Just-right Stories

What a MASSIVE blessing that a Daring Way workshop happened yesterday. Imagine an entire calendar, twelve months, 52 weeks, 365 days (366 this year).  And it happened on a day that fell within the 10 days that my sister was hospitalized, a hospital admission, she made as clear as possible, was going to end fairly quickly & with her death.  Which it did.  

As I wrote in a 06/21/16 posting, the year following her death has been amazing.  The tendency of the just-right thing to show up in my life at the just-right moment in the just-right way amped up over the past months.

Over the past week, my thoughts have often turned to Mim.  The bittersweet feelings that always come on thinking about her, about us, about the family & life & countless "might have beens" have been part of my day.  

I wrote about realizing how easily I could have been locked into an "endless loop of regret, frustration & unacknowledged anger," trying - futilely  - to come to peace with the fact that we could have been such a great partnership & the reality that it could never happen.  

 

Sitting there yesterday, in the midst of an awesome group of women with an inspired workshop leader/facilitator, attending an event organized by a brilliantly creative team of ab fab females, in a beautiful room filled with all sorts of cultural touchstones & a knock-out view, it struck me that, on this first anniversary of that final hospitalization, I could be amping up a new endless loop, another spasm of searching that feels soul-satisfying yet ultimately goes no where.

And I pulled myself back.  Or, more accurately, I chose to step away.  To chose JOY.  

Felt bumbling, talking to John about it later, trying to explain the siren call that was pulling me to share experiences of Mim in an attempt to gain clarity.  

Imagine, I asked him, reading an intricately-plotted, skillfully written mystery novel, a story that utterly engages you, that sweeps you into the action, makes you connect with the characters, makes you CARE.  And the end leaves you in limbo, wondering what had happened, who had actually done what, the identity of the good guys & the bad guys, if there even were good & bad guys, without a clue about all that you'd just read.  No clue about what you'd invested all that time & energy & caring in following. The author is dead, so unless someone discovers a manuscript that spells it all out, there's no way you're going to know for sure what happened.

Yesterday, between the event & talking to John, I connected the timing & my intention to use writing as a form of spiritual smudging.   Writing about wanting to purify "my personal space through an intentional, respectful, honoring of my sister.... (sharing) aspects of her being, at least as I experienced them," my unspoken expectation was to get to that place of knowing what it had been all about through new-found clarification.

Sorry, kiddo - ain't ever going to happen.  I am never going to get a clue about what it was all about, about why people acted as they did, apparently felt as they did.  For me, the mystery will always remain a confusing, jumbled mismash.  

Which doesn't mean I won't write, won't share.  Because, for me, there are things that need to be put out there, even if they make some people uncomfortable. 

Like the reality that my sister didn't like me.  My family didn't like me.  Well, it wasn't that they didn't like me.  For that to be, I'd have to register on their reality radar & I sure as shootin' didn't.  

That sounds harsh, but actually explains a lot.  Their response wasn't personal.  For freakish reasons no one never openly acknowledged & quite possibly never understood, I just wasn't ... real to them.  Use that as the starting premise & everything they (& others) said & especially everything they wrote makes complete sense.  What so many fail to understand, is it wasn't personal.  To be personal, I would have to have been a real person to them. 

 

It makes no sense, but almost nothing in my experience of my sibs & parents did.  The one thing I know in my bones is that Mim was terribly abused as a little child.  

Was this ever discussed, even indirectly?  Never.  BUT all you have to do is look at Mim's life to see that something happened.  I knew it long before hearing Brene talk about how cynicism, criticism, (the need to be) cool & cruelty are major protections against vulnerability (and against living a wholehearted life).  


That abuse, whatever it might have been, marked more than my sister.  Whatever it was that happened, it hallmarked my family, down to this very day.  THE primary goal within our family was to not see, not share, never speak anything that might bring up anything that might lead to anything that might point to something that might unintentionally uncover what must never be revealed.  

Sadly, while I could have been a boon to my family, they experienced me as peril.  I was born the thing they'd fear most - a seeker.  And for decades, I hadn't a clue there was a great terrible something buried deep deep deep that must stay hidden.  There I was, unknowing Twit of the Universe, assuring my sister, my mother, "It's okay - it's safe to share with me," totally oblivious that I was, to them, the most massively unsafe person on the face to the planet.

It's would be impossible to see the reality of all that & feel anything but swept with love & compassion for everyone caught up in such intense, unattended brokenness. 

This is not to say that I won't share aspects - including disturbing ones - of my sister.  Use them in connection with something Brene discusses.  No one could be more fortified than Mim against vulnerability.  Mim was terrified by everything.  Everything - especially good things - presented to her as potential sources of unforeseeable, inevitable trauma.  

But writing as form of spiritual cleansing - that's been done, thanks to the combination of writing some heartfelt posts, resting in the midst of incredible women, focusing on the insights of the brilliant Brene.  Happened far faster than I imagined, but am considering the special place in my head heart spirit, the place that's my instant retreat, duly smudged.


Mim had a wondrous card captioned, "Death is a wild night & a new road."  The words were part of her memorial tribute.  It gave me a lot of comfort, thinking of my adored sister finally finding that new road, her true road.  

It took until yesterday, sitting with those remarkable women all channeling Brene Brown, to realize that I am free to launch myself on an endless loop of clarifying the forever oblique obtuse obscure ~OR~ choosing to glory in being on my own true road.  

Giving thanks for all who helped set me here.  I pledge to be unstinting in my love for them, acknowledge the sorrow I feel for all they suffered, without wrapping myself in that same invulnerability cloak they felt compelled to keep snug around their heart.

Prepare yourselves, because I will be using Mim in future Brene-inspired postings.  It can't be helped, because there's no describing my response to what Brene shares about armoring up against vulnerability without bringing Mim into it.  

 

Stay in balance through realizing that wretched things happen in order to serve as lessons. And that is the attitude with which I will share - to enlighten & even empower, not to criticize & judge.

Yesterday, was once again touched with the just-right thing showing up at the just-right time in the just-right way.  Looking for something related to the workshop, I came across a sheaf of white paper with comments sent by friends & relatives this time last year, to be shared with Mim.  

It is a sadness that I can't describe her the way so many of them did, she never let me in.  But it gives me special joy to close this posting with THEIR view of my unique, complex, extraordinary sister:

Joann (her birth name), you were one of my heroes as a kid.  Thanks for giving me guidance & vision when I really needed it (even if you didn't know you were doing it at the time!).

Mim, may you truly experience all heavenly joys from the life of service you have given so well to others in mind.

MIM - accepting, friendly, caring, warm, helper, coach, giving, patient.  Holding you in my thoughts.

Blessings on you.

Dear Mim - Blessings on you for being an important gift to us on our spiritual journey.

Death is just a child come to take up by the hand & lead us gently away.  I love you dearly.

Mim - thank you for your wonderful leadership when I was just a kid.  What a gift!

We are sending so much love & warmth.

All our love, now & always.

Mim - Thoughts of you always make my spirit smile.

Mim - We will never forget the day at Laurel when we were saying goodbye to Frank, and you said (this is not a direct quote, but something like it) he was the person who brought you from the back of the room to the front of the room.

Death is a wild night and a new road - Mim, once more, as you have so many time before, you scout a new adventure.

Thinking of you & loving you.  I will miss your Christmas cards.  Happy journey!

Many, many blessings on your travel!

Wishing you a great adventure as you prepare for the great beyond. 

Mim, we send our love & this quote from Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace... to give you a future & a hope."  

"This is the day the LORD has made, let us rejoice & be glad in it." 

 

 

people change

A dear friend was uncomfortable with my writing anything but happy memories of my sister, Mim.  "Even if the two of you had your problems, people change.  You need to give her credit for changing, for growing, for the relationship between the two of you growing as it did over the past couple years."

Good advice.  And I took it to heart, thought about it long & hard, then realized my good friend could not fathom that one of the great constants over the years was that Mim's feelings toward me apparently remained the same.  She didn't like me.  Tolerated when necessary.  In the last few years, perhaps appreciated.  But if she liked me, it was a far different definition of the word than how I use it.

Now, I know that is hard for people who saw us in her pre-MSW days to accept.  In my teens, twenties & early thirties, we were practically joined at the hip.  So much so that someone I considered a super close friend clarified reality - "I'm not close friends with YOU.  I'm close to all three - you, Mim & 'Aunt' Kay."

That was a bit of a shocker.  But then, a lot of people in my little hometown thought of us as Mim Elsa Mrs. Lockhart.  

Once Mim got her Masters from Rutgers, she could let herself own feelings that were ... inconvenient until then.  It was after she got her Masters that she could acknowledge, "Don't like you.  Never did." 

Praise be, I'd known that for many many many years.  From an early age, I understood that Mim did things with me because of availability, not affection.  Until her late thirties, she didn't have close friends who lived near by, people she could bop with up to NYC or off to the shore, who was up for going into Philadelphia every day of 1976's Bicentennial Week or to make a mad dash to Lock Haven.  But I knew.  By the time I was eleven, it was clear.

"But that was so many years ago.  She changed so much in the last thirty years."  My friend was right - Mim did change a lot since the late '70s.  But certain things seemed to stay the same.  Her attitude about me & her ability to make the most devastating comments.

When I was ten, she confided in me, "When I get married, I'm going to have Wynne in my wedding & Lark in my wedding.  I'm going to have Fawn in my wedding & Brooke & Beth.  I'm even going to have Star in my wedding, and she is just a toddler.  But I am not going to have you in my wedding."

When I was around 45, years after getting married to John, Mim confided in me, "I bet you think I talk to my psychologist about you.  I never talk about you, about out relationship.  Ever."    

Okay, that last was almost twenty years ago & it's possible that Mim changed significantly between 1985 & 2015 - but I personally doubt it.  Although she didn't make any devastating digs over those final years, she did something gut wrenching - unless she needed something done, I was typically left out of the loop if she had a medical crisis. Shut out.

I thank the Universe for that last moment, for stroking her hair as I thought she slept, not realizing she was gone.  To touch her & not have her shrink back.  An unexpected, priceless gift.  

People do change.  It would be nice to think that Mim did.  But I wonder.  Before Mim could feel at peace with being fond of me, she had to feel the same about herself.  She was so suited up in "don't get near me" armor, I doubt that was possible.  

Brene says you can't love others if you don't love yourself.  Mom, my brothers, the rest of the family seemed fine with Mim as she was.  I saw someone crying out for help, someone who saw herself as utterly UN.  Saw it when I was a kid of ten, saw it through my teens, into my twenties & thirties, my forties & beyond.  I never could break through, but not for lack of trying.  In that, I never changed.

shameless

I was shameless as a child, even into my teens, deep into my adulthood.  Literally.  I had no concept of shame.  It was as impossible for me to understand shame as it would be for a fish to comprehend water.  Shame surrounded my environment. 

Anyone who knows my sister well should not be surprised to hear that I am absolutely sure she was massively abused in her early childhood, before I came on the scene.  She never, in my experience of her, had a sense of self.  While I felt X'd & UN'd by my family,  it felt like Mim felt she was X, was UN.  Nothing. Nada. Utterly unworthy.  Filled with shame.

Mom seemed filled with shame, too.  She'd let down her father, she'd let down her mother, she'd grievously let down her first daughter.  Not that she actually had, but that seemed to be how Mom felt. 

Shame filled my home.  Mim embodied shame, Mom was riddled with it, and Peter was clealy ashamed that we were his family.  I breathed in shame, breathed out shamelessness.

It's no wonder that I was numb to shame, so it never protected me the way as it's designed to do. 

There are things we don't do because they'd make us ashamed.  Not me.  

Honor your body?  Never occurred to me that there was anything worth honoring about my body. 

Complete homework assignments?  On that, I was hit with the double whammy of feeling no shame at not doing assigned work, I came from a family with a trinity of people who put primary emphasis on getting the big idea or setting the good intention & giving no value worth importance on following through to completion. 

I never developed deep lasting friendships because I never - even as a young adult - thought I had anything of value to offer.  And it didn't feel wrong - it felt natural.

It took having a really hit-bottom relationship with an utter & complete cad to wake up to, "You are worth more than this."  And once that thought hit me, I believed it.  I did not feel like I needed to scourge myself for all the wretched decisions I'd made in my life.  I did feel like I needed to hang onto the lessons they'd taught me. 

Years & years & years ago, I was talking with a very worldly friend of my mother's about regret & shame.  Responding to something I'd said, she asked if I felt any shame for decisions I'd made.  To this day, I consider that a strange question to come from Gig.  And I was surprised that she was bowled over when I answered that I felt regret about certain decisions, but never shame, because when I made them they seemed right to me.  "Then you're a hedonist!" was her shocked reply.  She confused not feeling shamed by what I did with doing anything I wanted.  Strange.

Brene talks about shame being part of our invulnerability armor  It's interesting that I didn't feel it.  Interesting that I did some truly ghastly things & made some seriously STUPID choices, but that I was ever eaten up by a sense of  shame  That's weird.  And a blessing.  Because when I finally woke up - in my mid 30s! - to how messed up my life was, I could step away from a road that was taking me to dark, nasty places & step toward a better path.  Toward what would turn out to be John & everything that is.

I did not feel shame because the feelings associated with it filled my home environment.  Mom & Mim & Peter were so engorged with shame, for some reason it rolled off of me.  Today, I feel healthy regret, feel distress at dumb decisions or unintentional hurts I've caused, feel the sharp familiar pang of guilt. But SHAME?  I saw too well, too closely, the destruction it causes to fall prey to its allurements.

My mother's & siblings' misfortune was my salvation.  That doesn't seem fair.

AH HAs, not OMGs

originally posted on older2elder...

What I find so engaging with DARING GREATLY is my sense that each person reading it is having a distinctly different experience than every other reader. 

What Brene writes takes me back to my own experiences, my sense of other family members' possible experiences - and knowing that all memories are "best possible" approximations of what really happened.

One of my dearest wishes is that DARING  GREATLY had been written when Mom was still with us.  It might not have explained a lot, but it would certainly been a springboard to A LOT of interesting discussions.

It seems to me that oldsters, the elderly & ancients could be especially affected by Brene's book because they have sufficient span of years to give them a wide view of their life landscape & hopefully the ability to even step back a pace or two from events, allowing them to see a bigger picture.  Brene offers so many triggers to connect with our own histories, with interest but not not necessarily judgement.  At least, that's what happened as I read Brene. 

A series of surprising AH HAs, rather than incapacitating OMGs.

love letter to Alison

I barely know Alison, yet am head over heels in love her.  Well, in love with her incredible spirit. 

What is it about her inner wow that leaves me so googly?  Haven't the slightest.

She was one of the little kids who lived across from the Post Office, then a much younger young adult, then she got married & moved to Canada.  K

Knew of her enough to know her full married name, but that was it.

Then, my mother got involved in an e-mail discussion group that supported women in our (then & now) men-only priesthood.

Alison got on my radar because she got on Mom's, because Mom participated by her dictating & yours truly transcribing.

Mom was so proud of women like Alison & Janie, Julie & Ros & others - women who felt a call & moved around & over & under & PAST the apparent obstacles that seemed to block their way.

Alison lives in NYC, recently re-expatriated from the frigid North.  She is job hunting & wedding planning, family loving & friend supporting.  Maybe what connects so strongly with me is my sense she has stars within her & such glories ahead of her.

She recently wrote on her Facebook page, "I just walked past Maggie Gyllenhaal," to which a friend commented, "Maggie Gyllenhaal just walked past Alison Longstaff." 

Amen & hallelujah!