I recently had lunch with an acquaintance who was lamenting her lot in life. She has to work for a living. This would likely not be a big deal, except for the periodic bouts of panic she has about not making it. Not surviving. Not making enough moola to cover the rent – or in her case, two mortgages.
I’ve heard this story a lot. Not the two mortgages part – but some variation on the terror that can grip the belly when the specter of homelessness starts to creep up.
For some reason or Act of God this does not happen to be one of my terrors. So, in some strange way, I feel uniquely qualified to discuss it. Not because I’m an expert from the inside trenches, but because I might be able to give another view on the subject. I also want to offer the caveat that I am most certainly not free of fear; and my own variation of demons lurk in the basement, periodically scrabbling up the stairs ready to pull out my nails and yank my hair.
Back to the safe territory of basic survival. I can say there has been only one time in my life I cavorted with this particular devil of doom. And that was when I cohabited with a man whose proclivity for lying only matched his ability to overdraw our credit card. I remember distinctly laying on the cold floor one particular frozen Spokane winter day, staring at the ceiling and realizing I really, really did not have any idea how I would pay the mortgage that month. In retrospect, this particular moment stemmed from one of my more sinister demons relating to deceit, but it tapped deeply enough into the survival stream that I do know how that one tastes.
Most of the time, though, where my mind goes with this element of earth life is more brimming with possibility and adventure. I recognize this is due to Grace and hope my sharing this stuff is helpful, not just a piss-button pusher. I remember the time in college, when I was living in the student health center – allowed to sleep in a bed there every night in exchange for being on call in what passed as the emergency room. I had scrounged a few dollars that month doing some ward clerk work, so I headed to the grocery store for my weekly shopping spree. As I stood there eyeing the possibilities, I did some quick math that told me the turnips were the best buy – pound for penny, so I bagged up as many as my dollars would cover and headed home. Now I know for sure that living on a bag of turnips for a week would strike some as being out there on the limb of barely surviving. But that’s the point, see? I didn’t feel that way. Not even a little. All this sort of living is just an adventure to me.
I have lots more of those sorts of stories, but the point here would be that if anyone – even one single person – can live in similar dire straits as your worst nightmare and come out of it grinning, there is some likelihood that you, too, could begin to see your circumstances in some slightly different way. Even trying this on for size could rank as a novel adventure.
Let me know how this goes for you.
Just don’t tag on any invitations for bungee jumping.
Mary Ann Iyer, MD
Monday, September 23, 2013
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Making Peace with Being Woman
An excerpt from a book I am writing:
One thing I noticed in all the interviews I did with women about their relationships with their mothers is that to make peace with who their mother was is essential for their own wellbeing. It is as if our history lives on deeply inside of us, so that to expunge the demons of the past includes embracing them first. The wholeness of who we are includes and is in part because of this very past we most don’t want. We can’t get away from it by ignoring it if it dwells within us every step of the way. Which it does, really.
We are of and from our mothers whether we like the person they were or not. And those who most loved their mothers were most willing to see the gladness of their past. Ironically, sometimes this made it difficult to move on, too. Being stuck in the past is no better than trying to expunge it from the core of our cells. Neither attitude works, really. But to embrace it – now there is a different story. A happy one.
Therein seems to be the healthy way. The middle ground, as it were. To embrace our past is to include it gladly in our present, without clinging or pushing it away. The middle way of acceptance, embracing, seeing who and what we are in the continuum of life as it was handed to us. We can only start there which is here. When we accept gladly that which was given us to deal with in this lifetime we can most readily get on with the living of it. We can make the changes we need to from where we are, not where we wish we were already. Which is simply impossible at best.
What ground do we have to stand on if not the solid ground of where we are? Even if we are headed in some direction that will move us eventually to a different place, we must start from where we are. Peggy Tabor Millin, in Women, Writing and Soul Making, remarks: “Because feminine responsiveness does not make the splash or the money and success required in our culture, because it is not ‘out there’ and ‘in your face,’ women, as well as men, devalue it.” “By the 1970’s the Power Principle had co-opted the women’s movement, opening the doors to women on condition that they turn their backs on their roles as nurturers and responders and become competitive and action-driven. With few models for feminine power based on the synthesis of feminine and masculine, we went to where the power lay – into the world of the Power Principle.”
It is time – we are in great need – for feminine integration as part of power. We have to translate from the debased female to what it would look like to have that principle honored. All of this sounds so self-evident, yet with the imaginative power of our brains and minds we can imagine whole fantasies to distract us from the task(s) at hand – which we most need to deal with to become our full potential. Our Being. Of Life, free from the constraints we were handed as the straitjacket into which we were born.
What I realized after my mother’s death was a sense of being loved that I had never encountered when she was alive. Encumbered by the straitjacket of her time – religious and cultural – she never broke free to extend the love which she really was. She lived the norm of her times. But after her death, she has come through to me in myriad ways, again and again loving me where I had felt previously judged. It has been a most remarkable journey that continues still. I had not realized how very little association I felt in any way with any sense of a Divine Mother. In our time of patriarchal religions holding sway, the only reference to the Divine is masculine. Even the Holy Trinity, which holds the potential of including the feminine to be complete in its expression, has been stripped clear of any such reference and speaks only to the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. A more complete version would be: “The Father, Mother, and Divine Beloved.” These reflect the major relationships with which we need to make peace, find consolation and “Divine Love” to feel fully safe in this world.
Peggy Millin, again: “Now is the time of redefinition of feminine power, a definition based on inner values rather than on outer roles and action.”
One thing I noticed in all the interviews I did with women about their relationships with their mothers is that to make peace with who their mother was is essential for their own wellbeing. It is as if our history lives on deeply inside of us, so that to expunge the demons of the past includes embracing them first. The wholeness of who we are includes and is in part because of this very past we most don’t want. We can’t get away from it by ignoring it if it dwells within us every step of the way. Which it does, really.
We are of and from our mothers whether we like the person they were or not. And those who most loved their mothers were most willing to see the gladness of their past. Ironically, sometimes this made it difficult to move on, too. Being stuck in the past is no better than trying to expunge it from the core of our cells. Neither attitude works, really. But to embrace it – now there is a different story. A happy one.
Therein seems to be the healthy way. The middle ground, as it were. To embrace our past is to include it gladly in our present, without clinging or pushing it away. The middle way of acceptance, embracing, seeing who and what we are in the continuum of life as it was handed to us. We can only start there which is here. When we accept gladly that which was given us to deal with in this lifetime we can most readily get on with the living of it. We can make the changes we need to from where we are, not where we wish we were already. Which is simply impossible at best.
What ground do we have to stand on if not the solid ground of where we are? Even if we are headed in some direction that will move us eventually to a different place, we must start from where we are. Peggy Tabor Millin, in Women, Writing and Soul Making, remarks: “Because feminine responsiveness does not make the splash or the money and success required in our culture, because it is not ‘out there’ and ‘in your face,’ women, as well as men, devalue it.” “By the 1970’s the Power Principle had co-opted the women’s movement, opening the doors to women on condition that they turn their backs on their roles as nurturers and responders and become competitive and action-driven. With few models for feminine power based on the synthesis of feminine and masculine, we went to where the power lay – into the world of the Power Principle.”
It is time – we are in great need – for feminine integration as part of power. We have to translate from the debased female to what it would look like to have that principle honored. All of this sounds so self-evident, yet with the imaginative power of our brains and minds we can imagine whole fantasies to distract us from the task(s) at hand – which we most need to deal with to become our full potential. Our Being. Of Life, free from the constraints we were handed as the straitjacket into which we were born.
What I realized after my mother’s death was a sense of being loved that I had never encountered when she was alive. Encumbered by the straitjacket of her time – religious and cultural – she never broke free to extend the love which she really was. She lived the norm of her times. But after her death, she has come through to me in myriad ways, again and again loving me where I had felt previously judged. It has been a most remarkable journey that continues still. I had not realized how very little association I felt in any way with any sense of a Divine Mother. In our time of patriarchal religions holding sway, the only reference to the Divine is masculine. Even the Holy Trinity, which holds the potential of including the feminine to be complete in its expression, has been stripped clear of any such reference and speaks only to the “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”. A more complete version would be: “The Father, Mother, and Divine Beloved.” These reflect the major relationships with which we need to make peace, find consolation and “Divine Love” to feel fully safe in this world.
Peggy Millin, again: “Now is the time of redefinition of feminine power, a definition based on inner values rather than on outer roles and action.”
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