly clean, my kids are perfectly polite, my mental state is perfectly upbeat.

I've seen a little bit of just about everything as a social worker, and I can tell you what I learned a long time ago:  even the most perfect looking outside has a vulnerable, tender inside.  Several years ago, I became willing to write about my experience and share it, because I knew deep down that me sharing my goofy life might encourage others to be more compassionate with themselves and with others too.

But the past couple years have allowed me to experience this, not in some esoteric way through my work life, but in a very personal way.

My husband and I separated for over a year.  Then we reconciled.  This was a little beyond "You don't want anyone to know we have problems!"  Everyone knew we had problems.  Everyone knew we were not only imperfect, but struggling.  My experiences in the past couple of  years took me beyond giving compassion, to receiving compassion.

If you are hurting like I was, I want to tell you that the world is good, even if you're imperfect. Maybe especially if you're imperfect.  When I was in the greatest pain during my marital separation, amazing people 'showed up' to support me and my family.  Family, friends, acquaintances, even strangers.  Moms from school, friends from church, even the guy who upgraded me on the rental car.   I ran into one lady who simply asked, 'how are you?' on her way out of church and I started bawling.  You know what she told me? "I trust you."  She trusted that I had the strength and wisdom to navigate this painful period, even as I was a blubbering mess.  It was such a gift.  I will never forget that.

As humans, we are tempted to present a perfect outside not only because of how others will perceive us, but also out of a desperate hope that we can maintain control.  We may not need to have an immaculate home, but we may want to be the perfect father so our kids will turn out great.  Or we may want to be the perfect employee so that we never get fired.  Or even perfectly fun so that we hide even from ourselves how much pain we are in.  The difficult, but freeing truth is wisdom for the ages that I have to remind myself of everyday - there really is no control.  Really.  Andyou can still have a beautiful, amazing life.

If you follow Oprah or TED, you've probably heard of Brene Brown, who is a social worker (woot!) and was launched into the public spotlight several years ago after doing a TEDtalk on vulnerability.  She also wrote a book, Daring Greatly, which I recommend.  Here is a quote from Teddy Roosevelt, which kickstarts her thesis:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.”  (http://blog.ted.com/2012/09/11/5-insights-from-brene-browns-new-book-daring-greatly-out-today/)

I hope I am daring greatly to share with you my imperfections and struggles in the hope that you might be sitting there and love your own goofy self and all the imperfect people around you more and more and more.


Tuesday, October 28, 2014

Bouncing Into Graceland - Chapter 1 (or Remedial Bouncing)

I have a friend from South City St. Louis - he grew up there in the 1960s and 70s and he starts just about every story with, "one time, back when we were kids on the South side.."  And this is a guy who likes to tell stories, so you can imagine how we roll our eyes as soon as he starts.  Affectionately.

So, sometimes I feel like that too when I start a story "one time, when I worked in hospice..."  I hope my audience has the same patience and fondness for me that I have for South Side Pete.

As I was saying:  When I worked in hospice, I became closest to and listened to the stories of caregivers. Husbands, wives, daughters, sons, siblings, cousins, who found themselves in the role of taking care of their dying loved one in their home.  Caregivers are made, but some people have a natural predisposition to it.  Caregivers put their own needs second.  They see what needs to be done and they do it.  They have strong stomachs and live on very little sleep.  They are stubborn, self-sufficient.  Sometimes they are martyrs.  They often get irritable.  They often think it's easier to 'do it myself' than let someone else do it.  They often think others don't do it right.  Many times they have a secret thought, "If I don't get it done myself, something terrible is going to happen."

I am a natural born caregiver.  It's no badge of honor, I've come to find out.  I am the oldest sibling and something in my disposition is a 'fixer.'  When I was just four years old, I saw a baby bunny in the jaws of a neighborhood cat and I went and plucked that bunny out of the mouth of the cat and gave it to my mom.  How proud I was that I "saved" it! I am sure I was a caregiver in other ways over the years, but I never named that part of my personality until I was a young mom AND I worked in hospice at the same time.  I also noticed that many of my other young mom friends acted and felt much the same as the caregivers I worked with.

In 2013, I found myself and my family in a crisis.  The biggest crisis I'd ever faced.  And I again, found myself in the role of a caregiver.

Yet, I was in shock and grief myself.  And I needed caring for.  I didn't know where to begin.  The only thing in my life before that which had prepared me at all was my observation of other caregivers when I worked in hospice.

And here is the remedial lesson for today in Bouncing Into Graceland - when you find your grown up self in pain and at an all time low, but also having to maintain a job, be a good parent, pay bills - and you don't have the luxury of falling apart.

People who love you will tell you, "Take Care Of Your Self."  They mean well.

We caregivers don't know what the hell that means. Maybe most people don't know what it means.  If you have some financial means, about the best you can come up with is, "maybe I'll get a massage."  Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a massage, but taking care of yourself is something so much more basic than that.

Caregivers will tell you, "I don't have time to take care of myself.  I'll take care of myself when x y or z happens (my dad dies, when my kids are in college, when I get this promotion."  I am here to tell you that from experience, I can now officially say I know better.  I can offer a better, kinder, more healing way.

Taking care of yourself starts small.  Are you getting sleep?  Are you getting enough sleep?  Do you taste your food?  Are you eating food that has some yumminess to you?  Are you getting  hugs?  Can you feel what it feels like to let someone hug you?  Can you stretch your body?  Can you read something for fun?  Can you feel what your warm coffee cup feels like when you hold it in your hands?  Can you take 20 seconds to look at the colors of the Fall leaves?

Taking care of yourself means knowing that you are a grown up you, but you are also as precious as a child.  Your basic needs of sleep, food, connection need attention.

This is one place I started.  This was my remedial lesson in getting out of my strictly caregiver role.  I knew that if I didn't, I could maintain, but I would become a bitter, weakened person.  I knew this because I'd seen it happen with some others caregivers I'd worked with.  I didn't  want this for myself.  It started so small for me.  The warm coffee cup.  Thinking hard about what food sounded good to me, even when there were times it tasted like dust.  Doing the same thing the next day.

If you find yourself burnt out and frustrated or feeling like a martyr, don't wait until a crisis.  If you are scared and fragile, you don't have to take on the world.  Just try to get back to basic building blocks.  Today is a beautiful Fall day...the sunlight is free and feels warm and good if you let yourself step outside.


Monday, October 13, 2014

Playing with God and Other Big Questions

You haven't heard from me for a while because I'm working on a graphic novel! Well, that's pushing it a little...in the past two weeks, I got overcome by some creative spasm, and started this crazy project.  We'll see what happens.  It may be particularly ridiculous since I draw stick figures.  What compelled me was this overwhelming urge to create a story/portrait of what role(s) God has played in my life.  Which is especially weird since I'm a Unitarian Universalist, and often with people I love dearly  who are either agnostic or atheist.  I feel like I'm coming out of the closet!

Anyway, as a creative project, I am just getting started and don't really know where it's going, but I wanted to share some really non-arty panels with you and connect it to some things I've been reading in the past week.  So, here goes. I'm very nervous.  If you look at this and ask, "is this supposed to be funny?", the answer is yes.  Sometimes when you write about a big thing like God, people think it's supposed to be 100% serious.  This is not.  Okay, I just had to get that out there.

In case you can't read it, I'm 10 years old and wondering what it means if people want to be good just to get to heaven.  Maybe I'm like this, I wonder. 

Now, it's 6 mo later and I decide it's better just to 'be good' and not worry about why.
Coincidentally, I stumbled upon an essay just after I drew this little 'ditty', From the journal, Image:  Art. Faith. Mystery.  http://imagejournal.org/ .  The piece, by Dan Wakefield, is called,  Kurt Vonnegut, Christ-Loving Atheist.   Here's a quote from this piece that I really liked - it's an exerpt from Timequake, a semi-autobiographical novel by Vonnegut,

 "Humanists try to behave decently and honorably without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife.  The creator of the Universe has been to us unknowable so far.  We serve as well as we can the highest abstraction of which we have some understanding, which is our community."

But despite this theological theme today so far, what I'm grappling with is not so much the question of being 'good'  or the nature of God.  What I'm grappling with is why create something?  Whether it's a picture, a piece of music, a poem, etc?  I think Kurt Vonnegut and I may agree that one part of creating art is being of service to your community.  But I think, more basic and real than that - something that really inspires me - is that we can create art as a way to PLAY.  As a way to bring a light touch to the sometimes serious business of being a human.  \

This graphic novel is a way for me to 'play' with big ideas.  I think there are lots of things we can be more playful and light with in our lives - so many friends (and me) get so serious about HOW TO BE A GOOD PARENT or WHAT DO I REALLY WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE or I HAVE SO MANY REGRETS or lots and lots of other things.  Maybe it's just helpful to remember to play a little bit and not take ourselves so seriously.

Another one of my heroes, Bill Watterson, who wrote and drew, Calvin and Hobbes, mentioned in an interview that whenever Calvin and Hobbes were grappling with deep, universal questions, he'd send them a careening off a snowbank in their sled or tumbling into a pile of leaves in their wagon.  They couldn't take their philosophical pondering too seriously when they were in the middle of a crash landing.  So, here's what I'll leave you with - a comic from a total genius.  Shout out to Bill Watterson and my old friend from high school, Bob Early who I haven't talked to in years, but who shared a love of this comic strip with me as well as an earnestness about God and talking about vomit.







Friday, September 5, 2014

Bouncing into Graceland

I called my old blog, Thirteen Ways - it was from a poem I love by Wallace Stevens - "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird."  Each stanza is it's own little image that paints a different picture or creates a different meaning of a blackbird.  What it represented to me is that there are many ways of looking at the same thing. To me Thirteen Ways was about the way our thoughts shape our reality.  And how we have a choice about how we want to think- defensive, positive, self-critical, self-accepting, etc.

But in the past year and a half my life has been one of great change --  some tragic, some hopeful, and most of it beyond "thought" -  my body and my heart and my mind all turned upside down, broken apart, lifted up.

So I had to take a break from Thirteen Ways to experience all that.  And during that time, a friend sent me an email about the "window in your heart.  Everybody sees you're blown apart" - these lines from Paul Simon's song, Graceland.    He said, 'when your heart is blown open, there is space for something new.'  Those words meant a lot to me not just because they put a hopeful twist on something that felt awful, but because they brought to mind another part of that song -

 There is a girl in New York City,
 who calls herself the human trampoline
 and sometimes when I'm falling flying or 
tumbling in turmoil, I say 
'oh, so this is what she means'.  
She means we are bouncing into Graceland.

The poet in me loves those lines and I feel them in my bones.

I can tell you something I've learned:  sometimes you just have to feel it.  You can't just think it. You have to be it.   Life happens.  As I tell my kids in moments of great parental wisdom and eloquence: shit happens. (If your kids come home from my house saying 'shit' please don't blame me - I try to teach mine to only cuss in front of naughty children).  We have far less control than we think we have or want to have.

But, I believe it is possible to bounce - bouncing to me means resilience...it means that you come back or go forward and you are changed but you are not sick or damaged forevermore, you are simply a new version of YOU.  Bouncing to me means a little faith.  You don't necessarily know where you're going to bounce to, but you're going there and you're going to be okay once you get there.

And Graceland.  What is Graceland?

Graceland is a journey.  And to me, a journey is mysterious.  I believe in Mystery and sometimes I call that Mystery, God or Love.  Graceland is the place where we end up.  We don't know how we'll get there - what the journey will be - but in the end, there is good and love.  Even after pain, there is good and love.  Maybe especially after pain.

So Bouncing into Graceland will still be my thoughts (how else could I write it?!)  - but I hope to make connections and keep learning in a way that continues to open my heart and the hearts of the people who read it.  Maybe equal parts heart and brain.

There are a lot of questions in this life and many times we feel afraid - but what I've learned is that fear will weigh you down in your journey.  Sometimes it will stop you.  Letting go of fear, accepting when you are blown apart - in this great unknown, you will find yourself lifted up and on your way.


Thursday, August 21, 2014

A Community Grieves and a Therapist Wonders What Justice Means

I thought I was going to come out of my 'blogger' hidey hole after more than a year with some kind of big statement about myself, but the truth is, the thing that motivated me to write again, in prose and in public, is my community - St. Louis, which has been all over the news in the past two weeks.  It's surreal to me that the name Ferguson became a household word and that the intricacies of St. Louis civics are being given a national and international forum.  These type of stories always seem to happen 'somewhere else' and feel so sensationalized that I stop paying attention.  But this is my city and it's important to me.

In most ways, I'm reluctant to add my voice to the cacophony - what good would it do?  Do I really have something unique to say that isn't already said or could be said by someone who says it better?  I don't know.  I'm taking the chance.  I'm a believer that every little voice that speaks for truth and love also works for justice.  Justice is a concept I have many ideas about - with all my experience being with grieving people and in my own personal experience of grief, I don't believe justice can ever be done, in a literal sense. Justice cannot be done because the person who died cannot be brought back.  The wrong-doing cannot be undone.  The circumstances and variables that came together to create a real tragedy cannot be un-created.  We have got to change our thinking about justice.

So here I go, jumping in with a few ideas that I hope will be helpful to whoever reads this.  I am using an idea called systems theory (check it out - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory).  My interpretation is that a person is a system and a person interacts as part of many systems - family, neighborhood, work, etc.)  All systems are influenced by every little part of the system.  Each cell in your body makes a difference, each person in your neighborhood makes a difference.  In such a way of thinking - there are no little things.  Or little things can also be big things.

Ferguson is what grief looks like when it's played out in a community system - the stages of grief that an individual goes through:  shock/denial, anger, bargaining, sadness, acceptance - these are the same things a community experiences. It's grief writ large.  I've said to some of my grief clients, that if I were to have the chutzpah to mess with Elizabeth Kubler- Ross's stages of grief, I'd add PROTEST.  Protest may be a bit like bargaining and anger mixed together.  Not everyone experiences this - but a fair number of people that I see, especially if that tend to have what we call 'strong personalities' (and I say that as someone who has one), almost carry a placard in their grief  "I DON'T WANT THIS TO HAVE HAPPENED.  IT"S NOT FAIR." And some unconscious part of them hopes/believes, "Maybe through the sheer force of my will I can undo this."  We are seeing protest in Ferguson.

I also see what happens when a secret gets revealed.  In family therapy, secrets are a big deal.  If a family has a secret (Dad's an alcoholic, little brother was sexually abused, etc.), the secret holds much power and shapes the family in very unhealthy ways -mostly by creating shame.  The way I see it,  there is still racism in our community of St. Louis.  I don't mean that literally everyone is a racist, but our communities aren't integrated for the most part and that's just the tip of the iceberg.  I think racism has been a 'secret' - we are impacted by the shame of it.  This is a very complex issue and I don't think it's my area of expertise - only that I want to bring to light anything that's in the dark.  I want to live in a world where there isn't shame and there aren't secrets.

Finally, I work with a lot of people who have survived trauma.  For whatever criticism or support there may be of our police officers, I know that many of them experience trauma repeatedly (as do all our first responders).  I just want to point out that trauma, without intervention and emotional support, rewires our brains.  Even neutral stimulus can produce a flight or fight response for someone who has PTSD.  Again, I don't claim to be an expert in anything about the system of the police force, but I am guessing that they don't have adequate access to education and support as they experience repeated trauma.

And now back to justice.  It's such a confusing philosophical concept for me.  But here's a real laymen's take on it from my experience - real justice is a fair society in which each and every person has the ability and access to choose freely what and how they live their lives.  But in the real life we live in, I can't honestly say we have a just society.  In real life, I think we understand justice to mean, 'you hurt me, you get punished.'  Maybe that is the best we can come up with.  But what I find is that more victims seem to get created.  Anger seems to perpetuate, rather than diminish.  Here's what feels more just to me:

Ask yourself, how can I help Michael Brown's family heal and support them and the community through grief? Ask yourself, how can I help Ferguson, St. Louis, and other communities to honestly look at covert and overt racism and promote better relationships in our communities?  Ask yourself, how can I support police officers, firefighters, EMS?  Justice is served when we focus less on the 'wrong-doer' and more on supporting and loving the survivors of the wrong-doing.  Each of us can do something.   In systems, small things may very well turn out to be big things.