I’ve been listening to Alanis Morissette again lately. I watched her recent documentary, which told her story, her rise to being a truly influential female voice in musical artistry. A voice of self-actualization, of recovery and unbridled feminine magic. I loved seeing her, the way she looks today, how her body and hair have changed with some years behind her. Some validation that my own 30+ years in adulthood feels like an achievement, that a body, hair and smile do submit to changes in weight, texture and experience. She wrote some music inspired by motherhood–she may have experienced some more living her life before birthing her babies than what I did. I had quite a bit more shelter.

It is one of the reasons that her song, Unsent is an earworm for me lately. She describes boys or men whose company or attention had impacted her in different ways. “Dear Matthew, I like you a lot…” she begins. I have vivid recall of the few men I spent some time with before turning my loyalty over to one man (boy) at 19 who would be my betrothed. I was attached to a soft, tall cowboy in high school. His kisses were sweet and gentle, aside from the bitter menthol grit of Kodiak chewing tobacco, which I was never assertive enough to complain about. (At list he would flick it out of his mouth before leaning in.) Digusting? Perhaps. I’ve always been so accommodating, it didn’t seem awful at the time, although I can taste the funk-memory of it now and it makes me gag a little.

My choices from there forward were greatly influenced by the enmeshed influence of my mother. My very kind, boundary-less mother, who listened with patience and over-shared much about her own loneliness, with me. She had dated one person before her engagement to Dad, according to my memory of the narrative she shared. They married at 22, and she had always loved this one person. This became my un-self belief system. I would need to fall in love with my soul mate and be married by the time I was 22 years old, or what? “Or what” seemed like a terrifying abyss. There were no other women role models to talk to about this really. Jymn, Trevor, Pat, Gary, Floyd–these would be the few guys who offered kisses and compliments before I relented against the panic of never finding “the one.” Not a good deal of experience with other partners to speak of. Certainly not a good deal of experience really thinking about who I was, what I wanted from this life within the boundaries of what was also important to me.

Having no self defined my choice to make no choices for a long time. I looked to cosmic coincidences to help rationalize and believe in the direction I should take. That my family of origin and his each experienced the traumatic death of our parents’ sibling, seemed to me then, that we were meant to be. My Family Systems training tells me now, that in fact, those shared traumatic experiences also had an impact on our respective abilities to communicate and match up in our reciprocity toward one another. Our emotional fields were similarly fraught with anxious underpinnings. Our families had learned to either externalize or internalize our emotional experiences, such that over and under-functioning within a peace/agree approach became a very comfortable way of relating to one other. This would be a marriage of no self, but an enmeshed one-self. We became “one being, being one with each other,” a favorite Rumi passage, and one of us forged most of the choices for us. We have managed to accomplish a lot as a hive-mind. Our children have launched, they have each found success in their independence. They will have some effort ahead of them in unmerging their selves with ours, but I think they are each headed toward some differentiation–they each seek out help and look inside deeply toward what seems like a more self-directed compass.

I would like to tell you how much more of a self I have accomplished internally today at age 54. I have made some moves to that end during the last 20 years especially, but I continually struggle to make choices that are strictly for self–if the comfort of someone else is the least bit impacted, I have little tolerance for the way my stomach cringes in response. I’ve marginally improved my ability to assert what I think, even if most of the time it is after-the-fact, and following a good deal of roiling and churning. I continue to struggle with identifying my needs and wants.

I find myself in a 2nd new home in three years and a move and change is upon our partnership again. Ambition is again at the helm of our circumstances. I’ve made it my mission to find joy and calm during these last few years of tumult. We have been companions of a comfortable space for one another, but joy has often been independent of that comfort. I have understood some awareness that I could choose joy for myself without feeling uncomfortable or at the expense of my other. I’m wondering lately about how my one self wants to live life going forward as an adult self.

I do know that I deserve a life where I can call some shots. I was asked to go visit the Upper Penninsula, and experience for myself whether a move there felt good for me. I did so and admitted to having a gratifying experience there, the place where my Paternal grandfather was born. I could live there, I believe. I would enjoy getting to know a few people there, making my own relationships. What feels really uncomfortable is signing up for another move to a place where I become a little rooted, only to have another’s ambition un-root us again. What feels more uncomfortable is admitting that I want to have my own space, perhaps in the city where I work. So Risky. So. Very. Uncomfortable.

I want freedom to make mistakes and face the consequences, without cautiously checking in with another person who says, “absolutely not,” rather than engaging a dialogue. Where my solitude is a sense of knowing self and where knowing self is an experience of pink affection and caring for that person inside, from infancy forward. Where accountability is to my own self as well as others and that is enough of a reason to share who I am with the universe. Where this life known to me is deemed precious and valuable rather than dispensable, dismissed or injured. Goodness is inside flourishing, energizing, flowing, multiplying. Kindness embraces not only others, but all of my own parts, even the clumsy, fragile and prickly ones. I’m not sure why it seems impossible to achieve that within my current relationship, but excavating self from the no-self pattern is a vulnerable, painful process that promises to impose pain on my other.

So my journey must come back to me. Loving and being compassionate to myself. Being the me I have always been, but kept safe and small beneath a fragile veneer. I have been so careful, just dipping a toe feels dangerous. Writing this all down is a risky toe dip, but seems consistent with my interest in some accountability, bringing the cloudy mind out it’s shell of protection.

The last five years for me have been defined by new beginnings. The mid-life experience of an empty nest has been only one of a few for me in my personal and professional life. Ongoing transition and change has not only unhinged me during the peaks and valleys of recent years, but has also offered great opportunities to shift and grow, in spite of my fighting it all along the way.

The last time I posted, I had chosen to pursue a leadership opportunity in my workplace of the previous ten years. My responsibilities multiplied and my personal sense of responsibility intensified. The daily anxiety I experienced in my new role dominated the stories I told myself about what other people thought of me, how they were motivated to perform. I continually failed to see others as simply acting out their own daily story. I took it all personally and absorbed all blame for our lack of enterprise or growth.

When COVID-19 impacted the lives of our family, our community, nation and world, the anxiety I felt in my body surpassed anything I had ever known. I look back now and I’m so grateful I had sought learning opportunities over the years to practice yoga, meditation, manage self through psychotherapy and coaching, art making. While I had never consistently stuck with any one self-care practice, and had long relied on the leadership of others to cue and prompt me to take care of myself, the collective impact of those practices gave me with choices to make when the vibrations and tremors of worry seemed to much to bear.

My partner and I took part in the “great resignation” in 2020 when our tolerance of workplace politics and toxicity, had equally lapsed into resentment, frustration and burnout. A completely new learning opportunity presented itself for each of us and I have spend the last 18 months experiencing continual novice anxiety. We are now living in Ohio, after relocating to Michigan for 12 months prior. Two home sales and two home purchases later, we are unpacked, unfurled and settled? Lots more settling to be done, for sure.

While these new experiences have been no less challenging than what we left behind, they have for me, offered a greater sense that I am bolstered, supported and surrounded by fellow strivers in a new virtual environment. I am beginning to feel some integration, a sense of agency–these seeds I have been sowing have some hope and sunlight ahead for them. I do hope to practice more opportunities for inspiration, writing, art-making; practices I have parked in the boxes which have moved along with our new households. James Clear writes about tying habits to experiences that are enjoyable as well as making them easy enough to come back to regularly in practice. I’m thinking about making a point to visit here daily (ever ambivalent) and perhaps the sense of accountability will emerge again.

I took an Open Studio Process to my daughter’s leadership group at school.  I facilitated them in a process of witnessing the image and a mini collage/mandala process.  It went well.  I learned some things, felt humbled by their earnest brilliance, their pure intent to make the world a better place by ending racism.

Some of my notes from the morning:

Free writing, engage with yourself…I need to get some anxious energy out of my body.  These kids are great and they are all here to do great work and I want so much to provide a gift for them, to honor them and hold them.

My witness: Trees, brown, olive, fatigue greens.  Blankets on a line.  Naturalist, he could be there as a thinker, a ponderer, looking out over the vista of trees and earth.  His clothing and blankets hang on a line, a cup of coffee beside him.  At first glance, I considered that he could be homeless, without shelter and this is his dwelling place, whether by choice or force.  Curves and leaves, one trunk bends, as if a strong breeze pushes it over.  I read about trees that are bent, and how ancient native people here used to bend young trees and tie them down to point toward a path or water source.  It was a means of showing the way to those who would follow.  A large stone sits to the side of this man.  He doesn’t look lonely, but wise, at peace.  He wears glasses and books, signs that he respects the elements, knows his surroundings and chooses to be there.  The landscape of trees seems to go on endlessly and I consider with awe the amount of the earth and planet that is so unknown to me, a mystery, a gift to be discovered.  There is darkness in the forest beyond him, darkness that does not appear ominous or scary, but reflective of the density of a forest and then to think of that going on for miles, with no obvious end.  It is both hopeful and awe-inspiring.  The notion of being small among such greatness, knowing there is space for all, every kind of creature to exist and be nourished.  Sky and clouds shroud the background, fog obscures scale and size.

This is fragmented, I know.  There is something about the reflection of it that feels good.

I heard this song for the first time about 15 years ago and the lyrics registered immediately–I felt so heard, so understood and knew I wasn’t the only person to feel like I did. How could someone with so many talents, with so much going for her and with so many privileges feel so empty? There was no answer in the song, but validation, oh yes.

Grey Street
By: Dave Matthews Band

Look at how she listens
She says nothing of what she thinks
She just goes stumbling through her memories
Staring out onto Grey Street

She thinks Hey, how did I come to this?
I dream myself a thousand times around the world
But I can’t get out of this place.

There’s an emptiness inside her and she’d do anything to fill it in.
But all the colors mix together
to grey
And it breaks her heart.

How she wishes it was different
She prays to God most every night.
And though she swears it doesn’t listen
There’s still a hope in her it might.

She says I pray,
Oh but they all fall on deaf ears
Am I supposed to take it all myself
To get out of this place?

Oh there’s an emptiness inside her
And she’d do anything to fill it in
And though it’s red blood bleeding from Her now,
it feels like cold blue ice in her heart.
When all the colors mix to grey
And it breaks her heart

There’s a stranger speaks outside her door,
Says take what you can from your dreams.
Make them as real as anything
Oh it’d take the work out of the courage.

But she says please
There’s a crazy man that’s creeping outside my door,
I live on the corner of grey street
and the end of the world.

Oh there’s an emptiness inside her
and she’d do anything to fill it in,
and though it’s red blood bleeding from her now it feels like cold blue ice
in her heart.

She feels like kicking out all the windows and setting fire to this life
She could change everything about her
Using colors bold and bright
But all the colors mix together
To grey
And it breaks her heart
To grey.

Grey, not blue, is a much better color metaphor for depression. It is an involuntary, bland and lifeless place tempered by a spectrum of grey–some days feel a bit lighter while others get dark and bleak and the darkness is where the pain is most crippling. It blinds and obscures the ability to see anyone else. Shame, pity and solitary confinement are a heavy, muddy cloak draping and pulling down.

I hope it isn’t redundant to reference song lyrics again.  While I can’t be so histrionic as to say I’ve been “crippled” with grey lately, I have also been in the winter doldrums for sure.  Imagining the connections I can make to other thoughts and heroes, in spite of the chilled dormancy, has helped to prompt and stimulate me, borrow some energy from creative heroes for some inspiration.  And who isn’t inspired by some Dave Matthews?