Tag Archives: psychology

Children of Hoarders, Delving into the Psyche, I Own a Home. WTF?, Witchy

Drainage

altar

When my mom died and I had to clean up her house, her kitchen sink was clogged. We didn’t get to it right away because, frankly, a sink full of gross water was not a priority in that house. It took a few weeks to drain fully.

Later, as I was sorting through all her old papers, I came across a move out list from when we moved in 1989. This was the house we lived in when she fell apart. It was the worst of all her toxic waste (literally) and her hoarding. She fucked that place up. Once the toilet was broken for I don’t know how long. But we couldn’t call a plumber because of the state of the house. In the move out papers I found that she’d clogged that kitchen sink, too. And then I remembered her telling me that an old landlord of her in the 70’s had charged her for a broken garbage disposal when she moved out.

The woman had serious problems with draining, with letting shit GO. And this is metaphorical as well as literal. She was a hoarder with clogged sinks and grudges that were 30 years old. I feel like the clogged sinks were a desperate cry from the Universe to JUST LET IT GO, WOMAN.

When we first came to view this house, I could tell the woman who owned it at the time was a hoarder. She was clean, but her hallway shower was storage and that’s never a good sign in my experience. I don’t know how I find all the hoarders in the world, but I do, somehow.

Anyway, she put these stupid metal hair catchers in the bathroom sinks and they are forever getting clogged. She couldn’t let things drain, either.

I haven’t done anything about them in almost four years for a few reasons including not really knowing what to do (cause they were STUCK in there), being super busy in other, more important, areas, and, simply, being lazy tired. But today I yanked them out with jewelry tools because that is how I roll and I replaced them with cute little plastic cups from Daiso. I am so ready to let shit drain now. DRAIN AWAY, SHIT. BEGONE. (Certified witchy spell right there.)

I pulled a random goddess card for my altar last night and it was Ostara. Fertility. At first I almost burned it and ran away BECAUSE THIS UTERUS IS CLOSED FOR BUSINESS OKAY (despite the fact that it would have to be the son of god or some shit bc the vagina isn’t exactly a party zone either right now) but then I read the card and it can also apply to the fertility of art, creativity. I read that as: the goddess who motivates you. So, yes, I am choosing to tap into Ostara’s energy of motivation and creativity. I did a deep cleaning of the living room yesterday, pulling all the furniture out and doing battle with the sentient dust bunnies who have been trying to set up civilizations back there. I feel so much clearer in my head without al that dust. I feel so much lighter in my core now that my drains drain. Household cleaning is the same as soul-cleaning and I too often let it go because it feels too overwhelming, despite the fact that I know damn well how much better I’ll feel once I’ve just sucked it up and done it already.

These past few months have been filled with a lot – a lot – of psychological work, much of which has been the Universe’s way of forcing me to do the work of psychologically untangling myself from my mother. I spend so much time and energy worrying about whether I’m turning into her and apparently the Universe has decided it’s time to stop that bullshit and figure it out once and for all. So I’ve been tested by being put in triggering situations that mirror my own traumas and I’ve worked it out each time. When I used to knit more often, sometimes I’d have to untangle yarn. Sometimes I’d have to untangle a whole skein of yarn. I’d declare THE YARN NEVER WINS and it never did. I untangled it every time (except one time, but that was some of that fancy yarn with fringy stuff and so that doesn’t count). That’s what this felt like. I’d struggle with it, and then suddenly, I’d find the key knot and I’d feel it loosen and come undone. And just like that I was me and she was she. And – surprise! – turns out I’m not my mom.

It’s fitting that I’d finally get around to making my drains drain after all that. It was like closure on this chapter of the psyche work I’ve done recently (KNOCK WOOD, UNIVERSE, PLEASE NO MORE PSYCHE WORK FOR AWHILE OKAY). I untangled myself from the shit, and now I’m washing the shit away. Furthermore, I’ve worked to redo my drains in such a way that they won’t clog again. The little cups I’ve got in them are easier to clean, and semi-disposable. In the mean time I’m looking for a more permanent solution, but the point is that things are flowing away again. Just as they should be.

Delving into the Psyche, New Year New Me, Philosophy, The Zebra

Word of the Year: Nourish

nourish

Oh my. It’s been more than two years since I last wrote here. That’s a record! Life has been overwhelming. There was a time when I was a stay at home, homeschooling mom who enjoyed cooking nourishing foods from scratch and finding ways to make it all work out even though our income was quite low. And then I became a single homeschooling mom and I still enjoyed cooking and making it all work on a meager income. And then my income became frightening small and I went back to school so now I am a full-time college student raising two kids who are both in school now on very little money and let me tell you that the current me has no time nor energy nor money to make nourishing foods from scratch these days. I’ve never been rich – far from it – but even then I was quite privileged compared to my life now.

I wish I could tell you here that I love it and that I wouldn’t change a thing, but that’s not quite true. As it happens, I definitely would not change anything, but only because the way my life is right now, is just the way it has to be right now. I’m finally finishing college and my kids are in schools that suit them well. There isn’t any room to change. I have no regrets in the life I have made for myself right now, but I cannot pretend it’s easy. These last six years of growth have had a toll on me and I am exhausted.

Don’t misunderstand – my life is not lacking in joy. My kids are growing up into incredible people that I am so proud to know and we have a lot of fun together. I am loving every minute of being at university and the fact that my responsibility right now is to read literature and discuss it and analyze it feels so luxurious and delicious that I have to pinch myself regularly to be sure I’m not dreaming. I somehow wound up with the two best cats I could dream of – they are just the perfect mix of quirky and not too troublesome. My apartment, while not my favorite location, is growing more and more homeish and lovely inside as I continue to, slowly, fix it up. There is a lot of joy in my life.

But I am tried. I am so tired.

And it’s made me get too far from my better habits. Where I used to eat whole foods cooked in wholesome ingredients, now I eat at taco shops way too often. Where I used to be regularly connected to my spirituality, now I find myself too busy to focus. Where I used to have time for art, now I find myself struggling to meet the minimums of all my to do lists. Where I used to feel good, now I feel terrible.

So this year I want to focus on the word nourish again.

I love the word nourish. I love the way it sounds and the way it feels to say. I love that it means more than just “healthy” – it means to feed yourself making holistic health the goal. And I don’t mean just food. You can nourish yourself with exercise, too. But also with kindness and better thinking. And sometimes with a break from everything healthy. The psyche is just as important to nourish as the physical body. Sometimes, let’s be honest, trashy TV is exactly what you need at the end of a long and difficult day. The key is to do it mindfully.

So I’ve made this little doodle. I plan to print it out in various sizes and post it in places in my life that will help me remember that nourishing me is the goal. I’ll put one on the fridge for obvious reasons, but also on my bathroom mirror to help me remember to nourish my health by flossing every night. One on my bedside table to remind me to nourish myself by sleeping well. I’ll make one my lock screen on my phone to remind me to use it in ways that nourish me rather than as a means of escape or mindlessly procrastinate (notice the use of the word “mindless” there, because surely some procrastination is nourishing). I’ve made this doodle in black and white so that, during the year when I inevitably fall into old patterns, I can color it up or decorate it in different ways to make it new and obvious again. Art is meditation is prayer. And new things in the environment remind me to refocus. Win-win!

My life is still overwhelming and it will be for the foreseeable future. I can’t simply decide things like “no more eating out!” when, quite frankly, that will be an unreasonable goal for me at times. Instead I want to relearn to take a moment to focus on the word nourish and decide whether eating out is the most nourishing thing for me at that moment. Maybe it is at that moment. The goal is simply to stop acting mindlessly and to start connecting with my whole self on a regular basis. Remembering to nourish me means to remember to nourish all of me.

Do you have a word for the year?

The Zebra, This is a Woman

I don’t want to jinx anything, but here’s the first introspective psycho-spiritual growth post I’ve been able to write in a long time.

This is the cute side of my head today.

Lately I’ve been introspective, reframing some thoughts I have about my self-proclaimed faults. I have long worked to balanced the good and bad of all things – to find the positive aspects of a troublesome trait or situation and vice versa. So I sometimes try to find the good facets of my faults (although admittedly not always).

One thing that has always been glaringly obvious to me is my need to please everyone around me to the extent that I sometimes sacrifice myself or my needs just to not make people even slightly annoyed with me. They teach you all through school not to give in to peer pressure and this sometimes manifests in that way so I feel like I should have learned this lesson a long time ago. And yet, I still struggle. Sometimes this means I’m really insecure about my tastes in music (which… why music? I’m not insecure in my tastes in books or television or fashion. huh). But, if I am being totally honest, sometimes this means that I listen with two widely open ears to the thoughts and feelings of other people. And so my openness, my need to please people, has actually made me more empathetic and careful and thoughtful.

Of course, just for fun, mix that in with my social anxiety and I become a tightly wind ball of awkward afraid to say any words in any order in the fear that I might inadvertently hurt someone. Thank god I’m cute.

My son is a good reader, but he does not (yet?) enjoy it very much. Once he told me it’s because he can’t see the pictures in his head. I know he’s got a mind that is very different from me. He’s a born engineer, and I suspect he’s got ADHD. So what if his brain is wired in a way that makes reading less enjoyable to him than watching a movie? I feel so strongly that books are important (and they ARE), but I wonder if maybe it’s okay to not like reading sometimes. Maybe it’s okay to have a differently wired brain, one that doesn’t like reading as much as some. It doesn’t make him any less smart, and it sure as hell doesn’t make him any less valuable.

So I started thinking about my faults – about this desperate need to please people – and about how those things mean both good and bad things for me. And I started to wonder if maybe it’s okay to just BE who I am. Maybe needing to please people isn’t something I need to fix about me. Maybe it’s just a part of me that gives me a gift in exchange for being challenged in other ways.

This week I went to a therapy appointment (because I do that now) and talked about my issues with self-hate. Because confession: Even after all the work I’ve done in myself and in the world, I still have this little ball of self-hatred underneath all the self-love and all the goodness that just won’t.go.away. I’ve tried everything. But that hard little core of loathing is just there. So I asked my therapist why and how I can make that stop and she said, “Maybe you don’t. Maybe you just learn to live with it.” And that was really not what I was expecting. But she has recently been doing work with balancing the light and the darkness of the psyche (my words, not hers) and I think she has a point. And I think this is all related to my recent musings. Maybe my little bit of self-hate is just a part of who I am. Of how I am wired (for some reason – maybe genetic, maybe a result of past abuses). Maybe if I just let her be, and accept that she’s always going to be there, maybe she won’t have as much power over me.

And honestly, it’s only been two days, but I feel like I might be on to something.

So here’s my radical experiment: Love my self-hate. Accept and acknowledge that little ball of self-hate. Talk about her when needed, casually, even. Don’t try to erase her, don’t try to hide her, don’t try to fight her. Just love her. Loving my self-hate. When Jesus said to love our enemies, maybe he also meant ourselves.

Children of Hoarders, The Zebra

I have no idea what to title this one. It’s got everything. Pictures of the new place, hoarding trauma, procrastination, cleaning tips. I need a cookie.

We’re getting settled in our place. I mean. I haven’t even begun to unpack the kitchen yet because shelf liner paper. And I can’t even unpack the office yet until the new desk I ordered gets here (my last desk literally fell apart when they picked it up to load it on the truck). But the living room looks mostly like a living room and my new bed came today and IT’S JUST SO LOVELY.

New bed. Love.

And I’m supposed to be studying the neurons of the visual system, but instead I’m thinking about how the hell am I going to keep the house as sparkly as it is right now after the Merry Maids were here last week? The answer is I probably won’t. But I’m going to try. Because clean = sane for me.

One of the things I want to write about here at this blog is being the child of a hoarder. And I’d like to write a big introductory post before I start adding in little details, but Life Is Messy and these little details are what’s on my mind right now.

Way back in the dark ages in like 1991 my mom wanted to try to keep the house clean. I don’t remember which era of the house this was. Maybe she was hoping to start from scratch, or maybe it was after my friend’s mom came in and cleaned up for us and bought us fancy peach towels with seashells on them that we weren’t allowed to use. Anyway, my mom found this book about an index card cleaning system. It’s what Flylady is based on, actually. And my mom got as far as buying index cards and a card file box.

Anyway, a couple of years ago when we were cleaning out my mom’s house, we found the book. And I donated it to a thrift store or something. Because like hell I had time for that shit right then. And now that my new place is all sparkly and lovely, I was thinking that maybe it would be nice to find a copy of that book and see if the system might work for me (because another “perk” of being the child of a hoarder is that you don’t know you are supposed to clean certain things like the top of your refrigerator). Only, I realized that I felt very sneaky about this. I felt like I had to keep it a secret that I was thinking about looking for a copy of this book. Because I made the grave error of getting rid of it once and now I’ll have to admit that I’m the wrongiest wronger to ever have wronged. Because hoarders keep things, in part, so that they can always be fully stocked. Some hoarders enjoy sharing the things they’ve kept, and that is part of why they hoard things – to feel useful. (Others don’t want to share the things they hoard. At. All.) But, in my experience, hoarders tend to be very I-told-you-so when you get rid of something and then later need it again. (I’ve also developed a sense that I have to be sneaky about throwing things away because I’ve been yelled at so many times in my life after one hoarder or another picked through my trash and got mad at what I got rid of.)

But the thing is this: YOU CAN ALWAYS FIND THE STUFF YOU NEED. Sure, you might have to buy it all over again, but for most things in life that’s not going to be much of a big deal. And spending the extra $10 to get a new copy of this book is well worth the sanity that not hoarding affords me. I live in a little home. I don’t have space for Stuff I Might Need Someday. I keep the things I definitely need, the things I love, and, if I still have room, the things that are too valuable to replace but will realistically probably be used someday. The rest I can replace.

So the point is that I’m going to look into buying (or borrowing from the library) another copy of this book to keep my sparkly home sparkly. And if it doesn’t work for me after all, that’s okay, too. The other point is that identifying the issues I carry with me from my life with hoarders helps me to isolate it, and remind myself why I’m safe now. The other other point is that I need to go study the neural basis of visual perception now.

See? Sparkly:
Kitty.

Edumacation, Geek, Onwards, The Zebra, This is a Woman

On Ravenclaw, Pottermore, and Self Esteem

RavenclawRavenclaw manicure. I knew if I looked far enough back in my photostream I’d find a relevant picture for this entry.

I remember being probably about three years old, spending the afternoons laying on my grandma’s bed in her red bedroom, working through a learn-to-read series. I loved the books, but often I’d wind up daydreaming instead of paying attention (this was to be a theme in my life). But I do remember that when she spelled out “A-P-P-L-E” I just heard the phrase “pee-pee” and giggled at the bathroom humor (which was also to be a theme in my life).

When I was about to enter kindergarten I took a test, I guess it was basically so my teacher could see what things I already knew. This is just my assumption. Anyway, in this test, apparently, I was told to count as high as I could go and I had to be stopped somewhere after the 70’s.

In third grade, I was tested for my school’s GATE program (they called it CORE) and despite the fact that the only question I still remember today, I got embarrassingly wrong, I was entered into the program. Four days a week I’d leave my classroom and spend an hour doing cool language arts stuff (cause my school was a kickass language arts magnet).

While I loved being a part of CORE, and I’m so glad I had that opportunity (especially as school got harder for me), it also saddled me with certain self-esteem issues. Because being a CORE kid came with expectations. My teachers would regularly point out to the whole class (which. wtf were they thinking? WHO benefits from that?) that the CORE kids were super fast workers, while I was still only halfway done with the assignment. I often frustrated teachers with my daydreaming because they felt that if I just stayed focused I’d reach my potential. I never seemed to meet the expectations that the “smart” kids were supposed to.

Please understand that I am not – absolutely not – knocking teachers. Teachers are some of the most important people in our culture and I highly respect them. And nearly all of my elementary school teachers were not only good at their job, but I remember them as people who I loved very much, and I know they loved me back. Overall I was blessed with mostly good teachers.

Maybe it’s because things were just different back in the dark ages 30 years ago, or maybe it’s because we know so much more now, and I’m sure it’s because my attention issues are really mild and probably not diagnosable as anything even by today’s more comprehensive standards, but I was left alone to come to the conclusion that I wasn’t actually as smart as the other CORE kids, or as smart as everyone seemed to think I was. It was a sort of weird place to be. It was obviously considered a high honor in my world to be considered smart – to have been labeled “gifted” – and I was proud of that just as much as it made me feel like shit. I don’t think I ever talked about this as a kid. Maybe I was too ashamed of myself and afraid people would figure out they were wrong about me or maybe because I just couldn’t find the words to express it. I don’t know. But the seed was planted.

And then when I was in fourth grade my mom suffered her nervous breakdown and my life went to shit. I was absent more days than not and tardy on the days I showed up at all. The kids around me would ask why and I didn’t know what to tell them. Teachers would scold me for not going to bed earlier (not that easy to do when your mom keeps you out until midnight, you know?) and I felt ashamed of all the mistakes I was making. I began to hate school when I’d always loved it before. My grades started suffering and everything fed into those insecurities that had already been planted in me.

And that’s just how it was. I did OK in English classes, usually getting B’s, sometimes C’s. Math classes were nearly always D’s if I was lucky. I didn’t understand how to study, and I had no interest in grades at all, except to hate myself when they weren’t good. I feel like in many ways I slept through my education, wandering bewildered through where I was told to go, only vaguely aware of the goal at the end.

In ninth grade something happened where I was suddenly able to gain control of small parts of my life and I suddenly stopped having all those absences and tardies. I cannot tell you what changed in me that year, but it was not the only major change I made in my life. I suppose it was my Oak Tree calling me to the next step of growth.

Even after that, though, I was still only a mediocre student in high school. I didn’t take it seriously. In fact, in my first go at biology I wound up with a 17% in the class. That’s, like, not even an F. But it wasn’t because it was a hard subject for me. It was because I just never did any work. In fact the next year when I retook the class, they put me in an honors-level course (as is per the custom when someone flunks a class?) and I wound up with a B.

Senior year something clicked and I worked really hard all year and received my first (and so far only) 4.0. But when I entered college things started sliding back downhill quickly.

In high school I took all the AP courses, but never took the AP tests. I think I was too afraid. While I wasn’t consciously aware of it, I think I believed I’d fail them. And I couldn’t handle failing. So I just didn’t try. I think the college-choosing process went similarly. I wound up going to the community college for lack of aiming for anything else.

It’s a strange loop to be stuck in. Too afraid to fail, desperately wanting to be a smart as everyone acted like I was, and unwilling to try because I was too fragile to handle failing.

And being at the community college, instead of a four-year school, just confirmed for me that I wasn’t smart. High school counselors and teachers acted like community college was for the people too stupid to go directly to university (or maybe that was just my perception). So, basically, I failed before I ever began. And since I didn’t really have any actual goals in mind for transfer or career, I just sort of dropped out.

And I struggled with this for years. Well, to be honest, I still sort of do. I definitely have some insecurities that I am still working on.

But there came a time when Harry Potter came into my life. Don’t laugh. Harry Potter is real, man. Of the four houses, I’d wonder which one I’d get sorted into. I knew I wasn’t Gryffindor material. I’m not that brave and I certainly don’t want the glory. None of the glory. That’s my motto. (I’m OK with recognition. Just not glory.) (And by “recognition” I mean that I’d prefer it if it’s given discreetly and that no one looks at me all at once and we just move on with things quickly, please.) And I didn’t relate to any of the Slytherins at.all.ever. Which left Ravenclaw, renowned for their intellect, and Hufflepuff, described in the books as “for everyone else.” (I paraphrase because I am too lazy to go look it up right now. Don’t judge. Those books are all the way across the room. And I can’t even accio them. Stupid muggle genes.) Since I assumed I wasn’t smart enough for Ravenclaw, I figured I must belong in the catch-all house intended for people who are just leftovers, not good enough to be sorted anywhere else.

I KNOW BETTER NOW.

I don’t know why Hufflepuffs aren’t more celebrated in the books, but I think that’s why the house is so generally disrespected. It wasn’t until I got deeper into the lore of the Wizarding World that I began to really understand the complexities of the different houses, and to understand what Hufflepuffs actually are. They aren’t leftovers at all. They are characterized by being loving and loyal. By operating on feelings rather than glory or knowledge. And I began to see that Hufflepuff is, really, possibly the best house (aside from it’s unfortunate bumblebee colors, I mean). I mean. Helga Hufflepuff took everyone into her house because she saw that everyone is amazing. Because you don’t need to be brave or smart or driven to be important. That’s what Hufflepuff is. And I’d be proud if I were in Hufflepuff House.

And I do think I’m sort of on the cusp of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. A lot of my social anxieties are based in my intense desire to want to make people happy and know that they are loved (of course, one can also be loving and loyal without the anxiety part). But if there is one character who I most relate to in the Harry Potter stories it is by far Luna. She was flighty and dreamy, she was fiercely loyal, she believed in unbelievable things, and she was a Ravenclaw.

And then when I was sorted into my Pottermore house, I was sorted into Ravenclaw. And it might sound crazy, or fanatical, or childish, but that changed me. It gave me the confidence to begin to be able to see that I am not stupid. That I can get good grades and that I can finish college. That I had the ability all along, I was just missing the support, and the sane life, and the help to find my strengths among my weaknesses.

And so a few weeks ago I finished my first college course in something like 16 years and I got an A. And now I’m a week into a physiological psychology class which is challenging. Parts of it are fascinating to me (and therefore easier), but parts are more abstract (hello, molecular biology!) and things that are less tangible are sometimes harder for me to comprehend (when my son was born and my midwife handed him to me I said, “Oh! A baby!” cause I was legit a little surprised). But I’ve learned so much about myself, and I was given the confidence to believe that I can that now I’m able to see the parts that are challenging for me, and work harder at them. Because I know that I can understand this subject. I have the capacity and I will. It’s only taken me 30 years to get to this point.

Religion is probably not genetic. This shit is FASCINATING, people.
This is the fascinating part of physiological psychology

I Own a Home. WTF?

Five Days in and I Have a Home Depot Guy

You know, cause I’ve been there so much this week.

I must warn you now that blogging for the next few weeks while I have six different full time jobs will probably be on the back burner. I hope to fill in those gaps with amusing home improvement stories. Or at least photos of home improvement projects. Or photos of silliness in the home improvement store. Like this one:

For when I become a robot princess.
Where I practice for when I’m a robot princess.

Or this one:

What do you mean you don't wear your pillowcases to the Home Depot?
Where I brought my son’s pillowcase to Home Depot to match paint samples and then got bored of holding it so I threw it over his head and he just went with it cause he inherited my sense of humor.

Or photos of the process itself like this one:

that is one damn pink room
Where we discuss HOW VERY HOT PINK my bedroom was (it’s now primed). True fact: the previous owner (apparently) chose this color herself and then decorated it with all sorts of Jack Sparrow memorabilia.

So, as you can see, this is a shitty cop-out of a blog post. I’d like to write about where I’ve been mentally all year and how that relates to shitty potato chips, or maybe about that one two-parter episode of Welcome to Night Vale which is like a massive metaphor for life in general, but tomorrow I have to start learning about biological psychology (which, the book’s author assures me is the most interesting subject EVER. FACT.) and also I have to paint a lot of walls so I’m thinking it will be more shitty cop-outs for a little while. Bear with me. I’ll try to make it HILARIOUS.

I love this book already.

Review, This is a Woman

Brave, A Queen’s Story

In my giveaway (that ends today! go enter now!) of a signed copy of Eleanor & Park, I asked what your favorite unconventionally awesome female characters were. I am loving the answers! Some of them I am nodding along with and others I’m writing down to learn more about. Haley brought up Merida from Pixar’s Brave, and so, in honor wild red hair I thought I’d repost the review I’d wrote last summer. This was originally posted over at This is a Woman shortly after the movie was released, but not shortly enough that I actually remembered all the details. (Thank god I’m cute.)

PS. This week has been not only busy but also cumbersome with too much Oedipus Rex and multipletrips to the mechanic. I will try to get to posting some Lady Links for you, but I just can’t promise it. I’m sorry!

******************

Last weekend I took my kids to the drive in to go see Brave. It was fabulous. If I’d been smart, I’d have taken notes. But as it turns out, it didn’t even occur to me that I should write about it here until this past weekend. So we’ll have to make due with my memory of having seen it only once over a week ago in a venue that is somewhat distracting (my kids seem to be allergic to each other and break out in the MOM, S/HE TOUCHED ME’s if they come within six inches of each other. Which. They do. When they’re sitting in the back of a small station wagon).

OK. So. SPOILERS!

The movie is, as you are no doubt aware, the story of a spirited young girl with amazing hair, arguably the best accent on the planet, and amazeballs skillz in archery. She’s strong-willed in all the best ways and takes a stand against centuries-old tradition when it doesn’t suit her and what is best for her own life and personal growth.

Only. That’s not what this movie is about at all.

Well, OK. It is. But the story is more about Merida’s mother, Elinor.

It’s about a woman who grew up and had no qualms with the status quo. She was perfectly happy to grow up and be the queen she was expected to be, to live the life that was planned for her. She had zero desire to ever put her weapons on the table. In fact, she had zero desire even to own weapons of her own at all. She was not in touch with her inner Wild Woman in any sense.

And then she had a daughter who was the absolute embodiment of Wild Woman and who was physically, mentally, and spiritually incapable of being anything else. (We all need to have such people in our lives, whether not not we spring them from our loins.)

The story begins with various arguments between Elinor and Merida over what Merida should and shouldn’t be doing. After begging and begging her mother to hear her, Merida ultimately loses her shit and rides off into the night where she stumbles into a magic circle of stones, not unlike Stonehenge. Her horse refuses to enter the circle, but Merida is in her element here. On the other side of the stones, a path lit by will-o’-the-wisps appears, and she follows it. According to Wikipedia, a will-o’-the-wisp leads you from the safe paths. YES. Safety, in terms of the growth of our psyche is bullshit. Safety is what Elinor’s life has always been about. Safety is the opposite of what Merida lives for. Safety will never guide you forward spiritually or psychologically. Take the unsafe path. Follow the will-o’-the-wisps.

The will-o’-the-wisps lead Merida to a witch. I want to give props here to Pixar for making a witch who isn’t a villain. It is so easy to make witches the bad guys. After all wise women, both in folklore and in real life, have for centuries been made out to be bad witches. It’s so ingrained in us now to consider them bad, that we have largely forgotten that once they were revered. In Brave the witch is the method in which Elinor learns her biggest lesson. Merida begs for help and is granted a cake to serve her mother which will help her to change her mind about Merida’s future. Only, the witch doesn’t say exactly how that change will occur. True wisdom and growth doesn’t come from an outside source changing your mind for you. That is oppression. Elinor lives oppression. She needed something to help her to grow from the inside. And the witch knew that.

So Elinor is changed into a bear.

Merida witnesses this and is horrified at what she’s done. Because she, too, is oppressed, even if it is to a far lesser degree. On a realistic level, she just totally screwed up her mom’s life and possibly caused her death. On a spiritual level, she caused that big change, and that, too, is scary.

They run off into the woods where they try to find the witch again and ask her WTF, but she knows damn well that she has to be gone. She leaves them a cryptic message, telling them they have to fix this on their own. Because if it was simple, no one would have learned anything, and Merida would have been even further ostracized.

In the morning, they find there is no kitchen staff out in the woods to fix them breakfast so here’s where the work begins.

Step 1: Elinor must rely on Merida for her very survival. She doesn’t have the first clue about surviving in the wilderness. But Merida, like Katniss, knows her way around a bow and arrow and so has a very good advantage out in nature.
Step 2: Elinor must learn to feed herself from what nature provides. She is still hungry even after Merida’s hunted breakfast, so Merida takes her to a stream and tells her to catch some fish so she’ll be able to feed herself for a lifetime.

Because how better to find your Wild self, than by being wild?

And then there are some adventures and some mending of a tapestry-family-portrait that I forgot to tell you about earlier (Elinor had been working painstakingly for years probably on this tapestry and Merida sliced it in two, separating herself from her family CORRECTION: Apparently I remembered it wrong, it was Elinor that Merida separated from the family in the tapestry) and some more adventures and time is almost up for Elinor. If she and Merida don’t fix this, like, NOW, she’ll be a bear forever. The whole town is out to get Bear-Elinor, and her own husband is at the forefront. Merida keeps shouting the truth, but no one listens. Suddenly, the actual bad-guy-bear comes in and pins Merida and Mama Bear Elinor takes over and KICKS HIS ASS. It is symbolic of love, of motherhood, of her final test in becoming who she is meant to be. And things are mended and she is herself again. Naked.* Isn’t that exactly what such an amazing growth experience does to us – leaves us totally naked, right in front of everyone? At least in front of the important people.

The story was more about Elinor than Merida. About her transformation, about her growth, about her journey to find her psyche. The story was about Merida, too. She grew in her own way in this movie; she stepped into her role as Wise Woman for the first time.

I hope there are countless more movies like this for our daughters (and sons!) to grow up with. And also for us to learn from.

*Naked in a Pixar/Disney way. She was totally covered. That doesn’t make it less important. Just less porny.

The Zebra

Why a short attention span makes things more confusing.

I’ve been told I have an incredible memory. I mean, I can’t remember which of my kids did what when, but I can remember all the lyrics to the Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen song. (I’m 8 years postpartum now, at what age will pregnancy brain go away?) So while the last decade or so has been a blur, I have fairly vivid memories of my childhood, all the way down to my toddler years. The funny thing about this is that, now that I’m a parent, certain things make way more sense. I don’t know if some of my misunderstandings were due to my short attention span, or if it’s just hard being a kid, but things were damn confusing when I was little.

Instance #1
I was two or just about two when my family moved to Denver for about six months. I have both memories of winter and summer. My mom and I went outside and collected a bucket of snow and huddled on the couch together eating it and watching The Young and the Restless. What? That’s a normal childhood. In the summer I remember having a stand off with my dad about pool safety. He maintained that I sit in a floatie or I don’t get in the pool. I argued that screw that I wanted in the water of my own accordthankyouverymuch. I don’t remember the outcome, but I’m guessing that he probably won.

But there was this one day when there was a rainbow out the back window. We lived on the second or maybe third floor, I don’t know, and one of the back rooms – I guess it was my parents’ bedroom because it was not the room with my changing table – had a window that looked out over the parking lot. I remember being at this window with my dad and him trying to help me find the rainbow. The directions were utterly complex. First I had to look to the left and find the tree, and then I had to look next to the tree. Then I had to find our car and look above it and to the side. Then I had to look at that building in the distance and, finally I was able to find the rainbow. I remember thinking it was such a convoluted path to the rainbow and I was in awe that anyone was ever able to find them.

Happy Thing: DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY (probably)
Not the actual rainbow being blogged about. Like we we had the luxury to use film to take frivolous photos of city rainbows back in the dark ages in 1980. Pft.

There came a time with my own children when something similar occurred. I don’t even remember what exactly. But suddenly, 25 years later, it clicked in my brain. The path to the rainbow wasn’t complex, it was that he was trying different tactics to help me find it. Each time I had to look for a landmark was a completely separate attempt, not one long set of instructions.

I’m a little slow. Thank god I’m cute.

Instance #2
When I was in kindergarten we got kittens. They were Siamese and I named them Brother and Sister because they were a brother and sister. (I’m slow and also terrible at naming things.) Before we got all the way home, though, I changed Brother’s name to Booties because he had, you know, booties. (Really. I sucked at naming things.)

what not to do
Not the actual kittens. Not actually even a kitten.

Anyway, with kittens comes a litter box, and with a litter box comes germs. My actual memory is of my mom telling me, “If you touch litter you’ll have to go to the bathroom.” I assumed, naturally, that litter has magical or scientific properties that fill your bladder and make you have to pee right that second. Once, while my mom wasn’t looking, I snuck to the litter box and tested the warning (with clean litter. come on. I wasn’t stupid). AND IT WORKED. I TOTALLY HAD TO PEE RIGHT THAT SECOND.

Psychology is cool.

Years later I finally reasoned that what she probably actually told me was something along the lines of, “Don’t touch the litter box or you’ll have to go to the bathroom and wash your hands.”

I have a reeeeeeeeally short attention span. Like. Shorter than a sentence.

Instance #3
One of these instances is not entirely like the others. Hint: It’s this instance.

After Denver we moved to England. Only for like a couple of weeks (what? that’s normal), but I have memories there as well. I remember my bedroom being all set up with my bedspread and the curtains my grandma had made. I remember riding in a taxi cab and they had these tiny seats just for me that faced backwards and IT WAS THE COOLEST THING EVER. I remember being hungry and wandering alone into a darkened kitchen, opening the refrigerator to a bright portal of light and sustenance, and finding absolutely nothing illuminated except for one head of cauliflower. Which was disgusting. I remember that the car was all backwards with the drivey bits being on the wrong side. Some of these memories are probably more accurate than other memories.

I also remember the basic floorplan of the house. I remember where the kitchen was, I remember the hallway, I remember where the bedrooms were. Here’s my basic memory, omitting those areas I have totally no memory of:

my memories of our house in england

A couple of years ago I was going through my mom’s papers and I found the letter she’d written to family back here describing things. She’d included a map of the house:

my mom's floor plan of our house in england

I see she makes no mention whatsoever of an empty refrigerator. Gross overlook, if you ask me. Of course, one might say that I forgot that there even was a dining room. One might be totally right. One might counter that who cares about dining rooms, especially when the only thing to eat is cauliflower. But otherwise I’m impressed that I so clearly remembered a house I stayed in for so brief a time when I was 2 1/2 years old. Clearly my memory is my superpower. I mean. Unless you want me to tell you things that happened last week.

It’s funny now looking back at my childhood the things that have become clearer now that I’ve had kids. I know that remembering how I saw things helps me sometimes when I parent my kids, and helps me understand where they are coming from, just as much as parenting them helps me click certain facts into place about my own history. My children’s futures help me solve the mysteries of my own past. In these cases just memories of simple events, but I think the statement can be applied broadly to our whole selves as well.

At the very least, it’s a chance to get out the old family photos and reminisce about how cute I was.

potty in the car
Cute and peeing in the back of the car. Like you do.

This is a Woman

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

“You’re the kind of woman that other women hate!”
“I hate you so much!”
“You’re so gorgeous; I hate you!”

What.The.Fuck.

At what point exactly did hating each other become a compliment? How is this a good thing? And what is really so wrong with old-fashioned compliments that don’t drive wedges between ourselves and our friends? Compliments like, “You look great!” I mean. If you’re looking for emphasis you can just add a “really” in there. Let me demonstrate: “You look really great!” More emphasis needed? Add a motherfucking cuss word. “You look really fucking great!” Need a non-bad-word for a church picnic? Try learning some adjectives. Here’s a list:

Alluring
Angelic
Bewitching
Classy
Dazzling
Delightful
Elegant
Exquisite
Graceful
Grand
Lovely
Magnificent
Pulchritudinous
Radiant
Refined
Sublime
Wonderful

Yeah, I said motherfucking pulchritudinous. And you are. And I love you. Which is why we need to stop hating on each other.

I posted this image (via Adios Barbie) on SOAM’s Facebook wall yesterday and proceeded to have the weirdest debate ever about modesty of all things. This particular image isn’t even about modesty. It is clearly discriminating against size (or, as one woman pointed out, any aspect of a woman’s body that doesn’t fit conventional beauty standards). To debate modesty is rather pointless anyway, since it’s all subjective. The idea of what modesty is changes from era to era, from culture to culture, from woman to woman. The point of the whole thing – modesty included – is that we have to stop making comments and judgements about other women’s clothing. Or about other women’s anything, really. Cause news flash: if it doesn’t affect you, it doesn’t affect you.

Instead it keeps us separate. It divides us. Where we could be coming together to support each other and to promote the validity of the spectrum of what beauty is, we are actually contributing to this one particular ideal that is created for us and that keeps us feeling bad about ourselves. Instead of lifting each other up, we – under the facade of a compliment – tear each other down. Honestly, I’d rather you just insult me. That’s easier to know what to do with. This confusing frenemy bullshit women have created for each other is detrimental to each of us, and particularly to women as a group.

In many circumstances I might say it’s better to get to the root of a saying and say that instead. But in this case saying, “You’re so beautiful that I’m jealous of you” isn’t really any better. If you are jealous of a friend that is your issue. It’s a legitimate issue and I am not trying to undermine your feelings, but it is your issue. By stating such a thing to a friend you put this weird burden on them to feel guilty for having been complimented, and to try to make you feel better. Chances are they try to make you feel better by tearing themselves down (“Oh, but I look terrible today! You look much better”). And we’re back to degrading ourselves. This time as an unharmonious duet.

Does it feel good to know other women are jealous of us? To hear that we’re hated for our beauty? Sometimes it might, yes. At least on the surface. But I would bet that if we dig deeper, we’d find that it’s a kind of bitter happiness. A happiness that’s less actual happiness and more a consolation prize for having been pushed away from a friend. If we can’t be loved, at least we can be beautiful.

Know what’s more awesome than the consolation prize? The actual prize. Of getting (or giving!) a real compliment. No strings attached. You’re beautiful! I love your eyes! That color makes you look radiant! Your hair looks amazing today! I love that dress on you! You look motherfucking pulchritudinous today!

And you do. Look motherfucking pulchritudinous today.

7 Days, Edumacation, The Zebra

Back to School (7 Days: Day 4)

7 Days: Day 4 (Studying)

(7 Days is a quarterly self-portrait group project I have taken part in for the last sixish years. One selfie a day for a week.)

So here’s news: I’m a student again. I’m tentatively excited about this. Tentatively? Yes. Because there are still some challenges to overcome. Things like, how many online classes can I take? And if I need to take an in-person class, where do I put the children while I do that? But I am going to keep moving ahead and hoping that doors will open, even if I have to adjust which hallways I take to find said doors. OK. That metaphor got a little awkward.

Another challenge is what to do about my pervious transcript? When I was younger and in college, for so many, many reasons, I didn’t do very well in too many of my classes (mostly for lack of stopping attending than anything else). This might come back to bite me in the ass now for things like financial aid. While I understand the reasons, and while I’m glad I don’t have to start from scratch, it is a little bit frustrating that things that happened seventeen years ago might have a negative impact on my future now. But that’s just a thing. I am going to keep moving forward the best I can.

The thing that needs to be decided now is which direction? My current two favorites for major are English and psych. In fact I am currently registered as a psych major, but I’m not tying myself to it just yet. I know that no matter what I do, I want writing to remain a part of my life. I would love to support myself by writing, in one way or another, but I feel like I can do that with either major. I think that a psych major would provide maybe slightly clearer job choices than an English major and I do much better with things that are less ambiguous. I feel like I have a natural inclination towards psychology and I really enjoy understanding it. I think I could make a good counselor someday because I am able to detach myself my a situation and to see all sides of it.

More than that, perhaps, I want to understand my mother better. When she died two years ago I discovered, in reading through her medical records, that she’d been diagnosed as bipolar. I don’t think that was right, though (she never had a manic episode, ever). I am not sure why the strange diagnosis – perhaps she presented herself falsely to her doctors, or perhaps that was a diagnosis they gave her for simplicity’s sake so that she could continue to receive her disability services. I think she had some sort of personality disorder coupled with lifelong depression and perhaps repressed memories of sexual abuse. I feel driven to understand her. I don’t know if this is guilt for having been estranged from her, or guilt from just being alive when she’s not, or a deeper, primal need to understand her in order to better understand myself. And I don’t know if that is a good reason for choosing a major. But I also don’t know that it’s a bad reason.

And so I stand here at this crossroads in my life, and try to make the best decisions for me and for my future. And I feel very old, at 35, to be here only now. I regret that I missed all these years of possible education or career-having. Of course, I also realize that, without all these years, I’d never be who I am today, or even know who I am. The major I had back in 1996 wasn’t one I ever took seriously. I actually had no vision whatsoever for a future. When I was 18, I was so wounded that there was no honest way for me to see where I needed to go. I’m in a much better place today, thank god.

So, for today at least, I’m sitting down to read some Poe. And someday I’ll be able to say I’m a college graduate. Cause I can’t physically say it right now.

So what do you think? How did you decide on a major? Do you think having a personal agenda is a good or bad thing in terms of major/career choice?