Plays well with others

Something astonishing hit me in the wee small hours.  I am, by nature, collaborative.  That might not seem like a mega AHA to you, but is radical to me.  Of course I am collaborative – look around The Retreat, where I am writing this, or The Front Room (formerly Mom’s), or the living room or den or even the basement.  Look at all the books on so many topics – personal growth, spiritual growth, creativity – each bearing witness to my search for other voices, other viewpoints, other possibilities. 

Looking at the successes in my life ~ ~  the 6^th Grade Carnival & Craft Sales (which were radical in their day), the 7^th Grade Raffle Quilt (also radical), my customer service & Provider contact work at USHC, Brand Voice Bulletin – national coordinator of the PHCS 50^th Anniversary celebration, BISYS account exec, Dad’s memorial service, my wedding, Mom & Mim’s memorial services, The Cupcake Lady, tomorrow’s Creativity Jam for Age Justice.  They all resulted from collaboration. 

But I have never ever seen myself as a collaborator.  I’ve been one, but it never registered. 

It makes a difference, knowing.  It will make it easier for me to tackle my first Twilight Wish assignment.  I’ve been on the TW Foundation’s (hq’d in Doylestown) selection committee since January, but this is the first wish I’m in charge of granting.  An NYC 84-year old composer, who writes music gratis for foundations & charities, wants an Apple computer & a printer.  I have to get more background to consider the request.  Last Thursday was the first time I really spoke up at a meeting, shared perspectives & opinions.  It was the first time I had the confidence to be part of the foundation’s driving purpose – to grant wishes of low income olders.

A Creativity Jam for Age Justice is, by it’s nature, collaborative, but until the wee small hours of this morning, it didn’t hit me how much easier it would have been to organize it WITH another person.  Easier & way more effective.  And fun.  Big eye opener.

It makes me realize why I longed to be part of ANC’s Dormie Warmie events – taking goodies once a week to the high school dorms.  I was never a natural part of the group & there was nothing I could do to get around it – I’m not a Mom & everyone else there was. 

Am remembering the HUGE aha that hit over ten years ago.  I belonged to The Saturday Club out in Wayne, a group of women who did wonderful community projects.  After belonging for a years, two things struck me smack between the eyes – a) while I shared their devotion to community service, I didn’t play tennis or golf, didn’t have kids -  outside of our mutual devotion to community service, there wasn’t anything connecting us together; b) I gravitated toward groups & situations where I’d feel out of place,  which I figured out tied back to the fact that feeling like an outsider was my norm – it felt comfortable, while feeling like I was part of something was so outside my norm, it made me feel ill at ease & waiting for things to go horribly wrong.  It was an interesting realization.  An early aha.  An unexpected fresh awareness.  I sought out situations where I’d feel out of place.

Am proud to say that I immediately STOPPED.

But it still hadn’t hit that I am, by nature but certainly not nurture, a collaborative soul.

Over & over again, my experience of being older is being able to see my nature more clearly, to be better able to peel off the many layers of contrary nurture that have obscured, hidden it. 

I am a collaborative.  I need other people working by me to be my most effective.

In many ways, John is an ideal collaborator for me.  Our natures get each other, which is no small thing, since both of us can be, shall we say, a tad quirky.  But there are many areas of my life where he isn’t.   I’ve become friends with Tom, with whom I breakfast on Tuesdays.  He’s asked me to help him get his writing in shape for publishing.  His request, teamed with his different way of looking at things (mention something about time & he can talk ad infinitum about how time is an illusion), helped trigger one of my existential crises.  Tom pares things down, stirs up the pot, makes me look at things in a different way.  He is just the gad fly needed in my life!  But when he asked me to review & set in order his writing, I shut down.  For over six weeks, I found reasons to skip breakfast with him at the Lumberville General Store.  Who was I to be reviewing his work?  That was the set up to the crucible of April & early May.

Here’s what I discovered last Tuesday:  I am just the right person for the work because, unlike most of his near & dear, I am his target audience – someone who needs their brain disrupted.  And there was a reason I balked at doing the work Tom requested - he was giving me his thought pieces in dribs & drabs, but to get an overview of them, I need to have them all.  As for Tom, I need to shake him out of his 70-something thought process.  I’ll happily do what I can, but he should be spreading his message right now, through podcasts & online postings.  His goal is reach a particular type of restless mind, a group that’s hard to identify in olde tyme ways – he needs a multi-pronged approach, adding YouTube (he has a great voice & is about as telegenic as they come), twitter, Instagram to his mix.  He should be talking to Edie, the friend through whom we met, who is an old hand at this, to Christa who just followed her crazy dream of finding herself a performance space & mic, who now sings regularly at PAID gigs with the totally terrific Cherry Lane Band. 

Saturday a week ago, I went to my first story swap.  The Patchwork is a Philadelphia-based guild of storytellers.  Got an e-mail ~ no idea why ~ about the swap, being held at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore in Mt. Airy.  Off I went & had a wonderful time.  It was a small group, five all told – three from Philadelphia, me & a fellow from India, who’s visiting his son & thought it sounded like an interesting event.  I didn’t expect to add a story to the swap – have no experience in the sort of storytelling at which they’re old hands – but loved hearing about a wind-swept night lost on a Welsh moor, about bringing a small plane in for landing & having a hawk fly alongside, feathered wingtip keeping pace with the Cessna’s wing, peeling off in a salute as the plane throttled down.  With their encouragement, I did add my own.  

We are all stories.  In key ways, we are more our stories than by our dna.  Although I never saw myself as a loner, it sure felt like my natural state was to be alone.  Dave & Candy are my - now our - best friends.  We have been friends since 1973, when Dave, who hails from Iowa, was auditing courses at our local college while his wife, Candy, finished up a nutritional internship in Iowa before moving here, where he would be working as a researcher at Wills Eye Hospital.  On the night of the day Dad died, our house was filled with friends of Mom & Mim, but not a single one of my acquaintances.  Being a practical person, I called up Marie & asked, “Hey, Dad died.  Where is everyone?”  Turned out she was having a dinner party & the whole group decamped for our house.  Six women & Dave.  Dave became part of our lives on the day Dad died.  That is about as cool as it gets.  After Candy arrived, they moved into the apartment at Kenneth Synnestvedt’s at the end of our road.  Dave became like a brother.  We were so close, his mother was highly suspect of this woman who was tight with her son but wasn’t related to Candy – that is, until she & her husband visited & she got one look at me, at which point she burst into a huge smile, wrapped me in a warm Mom Zeigler hug & declared, “She looks more like my daughter than my daughter!”  Mom & Dad Z became part of my family, too.  But it wasn’t until years after Mom died, when Dave & Candy invited us out to South Dakota, sent us the air fare, that it dawned on me that they might actually like ME.  As dorkish & DUH! as it seems, I’d assumed that they tolerated me as a necessary addendum to Mom.  It didn’t fully hit me how they felt until Candy’s nephew, Greg, died going on five years ago & they came for the service & Candy collapsed in my arms. Five years ago.  When I mentioned my amazement to Marion, she was shocked – “Honey, you've always been part of our family.” 

We are more our stories than our dna.  My story was that I was alone,  someone others could barely tolerate.  Yeah, reality didn’t come into it.  But that story drove my life, blinded me to people who think I’m the bees knees.  Just over a week ago, Bethany Kay Zeigler, at 37, received her medical degree.  She is my namesake.  Mine & Mom’s.  Elsa BETH & Kay.  I knew that 20+ years ago & still thought Dave & Candy put up with me to be with Mom.  It went against my origin story of being apart, separate, unconnected (aka pure fiction).   

FACT - -  I  love collaboration.  I DO play well with others.  O be joyful!

Skinned - how to take criticism

Praise be, I was blessed to have in PETER HALL BOERICKE a boss who taught me how to use a performance review as a tool.  And he was blessed to have a "report" (me) who taught him how to write a more constructive one.

Having recently fallen head over heels for Tara Mohr, read her 09/27/14 NY Times op-ed on how women should respond to criticism that seems particularly pointed & personal.  As a balance, I also read the 09/30/14  The Belle Jar posting, No I Don't Want To Learn How To Love Criticism, Thank You.  

Much as I love Tara, am in agreement with the latter.  

I appreciated every performance review from Pete - and - am absolutely sure that his view of my work, how he critiqued it, was different than if I'd been a guy.  Which worked out fine, since I very much lead with my feminine strength of collaboration & cooperation.  

For my part, I took his suggestions for areas that needed work to heart & appreciated the ones he considered praise-worthy. That said, I did not - ever - take the attitude of rolling with the punches if I thought particular criticisms were undeserved.  There is a reason why employees are invited to comment on their review.  Use it.

In my case, while Pete gave me consistently above average marks, he rarely included specifics to back up the rating.  "Always goes above & beyond" might justify a 5 rather than a lower ranking, but it did not provided examples - details - of superior work.  Ditto when I received a 4 or lower - he didn't give specific examples of ways I had fallen short.

It was sort of strange, the relative new kid on the corporate block having a heart-to-heart with the seasoned head of PR&A about how he could write a super effective review.  While Pete was dubious about my points, he let me talk it out & really heard me.  He just thought it was unnecessary work, almost fluff.  Until several years down the road.

When I read over my 6th or 7th review, several areas had significantly lower marks that seemed out-of-whack with my sense of how I'd done.  Pete  explained that while the various examples he was thinking of had happened earlier in the year, they were important enough to my performance to include.  I was stumped, trying to figure out the instances to which he was referring.  In returning the unsigned review, I requested he provide specifics.  Being a just & fair boss, Pete agreed.

When I arrived to work the next morning, there was the review, with specific examples for each of the areas where he had rated me okay mediocre weak or worse.  

There was just one problem.  All of them were from past years.  Pete had remembered issues that had been resolved long ago but felt fresh to his memory.  And they were all related in some ways to gender.

If I'd just tried to interpret his critique as being well-intentioned misogyny, I would have been stuck with an undeserved review & he wouldn't have realized the wisdom of taking the time during the year to mark down specific assignments that had gone particularly well - with specifics of why - and ones that had fallen short of expectations & how.  

Making that change - not just for me, but for all his reports - made it easier for him to write performance reviews.  Instead of having to rely on his memory, he could check out brief notes made throughout the year. 

The change in review style helped more than Pete, his reports & the unit.  When other departments considered hiring one of us - which happened multiple times - our performance reviews highlighted our accomplishments as well as tracking how well we'd taken & used criticism.

The wrap-up at the end of the blog hit home, big time - "At the end of the day, it’s all very well and good to give women tips on how to function within the current framework of society; it’s another thing altogether to assume that this framework will never change. It’s never going to stop being a man’s game if women keep playing by men’s rules, and if our only form of resistance is to learn to live with how things are, well, this revolution isn’t going to get very far."

What a blessing to have in Pete a boss who was very much a guy expecting me to be very much a gal, who understood how to make our gender differences make us a better team.  That I got to work with someone who spoke against stereotyping, worked hard not to, who appreciated the rare times it happened & made himself aware.  Unlike a lot of others who want to be bosses but have no concept of how to manage, Pete really wanted his performance reviews to be a way his merry little band could build on our strengths, flip negatives into positives, use our unique talents to benefit company goals. 

A thought especially leapt out at me -  - "I want to figure out how to rely on myself, how to rely on my instincts, and how to trust in the fact that I am a smart, capable person who is worthy of respect."  Amen & hallelujah!

When it comes to accepting criticism, my goal is to be neither thick skinned nor thin.  My hope remains that I can hear it, see how I can use it to improve my performance & increase my value to a team.

My thanks to Tara for her op-ed, to The Belle Jar for a zing-to-my-heart response & forever thanks to PHB for showing me how to stay open minded & grow in unexpected directions.

A Patchwork tale

Earlier this week, an e-mail arrived about a Patchwork "story swap" this afternoon at Mt. Airy's Big Blue Marble Bookstore.  I'd heard bits & pieces about Philadelphia's Patchwork storytelling guild, but don't recall ever checking it out online, but here was an invitation to their monthly meeting.  It was a given I'd go.  

Now, the past week has been marked by my having one hot mess of existential crises - not one, multiple.  How John survived their blast, I do not know, but he appears to still be standing & - wonder of wonders - still loves me.  From the time I got the e-mail to inking it on my calendar to driving down to Mt. Airy with a driver's side window stuck half-way down with rain in the forecast, those two hours - 1:00~3:00 p.m. - felt like a promised oasis of calm.

The gathering - four regulars, two guests, myself included - took place on the second floor, up a narrow steep open staircase.  The regulars were all from Philadelphia, with the farthest one coming from the Fairmount/Art Museum neighborhood.  The other guest, a fellow from India, was visiting his son.

I've listened on rare occasions to The Moth, NPR's storytelling hour, but never by design.  I've never been part of a storytelling event, let alone a swap. I was there to listen, soak it in, see if it clicked.  

Two of the regulars told stories, one long, one short.  I enjoyed both tremendously - was stranded overnight on a Welsh moor, protected against wind & rain by a small umbrella & a serendipitously placed cairn, then guided a small plane in for landing with a hawk alongside, two sets of wings tip to tip - loved the storyteller describing that while he needed a variety of instruments for a maneuver, the hawk handled with a flick of a feather.


Feeling emboldened, I asked if they minded an amateur taking a stab at her first storytelling.  Everyone encouraged me to take the plunge - they made me feel safe as I told my story, something I never would have imagined sharing with total strangers yet seemed like what I was there to do.

Here it is, as best as I can recall...

I am the baby of our family, the youngest of five.  My brother, Peter, is fourteen years older, followed by Mike, Mim & Ian.  

I feel particularly tender toward Peter, who lost Ian almost sixty years ago & Mim in 2015.

Mom always described Ian, ten years younger, as Peter's heart delight.  The family tale is that when I was born, Peter informed our mother, "You will have take care of this one."  One of my favorite family photos is of Peter at his 8th grade graduation, blue jacket, white pants, necktie, diploma in hand, with 4-year old Ian at his side.  I can't imagine what he went through on that Easter Monday, when he was 21 & out in California, getting the call that Ian, just turned eleven, had been killed; can't imagine the long lonely airplane ride back.  

And then he lost Mim.  Mim was six years younger than Peter.  Although they'd never gotten along all that well growing up, they'd gotten very close over the past 20+ years, talking almost every day by phone. 

I remember the late July day John rang me on my cell phone - Mim had called from the emergency room & wanted me to give her a ring.  Alarmed, I called right away,  immediately soothed by her upbeat voice. 

"So," I asked, "What do the doctors say?"  Mim replied,  "I'll be gone in ten days."  "You're going to be in the hospital for ten days?!"  No, she replied- "I'll be GONE in ten days." 

And she was, after a hospital stay that left the staff amazed with her good humor, great smiles & awesome presence - they didn't know, as her family did, the Mim's dread wasn't death but a long dwindling dying.  She was abuzz with happiness to be spared that horror.  

But Peter wasn't prepared.  While Mim had been open from her first phone call that she'd be gone in ten days, he didn't see it coming.  I ached at his confused grief, another loved one's death taking him by surprise.

I feel for my oldest brother.  First his boy of boys died, then the sister with whom he'd become great friends.  Always the wrong siblings.  Never me.

As far as I can tell, Peter didn't have any use for me, not from Day One.  When I was a little kid, he'd complain to Mom, "Why must she speak such drivel?" 

Then there was the summer after my own 8th Grade graduation. Mom & Dad & I visited him in Indiana, where he was an up & coming  exec junior at RCA.  One evening is burned in my memory - Mom & Dad had taken the two of us & Peter's incredibly elegant date out for a special dinner.  I can still see the look on his face when I requested catsup - he was mortified that I'd slather it on my filet mignon; in that moment, I knew for sure that he saw his little sister as a social clod.  Even in my fifties, he lectured me on how to act around "people of quality."  This is not me imagining familial hobgoblins - many years back, someone asked if he'd always been close to Mim;  oh, no, he explained, it was fairly recent, a friendship forged when both discovered neither liked me.  Ouch!  

Today, I find myself Peter's only nearby family member.  Am torn - - does being a good sister mean being there for him, going over to visit, taking him out to lunch at his favorite family restaurant ~or~ is my presence an irksome irritation?  A tough call. 

Mim was a bridge to his days of academic & athletic glory, a mirror in which he could see himself at his perceived best. Me?  One look & he sees reflected back a person he's worked mightily to deny disavow disown. 

Yep, it feels like the wrong sibling always dies.  First Ian, then Mim.  Never me.  

Too much GREY

The past three months were the February That Would Never End.  It really messed up my sense of balance.  And I- yuck - it is still grey outside. 

One reason I wigged out today is that I've internalized the grey.  It is bad bad bad to feel dank dark & dismal inside.    

Small wonder I feel boxed in by isolation.  Am greyed out.

Gotta get color glitter pzazzz into my life! 

Internalize sparkling mini lights & spinning pin wheels! 

Let the confetti fling & the saxes swing! 

Clear out those internal grey skies & slap on a silly face!

Lower my bucket

Decades ago, a friend of mine was having new linoleum laid in her kitchen.  On taking up the old covering, they discovered that parts of the subflooring needed replacing.  When they took up the subflooring, they discovered the joists were in terrible shape.  It seemed like each time they set out to resolve a problem, a new one was uncovered.

That's been my experience with personal work.  The more I uncover, the clearer it is to see the damage that layer covered up or camouflaged, the more disparate selves have gone toe to toe for the upper hand.  The result is that I currently feel more a hot mess than ever.

This morning, driving John to work, I went unhinged.  My siblings & sister-in-law have long lambasted me as an angry person.  While I still think they confuse clarity with anger & honesty with rage, today I definitely went off the rails.  The heads up that something is very much amiss.

I've learned that when I am derailed (okay, deranged), my heart is trying to get a message through to my head.  My takeaway from my early morning momentary meltdown is that I've done enough personal work to be finally connecting to a self that's been safely buried for 17+ years.  If I don't watch out, will have the breakdown that could have happened in Autumn 2001, when I lost Mom, my family, the friends connected with Mom, a connection to my community & neighborhood, her dist list community - all of which I expected on her passing - and my job, a lost that totally blindsided me.

All of the personal work I've been doing for the past forever, but especially the past six years, particularly the past year, has revealed where I've emotionally papered over the great gaping hole, the still bleeding wound.  Hadn't realized how isolated I've become over the years, how much I expect isolation, which is just weird. 

Where I am right now is NOT a healthy place. This morning's meltdown, as short as it was, showed me in my full hot mess messiness.  Am in the midst of an existential crisis, caught in a crucible of past & future playing havoc with my present.  Like being on a combo Ferris wheel, merry-go-round & bumper car ride.  

Right now, am feeling crushed by the isolation.  But wait... What's this?  Friday, May 4 on the You are a Badass page-a-day calendar -  "Help is all around us, sometimes receiving it is simply a matter of looking at it differently, or not giving up so easily.  If you absolutely had to get some help, if it was a matter of life or death, what would you do?"  Leave it to the Universe to remind me that it is always on my side, that I am never isolated because I am always filled with The Great Spirit.  

And this isolation isn't new.  Wrote about it on Monday - felt like I nailed it then, but clearly did not.  Mixed & mingling emotional issues are messing up the clear path forward I want. Instead of staying off it, plunge forward.  

Stop emotionally going into community places, then isolating myself.  Get thee down to Be Well, but meet a friend for a cuppa.  Get back into the swing of weekly tag ups with Karen.  Make Tuesday breakfasts with Tom a regular thing.  Lower my bucket into the well of friendship.

My heart is in Sioux Falls

Oh, to have a magic wand & find myself in Sioux Falls!  Today, a niece-of-my-heart takes her physician's oath.  Teary, looking at her graduation invitation ~ ~ oath ceremony this afternoon, grad ceremony tomorrow.  Then onto Indiana for her residency! 

Am button-bustin' proud of Bethany.  She's got glam, grits & guts.  A role model of tenacity, hard work & focus.  Role model & dear friend.

"Find your own light."  The Buddha

It's only freaking awesome IF there is follow through

All the way.  To complete done finis.  

The past two days have been filled with an emotional roller coaster.  Is there a spiritual equivalent for puberty & menopause, with things in ferocious flux, some opening up, some settling down, some apparently attempting to do both simultaneously?  

Where I am right now has NOTHING to do with intelligence or mastering emotions.  This wild ride is of the spirit.  

The most jaw-dropping part of it all is how the Universe is saying, "The Great Spirit has your back - go for it!"  There are signs everywhere, courtesy of Rumi & Jen Sincero.

Jen - When your subconscious beliefs at out of alignment with the things and experiences we want in our conscious minds (and hearts), it creates confusing conflicts between what we are trying to create and what we are actually creating.  It's like we are driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. (05/01/18) ~ ~ ~ If you made the decision that you were going to reach your goals, you would do whatever it took.  If you merely wanted to, but hadn't made the firm decision to, you'd roll over and begin convincing yourself that your life is fine just the way it is. (yesterday)  ~ ~ ~  When you are vibrating at a high frequency, awesome things seem to flow to you effortlessly, and you seem to stumble over the perfect people and opportunities all the time (and vice versa).  As Albert Einstein observed, "Coincidence is God's way of staying anonymous."

Rumi -   For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.  ~ ~  From within, I couldn’t decide what to do. ~ ~  Unable to see, I heard my name being called.  ~ ~  Then I walked outside.

Sheez Louise, girl - doesn't get clearer, more caring loving supportive than that! 

The Universe can be an awesome support, but The Great Spirit only lets it go so far.  It's like Will Smith showing Kevin James the most effective way to give a first kiss - the Universe can do the heavy lifting, working on the internal stuff, but it can only go 90% of the way to the sweet kiss of DONE. The last 10% is on me.  

These past years, months, days can only be freaking awesome if I handle that last 10%.  For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.  ~ ~  From within, I couldn’t decide what to do. ~ ~  Unable to see, I heard my name being called.  ~ ~  Then I walked outside.