Ten years ago, this post was on my Accidentally Deleted blog ...

(I've made a few minor changes.  They should be obvious.)

I Go Back to May 1937 

I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.

Sharon Olds

(http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-go-back-to-may-1937/)


My father would have turned 82 92 today.  

The thing is, that poem up there?  the part that reads "you are going to bad things to children"?  That's only part of who he was.  Most days, right now, that's the loudest part of who he was, but the good stuff is still there, waiting.  I don't need to define him.  I need to define myself, who I am before God, and do you know what I really truly deeply hope for? I hope he reconciled things with God, sometime before that heart attack, so that some day, when we meet in heaven, all this earthly stuff will have fallen away, and the strongest thing between us is forgiveness.

Why I deleted that one Facebook post

 Okay so here's the thing.

We are living in a political climate that is unbelievably, heartbreakingly polarizing, in ways that are unprecedented in North America.   The fallout from this polarization lands on the marginalized.

Recently, after listening to a certain inauguration speech, I posted an opinion, on my Facebook status.  Some people agreed, some people disagreed.  That's fine. Disagree with my opinion.  I can handle it.

HOWEVER.

While I am open to respectful debate or discussion, that's not going to happen on a Facebook post.  And when people I care about are made to feel defensive and dismissed on a post that is solely meant to communicate MY PERSONAL OPINION, that's not okay with me.  I would have turned comments off, but I couldn't figure out how, so I deleted the entire post.  I've since figured out how to turn comments off, so I'll do that in the future.

If you want to invite me to a respectful discussion about our apparent differences of opinion, message me.  I retain my right to choose to accept or deny that invitation, but let's keep the debate where it belongs - offline, not in public, where I can take the time to be as detailed and nuanced as I need to be in order to be clear, and where you can say all the things you need to say without adding to the hurt that many of my dear friends are feeling.

In the interest of painting a complete picture.

 October came and went and mostly, I've been thinking about leaves and pumpkins and what do I want to do about Christmas gifts BUT ...

I've also been fighting seemingly rootless, untriggered panic.  Ten years ago this would have been debilitating - this year it made me curious, and a little tired.

Just a good reminder that progress is neither linear nor All-or-Nothing.

"let me always sing Hallelujah" (hat tip "Broken Hallelujah", The Afters.)

A Few Paraphrases

Some of the things I have said about October, mostly on the Blog I Accidentally Deleted. include:

 - October is hard, so very hard.

- the sight of the full moon peeking through bare branches was, for several years, enough to send me into a full-blown panic attack.  Or to make me dissociate so badly I didn't know my own name.

- I can't tell you what happened to me in October - it's not that I don't know, it's that I have some responsibility to think before I speak about what sorts of images I am putting in other people's heads.  I was hurt, very badly, by people who wanted to go on hurting me, and so took steps to terrify me into silence.

(it worked.  I was terrified into forgetting it completely until I was in my 50's)

A Memory:

October of 2019, I clearly remember having a panic attack after class, stuttering a short, edited version of the story to a perceptive classmate, who asked me if I needed anything.

"I need to ride this out", I told her, "but I've got the skills." 

She smiled.  "Would you like some company while you ride it out?"

(We are all just walking each other home.) (Ram Dass)

October 2021.  The Great Integration.  The insiders, the holders of the secrets, the Memory Keepers, were able to let go, to walk away from decades of being silenced, to their places of peace.

October 2024.  Today.  Yesterday.  Last week, the last few weeks.  A few stories.

I can look at Halloween decorations without needing to rant or cry to a therapist.  I can drive through the neighbourhood I live in and actually look at something other than the five feet of road directly in front of me.

Last week a dear friend texted me to ask how I was doing in "this hellish season".  (walking me home).  Told me she was thinking of me,  I was perplexed for several minutes and then realized - oh!  it's October!    I texted her back, telling her about the confusion and said "Maybe healing is A Thing." 

Thursday, exactly a week before Halloween, I had an ultrasound (routine.  Panic thou not) that involved a man I did not know, who was not having a good day, and had no interest in answering my questions, leaning over me and leaning on my body, with prolonged contact with my chest - ok, my *breasts* - and I ...didn't care.  I was astonished enough that I asked the resounding silence in my head "Where are you all ??" (unconcerned, is where they were.  There's a longer explanation, about what integration looks like inside my head, but that's not today's post.)

Church on Sunday.  I am a person who knits in church.  Before I Remembered, I only knew that it stopped me from falling asleep in church.  It's still the easiest explanation - my under brain needs something to do so my upper brain can pay attention.  (Also I like to knit.) And then I started to remember, and church became very problematic, as my primary abuser was a dedicated church goer.  I did not feel safe in church, and I realized, eventually, that when I did not feel safe but couldn't physically remove myself, I would dissociate by falling asleep.  Now that I am healing I bring the knitting and take it out if I start to get sleepy (or, let's be honest, I'm knitting something I want to finish!)  Sometimes I try to tough it out.  

Sunday I was astonished to realize that I hadn't once gotten sleepy OR even thought about the knitting during the service. I was present, fully engaged in worship, in learning, in Being There.  No insiders, no triggers, no shying away from a possible trigger.  Just me and the God I love, worshipping in community.

It is astonishing enough that this could happen, ever, at all, for me.  That it happened on the last Sunday before Hallowe'en is nothing short of a wild extravagance of treasured grace.

If I post every few years, is that considered active?

I just happened across this poem I wrote and liked and so I thought I'd hurl it into the ether.

How I Remember It
 
I’m fifteen, on a class trip to the city
waiting for a group of friends
to hide in.  They bring you with them,
long lean laughing boy -
so beautiful I can barely look at you.
 
The afternoon blurs.  Ice cream somewhere,
hide and seek in the cool marble halls
of the Mantioba Legislative Buildings,
the spring air drenched in lilacs.
 
Open air concert the next time.
You’re late, but a quick nudge in my ribs
lets me know it’s my bit of shade
you’ve chosen to shelter in.
 
They all wanted you,
all the slim pretty girls
with the long straight hair -
 
and you wanted me.

 - Susan Plett

And then there was one ...

One year ago yesterday, Brad and I went to church for the first time in forever because Covid restrictions had been lifted for a while and we felt like it was time.

Little did I know, God had Plans (yes, with a capital P) for me, for us, that day.  For today, let me preface this with:  In case you're new here, or you hadn't heard (I haven't kept it a secret), I have been dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder most of my life, but not consciously until early 2013.  You used to be able to read about some of it on my old blog, but I accidentally deleted that, so until or unless I decide to write a book about it, you'll just have to take my word for it. Very early in the healing journey, I adopted the term "insiders" as my chosen name for my inner parts.

However.  Here's how I wrote about the last Sunday in October, 2021.  It's been a year since this happened, and sometime in the next few days I'll come back and write more about what's different, but for now - here's the email I sent trickling out to family and friends, as slowly, slowly, slowly, I allowed myself to believe that what I experienced that Sunday was real.

***

And Then There Was ...One

So a few things to start with:

• Brad and I haven’t been to church since they shut it down for Covid, even though it’s opened up again here.  We have a lovely Sunday morning routine of parking by the river listening to the sermon but we’ve both been feeling like we will need to start going to the physical building again soonish.
• I have had a particularly “interesting” relationship with one of my insiders – she initially wouldn’t talk to me at all even though she made strong attempts to control my behaviour/attitudes. She’s been a lot of work and very antagonistic.  She’s one of the few later insiders to show up with a name – her name is Sharon. 
•  

Okay.  Sunday morning I’m lying in bed trying to decide if today is the day because our reluctance to go to church is often fueled by what I think my internal system can handle.  So I prayed “Church?  No church?” and I felt like the answer was church.  And then Brad woke up and said he didn’t think we’d be on time, let’s try next week and I was HA! I don’t have to go to church! And then I remembered that Brad actually isn’t my final authority and I said “I think I’m being called to church today” so we went. 

Partway into the singing I realized that, inside my head, Sharon was sitting next to me with her head on my shoulder.  This was astonishing enough but then she just …the only way I know to explain what integration feels like for me is to say it felt like she moved into my body, not to take it over (as they sometimes did) but a sort of merging.  She was beside me and then she wasn’t but she wasn’t exactly gone either.  I asked her “Are you sure?  Two weeks ago you hated me.” And she said “I don’t have anything left that I need to do.”

As I was trying to process this, I heard the words “It’s time” in the gentlest most compassionate voice you can imagine and a steady stream of parts followed her.  Integrating.  Integration is a word and even a concept that I have resisted for a very long time, not because I didn’t want it, but because I thought if that was the goal I might actually get in the way of my own healing and slow it down by focussing on the endgame, not the process. I watched it happen, I felt it happening, and I also noticed a great deal of fear and resistance and as I sat there battling I remembered our church has a prayer room that is staffed during the service.  I felt like God was encouraging me to go for prayer and to go right then, so I did. 

 There was an older couple there (much older than Brad and I, which is actually still possible) and I couldn’t figure out how to broach it so I just said “I’m going to say the thing and let’s see where that goes.  I have been living with DID for approximately ten years and I feel like God is calling me to integration but there’s a lot of fear and resistance so I’m here for help with that.”  Turns out the woman I was talking to was a retired psychiatric nurse who also spent several years facilitating a group for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse. She didn’t bat an eye, and she knew exactly how to bring my request to God.  There are so few times in our lives that we feel certain that we are part of a divine appointment, but Sunday was one of them

.Brad and I went for a drive for the rest of the day because I needed to process.  All day I watched parts fall asleep, getting sleepier and sleepier and they’re all there, still, I can visualize them, but they radiate relief that their job is done, that they can finally lay it all down.  It’s weirdly quiet inside my head.  I’m so used to checking in, to make sure everyone is okay, to handling triggers and nurturing them – it feels a bit lonely but also oh my goodness, so so freeing.

 

I am so deeply grateful.

***

I'm still grateful.

Music at Midnight

 Well.  Here's the thing.  I am struggling with depression.  It's taken a bit for me to get to the point where I have enough oomph to work against it, but today I remembered "read the boys" (there should be a link here to The Blog I Accidentally Deleted, but there isn't, because I accidentally deleted it, but in that post I talk about 3 poets whose work often sustains me - Malcolm Guite, Stephen Berg, and John Blase) and so one thing led to another and then I found an email in which Malcolm recommended I read John Drury's book Music at Midnight if I wanted more insight into the work of George Herbert and so I went to Kindle and look, look what I found in the introduction to the book!

In another walk to Salisbury he saw a poor man with a poorer horse that was fallen under his load; they were both in distress, and needed present help, which Mr. Herbert perceiving, put off his canonical coat, and helped the poor man to unload, and after to load his horse. The poor man blessed him for it, and he blessed the poor man; and so was like the good Samaritan, that he gave him money to refresh both himself and his horse, and told him, that if he loved himself, he would be merciful to his beast. Thus he left the poor man, and at his coming to his musical friends at Salisbury, they began to wonder that Mr. George Herbert, who used to be so trim and clean, came into that company so soiled and discomposed; but he told them the occasion; and when one of the company told him he had disparaged himself by so dirty an employment, his answer was, that the thought of what he had done would provide to him music at midnight, and that the omission of it would have upbraided and made discourse in his conscience, whensover he would pass by that place. 'For if I be bound to pray for all that be in distress, I am sure that I am bound, so far as it is in my power, to practice what I pray for. And though I do not wish for the like occasion every day, yet let me tell you, I would not willingly pass one day of my life without comforting a sad soul, or showing mercy; and I praise God for the occasion. And now let's tune our instruments.'

- From The Life of Mr George Herbert.by Izaak Walton, 1670.

Music at midnight. Let's all do that. Let's all make the choices that provide for us music at midnight.

"And the light that's lost within us reaches the sky" (Jackson Browne)

 I've been listening to Jackson Browne's Before The Deluge over and over and over again and while there are many lovely lovely phrases, I've been at a bit of a loss as to exactly why the song resonates with me as much as it does.  It's by no means a new song but it's new to me.

Today, some clarity. The mental health journey is arduous and has been particularly difficult the past few months.  October is usually fairly awful, and it was worse than usual this year. The struggle started earlier and was much more intense, and then the reprieve of November came but pretty early in November, the struggle changed and became more difficult, in ways it hasn't been difficult for a really long time.

So it's been ...dark. Dark and wearying and kind of lonely and horrifying and today I found myself singing along with "the light's that lost within us" and instead I sang "...and the light that's locked within us reaches the sky" and that, THAT, that right there is what I will strive for until my dying breath ...

By the Light, by the power of that Light, the light that's locked within me will break forth and blaze and not just reach the sky, but transcend it.

Your past is not a template for your future.

 So many times, I hear myself telling people these things:

    Your history is not a template for your future.

    Your parents are not a template for who you are.

    You have choices.  You have the power to choose.  Awareness is a gift.

I believe these things, truly, strongly, deeply. I believe that we have the power to make different choices than our parents made, even the power to make choices that are different from the ones we ourselves have made in the past.

This week I came face to face with my own template and it was oh, so tempting, to surrender to it.  There's safety in patterns, even in the ones that make us hate ourselves.

School has been tough this semester. I'm tired of isolation, of uncertainty, of not having quite enough money, of being lonely and overweight and schoolwork has been very difficult to force myself to do. One of the professors I took several courses from in my undergrad degree said "Every time you choose not to quit is an act of healing."  

Because that was my pattern.  Big plans, big ideas, big dreams, or even small dreams, dreams as small as "I will do my homework early and thoroughly" ...I started out well and finished poorly.  I remember being highly insulted in high school when one of my teachers berated me (and a few others) in front of the entire class for not working to my potential.  (Now that's an interesting thing to find insulting - how dare he call me smart??)  

I took a year of university shortly after high school.  I failed one course, dropped another, passed English and Psych.  This became my template:  I don't finish what I start.  I have no ability to follow through, to finish well.  (Never mind that in my late 20's I successfully completed a diploma in Business Related Computer Programming at NAIT while working full time...that's the thing about templates, sometimes - we form them early, and then we ignore all evidence to the contrary.)

For years, actually decades, I did not go back to university even though I dearly longed for a degree in English because "I don't finish what I start."  I did not go back to school six or seven years ago (time is flying, y'all.  I don't remember exactly how long ago now!) planning to get a degree.  I went back thinking "well I'll take a course and see what happens." I was pretty sure I knew what would happen but -  somehow, by doing the next thing, and finishing what I started on however small a scale (a reading, an assignment, and lo and behold, a course and then another course) - I got a Bachelor's degree.  And nobody was more shocked than I was to find myself pursuing a Master's degree.

Fast forward to this semester when I am farther behind than I have ever been, in more than one course ...for one brief half hour yesterday, I came face to face with the template. Everything made so much sense.  I'd been looking at too small a picture, but looking at the big picture?  The journey that started  six or seven years ago that led me to this moment?  This was going to be the moment that matched the template. I may as well stop fighting it. I don't finish what I start. This will never not be true.

Thankfully I also believe you don't have to believe everything you think, and I'm sitting writing this instead of an essay (which I will go back in a few minutes) because I want to blog this, and then post a link on Facebook, and then at least once a year, I can remind myself:

YOUR PAST IS NOT A TEMPLATE.

And if my past isn't a template?  Neither is yours.

Just for the last line of the quote ...

From "I Will Not Let You Go Except Thou Bless Me" an essay included in Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen

Sometimes a cool, colourless day in the months after the rainy season calls back the time of the marka mbaya, the bad year, the time of the drought. In those days the Kikuyu used to graze their cows round my house, and a boy amongst them who had a flute, from time to time played a short tune on it. When I have heard this tune again, it has recalled in one single moment all our anguish and despair of the past. It has got the salt taste of tears in it. But at the same time I found in the tune, unexpectedly surprisingly, a vigour, a curious sweetness, a song. Had those hard times really had all these in them? There was youth in us then, a wild hope. It was during those long days that we were all of us merged into a unity, so that on another planet we shall recognise one another, and the things cry to each other, the cuckoo clock and my books to the lean-fleshed cows on the lawn and the sorrowful old Kikuyus: “You also were there. You also were part of the Ngong farm.” That bad time blessed us and went away.

That bad time blessed us, and went away.

I am counting on this.

Mother's Day

Every year when the commercials start coming out "Here's what Mom wants!" I have a complicated anti-reaction to it.  I was going to blog about it but a) I don't blog anymore and b) I already have, at least twice, and the writer in me likes to whine about not doing the same thing AGAIN and the internal editor likes to point out that I did it MUCH BETTER last time so this morning I went and found those two blog posts in my (incomplete digital) archives and here they are, for your reviewing pleasure.

From May 12, 2013:

Mother's Day.

I used to cry in church, every Mother's Day, because I wanted children so badly, and I was barren.  And then I would look around me and think everyone knew why I was crying, and I would cry harder.  (Why on earth I forced myself to go to church on Mother's Day, I will never know.  God wouldn't have minded.  I know that now.)

Several years ago, when my own invisible, unknown-even-to-me demons were making my parenting hard on everyone in my household, I found myself approaching Mother's Day with an astonishing measure of self-pity.  When I caught myself thinking "well they probably won't get me anything anyway", I was finally appalled enough at myself to snap out of it.  Since that year, this is what Mother's Day has meant to me:

Today is the day that I say "Thank you, God, that I get to be a mother, after all."  I hope I cry in church today, out of gratitude for these two incredible fascinating funny smart athletic interesting people that live in our house with us.  They're tall and lean and brown and fit and they have great hair and both of them have great senses of humour, in very different ways.  They are both capable of great kindness, and I love being with them.

Today, especially this year, is also the day that I celebrate the fact that my own mother is still "this side of heaven."  I will say this, too, because she would say it as well, that she is mothering me more at this stage in my life, while I am enduring an absolute storm of recall of repressed memories of severe, sustained abuse, than she ever has.  As horrible as the stories I have to tell are, and as heartbreaking as they must be to her, because the perpetrators of my worst abuses were not unknown to her, she has never once doubted me, never once faltered in her absolute resolve to be strong for me.

The gift I want today, on top of those? as if a person should need any more than that?

A picture of three of them together, these extravagant graces in my life, a memento to mark this moment in time. 

And from May 15, 2018:

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say Mother's Day has been a problematic day for me.  Likely when I was younger and mostly did As Expected (beyond one cranky day in grade five where I got tired of always being called a brain and the teacher said "remember to pay attention to the ..(I forget what letter).." before she gave us a spelling test, and so I deliberately spelled them all wrong ...) I bought the requisite gifts and cards and there may even have been breakfasts served in bed.

And then I got older and moved away and got married and started to realize that all those complicated conflicting feelings I had about my mother were actually justified and also not my fault, and I went through the motions without actually meaning much of it.

And then we started trying to conceive, and there were at least a dozen years where being in church on Mother's Day was pure torture.  And then the children came along and for a few years, when they were tiny and compliant, Mother's Day was deeply satisfying.  And then they got older and I wasn't being the magical sort of infinitely patient mother I had fully planned to be and things weren't looking a lot like the imagined life I had planned and then more things and other things and about five years ago, as I was feeling slighted on Mother's Day, I realized I didn't ever want another day like that.  And I changed my perspective, and I remembered all those years I'd cried in church on Mother's Day because I wanted a CHILD, ANY CHILD.  I also remembered how far short of my personal goals my own performance as a mother had turned out to be, and I cut my mother some slack. (It helps that my mother, who used to lose her temper on an hourly basis, somehow (God) became a woman who has almost completely lost her ability to lose her temper.)

I decided that Mother's Day was going to be my own personal thanksgiving day - Thank you God for these amazing kids.  Thank you God that despite all kinds of trauma, (mine, hers, known, unknown), my mother and I have a relationship that is even often satisfying to both of us.

This year I've added a realization.  My mother was in the hospital, and she was very very ill and the doctor was of the experienced opinion that she would die, and then she started to get better.  And as she got better but still not that great, she got petulant and mouthy and I was the brunt of most of it.  And when I say most of it, it was only three incidences in eight days, but it wounded me deeply and it took me a week of doing nothing but knitting and Netflix to get over the emotional shell shock.

But I realized that I still love her.  I grew up terrified of her and I still love her.  She is so much more at peace than she ever was when I was growing up, and things are SO different now that loving her is a lot easier - she's kind of sassy and funny and I don't have to tiptoe, much, but that's actually beside the point.

The point is I love her because she raised me.  There's a lot of us out there with similar upbringings, and some of us have relationshoips with our mothers and some of us don't, but I want to say this, to MOTHERS -

This is a relationship where we need to be intentional, because we occupy the spot labelled "mother" in someone else's life.  What fills that spot is something your child will carry with them their entire lives, and it will forever inform who they are.

Can we please be careful with our babies, our toddlers, our teens, our adult kids?  Can we make what occupies that spot fragrant and not frustrating?  (As our children age, I think we need to be intentional about listening more than we talk but that's likely another whole blog post.)

I want there to be a better summing-up sentence than this but it's all I have.

***

Too long for a Facebook status update

Today was the last day of classes of my Bachelor's degree. I took so long to get there, and now it's almost over. It's a bittersweet day.
And in my Inbox this morning, from the daily dose of Frederick Buechner I subscribe to, was this gem.

Be Alive

YOU ARE SEEING everything for the last time, and everything you see is gilded with goodbyes. The child's hand like a starfish on the pillow, your hand on the doorknob. Caught between screen and window, a wasp unfolds one wing. With a sick smile, guilt-ridden, the old dachshund lurches off the forbidden couch when you come through the door, his nose dry with sleep, and makes for the pillow by the hot-air register. It is the room where for years Christmases have happened, snow falling so thick by the window that sometimes it has started to snow in the room, brightness falling on tables, books, chairs, the gaudy tree in the corner, a family sitting there snowmen, snowbound, snowblind to the crazy passing of what they think will never pass. And today now everything will pass because it is the last day. For the last time you are seeing this rain fall and in your mind that snow, this child asleep, this cat. For the last time you are hearing this house come alive because you who are part of its life have come alive. All the unkept promises if they are ever to be kept have to be kept today. All the unspoken words if you do not speak them today will never be spoken. The people, the ones you love and the ones who bore you to death, all the life you have in you to live with them, if you do not live it with them today will never be lived. It is the first day because it has never been before and the last day because it will never be again. Be alive if you can all through this day today of your life. What's to be done? What's to be done? Follow your feet. Put on the coffee. Start the orange juice, the bacon, the toast. Then go wake up your children and your wife. Think about the work of your hands, the book that of all conceivable things you have chosen to add to the world's pain. Live in the needs of the day. -Originally published in The Alphabet of Grace

So that was lovely

I keep thinking I'm going to blog stuff and then I don't, but then this thing happened and it was too long for a Facebook post …

A tiny bit of backstory, since I haven't blogged since sometime in the spring …

It's been pretty stressful here in our house, what with an incredibly busy semester for me coupled with Brad suddenly becoming unemployed and plunging into a deep depression two days before the semester started, added to the fact that there's been quite a lot of mental illness flare up on my part.  (One day this semester I realized that instead of using knitting to ground myself, I was stabbing the ball of yarn over and over again with the knitting needles …in class.)

Thursday I hit meltdown.  I spent a lot of the day ugly-crying and by evening had worked myself into the worst asthma attack I've had in a very long time.  Because my asthma symptoms are atypical, presenting with pain between the shoulder blades, if I can't get it under control with inhalers, I have to go to the ER to make sure I'm not having a heart attack, as pain between the shoulder blades is a common symptom of heart attack in women.

So that's the backstory to this lovely story, which is indeed lovely.  I went in and over the several hours that I was there, they ruled out heart attack and blood clot and chest infection but were not pleased with the fact that my blood pressure was rising and did not seem to be lowering at all.  At some point, several hours into the process, I realized that Brad was actually allowed to be hanging out in the back with me, so I went and fetched him from the waiting room and we held hands for at least an hour and when they came to take to my blood pressure again -  seriously. this is so lovely -

It was close to normal.

Globalization for the Woefully Uninformed

Okay not globalization.  The IMF, actually.  This is part of a project for a university course on globalization, which is a word that meant nothing to me six weeks ago except "the name of that course I still have to force myself to take".  Part of the project is a "creative element that is action-oriented" and I have spent the last six weeks either racking or wracking my brains (depending on how that is meant to be spelled) trying to figure out what sort of call to action was going to result from my research into the IMF.

And then I remembered that information is power, and even though my approach to politics and global concerns is still to suddenly have to be in the other room when they come up, maybe there's someone who will read this and find it mildly interesting and go look up stuff about the IMF's involvement in low or middle income countries and find themselves outraged and holding a sign outside a politician's office.  And more power to you.

For the uninitiated - here's what I know that I didn't know six weeks ago.  Do with it what you will.  (Let me first say that every article I read talked about the empirical nature of the data they were about to present, and let me also say that every single person I have ever met has their own interpretative opinion of just about any piece of empirical data.)

1.  What is the IMF?  

     I think I'd likely heard of the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, and heard the words and thought "oh nice, some kind of something in place to give financial aid to poor countries. What a nice idea."

So that's not really what the IMF is.  The IMF's mandate is to provide short-term relief of macroeconomic problems arrived at by poor countries borrowing money from rich countries and then finding themselves unable to make a payment.  (Kind of like Lower Slobovia can't make its car payment in June, so it borrows money from Transylvania.  Only then it still can't make its car payment *and* pay Transylvania back, so it goes and asks the IMF to loan it money so it can make all its payments).

2.  Isn't that a good thing?

     Sure.  Maybe.  Or not.  The IMF doesn't just say "sure, here's the money, pay me back when you can."  The IMF says "well, LS, you got yourself into this position by spending too much money on movies and popcorn, so unless you put some kind of governable process in place that limits your movie and popcorn money, we're not lending you this money."  Only when it's real countries involved, the controls are somewhat more over-arching.

3.  OKAY but fiscal responsibility is STILL a good thing, isn't it?

    Sure.  Maybe.  Or not.  The IMF isn't really accountable to anyone, and there's this really fine line between economics and politics (yes, I used that word, on this blog.  It may never happen again.) so really, the IMF is saying "well I will tell you how to run your country and nobody is going to make me accountable if that all goes wrong."  ( Kind of like if you are somehow addicted to popcorn and the IMF makes you quit cold turkey and your quality of life takes a sudden serious nosedive but they don't pick up the phone to talk you through it).

And here's where it gets tricky.  We're all secretly convinced we've got the right answer, on a personal level, on a community level, on a political level.  And right now, there's this massive neo-liberal agenda that is being promoted on a global level.  (Neoliberal in this context is characterized by the extreme devaluation of labour, supply-side economics, and privatization of just about everything.)

And many of the conditions attendant upon borrowing from the IMF are conditions that equate to little more than the imposition of neoliberal values on countries where they may or may not work.  If you've read this far, and you actually find this interesting, check out this article:

Re-evaluating IMF Involvement in Low-Income Countries: The Case Of Haiti

And if you're really interested, just type "IMF good or bad" into your search engine and read to your heart's content.  (And if you become an activist for IMF reform, could you just send me a quick note so I can let my professor know?)

Watch this space

Just in case there's someone out there I've never met who wants to know what the poetry that is being let loose on the world these past few months is all about - I plan to tell a bit of the story here, over the next few days and weeks.

Mother's Day

I'm pretty sure I'm not alone when I say Mother's Day has been a problematic day for me.  Likely when I was younger and mostly did As Expected (beyond one cranky day in grade five where I got tired of always being called a brain and the teacher said "remember to pay attention to the ..(I forget what letter).." before she gave us a spelling test, and so I deliberately spelled them all wrong ...) I bought the requisite gifts and cards and there may even have been breakfasts served in bed.

And then I got older and moved away and got married and started to realize that all those complicated conflicting feelings I had about my mother were actually justified and also not my fault, and I went through the motions without actually meaning much of it.

And then we started trying to conceive, and there were at least a dozen years where being in church on Mother's Day was pure torture.  And then the children came along and for a few years, when they were tiny and compliant, Mother's Day was deeply satisfying.  And then they got older and I wasn't being the magical sort of infinitely patient mother I had fully planned to be and things weren't looking a lot like the imagined life I had planned and then more things and other things and about five years ago, as I was feeling slighted on Mother's Day, I realized I didn't ever want another day like that.  And I changed my perspective, and I remembered all those years I'd cried in church on Mother's Day because I wanted a CHILD, ANY CHILD.  I also remembered how far short of my personal goals my own performance as a mother had turned out to be, and I cut my mother some slack. (It helps that my mother, who used to lose her temper on an hourly basis, somehow (God) became a woman who has almost completely lost her ability to lose her temper.)

I decided that Mother's Day was going to be my own personal thanksgiving day - Thank you God for these amazing kids.  Thank you God that despite all kinds of trauma, (mine, hers, known, unknown), my mother and I have a relationship that is even often satisfying to both of us.

This year I've added a realization.  My mother was in the hospital, and she was very very ill and the doctor was of the experienced opinion that she would die, and then she started to get better.  And as she got better but still not that great, she got petulant and mouthy and I was the brunt of most of it.  And when I say most of it, it was only three incidences in eight days, but it wounded me deeply and it took me a week of doing nothing but knitting and Netflix to get over the emotional shell shock.

But I realized that I still love her.  I grew up terrified of her and I still love her.  She is so much more at peace than she ever was when I was growing up, and things are SO different now that loving her is a lot easier - she's kind of sassy and funny and I don't have to tiptoe, much, but that's actually beside the point.

The point is I love her because she raised me.  There's a lot of us out there with similar upbringings, and some of us have relationshoips with our mothers and some of us don't, but I want to say this, to MOTHERS -

This is a relationship where we need to be intentional, because we occupy the spot labelled "mother" in someone else's life.  What fills that spot is something your child will carry with them their entire lives, and it will forever inform who they are.

Can we please be careful with our babies, our toddlers, our teens, our adult kids?  Can we make what occupies that spot fragrant and not frustrating?  (As our children age, I think we need to be intentional about listening more than we talk but that's likely another whole blog post.)

I want there to be a better summing-up sentence than this but it's all I have.

April is Poetry Month

(I want to say this, right up front.  If you are someone who knew my family, knew my father, knew me, all those years ago, and this post brings up questions or responses or reactions that you want or need me to hear - I am open to discussion.  Always.  Message me on Facebook, email me at brekke2004  (@gmail.com) ...the time for silence, for silencing, is long past.)


Poetry speaks straight into who I am, at the core of me, in the ways that nothing else does. As I sit here trying to frame this blog post, imagine lines of poetry floating in the air, crowding my office space.  There is birdsong out the open window, I've had coffee, all four of us are under the same roof for the first time in such a long time it pleases me to a degree that is almost painful.

This blog post has a reason, though, a purpose beyond "let's talk about poetry, let's give a nod to the late-arriving spring".  Here are some of lines that fill this room, this morning.

"...Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it."  Sharon Olds 

"...I sit beside an old man
who cannot hurt me

forgiveness is -

what?

a deer no one
has ever tracked..."

From Come Cold River, Karen Connolly

"...I can tell he needs this but I am not stupid
I leave and watch what remains from the safety
of the meticulous
pressed tin ceiling" 

From The Truth Of Houses,  Ann Scowcroft


None of these people wrote this poetry with me in mind, and yet it has fed me, and held me up, and helped me think through first if, and then how and when, I will tell my own story.  The poetry itself had work to do in the world, and these poems could work in me because they were out in the world.

I have poetry that, while well-written, deals with some disturbing topics.  This year I learned that the word "ambivalent" doesn't mean "I don't know what I think", it means "I have opposing strongly held opinions about this".  Therefore, I can clearly state that I have ambivalent feelings about the poetry that was most recently published in ELQ, and the poetry that is coming out in May of this year.  (No link because I can't find one, but the poems are in an anthology entitled drifting like a metaphor, and there will be a launch at the Memorial Park Library at 7 pm on May 16, and several of the poets who have work in the book will be reading.  I will be one of the readers.)  My opposing strongly held feelings are:

1. Yikes.  Am I sure I should be that stark, that honest, that disturbing?  And also, to be honest, the insiders (see earlier post, somewhere, about DID ...) are terrified of "telling".

2.  Sharon Olds. Karen Connolly.  Ann Scowcroft.  I write what shows up - I don't have any choice.  When I try to force that choice, then I'm brought back to another poem, this one by Leona Gom, published in this collection:

These Poems

These poems are homesick.
They keep crawling out
        from under my pen
and running back to the north.
They will not be domesticated.
They will not be toilet-trained.
They mess all over the page
with their persistent images ...

(...)

...And when there is no way out
they curl up spitefully
       underneath their titles
and starve themselves
      to death.


And there it is again, the feeling of being recognized, validated, seen, not-alone.

I write what shows up, and when I try to force it, I can't write.  If this is what is showing up, then maybe, just maybe, there's work this work is meant to do in the world, and why would I refuse to let that happen?

***

So.  Here's one of the poems that came out last summer in ELQ.  You can see the painting it was written in response to here.


On Viewing Rosetti's Annunciation

I'm pretty sure Rosetti got it wrong -
the terrified girl, shrinking
against the back wall
of her suddenly too-small room

I know this room, what happens next.
     What happens next is
     not necessarily violent -
     sometimes there was great tenderness, even
     weeping, often a twisted, misplaced gratitude -

no - not only violence,
although it must be said
     there was also anger
     urgency, roughness
     in my own too-small bedroom

not always violent
always violation

and this is where Rosetti gets it wrong
his angel extends not invitation, but imperative
the stern face allows one outcome only

I want to slip into the frame
wrap warmth around her shaking shoulders
promise:

This is a Father you can refuse


***

And I have now used up my courage for this day.

How Not To Hate Your New Phone

Sometimes you have to get a phone with a different OS from the one you have known and loved for years, especially if your Windows phone has worn out and your provider  no longer carries Windows phones and you are of the opinion that you refuse to pay money for a phone if you are eligible for a "free" upgrade.  However, changing from a phone you know to a phone you don't may include whining, of varying intensities and frequencies, as you get to know your new OS.  Here are some steps I took to ensure I had a new non-Windows phone that I loved.

1.  Walk into the cell phone store and announce you need a new phone, but you want to see only their "zero dollar" phones.

2.  Look at the two identical-looking phones they show you and ask what the difference is, after you read the boxes and see nothing glaringly different.

3.  Take the one the person behind the counter tells you has a bigger screen.

4. Get home with your Android phone and start joyfully loading all the apps that you couldn't use with a Windows phone.

5.  Do this for ten minutes before your phone tells you you have no space, because you have gotten an EIGHT GIG phone for your zero dollars.

6.  Ignore your friend and your husband when they tell you to take the phone back right this minute while you still can.

7. Negotiate all the many learning curves, like getting your calendar to show up, and your contacts, and all the other things you cannot live without, complaining bitterly that all you had to do to accomplish this with a Windows phone was TURN IT ON and ENTER YOUR ACCOUNT number.

8. Use the phone for six months. Mutter at it on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.

9.  The 197th time you have to move an app BACK to the SD card after the Android phone helpfully moved it back to the largely full internal storage in order to update it, announce you have Had Enough.

10.  Go back to the cell phone store and after a few weeks of talking (it may have only been an hour), choose a phone that lets you make no changes to your smoking good deal legacy plan if you pay $$$ for a stronger better faster phone.

It took me about an hour to set up, because all I had to do was go look at my old new phone and copy stuff.  And it is so fast.  So very fast.  It is likely much slower than yours, because it's still only 32 GB with 3 GB of RAM but it is so much faster than the phone I clung to on the moral high ground.

Maybe I won't even publish this

Complex PTSD.  There's some letters and acronyms to describe it.  A nice box to put things in.  A result of prolonged repeated trauma.

The thing is, the label doesn't help, much, sometimes.  It doesn't make October less awful.  I can't actually tell you why October is so awful for me - it's not that I don't know, it's that it's not really that believable.  I can't think of a sentence to sum it up with.  I can't think of a single thing to say to make it crystal clear what happened to me, on a long ago October, or Octobers.  I met a psych nurse once, a student in a class I was teaching, who knew I had DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) before I told her, and then she said something that has stuck with me:  "You can't even write about that kind of sh*t."  And you can't.

But I can write about October, and why it's 1 am and I have an essay due less than 12 hours from now that I just started 5 hours ago.  I'm not going to get an A on it, because it's 400 words too short, but it's all I've got.  And it's all I've got because it's October, and October haunts me.

Bessel van der Kolk (look him up, if you like) wrote a book called "The Body Keeps The Score", but even before I read it, I knew - the body remembers things you don't consciously remember.  My body does not like October either.  I'm sore and stiff and I can't breathe, and I'm in fight-or-flight every minute that I let up the vigilance against it.  So when I try to lie down to go to sleep. Or when I try to study for that exam I had this afternoon, that I skipped my first class to study for - or when I try to look at a blank page and write an essay.  (And I am a WRITER.)

I got through the exam studying by going through review sheets one painful question at a time, stopping to walk or deep breathe or take a good long cold drink every time the panic started to overwhelm me.  It took a really long time.  I got through the exam because I had lavender on my fingerless mitts and because I will not allow myself to quit.  I will deep breathe and I will send up desperate pleas for help and I will stay the course because October 1967 or October 1975 doesn't get to WIN.  That was then, this is now.  I finished the exam and checked it over and did not wait for someone else to leave first because I had a vicious stomachache and I could not wait one more second.  I probably got a really good mark because I knew most of everything,  My stomach didn't care.  My body was in fight or flight and none of my careful, kindly worded logic did anything to change that.

And then I had an essay to write, to hand in tomorrow.  But it's still October, and my left leg wants to have a vicious muscle cramp when I sit down, in class, to write, to eat with my family, because the body keeps the score.  But I sat down, because that is what I do.  I do not, I will not, quit.  There is a vast array of marks between 0 (no essay handed in) and perfect, and I'll get one of those marks, because my essay is 400 words too short.

But this isn't really about complex PTSD or DID or October.  It's about how answering desperate prayers for help is God's strong suit, and how when I picked up my computer, trying to sit so my leg didn't hurt, I saw a tiny bookmark in the middle of all my bookmarked sites that said "hymns" and when I clicked on it, I remembered I had this hours-long play list of so many of my favourite hymns and so I started the music and I started to write, and my whole body exhaled, listening to hymns, to Him, and this - THIS - is HOW I don't quit.  I ask, beg, plead God for help, and He shows up.

On This Day* - Carrying Matches

(From September 2013)

Teach us to always carry matches,

to light every candle we find.

They are key witnesses to the dark.

 
From here.

This post was originally written as a rant that I decided not to publish, and then this morning I read a poem by John Blase, and a reframing happened.

So I was at the rink today - we are the rink most days. After B's game, as I was waiting around for him to emerge from the dressing room, and reading a book, I noticed two little girls being very loud, at the open area just inside. I looked up, but they seemed to be shrieking in delight, so I let them continue.

And then one of them started hitting the other and I heard phrases like "if you want it harder, I can hit you harder" and then the toys and books that are there for kids to look at started getting thrown around. I had been standing there for several minutes and no other adult had come by. Every so often I looked at the knots of adults standing in the restaurant talking but none of them seemed to be paying any attention either.

I looked one of the little girls in the eye and said "You need to stop treating these things this way. If you can't play here nicely, perhaps you need to be somewhere else." She looked at me for a moment and then walked through the swinging doors to another open area, which also seemed to be strewn with toys and books.

The other little girl looked at me to see what I would do next. As kindly as I could, I asked "Where's your Mom?"

"Oh" she said cheerfully "Today is a not a day that we get to see our Mom." And then she rattled more details about visitation and such and I looked at her and the mess they'd both made and I said "Somebody needs to clean these books up. How about you pick up two and I'll pick up two and then we'll see how many are left?"

So we chatted as we worked and I wondered who she was there with and an older boy showed up, hovering on the periphery of our conversation, and I asked if he was their brother.

"Nope", he said, a little grumpily, and I asked if he knew them.

"Yes he does!" the little girl I was cleaning up with said, so I kept guessing. Uncle? cousin? friend? Dad? He cheered up at that guess and told me "We're all in foster care."

I stayed with them chatting until another child came running up to tell them they were going now, learning their names and ages and favourite colours.

Lighting matches.

Teach us always to carry matches.





(*On This Day denotes a post that got deleted when I accidentally deleted my old blog due to electronic incompetence.  When Facebook reminds me that I posted something that I want to re-read, I go fetch it from the many various cobbled together electronic rescue attempts, if I can find it, and re-post it here.)