This weeks newsletter is layered. I am not just addressing what I allude to in the title but also include my current life stage, projects and insights. I sketch everyday and I am a mom everyday. I am not just one of those things. I am also a writer, an artist, a spiritual seeker on the bodhisattva path and regular meditator. I am a maker and builder which you will soon see as my wood shop is just about set up. I am not just one thing but a body containing a universe of experience and understanding as we all are. This newsletter is not just one thing. We are humans with multiple roles but at the core is our self awareness and mindful presence in our own life in the day to day as well as the macro lens of where we stand within it all. This newsletter is a documentation of my particular life and motherhood. With all of the struggle, all of the tiny joys and the continuous growth that parenthood and life require.
Untangle your stories. It is OKAY if it’s messy.
The stories we carry can determine the trajectory of our life. The stories we have framed over the course of our lives have the power to keep us trapped in a cage of our own making. Unless we begin to question our stories that we have gathered we are not in full awareness of our true selves, our soul. An unattended soul is a starving one, un nurtured with a craving for fulfillment and peace. Breaking through the walls of these stories is where your peace lives.
So what are the stories that have defined your life and are they true?
The stories that have defined me.
I have felt different from other kids since I was about 6. I feel like this shift in my consciousness happened earlier than that but my earlier memory is from between 4 and 6 years old. From age 6 until age 13 or 14, I attempted to have friends, fit in and be part of the crowd. But eventually my true, emotional, sensitive self would come through. My need to process deeply and understand the circumstances around me would be deemed over thinking and I would be misunderstood and bullied. My joyous, childlike behavior deemed immature and silly, something I should temper down and grow out of. My sensitive soul would take these experiences so deeply that it would affect my self worth for my whole life.
I would come home to a safe home but, like many, not one of emotional maturity where I could seek and receive the help I needed. At my core, I felt as though my emotions and troubles were too much for my parents as well. There were no skills or coping tools to learn so I didn’t learn any. Other than to stay quiet, helpful and small as a means to getting through life.
Parents - They do the best they can with the information they have and support they get.
My mother and father had to face many burdens in their childhood years that were left unattended for decades. They did not have the time, money or awareness at the time to “do the work” needed to grow into the parents I needed. To dig deep to heal your inner wounds was not part of the whole consciousness. In the 1980s-1990s when I was a kid, we were still very much shoving our humanity down and ignoring it. My mother grew up taking care of other people. Her mother was a wounded human and did not have the ability to be a present mother but instead a lying and manipulative one. This is the fact, that my mother, didn’t have the guidance she needed that confirms for me, she did the absolute best she could. In her motherhood, she didn’t have the support and balance we now know we need in order to live a full life. Instead, she spent her motherhood caring for babies then caring for grandparents as they died, managing my brothers eradic behavior and my fathers undiagnosed ADHD and eventually 1-2 year depression. She cared for all of us deeply but forgot her own needs.
My fathers dad died when he was a preteen and he became the man of the house. Without having a father to actually look to for guidance, my father lost his childhood and became a father figure without consent at age thirteen. He lost all of his teenage years. All of the years where he could have freely discovered himself but instead, stunted but the needs of others.
I saw all these struggles deeply from a very young age and I believe unknowingly became what my mother needed me to be. Unfortunately that meant, I did not share my biggest, hardest stuff with her or with anyone. I stored it for keeps.
About a year ago I read a book called “The drama of the gifted child” by Alice Miller. This book opened my eyes and clarified the above assumptions. I did, in fact, become smaller in order to adapt in the environment I grew up in. It was my adaptation that enabled be to manage up until this point.
Random thought - I actually took a strength finder test over a year ago and adaptation is one of my top strengths. I wonder if I took the test again, if I would still be just as adaptable OR if I have released my stories enough to have a shift in the top 5 attributes.
Seeking Outside help from the “Professionals” - Psychiatrist
When I was a teenager, I was taken to a few therapists to try to help with my sadness and my anxiety. My parents were not sure how to help me so they sought help. I am grateful they tried. I know I did not answer the questions with full honesty but in the light of all my self aversion and feelings of defect, my own feelings were not actually valid, so even in therapy, I would try to give the right answers. Im not sure I was asked about my friendships and I am sure I never mentioned my lack of connection or close friendships. I do not remember anyone asking me about my support system. Obviously my parents were supportive and bringing me to a therapist but there was, what I now see as a glaring bright missing piece in the help I received. Understanding of my experience.
I was given medication as most kids and young adults, hell humans in general, are given to “fix” it. Medication is a bandaid. It can absolutely help get you out of the initial hole and has been necessary for me to survive. Whether or not it was placebo or not, medications would help me manage. But they never fixed anything. The trick is to use the medication as a means to do the real work. The real work of understanding why you are depressed in the first place. What stories led me here? What feedback was I receiving from those around me? Were my feelings being shoved away as though they were a problem to fix? Yes. Were my feelings grossly misunderstood by not only my poor child self but all the adults around me? Yes.
As a human species, we do not want to feel pain, hurt, sadness. It is uncomfortable, for the person feeling this way, for the people around them. No one wants to look it straight in the eye to figure out where it truly hurts. It is hard to feel through it and to sit with someone in their pain. It takes courage to sit with your own feelings and if you can’t sit with your own, you cannot fully sit with and empathize or help another with theirs. People want to either look away, cover it up, and ignore it instead of talking about it, dissecting it, together. Instead we leave everyone in our lives to fend for themselves, in an internal battle. Unvalidated, unheard and defected.
My inner story has been harmful to my own life. My story is that I am overly sensitive and my sadness is something to fix. I am not good enough as a human because of my sensitive nature , my melancholy and joy, my deep emotions were too much. I was not enough and too much at the same time. In the end my story has always been framed by these “facts” that I have accumulated over my life.
“I have mental health problems” ie depression and anxiety can be a harming label. It can worsen feelings of being “other”. Deepening the depression. If we don’t ask the core questions about a humans life, like community and belonging, health and wellness etc, we are not understanding why a person is depressed. I imagine there are many people, who have slapped a label and medication on it only for it not to work but further alienate you from your own sense of self worth and ability to find connection in this world.
I hope that every therapist and psychiatrist knows this or will know it soon. We need to treat the people not the symptoms. We need to slow way down and start at the very core needs or being a human.
What depression is, in my life experience.
Depression is the manifestation of unmet needs, unvalidated feelings and the gross misunderstanding of the range of human experience. The lack of a true community over a prolonged period of time ingrained my assumptions deeper as I tried and failed to find belonging. Then I just gave up. I found solace in work during the day and alcohol and cannabis at night. I distracted myself from my lack of connection. Deeper into depression and anxiety, made worse by outside substances.
Psychiatrists, the ones responsible for prescribing medication are completely cut off from other healing modalities such as cognitive behavioral therapy, somatic expression, emdr, and hell just human to human conversation and connection and knowledge of core human needs. Sessions with a psychiatrist are limited to 30 minutes (Ive seen 15 min even). This is not enough time to understand someones experience, to understand why the person is there. This is not enough. It is inhumane to give a person a diagnosis and medication without full understanding. It is dangerous to prescribe a medication that will effectively then change their brain chemistry, potentially confusing their issues further, rather than to take the time to understand why the person “thinks” they needs it in the first place.
If we track back a bit, we can see the connection between modern medicine and the structures that modern society has built, has created a disconnection from our intuitive needs. The humanity and emotional belonging in community is all but gone, leaving us to trust outside sources rather than our own instincts and self knowledge. Hello Dr Google. Hello specialists who only focus on one part of the whole. We need to reintegrate humanity and medicine, motherhood and healing, people with people.
We were born whole. The reason we do not feel whole is because we learn by our culture(s) and what is considered normal and right. If we are misaligned with the greater culture it can cause us to divide from what is true to us and what is supposedly true for everyone else. We have not been taught to respect our own bodies as if they are an expression of our truth, our nature. We have been taught that part of our nature is not to be discussed, they are to be hidden, blocked, denied. Assimilate or be an outcast. I didn’t have enough confidence to be an outcast instead, like many, I divided.
Compassion grows when you begin to understand that we all have wounded parts from this world we live in. We all have stories we live by whether we are consciously aware or not. We have all developed coping skills and way to navigate the world safely. But what if you want to truly heal so you can move through life with all this compassion instead of fear and anxiety?
Talk about it, write about it, find a person to validate your feelings. Be unapologetic in how to feel because they are yours and they are trying desperately to tell you something. Keep writing and reading because you can only understand as much as you show yourself. If you are afraid to look? Well, looking at the dark spots is where we find our growth out of whatever stories are keeping us from living our true self. It is where we find ourselves again so we can show up how we were alway meant to be.
“Accept your shadows, without it, there is no sun”
-Rae
Rae’s Reading Room - Books that are changing my life, page by page. Book by Book
Motherwelmed by Beth Berry has been and will be a guide for me and my motherhood going forward. Berry talks through all the issues with motherhood in the modern day. The lack of a village and belonging that will continue if I as a mother, do not dispell our own myths about motherhood, shame and unworthiness. Open to yourself and your own human needs and open to the community we ALL desperately need in our lives.
With my understanding of my own childhood story and my desire to to be a fully alive human, I understand my journey in becoming a mother. I had to become a mother to myself first so I can show my girls how to take care of themselves. In all their messy emotions and confusions, I know these are just as important and most likely more important to listen to as the joyous or even the mundane because this is where they will teach me who they are and what their life experience is so that i can guide them through the process I took myself through and will take myself through the rest of my life. My girls will know their feelings are their teachers and respect them without abandon. And for the long list of cultural consensus on motherhood? The things I thought were important? Not in my motherhood. But only I had to look and sit with them to really find what is and isnt for me. Turns out, not much of it will be part of motherhood story except for the continuous breakdown and rising above.
From the Sketchbook
Falls Joys and Googly eyes!
Fall season is upon us and the crafting/nesting part of myself loves this part of the season. Before it gets too cold and all the colors are just starting to change. When cuddling up in a blanket outside on the porch seems like the most perfect place to be and you never want to leave. This is the time to NUTURE! To begin to prepare for the long months ahead, I am gathering art supplies like squirrels gather nuts and I am giddy at my collection. As we get into the colder months, let this remind us to care for what is inside. Inside our homes, the people inside our homes and what is inside their hearts and ours. Listening closely. Caring for the core of you like the trunk and roots of the tree and letting go of our stories like the tree let go of their leaves.
And for straight up joy - put googly eyes on it. Anything. I guarantee it makes everything my light hearted and we all could use that!
Get outside and let the cool air cleanse you. Let your stories go.
Love, Rae