Hands Full of Rocks

Acceptant Loving Faithful is a good outward filter, too

I have had a rough week, personally. Lots of past history (abuse-related) coming up due to some other events. Just one of those bad cycles, though I haven't had one this bad in a very long time. I tried to track back how long it has been (I initially thought 10-12 years), but the last time this bad, where it was interfering with my daily functioning, was 15 years ago. After 15 years, I didn't really expect it to ever happen again.

Kinda took me by surprise. Which meant I had a hard time getting my feet under me. Huge physical reactions, getting the shakes at work, having to work at not crying in meetings. Bad, in other words. Fortunately, just two days of bad, and then three days of waiting for the next flashback or surge of emotional pain out of nowhere... meanwhile, trying to build a social net, and leaning into the net I already have (letting people know that I might need some support, and why).

What does this have to do with the triad? (Acceptant/Loving/Faithful) I realized that while these three filters are my internal measures of action toward others, they are also what makes others' actions toward me feel 'right'. The more attuned to this triad a response it, the more it feels good, appropriate, effective. Hmm, the more it is acceptant, loving, and faithful, the more it feels safe, respectful, kind, and the more it tends to also land in effective, prudent, and true, too. 

Pretty cool, that.

Two of my coworkers (one also a friend) are extraordinarily good at this. It is part of their character, though it comes out in different ways, and with different emphasis. And okay, the 'loving' part is not the same definition as I'd have for ep - but 'loving-kindness' is definitely there. They let me be me (even if that's not what they would expect of someone else), they respond with warmth and caring regularly (more often than I would expect, certainly), and they have faith in me. That last one really matters - without the faith in me, I end up feeling weaker, not stronger. They trust me to handle myself, which includes asking for what I need. I know where I'm likely to err, and their faith in me helps me ask for help in just that space, instead of being treated like I can't handle things at all (which would just make me angry if I didn't give in to it, and ashamed if I did).

Both of them helped me get my feet under me. Interestingly similar strategies to do so. One spent a longer time on the acceptant part of the conversation (listened and asked over a longer span), but they both did all three. Just having the conversation was important to getting my balance. And having the conversation with those three filters in evidence was the critical part.

Interesting to feel how that feels applied back. I could read through those filters how I am valued. More than interesting, humbling. Makes for some thoughtful moments about how much I need to stay attuned to that in the other direction - if I feel this way when someone else is acceptant, loving and faithful toward me, then I can expect that my kids will feel this when I am the same toward them.

I suspect I have been using this triad much longer than I thought I had. When I think now about my other friends and relationships, the ones I think of as 'best' are all a match to this triad, which I came up with specifically for talking to my kids about relationships of all sorts.

Using the triad as an outward filter (for that which is incoming) may also be why I have an easier time being friends with people who have very different values from mine - it isn't what values they have that matters most (maybe some, but not most), but the quality of their ethical exercise. If they are true to their values, I can trust them to be true to their values. I know where they are, and where they will go, and what matters, even if I don't believe the same things. It is easier for me to be acceptant when I know the other person is true to their values. There's more to it, of course, but that's a big part.

Meanwhile, loving is a direct return in the middle - even if the form of loving-kindness from them is not the exact form of loving-kindness I express back.

Anyway. Back on my feet, now, I think. I had the second of the two conversations yesterday, and this morning I woke up not feeling scraped raw. Much better.

April is anniversary time

Mid-April would have been the due date for one of the babies I miscarried. Mostly, I don't have any blips over that - the losses were mainly early, and I generally had a sense of peace over them, eventually.

But I still miss her, sometimes. She being the one whose laughter I could hear, whose smile I dreamed about, whose loss and my subsequent silence about the ongoing grief caused the biggest train wreck in our marriage.

Now, if I have faith in what Mr G has said, I'll meet her again - she was not mine, but was instead meant to be with him. He told me that she was born to another mother, and that he would marry her when he grew up. And that she loves earrings.

My dreams of her were all of someone of mixed race heritage - dark skin, curly hair, deep brown eyes, and that ready smile and somewhat dry sense of humor. I dreamed of her more during that very short pregnancy than I dreamed of any of my other kids, or that's the way it feels, anyway.

It's been a while - nine years. Some of the information fades. But April always gets to me. August gets to me on another loss, but April is hers.

I never notice until I'm knee deep in it, feeling unaccountably weepy, volatile, like I'm waiting for something that might never come. It's that feeling of nearly holding my breath, or of worrying about ep if I'm waiting for him to come home - trusting that he's fine, but anxious anyway until I see the headlights of the car.

For extra fun, I usually end up mentioning miscarriage to someone, without warning. This time it was a coworker. Totally tangential comment to the conversation, out of the blue. I had no idea where that came from (I opened my mouth and the words fell out). I recognized that they weren't relevant and shifted the conversation on to the next topic (he fortunately tends to shrug odd stuff from me right off - it's either a Me thing or an American thing, whatever) - it was only this morning that I realized it was a week past her due date, which is right when it usually reaches surface for me.

Bleah. And I have a busy day today, and no time to process.

I like men

It's one of those things that may seem like a duh, since I'm married to one.

But I know a fair number of women (mainly through work, but some socially) who tolerate men, who find them charming at times, exasperating at others, but underneath it all, don't really like the MEN-ness of men. They really prefer women, at the underlying level. They'd really rather everyone was like women, and men would just stop with the whole male thing. Keep the parts, change the behaviors. Not that this is wrong - it isn't any better than me liking men more than women.

I am reminded of this in part because I'm working mostly with men right now. I've worked with a team of 14 men (me the sole female), and with a good blend (nearly 50:50 men:women), with almost all women (one man, maybe 15 women), and now again mostly men (3 women, 12 or so men, I haven't counted exactly). Plus a good dozen-plus other scenarios in the consulting world, but those are the big chunks.

All the teams have worked really well together. There was more socially-driven work behavior in the all-female group, but that was also rather a lot to do with the group having been totally un-managed for 5 years before the point that I joined. It wasn't 'malicious gossip', more like relationship-building, and it was part of the interweaving of how things worked. Social process was important. I'm fine with that, and it was functional especially given the lack of directed management for so long. And I liked every one of the women I worked with.

I still seem to thrive better working with men, or at least with more men proportionally in the group.In other words, I'm loving working in the new team.

I also read men pretty well - part of my job is to translate from one set of meta-messages to another, and I'm told I'm a master of reading what is going on between individuals that is unsaid. That probably doesn't hurt - there's no 'wait, what did he mean by THAT?' - or not much, and I am comfortable just going and finding out. I'm also good at communicating my comfort with men being themselves. Without making myself 'one of the guys', either.

I have no idea how I learned that, but I suspect it has to do with being raised at least for a while by a guy who was very funny and open about being a guy. Very playful with even the rule-breaking, gross, and macho behaviors - he made them obvious enough and laid out the boundaries of what made him male-and-therefore-not-female (not speaking sexually, in particular, just culturally) with rather a lot of entertaining drama and silliness. I learned the language early, and because he made it fun - and because my mom also found it welcome and charming and worthy and loved - it was something I came to appreciate for itself. The style of it countered my tendency to be overly serious, as well.

Liking guys and men (which may not always be the same thing) makes it easier to be a parent of boys, not to mention making it easier to be married to a man. It should be obvious that it is useful to have a deep appreciation for the culturally male 'stuff'. I will admit that the sudden onset of a sports addiction mid-marriage took me totally by surprise, but that was more to do with the fact that I didn't expect it to assert itself later if it hadn't by the time we were married, not with the fact that men find sports to be a useful emotional outlet.

This doesn't mean I'm supportive of the over-limiting of male behavior, though. There's a lot of excessive emphasis on the male culture in upbringing, to the point that it can be crippling. I'm okay with the boy rules of downplaying emotion, but not of blocking it entirely. Flexibility is important, self-understanding is important, emotional resilience is important. They just don't have to take the female cultural format to be okay.

It is actually fun to parent boys knowing that I am welcoming to them becoming men who include the male 'stuff'. That stuff that comes as the baggage of our culture crossed with their physiology. In our case, also modified for Quaker and UU attitudes, so we're not talking 'sexist' or 'misogynist' but the physical outwardness, the difference in the pattern of their emotional process with a tendency to delay statements until certainty, the manner of expressing affection, the intense sensitivity to their own feelings causing a strong boundary to be set up to protect themselves from hurt, speaking in VERY broad terms here. I will roll my eyes now and then when they go way to the stereotypical extreme on something, but it's more to do with the extreme. And frankly, I can't recall the last time that happened.

I think in part because I am so comfortable with the male-ness, I'm also comfortable with them stepping outside the stereotypical male behaviors. I'm open to them being tender without making it a big deal that they are, I'm open to them caring about their appearance, or attending to the wellbeing of others, or wanting to learn to sew or knit, or all those things that are not culturally assumed (and that are being pressed for in the 'sensitive male' mode). I don't press for those things, just allow. Because there's no need to defend against any negative attitude, it tends (I think) to be easier for at least the men who know me well to express their full range around me. They're not constantly on guard, wary, or worried about my reaction.

That's kind of a duh statement regarding friends and family (who are mainly comfortable with themselves anyway). Where it gets interesting is at work. The male-heavy teams I've been on have let down their gender guard, and learned where my personal boundaries lie instead of working with an assumption of gender-driven boundaries. Which means no, I don't want to hear about your sexual conquests, even from across the room. But I'm okay with the waves of emotional engagement over a sports event, and the drift of testosterone-driven affection-coming-out-sideways banter with the guy who is planning to ask his girlfriend to marry him. The various forms of posturing and defense, the efforts to set and maintain status, they're all good. It isn't like women don't work the same zones, they just tend culturally to do so in different ways.

With my kids, I'm okay with the boys wanting to play with swords and their fascination with fire and their need to bump into and against each-other in their expressions of affection. Safety limits apply, firmly, but the need? The need is totally okay.

I think something that makes this easier is that I don't take any of it as my responsibility. Their behavior is theirs. As a parent my sons' behavior reflects on my parenting, but as a gender, their behavior does not reflect on me. I've encountered the expectation that women are responsible for controlling and containing the behavior of men within social bounds and rules, and I just don't go there. A little rule-bending with style and humor is entirely okay with me. Do it without style, and I'll give you the hairy eyeball, maybe, but I can appreciate the range of styles as well, so there's a lot of play. Case in point, at a friend's wedding many years ago, epeepunk and a couple of guys at our table were cracking up, releasing the tension of the formality and the meeting-new-people thing... and a woman turned to me and asked me if I couldn't just rein in my boyfriend, please. My response was that if you have a problem with his behavior, take it to him. I don't have him on a leash. The message was that his masculinity is not a pet dog, and I don't bring him to heel. It is part of his humanity, treat him as a whole human and deal with the issue directly if it causes you discomfort. The wistfulness of one of the men at the table in response to my statement was truly sad - how come more women aren't like that? Why is it so uncommon to find women who like and respect men, as humans with their own way of being? All the women in my family are like this, so it surely can be taught - we're not all identical twins. We don't all read men as easily as I do, but we all appreciate them as full humans. Not something for which I really have an answer, just something I ponder.

I've talked about my discomfort with the full range of female cultural behavior before, and that's still in there for me. I like women, but there are times that women acting like women in our culture drives me absolutely insane. Much more so than men being men. I'm still working on that. Working on not feeling pained, personally, when Miss R decorates her face with pen, pretending to put on makeup. Working on being patient with the social status shifting and interplay between them where they practice how far they can go being unkind to each other, and how that affects their behaviors together and apart. Again, safety rules apply - unkind is a weapon, and it always hurts, so we don't use it. But the engagement in the emotional scuffles they use to set and hold and change their mutual status and regard, the way they express their affection and frustration through words and looks and gestures more than through physical play (at least a little more, heh), that's part of the cultural-plus-physiological female process. And I need to work with it effectively.

Maybe I like the maleness because it is simple for me to deal with, takes less of my attention to see into, and has ZERO painful hooks in my psyche.

Mostly that last part, I bet. Our own pain cycles in and then back outward again.

My goal is - rather than just sitting back and enjoying the company of men - to end up liking both equally. I really don't want to set the wrong feelings in my daughters (through modeling a negative value of being girls). I like being a woman, myself, after all, albeit an atypical one. And they're entitled to be as much girls as the boys are to be boys. It's still a struggle for me, I'm afraid. There are just some parts of girlhood that I'm still dealing with, and not all of them are the excessive versions or extreme stereotypes. That part is a no-brainer - mean girls are mean, I'm not going to be accepting of mean. There are just some okay-to-enjoy, okay-to-be things that I find okay when the boys do them, and struggle with when girls do them (fraught with unnecessary meaning, I suppose).

That's going to be something that ends up on the therapy list for them, I suspect... hopefully just a few sessions, though. Meanwhile, I'll work on it.

The New Years Effort

Effort, because it isn't a resolution.

Moxie asked about what we wanted to leave behind in 2008, and who we were going to be in 2009, what we would believe about ourselves.

My effort the last few years has been toward finding a balanced way to integrate the Me into my decisions.

Which may seem strange, since I'm pretty good at expressing myself most of the time.

But having learned young that what I want doesn't matter at all, having only learned at adulthood what it means to even register that one wants something, then that it is possible to have what one wants, and working on developing that... well, it's kind of spotty in execution.

I still believe in being openly of service to others. The problem is that I tend to swing wildly between 'let's all do what everyone else wants and then we'll be happy and that's what I want' to 'what about me, everyone has to do what I want, or at least let me do what I want, RIGHT NOW'. It's all you you you you you ME ME ME you you you you ME ME ME.

Which is confusing at best, and a real mangle at worst.

I neglect my own needs until/unless they're screaming, essentially, and once they're screaming, I can't hear anything else.

So, this year, working on bringing in my needs intentionally at the lower level, rather than leaving them in the dirt until it's way past a problem.

Kind of painful case in point - talking it out with epeepunk, he said, 'If I knew what you liked, it would be easier for me to be sure that it was included'... we've been married 15+ years, and I haven't managed to make clear what I like. And it isn't male cluelessness, there. He's intentional about gathering that kind of information. He knows what the kids like (at least the older two, who have developed into their preferences). He just doesn't know what I like. Some things, definitely, but many things, no.

And often enough, I don't, either. Which would be the point, underneath the point.

Having grown up not knowing what I want, not being allowed to need (partly a gap in parenting, partly situational due to random - even if short - bouts of poverty, partly other people dealing with severe personal needs, partly my own utter unwillingness to communicate anything important to my parents, partly a lack of ownership of my own things so a lack of willingness to desire that which will only be taken away if it interferes with someone else's issues, and probably about five other layers of encumbering issue)... anyway, having grown up not allowed or able to need, or want, I ended up having a hard time reading myself on what I like.

Stuff that has been discovered in adulthood (like, oh, COFFEE) is obvious. And some things aren't hard to put a finger on in general - I like chocolate (dark), and I need to write (not even like, there, it's more of a compulsive disorder or a fundamental drive like breathing).

But on the daily 'incorporate my self into the flow of life' level, what is it that I like? What do I enjoy, so that it can be included? At the plain physical level, life basics, instead of just eating whatever cookies were bought because other people like them, what ones should we get because I like them?

Weird that I should have to think hard about what kind of cookies I actually like. I immediately go back to cookies I liked when I was a kid, but ... I don't like those as an adult (mm, the waxy-frosting-dipped animal crackers with the sprinkles... :shudder: ). Kind of sad that I'm not sure, even on thinking about it.

Yesterday was another example - we went to Longwood Gardens. Mr B was, er, SEVEN. Very very seven. Plus very middle-child-everyone-else-gets-to-be-special-but-me (hmm, I think that's part of my issue, too, me being second-to-last), and rather out of sorts. I tried to get onto his side of the line and handle it understanding where he was, but it ended up being a bad job every time. It felt like I'd move to his side of the line, and then he'd move the line. If I allowed one thing, he needed another different thing, and was equally upset about that. If I wasn't positive that he wasn't TRYING to be unhappy, I'd have thought he was inventing needs that were guaranteed to go unfulfilled just so he could end the day miserable.

ARGH.

Faced with that, I suppose it isn't entirely unreasonable to just want to have my own joy at the beauty, unsullied...

So, there I was you you you you ME ME ME you you you you ME ME ME ing all over. Which meant that I was giving room, then yanking up chains short, then giving more leeway, then putting my foot down, then getting down at their level and talking, then standing there saying NO without listening, then...

Uh.

Modeling, they call that. Yeah. SO not the things I want to model.

And exactly what my mom modeled, a lot. It's all about you, wait, it's all about me. She never learned to integrate the two, either. And not that I expect life to be a perfect amalgam of needs, smoothly blended so that everything is a silvered stream of beauty and grace. But I do think it shouldn't show up like doors slamming in everyone's faces randomly, which is kind of how I express it.

So, that's what I'm working on, this year. Figuring it out (what DO I want, really? What do I actually enjoy? What do I need?), and blending that in - gently, and more continuously, so it doesn't get so urgent from constant ignoring that it comes out so entire and absolute on everyone else's heads.

Meanwhile, I'm glad the kids are headed back to school today. It will give me some space to think through the process.

Boundaries and sanity

So, the last note was really from the perspective of safe boundaries already in place.

Which, I know, is often not the case.

A lot of the time, the boundary-crossing is just not knowing what the roles and limits are in the new situation. Very common.

But there's also the unsafe boundary crossing, the habitual, dysfunctional, or just plain blind-to-the-issue trampling of one's sense of self and safety into the dirt.

Even when someone is good on boundaries with one person, they may suck with another. My mom does pretty well with boundaries with me (and where she doesn't, I tend to defend mine pretty well), but poorly with some of my sibs, and particularly poorly with one of them. Unfortunately, that's the one who is most likely to be really hurt by the boundary crossing. It's like my mom can't sense where that boundary is, even when she's been told over and over.

She's mainly not great with introverts. The more introverted, the less successful. So that's her blind spot, or the biggest one.

Despite that, she taught the idea and concept of boundaries to me pretty well. I watched as she held her boundaries with her aunt and father, both of whom were only semi-functional people, though in different ways (and both with physiological underpinnings to their issues, making them less responsive to efforts to modify their interactions).

I also watched my dad set boundaries, though his are set so firmly that there's no flex. At the same time as I feel a little sad (and maybe even slightly hurt) that he doesn't let others 'in' beyond that hard line, I also have every reason to respect that choice. He's let people in and had them end up dangers to him - even if it took time for them to go off and send shrapnel flying everywhere. He determined that he was not a good judge of who to let where, so he chose to set boundaries that were hard and firm, and be very cautious about the process of letting someone in - or himself out. He's willing to allow permeable windows now and then, out of regard for those who are asking with love for more from him. It's a tough concession for someone who has been so trespassed upon, and one I value highly.

Setting the boundaries often starts as an act of self-preservation.Sometimes out of desperation, but generally somewhere in the world of 'I love myself enough to protect myself' (or more commonly, I love my child so much I must hold this line for them, even though I've never been able to hold it for myself). 

For those becoming whole themselves, the meaning begins to add in 'I am worth protecting, so I will protect myself, too' - a statement of self-love and self-respect.

From there, it matures into a lot more than that. It becomes a statement of values, morals, ethical position. I choose to hold this line because it is right and just that I do so.

And further, it develops into an act of love outwards, as I noted to andrea - choosing to prevent someone else from acting in a way that they might later regret is an act of love. Even if the odds of that person achieving enough healing and wholeness that they get to that place where they might regret former actions might be iffy... even if it is so unlikely as to be monumentally absurd, it is still an act of love for them to prevent them from harming another.

It's akin to taking away the car keys, or escorting one's drunk buddy to a side room to cool down before they get into that fight that is brewing. We know they're not functioning at full power, so we make sure they can't do something stupid or harmful that they'll regret later.

Yeah, it takes knowing them pretty well to know how they'd want it handled, and no, most people would rather not have the answer be 'no contact because any contact leads to disasters'. But at the same time, I know enough recovering alcoholics to know that while making amends is cathartic, it is also heartbreaking. How much better if that incident hadn't happened at all? There's definitely always going to be something that needs healing or making amends, no matter how hard any one individual holds boundaries. The boundaries just prevent it from being worse than that.

So, yes, holding those boundaries is an act of love. Just as my mom refusing to sit still for my great-aunt's horrifying racism was an act of love - my great-aunt really didn't want to be mean, or hurt people's feelings, she just could not comprehend that everyone was really (REALLY) the same inside. (Okay, maybe she was mean, too, but at least with some effort from her loved ones reining her in, she could be remembered as less mean than she'd have been if nobody stopped her.).

My mom taught me the jelly-jar first layer boundary, where you picture a glass jar (as pretty as you'd like) over yourself, nice and sturdy, at the level of your personal space bubble. I personally picture it causing a slight diminishing of sound, as well as preventing physical contact, since I am sensitive to tone of voice. There are plenty of codependency books that can help with boundary-keeping with love - anything from Melody Beattie's classic  Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself, to the Christian-oriented Love Is a Choice: The Definitive Book on Letting Go of Unhealthy Relationships. There are over 6000 results on the Codependent search results page, so fish around and find one that resonates - quite a number of Christian ones, and a lot of Al-Anon, Codependents Anon, and other 'angles' to choose from! Consider it a holiday gift to your entire family.

All more of the Acceptant, Loving, Faithful rules, when it comes down to it. Acceptant requires allowing them to be where they are without that desperate need to change them. Loving requires acting for all concerned in a loving manner - this doesn't mean being a doormat, it means stepping up to the boundary line to hold it quickly, gently, firmly, so that there isn't so much need to push back violently (though there's no way to guarantee that the other party will respond better, still the faster and firmer we hold the line, the less likely they'll forget where it is). Loving for ourselves, and for them, to do that. And Faithful allows that it is possible for anyone to heal, even if we have no power over that process. They might never succeed, but having some faith in the possibility makes it possible to act with love toward that future state, which then makes it so much easier to protect that whole future self from the actions of the current state - at least where we have power and authority to do so, which is definitely a limited scope. (I think the emphasis on the precious child concept - that everyone deserved to be precious and many of us were not - can make it harder to grasp the precious whole adult image. We're taught to picture ourselves - and others - as our child-self, deserving the love and respect we didn't get. But it is also quite powerful to picture our - and their - whole adult self. It can be heartbreaking when that future state seems improbable in the extreme, but it is an important grief to deal with, and can make it easier to understand our next steps, IMHO, if we can hold both the past and the future as a continuum.)

Sanity demands that first step - that we protect ourselves. Love demands that we protect our kids. And in the end, it is compassion (a form of love) that demands that we protect those who would do harm, by preventing that harm through holding our boundaries clearly and with dignity and pride. Even when they're also held with regret.