TIT FOR TAT IN MARRIAGE. WHAT'S IT REALLY ABOUT?

If you've been reading my output, chances are you've got a pretty clear idea about the name of my game: recognizing ineffective methods of operating in your relationships.

Most of us are living on the surface of our lives. This isn't intended to act as an insult. I'm not insinuating that we’re shallow. My observation is that we live busy, over stimulating lives. Our plates are overflowing, and there simply isn't the energy or the excess time to be introspective at the level required to actually understand the motivations behind our ineffective tendencies.

Humility is en vogue right now. Self deprecating humor is everywhere. Unlike our parents’ and grandparents’ generations, admitting our flaws isn't considered a weakness. Acknowledging the problem is the first step, but most of us fail to go beyond that.

We out ourselves and consider the job done. We’re more open about our inadequacies than ever, but identifying your triggers and the origins thereof is a lot to ask when your head is already spinning because you have little people to take care of and a husband to stay connected with, amidst all of life’s other chaos.

Unfortunately, you can expect more of the status quo in your relationships as long as you continue to stop short in your introspection. That fight that you have over and over and over again with your husband, never gonna end.

My real life example: When my husband wants to go do something on his own or with his friends, I have difficulty feeling supportive or glad for his much needed respite from dad and husband life. I've had this issue in previous relationships, when my trust had been betrayed, my bond was shaky, and faith in my partner just didn't exist, which is common for many, thus my bringing it up, but that's not the case with my husband.  

Our scenario has to do with me associating him taking care of his needs with a lack of concern about my own. He knows how worn down I am, how much I do for the kids, how neglected I am, how can he even feel decent about leaving me here to go it alone?

Most of us don't make it past that initial line of thought. We impulsively give him the cold shoulder and maybe have a confrontation about some other thing later on, because we’ve held our feelings in for too long. Or, we have a blow up right then and there about him leaving, and he begrudgingly stays in. You then sit on opposite ends of the couch ignoring each other until you forget what you were pissed off about to begin with, usually the next morning. A good night’s sleep seems to offer temporary amnesia. And your husband, well he doesn't know what the hell even hit him. Men are pretty good at circumnavigating futile emotions, like guilt. Women, well, we like to wear that one like a crown, dangling it for all to see when it suits us.

If I let those feelings sit and don't dig any deeper, which I sometimes do, because I'm tired, and I don't want to think anymore, then I would never realize that the underlying emotion for me is a fear of rejection. If my husband is taking care of his needs and not acknowledging mine, (not exactly accurate, but the mind and heart are often irrational) then he must not appreciate me. If he doesn't appreciate me, does he notice me? Does he love me as much as I love him? Am I worthy of his love, of anyone's love? Oh God, I'm going to be alone… You can go further with this, exploring why those sensations exist. Who did you need to be to feel loved growing up? How did your parents interact? How do you feel about you lately?

The point of this exploration is to own your side of the interaction, instead of thrusting all of the responsibility for your feelings into your partner’s lap. Chances are that there's more to it than meets the eye. If there is a repeated sore spot in your relations with significant people in your life, then there is a deeper underlying issue that’s going to require some psychological excavating.

Start by addressing your basic feelings. Think about the recurring friction. Really try to identify if there is an insecurity for you surrounding this topic. If you're going deep enough, you should notice some discomfort and even embarrassment. Admitting flaws doesn't feel nice. On some level, if you linger in it, you should be able to recognize a fear in there. This is going to vary, based upon the situation at hand, but it generally comes down to a fear of not being worthy of love or a fear of not feeling connected. Fear and Love are the two most basic emotions, they're the foundation for everything else. So, if you're pissed off, there's some fear hiding in there.

Determining your raw sentiments isn't a cure all. You then have to remind yourself of them the next time you feel the desire to do battle. The goal is to be able to talk yourself down from that ledge, because you know how irrational the interaction is. It helps me to also remember that my husband is fighting his own inner demons, and we’re both just trying to protect our hearts from pain and loss; noble causes, indeed.

None of it’s going to come easy. It's all work, but so is the drudgery of endless bickering turned silent treatment, on repeat. You can move beyond that one argument and maybe tear the band aid off another festering wound that needs mending, slowly working through heartaches and fears of years’ past, becoming a fierce team united and persevering in love, a true force to be reckoned with.

-Angi

PREGNANT AND THINKING.

Eleven years ago, on a hot June night, my daughter was passionately conceived (her middle name is June for a reason). I skipped a period, freaked out, made haste to my local grocery store for a pregnancy test and had half a second to knock over a box of cereal inside my cart to hide the 99.9%-accuracy label before I ran smack into my future mother-in-law (I kid you not.) I went home to my apartment where I was nightly sharing a bed with John for the past two months (a time I now refer to as the ‘courtship-quickie’) and found out that I was in fact harboring a fetus. I quickly pounded a glass of wine so I could secretly wrap my head around the abortion I would be scheduling in the morning.

I was twenty-five, not vehemently attached to any ideal for my future, but wise enough to know that babies needed 100% of what you had to give. I hadn’t had any aha moments confirming that I was actually even a grown-up yet. There were only two options: be miserable and have a baby, or don’t think about it and have an abortion.

The thoughts confirming that pregnancy yields misery were readily available; I would be a disappointment to my new boyfriend. I would be sabotaging our careless nights of drinking, and whimsical weekend warrior trips. I would resign my body to be transformed by pregnancy in every way that society dictates women shouldn’t be: fat, hormonal and unattractive. In the long run, I would be alone raising a baby, committed to giving up my life as an individual, poor and on welfare. These were the only thoughts I could conjure, because this is what I had witnessed in my community of women.

In retrospect, there was another community of women that existed; the ones who had pruned despair out as quickly as it had sprouted. Society didn’t promise them any favorable support as a single mother. Society sexualized them and packaged them, and one unplanned pregnancy later, they were left without any headspace to visualize themselves as successful mothers. So in some instances, terminating a pregnancy can be a choice, or it can be something that you do without ever being able to think about it. Not thinking, is assuredly the quickest way to give up your liberty as an individual woman.

In my terrified attempt to save my individuality, I would have hastily made a choice, and then had a lifetime to think about it, after the fact. I am whole heartedly speaking from my own perspective. And although I did not have an abortion eleven years ago, I am no stranger to the effects that an unthoughtful abortion may have on a woman’s psyche. My two sisters and I were fertilized eggs in a time and space that encouraged my mother as a successful pregnant woman. But before us, and multiple times in between us, there was no abundance of support. And I watched my mother deteriorate as a woman after each successive termination.

That night as I crawled into our shared bed, John put his arms around me and held me in the darkness. I couldn’t stop the thoughts. I had no idea that I was a brave, grown woman, capable of doing difficult things. The revelation that I existed when others had not, would have led me to the obvious answer if I’d only known I could ask it; did I want this baby? I wasn’t able to get there. I was shutting down. That is when John’s whisper broke the silence.

“Emily, are you pregnant?”

“Yes” I responded, “I’m sorry. You don’t have to worry, I’m not going to keep it.”

“Why don’t you want to keep it?” He said, “We could have a baby.”

In that moment I realized “we” could maybe do it. Once I knew I wasn’t alone, every rational thought of success flooded my veins, filled my heart and poured life into my growing baby. This was my aha moment. I was physiologically vulnerable now that I was pregnant, but any lack of confidence I may have had about how this world would receive me was null once I knew that I wasn’t alone.

My story has a happy ending. And the reality is that many women won’t find a safe space to ask themselves what they want. I recently read an article by Sherronda J. Brown, White Women in Robes, that shed light on the so called choices that many pregnant women are given in regards to their pregnancies. I stand by reproductive rights with my ladies, but I can clearly see how “pro-choice” for many unsupported pregnant women leads to only one choice. If you have time to give it a perusal, I would love to hear what you think. https://werdbrew.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/white-women-in-robes/

-Emily

THE FEARLESS YOGI.

During the course of my career as a therapist, I've found myself continually frustrated because I want more for my clients. I want them to experience a whole (mind, body, spirit) experience; achieving this is few and far between with traditional talk therapy. Talk therapy is an imperative part of the process, but it has inherent limitations. This is something I feel not only with my clients but in my own experiences. 

Yoga has been in my vocabulary for the duration of my life. My almost 100 year old grandfather practiced it every morning. My father taught me breathing techniques when I was a child. I've tried it sporadically over the years and knew a few colleagues who utilized it in their therapy practices, but I never did more than dip my foot in. I felt afraid for so many reasons. 

My age was one of them. I'm 38 and am a pretty well established therapist. I went through years of schooling and spent a lot of money to get to where I am today. I struggled with feeling too old and too invested to start something new. 

I'm not a yogi. In my mind I had to be a yogi to start yoga. Doesn't make sense, right? Well to my perfectionist brain it made perfect sense; you have to be the best at yoga to start yoga. 

I don't look like those girls on Instagram. You know which girls I'm talking about, the ones with the perfectly proportioned bodies doing those incredible poses (which you secretly attempt at home and then need your husband's assistance to dismantle yourself from). I never paid much attention to my body growing up, but now that I'm getting older and have given birth to two children, I'm more focused on the changes. I'm working on aging gracefully and fully accepting my flaws, but social media and the human tendency to compare makes it incredibly hard to do so. 

The most important part of my hesitation was that I wasn't clear on my intention. I've learned over the years that your intention always has to be clear or at the very least come from a pure place. When your ego has an intention you can guarantee it's going to steer you wrong. I wasn't sure if I was trying to prove something to myself, or if I truly believed in the power of yoga. I look back now and know that the origin of my intention wasn't ego based,  but the aforementioned fears were holding me back. 

It wasn't until I found my yoga tribe, this year, that I was able to find my fearlessness. I use the word fearlessness because that's what it really took for me to dive in. I saw so many young people around me not hesitating once about what they were pursuing, not using age as a limitation, not worrying about the way their bodies looked, not attempting to be the perfect Yogi. I wish someone would have given me the following suggestions when I first started my Yoga journey:

 1. Be fearless- don't let fear burn you... let it burn a fire in you. 

2. Be a racehorse- I was watching "The Defiant Ones" on HBO the other night and Jimmy Iovine said that racehorses are blind folded so they don't see what's happening around them, they just go. So just go!! Don't think about how you will look compared to your neighbor or what the person in front of you is doing. Just go! Live!

3. What's your end goal? -trick question! There is no end goal. Go for the experience and dwell in it,  breathe, and enjoy your Yoga journey, or whatever new endeavor your heart desires, every step of the way!

-Nayantara

AM I GOOD ENOUGH TO BE AN INSTAMOM?

I'm a newbie to the mommy bloggersphere. My intention in entering into this world was to share thought provoking information with other women, about an array of topics, particularly vulnerability.

We get sucked into the minutiae of everyday life, and our sense of depth is often the first thing to go. This loss lends itself to inter relational difficulties, on every level. Self reflection is imperative, but we often focus on what we see as other people's responsibilities for our own pain. That's what I'm in it for, the peddling of introspection, but I've quickly discovered a few pertinent things about this whole blogger dynamic along the way.

The first is that you can expect to get the least support from your own friends and family. Perfect strangers will be more comfortable praising you, and throwing a virtual high five your way, than many of your own peeps. I chalk this up to our difficulty with feeling joy for others' successes when we're struggling with a lack of personal fulfillment ourselves. It’s easier to dissociate from that self comparison when we don't have an intimate relationship with someone. Anonymity is safer for the ego. I'm learning/ telling myself not to take it personally. Fact is, the people who are the most supportive happen to be the ones who are doing it as well. They're in the same boat, and are riding the waves with you, propelled by a sense of purpose for their own ambitions.

My second revelation is that growing your social media following is a game. And, lamentably, it's a necessary one. Unless you want to retire your words to that personal journal you stow beneath your pillow each night, you'd better ante up. It's a big, big world, and it seems like half of Earth's inhabitants are fellow mommy bloggers. I struggle with how trite it feels to amass "followers," but if you believe your message worthy, this is the trade off.

Then there's the picture thing. Gawd, the picture thing. It seems like an imperative for reader connection. But, who in the hell are you people that inhabit snowy white farmhouses, replete with subway tile and claw foot tubs, in the middle of flowing green fields, groves of 100 year old oak trees, with a wrap around porchful of abysmally handsome children dressed in coordinated earth tones of linen? And, how are your legs so long?

How am I, Joe Schmo, to compete with that? Do I put the peonies in my baby's bath water before or after I put her in it, and when do I grab the camera, right before I put her Briar bonnet on? And then, after said bouquet infused bath, is that when I put the Cornish hen in the oven? Oh shit, I forgot to photograph my herb bouquet on the acacia cutting board...

Where are my kids anyway???

Truth is, I consider myself to be pretty on top of my biz. I've got a stellar capacity to multitask quickly. My house is clean and decorated, and I make Pinterest dinners from scratch on the regular. But, the idea of dressing my daughter up, forget the sons, they'd be in hysterics if I tried to part them from their "sports" clothes... anyway, the thought of dressing my two year old up in some sort of circa 1940's made over Etsy outfit, camera in one hand, willfully dragging her with the other, likely from her examination of a twig or a pile of dirt, then strategically placing her for the photograph, I don't even know where, on a stump in a nearby field I suppose, sounds like an actual all day affair, sure to end in a vat of tears from both of us. Don't get me wrong, I want her to wear that $60 mustard hued, organic hemp romper, I really, really do, she'd look like a god damn angel, but then she could never eat blueberries again or steal a handful of chocolate chips while I'm baking, and that's just too sad a state of affairs to even entertain for a moment.

Then there's my wardrobe. I love clothes. I'm a trend junkie. I get it, but the last time I attempted to wear bell sleeves, I got caught on a door knob no less than 62 times. I can't parent in shoes with heels and skinny straps or jeans that go up to my rib cage and a floppy hat, at least not in a way that I feel good about. I do wear makeup every day and try to be as "mom" chic as real life will allow for, and as far as I can tell, I've got a leg up some of the parents I see around, but I still look like a drifter compared to the creme de la creme of Instamoms.

I'm intimidated. I'm confused. And, I'm nervous that my parenting skills are going to straight up plummet while I'm in search of the perfect Insta worthy moments. Am I even going to experience being with my children, mindfully, if I'm constantly taking pictures?

And here's the most upsetting part of the whole thing. You don't want to see my real life. You don't want me to be like you. You want me to be better than you, prettier than you, more well dressed than you. If I seem like you, my words won't be as attractive. I'll remind you of the ways that you feel inadequate.

We're okay with hearing about Instamom's struggles from time to time (how endearing), but we don't want to see it. We want to keep them at arm's length, upon that carefully crafted, hand fired, artisanal ceramic pedestal. It's a form of escapism; another way to keep the aforementioned depth out of our own lives. Focus on them and how perfect they are, and maybe I can forget about the pit of problems that is my life, disconnect from my stained carpet and stretched out sweatpants. Disconnect from the dysfunctional relationships, from the pain.

Well, I'm not gonna dress my kids up. We're going to be unabashedly us, because I want you to own me as you would yourself. I want you to see that depth isn't scary and that perfection isn't real. I want you to think the hard thoughts with me, to liberate yourself from window shopping in somebody else's life.

It's going to be difficult for me, too. I'm nervous about being judged, but I can't go forth with integrity if I don't practice what I preach. Join me in a lil' self love and introspection. Let's buck the social (media) system together.

-Angi

TALKING ABOUT RACE- Honoring our Differences through Exposure and Education.

I’m sitting in a chemistry lab with 25 other students. I waver between compete fear upon the introduction of new information (nomenclature anyone??) and enraptured interest over the micro-infinity that makes me, me; carbon atoms that belonged to 20 other living organisms before they were ingested into my own existence.

It’s the little things that matter (chemistry joke). As cliche as that sounds, the hugeness of that phrase is not lost on me. I am, at the physical level, really little things. I am also an individual with unique desires, opinions and quirks, because of all the relatively small circumstances that accumulated to make up my history. I live in a great big world with huge ideas and problems and hopes, and all of that rests within a single pin-prick poked into the vast corners of space.

I travel an hour each Saturday morning to take advantage of my husband’s availability to stay home with the kids and slowly work towards attaining a bachelor's degree. My fellow students are mostly women. Many are tackling the requirements for the nursing program, others are working towards engineering. I am here on the presumption that I will someday be a chemistry teacher, but between you and me, I come here to figure out what the world is made of: that simple. Only my financial aid counselor doesn’t like that answer: so, chemistry teacher.

Upon arriving to class the first day, I notice immediately that I am in a multiracial setting. I am instantly excited. This shifts into me being mortified by my own excitement. I have to pause and search my heart. Why did race even make it on my radar? Do I have expectations that this experience will be different or special, and why? Don’t I believe that all people are the same? I I silently freak out for a minute and then find my breath. I am surely not the only one that could feel this way. Am I the only lame, white girl that feels this way?! My rural, “Hillbilly Elegy,” mountain-town foundations are shaken by the exposure to not “white” people? I get a flip-flop sensation in my stomach just acknowledging how this affects me. My tiny world is very incomplete. It’s uncomfortable to think about, and down right difficult to find a receiving ear to talk about it.

It would be easier to say, “Hm, I didn’t even notice how diverse my class was” because people are people and all that jazz- end of conversation. Now I don’t have to incorrectly assume that the articulate young woman with good posture sitting across from me is Asian, because she is actually Pacific Islander. And I don’t have to consider that the shy, soft spoken girl behind me looks Indian, even though she is Pakistani but that means little to me, because while trying not to think about race, I stopped giving two fucks about anything outside of the bubble that I live in, and I can’t point to Pakistan on a map, and why does it even matter since she is a second generation American and was born in California…? I am being facetious only to highlight that not knowing these things causes fear in general; it is a scary kind of vulnerability. I struggle with the humility of acknowledging that I know less than other’s about certain things. And race seems like a pretty important thing to know about, so yeah, I’m terrified of being the fool. But fuck it. Hiding behind the veil of color-blindness isn’t going to save me from this conversation.

I have inadequate exposure to people. I live in a white neighborhood, and share classes with predominantly white people in my little community college. I homeschool my kids with other families that are mostly white. I shop in a grocery store with familiar white faces at the checkout line. I can count on one hand where I might come across a different race in my daily existence, and that is a stretch. I know that this is an evil to the future of understanding my world. I read like a mo’fo, and although I can gain a perspective of what another ethnicity is like, I am struggling to stay afloat in a community that’s major tolerance is for ignorance. This town still proudly flies a rebel flag, and has three consecutive streets named Hang Tree, Black, and Spook. And that's just the outward bigotry. The quiet bigotry is what really frightens me.

I have an insecurity that I wear the ingrained racism of my backward-town like a patch on my sleeve. If I don't actively probe these feelings, there is a good chance that systematic racism will hide in the corners of my intellect. I want to be a part of a community that celebrates this woman sitting across from me. She just explained the naming of cations to two other students while I sat next to them quietly confused. She is black. How can I get a full view of this world that I am trying so hard to understand, if I don't see her?

I am down to take ownership of my cowardice and hold true to what I know; that if I want to figure out what the world is made of, I need to look into the eyes of other races. We are sharing more than carbon atoms, and I want to celebrate our similarities and differences.

I have made an effort not to shy away from matters of race over the last year. I wish I could say it is something I've always done, but I can only do better when I know better. Thank you Maya Angelou. I am by no means saving the world, but discussing issues that we have made such an effort to bury, can force our minds to grow, and eventually our hearts. Here are a couple of the ways I have strived to figure out what the world is made of, outside of my Chemistry class:

1. Go back in time. Teaching my children the history of immigration, indentured servitude, and slavery, has created an insatiable desire to know how our country was established. It's invaluable to go back this far before I am able to wrap my head around our current social dilemmas.

2. Read all the books! Or at least make an effort to read outside of your comfort zone. Here are some of the books I read this year: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz. The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas. A Young People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn.

3. Relearn Words. The Google definition of “white supremacy” falls short. If we are only looking for racism to display itself beneath a white hood, we are missing the social, political, historical and institutional poisons that currently plague our country. There is a difference between discrimination, prejudice and racism. Don't let the media give you their interpretation. Use your words.

4. Engage: I had to get real uncomfortable with my book club. I chose a book that some refused to read, and it got ugly, but it also got real. And I felt inspired by the women who responded with open hearts and shared their own personal insecurities about racism.

I am still on a journey to undo an ignorance that I grew up with. I am grateful to know enough now, to speak to my children and teach them to recognize racial intolerance when they see and hear it. I continue to hear the concern from people in my immediate bubble, that I shouldn’t shame my kids for being white. I hear the fear in that statement. Equipping them with the knowledge to discern when racism is happening is an empowering gift. How they use that gift will be up to them.

-Emily