This is Not Normal, OR Quirky Kids and One Idea about Reducing Social Isolation

My daughter and I participated in the March for Our Lives this past Saturday.  While we know and love several gun owners, we also think the safety of our kids and society in general should be addressed in a variety of ways, which would include more regulations on the way guns are procured and who can get them.  In a discussion of good will I have on an ongoing basis with a good family friend, he let me know that he is most concerned about the mental health issues facing anyone who might use guns for ill and how can we better address that aspect (since I am a mental health professional).

It makes me think of one of the signs at the March on Saturday, it read:  This Is Not Normal.

Well, what does that mean?  What is not normal?  The number of students killed in school shootings in 2018 so far?  The number of deaths by suicide in which a gun was used?  A President who, to put it mildly, seems to have disdain for women?  A population of people who are so angry and afraid of one another that they can't speak and listen like grown ups?

You guys know me - I am a big advocate of paradox.  As a therapist, I am often one to say, "There is no normal."  There are so many variations of brains and bodies and hearts and souls and that is one of the most beautiful and astounding aspects of being human.  But also, sometimes it helps to have some kind of range.  I had a therapist who used to repeatedly ask me, "If we were watching the movie of this, what do you think the audience would be saying?"  (Her implication was that the audience would be like "oh shit, this is NOT normal.")  It helps to have perspective.

So when my friend asks me about mental health and helping people on the fringe - adults, kids, white, black, and mostly male, I think it takes a lot of nuanced and mature thinking to parse through it.

Another friend talked to me recently about her "quirky kid."  She worries about her kid who is not 'diagnosable' and does not look different on the outside but relates to other people in a different way.  My friend worries about her kid being socially ostracized.  She worries about her child's boundaries and vulnerabilities.  She worries about her child's current and future struggles.  And my friend has gotten her kid every intervention known to parent-dom.  This is not a kid who hasn't had support, love and resources.  This is not about getting the quirkiness out of her kid, this is now about helping create a world where the child's quirkiness may have a place.

What is or is not normal?  How do we relate to those who are not 'normal'?  As adults?  As youth?  What do we model to our kids about this?

It seems like being 'normal' is the lowest bar in kid-dom.  In kid-dom, a lot of people actually want to be better than normal.  I remember in 7th grade, a girl I looked up to a lot was just COOL.  (Yes, Stephanie, it's you.)  She could write bubble letters without practicing, her jean jacket collar stayed up at just the right angle, her hair always looked good and the song lyrics she wrote on her folder were effortlessly perfect.  I had to study and practice and really, really think about all that she did to get even a fraction as cool as she was.

I think about how this kind of dynamic permeates through to adult life.  Some people are cool, some people don't care and are still cool, some people try and are not cool, some people don't care and just really don't care.   We have PTSD from being kids, in a way - no one wants to have cooties, but we also often remember the kid with cooties.  It's a terrible part of 'normal' childhood and it probably continues on in a muted form to adulthood.

In the end, I think both of my friends are worrying about social isolation - one very personally, and one from more removed point of view.  What can be done to prevent social isolation?  To 'treat' social isolation?  I don't think it's right or realistic to think everybody should 'just be friends.'  We can't force genuine relationships.

As I've been writing this, I've been going over in my mind how 'quirkiness' is seen in adult world and I am relieved to notice that there is a wide range of quirkiness that I think just doesn't matter in adult world and/or you can certainly find friendships even if you say...love poetry or something really weird like that.

But what I think continues to trouble adults and I also remember it from being a kid, is how to relate to people who have different boundaries.  Perhaps different physical boundaries - they touch or talk close up, they might talk too long in meetings or after church service, they might not have typical hygiene, they might seem angry or sullen but have outbursts that they want others to acknowledge at times that aren't convenient.  I think these are the kinds of quirks that even wise adults struggle to understand and have compassion for.  But I think this is the challenge we are asked to undertake now.  Both for our selves and to model for our children.

We need to be empowered to be both courteous and straightforward.  To ask more questions and voice our own needs and wants in a compassionate way.

For example, if I interact with an adult who is talking too close to me, it would be very difficult, but I actually think I need to say, "Could you please take a step back."  Or to say to the colleague who is might be having a monologue at 5pm, "I need to get home now, the end of the work day isn't a good time for me to talk."

I think when we become more comfortable saying what we need or what boundaries are ok for us, we also model this for our kids and we take away the stigma or fear.  Sometimes I think we humans act ugly toward others when we are afraid...afraid we don't know what to do or how to handle a situation.  I think being ignored and brushed over might be the worst part of social isolation.  Honest, compassionate communication is a form of connection, to me.

When I worked in hospice, I learned that you could just about say anything to a person, it just depended on how you said it.  I talked to people about everything - from how they pooped to how their body would shut down when they died.  I know we can do better with one another, but we have to be willing to look at what makes us uncomfortable.

Maybe it is looking at our own fears, our own shortcomings, our own lack of knowing the answer.

Here is something I do know  - I'm not so worried about 'normal.'  I think it's a better tool to use to ask, "If we were watching the movie, what would the audience be saying?"  I think the audience would know that many factors contribute to gun violence and social isolation is only one of those factors.  I think the audience would also know that social isolation is the result of yet again, many factors.  Sorry everybody...this is a complex world.

One aspect of social isolation is our aversion to our own weirdness and our own fear that we don't know how to address other people's weirdness.   That's ok.  We can work with that!

My bubble letters may never be the right amount fluffy, but I am going to keep practicing compassionately and courageously setting boundaries, knowing that honest communication is one way I can show deep respect for another human being.

Paradox, Poetry, and Healing Our Big, Little Selves

In the two weeks since I last wrote, I started several different blogposts - about sex and intimacy, about talking with your teenager, about why it's hard to say 'no', about Valentine's Day and being single, and now this one.  It's been difficult to focus my attention on one thing because so much has happened to shift what I think is meaningful to write about on any given day.  So while I think all of those topics are interesting and I will probably revisit them.  We've had another mass, school shooting in the past week and there is much talk about mental health - something about which I am supposed to be an expert.  It seems the most pressing thing.

In times of great sadness and fear, when the weight of being human and the call to do something to help presses on me, when it feels that I don't have any ideas or energy left, I often go to poetry to comfort me.  And this week, I found myself with a poem that I've loved since I took my first writing workshop with Colleen McKee, a St. Louis poet, in 2006.  It's from a book called The Writer's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux and it taught me about how to bring a character to life and how poetry can be written in simple, straightforward language.  It's by Susan Browne, who I think is a Buddhist.

POEM IN MY MOTHER'S VOICE

When my mother meets God,
she says, Where the hell have you been?
Jesus Christ, don't you care about anyone 
but yourself?  It's time you wake up,
smell the coffee, shit or get off the pot.

You must have won your license in a fucking raffle.
You're grounded, and I don't want any back-talk.
In fact, don't talk at all until you can say something 
that is not a lie, until you can tell the truth.
You know, the truth?  Something in sentence form
that comes out of your mouth and is not a lie.
Could you do that for me?  Is this possible 
in my lifetime?  Don't ever lie to me again 
or I'll kill you.  And get off your high-horse.
WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Running around the world
like a goddamn maniac, creating havoc.  You have lost
the good sense you were born with.  Shape up or ship out
I can't believe we're related.

My mother lights a cigarette, pitches the match
through the strings of a harp, inhales profoundly,
letting the smoke billow from her nose.
Her ruby lips press together in a righteous grimace
of disgust.  She never stops watching God.

I've really had enough this time.
What do you take me for?  A fool?  An idiot?  A patsy?
Some kind of nothing set down on earth for your convenience,
entertainment? A human punching bag?  For your information
I was not born yesterday.  I know what you're up to.
I have been around the block a few thousand spins of the wheel.
I have more compassion in my little finger
than you have in your entire body.  I am a mother.
I care.  Maybe you don't care, but I do.  Care.
Do you know what that word means?  Bring me the dictionary
and I will tell you what the word care means.  Never mind.
How could you find a dictionary in that dump you call a room.
The whole universe of care down the toilet
because of your dirty socks.  Do I look like a maid?
Did you think the purpose of my existence was to serve you?
You are barking up the wrong tree.  We need to get something 
straight.  I am not here for you.  I am here for me.
But I care.  Can you possibly, in your wildest imagination,
hold two ideas in your tiny mind at the same time?
This is called paradox.  Par-a-dox.  We need the dictionary.
No, we need to talk.  What do you have to say for yourself?

"I'm sorry," God replies.

You're sorry.  Well, that's not enough.  Wash that sullen look
off your face or I"ll wash it off for you.
And quit looking down.  Look at me!

God lifts his heavy head,
falls into the fierce love
of my mother's green-blue eyes.

Grow up, she says.

What comforts me about this poem is that it reminds me that our human condition is a paradox.

People might not think poetry is practical, but it is.

When we are straightforward and realistic, when we engage in political and civic thought and discussion, we are 'fighting' about whether this problem we have in our country is guns or mental health.  It is both.  We have to hold two ideas in our minds at one time.  More, even.

When we look at our technology, our phones, social media, the immediacy of all the information and opinions available to us, we wonder "Is this good or bad?"  It's both.

We ourselves are paradoxical - look at the mom in this poem.  What Susan Browne shows is that her mom can yell and cuss and berate, but something about her particular mom comes through - fierce love.  I don't think every parent who yells and berates also conveys fierce love, but this one does.

One of the most difficult things about being human right now is that there are many forces in the world that want to dumb you down.  To reduce you to your simplest form.

They want you to be smaller than your are - to think smaller than you are, to feel more petty that you are.  These forces are in the media, in social media, in the things you are addicted to or nearly addicted to, in the people who might be in your life.

At the end of the poem, the mom tells God to "Grow up."  That makes me laugh, but I think it's what embracing paradox is about.  There are moments in the media coverage of the aftermath of the shooting in Florida last week, where I see that the students are more grown up than many of the adults who also have a media platform on these issues.

I guess that's the paradox and wisdom of this poem too.  In some sense it's playful and simple, and in other ways it's very grown up and complex.  Sometimes people will say to me, "I read your blog and it seems like you've got it all figured out."  I don't.  I am trying, I make mistakes.  My kids might write funny poems about me one day, because I'm kind of weird.  But, I try to both play and be a grown up.

One of the things that has enhanced my weirdness is working in dying and grieving for so long.  And believe it or not, I am going to bring up back to paradox with a little anecdote about a makeup/skincare party I attended on Friday at a friend's house.  I don't always sit around thinking deep thoughts.  Sometimes I think about makeup.  This particular line of makeup is supposed to be natural and carcinogen-free.  That is it's mission.  I found myself thinking - "Ah, so what.  We're all going to die.  I'm not opposed to wiping some carcinogens on my face.  Especially if they reduce fine lines and wrinkles."  This was not what I was supposed to be thinking.  I was supposed to be fearful of dying and spend $80 on face cream.  And I'm not opposed to that either, in theory.  What I am saying is - I think often about how the time we get is limited. 

We are small, but we are big.  In what you do, in what you say, in how you love and who you love. We all will be dead one day, but it matters.  It is everything. 

The Rattle Bag: Dances with Wolves, Translations, and Gun Control

Living in D.C. in my early 20s, I remember discovering a bookstore called Kramerbooks and Afterwords, which I loved the way book nerds like me love bookstores.  Which is to say, I felt totally cozy and at home there.  Independent bookstores often effect me as church or museums do - I get solemn and sense a connection with Big Things.  With my very little expendable income, I picked up a poetry anthology called The Rattle Bag, edited by Seamus Heaney (the Irish, too, do something romantic me) and have picked it up periodically and read and appreciated for the past 20 years.  In part, what I take the word Rattle Bag to represent is a hodge podge - a poetry book full of interesting poems, related only by the fact that the editor liked them.

So today is a Rattle Bag of some ideas I've been working through and a couple bits that have been helpful that have stumbled across my path recently.

First, I want to share with you, that it's my intent to start work on a book in 2016, and perhaps finish it too.  It will be part anecdotal/memoir and part self-help workbook/journal for readers.  Through work and life, I've experienced a variety of interesting, joyful and even harrowing things, and certainly been witness to others' lives and through the past 15 years, I've journaled almost every day.  It's an important part of how I stay truthful with myself, how I feel connected to myself and other people, how I work through puzzles and pains.  If you are interested in reading bits as I go along, let me know.  In that spirit, I offer you a new exercise that I've been using in my own journaling, and that I plan to include in what I put together in a larger picture in 2016.  Here goes:

Over Thanksgiving weekend, my family and I watched Dances with Wolves together and I was struck by something that had never resonated with me in the same way before - the meeting of the Sioux to decide what to do about John Dunbar (Kevin Costner), who they'd found living alone at the soldier fort.  Sitting around the fire, the Sioux men met and each had their say, which was listened to fully and seriously by the other members of the tribe, including the chief, Ten Bears.  The men spoke one at a time and paused to take in all that the other man had just said - one man was angry and vengeful, one man was curious, maybe each man had a slightly different opinion, but he was fully heard.  Then, Ten Bears, after taking it in, made a decision - that no decision had to be made at that time.

From a psychological perspective, I loved this as a metaphor for how we might better solve problems or questions in our lives - i.e., what should I do about the problem at school, at work, with my friend, with my sister, with my spouse?  Many people react quickly without thinking through all the different internal responses they are having.  Other people get so stuck in pondering and puzzling that they never do anything.  But the important part is, that in order to proceed with wisdom (even, if your decision is to do 'nothing' at this time,) every part of your personality needs to be heard fully.

In puzzling out how to deal with my own kids, who have been bickering, fighting, complaining and hitting each other recently, I drew out a big circle on a piece of paper.  I put a small circle in the middle and pie pieces coming from the middle circle to the outer edge.    On each pie piece, I wrote a feeling that represented a member of my internal 'tribe' and what that member would say at a tribal council.  For example:  Disgusted/Exhausted, "I'm sick and tired of all this fighting"  Or, Failure, "They fight because I didn't teach them well."  Or, Normal, "It's normal for brothers and sisters to fight like this."  In the end, I had seven representatives on my council, each with a different feeling about the same problem.  Then,  I imagined what the chief would say after having listened to all the different parts of me.

What I noticed after I wrote all this down, is that I felt much more peaceful about the problem than I had before I wrote.  I needed to consciously acknowledge that I was being driven in part by guilt and feelings of failure, but after admitting that to myself, the "chief" also saw that it was best to listen to the voices that said be both consistent with consequences and patient because this is normal.

I just want to encourage you to try something like this, if you are grappling with a problem right now - what are all the different ways you feel about it - even if they are illogical, unattractive or silly?  Don't try to impress yourself, just be real.  After knowing ALL the different ways you feel, what makes most sense?   Feel free to let me know how it goes - I'd love to hear if this works for you in bringing a greater sense of quiet to a problem that's kept you stirred up.

And of course, in my Rattlebag this month has been deep sadness about the gun violence in our world (we can't just say the U.S., now), terrorism, and rage in general.  A young person I know recently shared with me that the root of the word 'sin,' really translates to 'missing the mark' (it actually had to do with archery).  I am a person who gravitates toward words and religious words have power for me, even if I am not a dogmatic at all.  Sin can be such a polarizing word - lots of non-religious people sort of roll their eyes at it.  Yet, missing the mark is a concept that resonates beyond the religious.  I think about the overlap of the metaphor -  of shooting, missing the mark or hitting the mark, good and evil, peace and violence, injustice and justice.  Each of us must look at our own thoughts and actions.  Where do we 'miss the mark' in our thinking, feeling, or how we treat others?  I know I say it all the time, but our little bit counts in ways we can never fully understand.

And finally, I have been thinking a lot about gun control and what the nuances of that mean to me.  I could go two routes - one, is that I do understand that many people feel extremely threatened and perhaps rightfully so, in willy nilly changes to the Bill of Rights.  This is how the Second Amendment reads:  Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

I just want to pose a genuine question, in tribal council mode:  Would the Founding Fathers, given today's technology with firearms, adhere to this?  I truly wonder.

But the second route I go is more practical, I suppose.  I understand that many people who don't hunt or otherwise use firearms are confused by the differences between semi-automatic, automatic and assault style weapons.  My own son is a hunter and enjoys trap shooting, so I've learned a lot more than I ever would have known otherwise.  I believe that as a society, we must implement regulations that slow the legal processes of acquiring firearms and maintaining them.  I don't believe that solves the problems we are facing, but does that mean we shouldn't do it?  We should do all the things we can to create a common sense society.

That's the Rattle Bag today, I suppose.  And one more thing  not to be forgotten - hopes and wishes for your family to enjoy a December that is gentle and full of love.