It should be the norm

This past week I have received a number of e-mail letters in which people described their personal histories to me. It seems that writing as I did helped others remember, or allow themselves to tell me what had happened to them. Yesterday, Nelle wrote a comment:

What you did in Breaking It (Update) is brave and beautiful. But it should be the norm. Reviewing our plays should be part of our everyday conversation.

Imagine if we could all sit together and share our stories, personal histories, our life scripts? Imagine siblings describing different experiences even with the same parents, sharing pieces of themselves with one another allowing each person to really know who or why we are? Imagine our conversations being about understanding, validating, closure, complexity? It is something I have yearned for, it seems, since long before I can remember. Indeed, I have always sought out people who believe this. I have met a few throughout my life. There are not many. That is why when I first met Nelle and she opened her home and heart to me, inwardly I wept with relief. Nelle shares her story and is interested in ours. She cares deeply about getting to the bottom of it and telling it as it is. If ever I become terminally ill, I want to die with Nelle at my side. She will always tell me the truth and allow me mine even as my darkest hours draw near. Nelle does not see one's life experience or personal history as a betrayal. Reviewing our plays is a part of Nelle's everyday conversation. She walks the talk.

I used to tell myself a story that made me feel worthwhile. Each time I passed through a family that would take me in (through marriage or friendship), I would fantasize that they needed me to solve their emotional problems. I would say to myself that I would stay as long as they needed me and when they were well again I could move on. It was, of course, a fantasy. The reality was that when I began to care, feel vulnerable, or need them I would run away before they could find out how bad I was, and thus reject me. It was a way of deluding myself into feeling safe, in control, un-hurtable.

About three years ago Tom and I traveled to San Francisco to join his brother's family in celebrating their father's seventieth birthday. It was a wonderful occasion. All the family together. I felt belonging and included in a very deep way. As the days went by I started to feel uncomfortable. The old nagging feeling of caring deeply, wanting them to love me came rushing into my soul. I became anxious, restless. We all sat together at the restaurant around a long table. I sat next to Tom's Dad, Dick and his wife, Nelle, sat opposite me. There was laughter, love and joy all around. Without thinking I said softly, mostly to myself, "Everyone is doing fine now, I can move on." My old tune, script of: "Okay, kid, now this is becoming too dangerous ... intimate ... meaningful ... run!" To my surprise and shock, Nelle looked straight at me across the table and said directly to me, "Don't even think about it. You're not going anywhere." She had heard me, and not just the words. I lowered my head so as not to show the tears of relief welling in my eyes. The old ache of longing to be wanted, lovable, belonging pulled back like a tide running out to sea, and I sat back and allowed myself to hold still. A calm came over me that felt warm, comforting, inclusive.

How I wish we could all review our life scripts and personal histories as part of daily conversations together. However, I know that most many of us have been taught that even to think about our childhood negatively is an act of betrayal to our parents. Certainly in my family the concept of betrayal is strong, bullied into us by my frightened and vulnerable mother who sees our personal explorations as an expression of her failures. Poor soul, she had her fair share of horrors in her own childhood, which she was able to describe in detail to me as I grew up. And I am grateful to know her story for it helped me understand that how she related to me was out of her own pain, angst, anger, and not because I am inherently bad, not because it was my fault. Understanding that has helped me forgive her and all we went through together.

Indeed, I have worked hard at validating my own son's personal stories even when they include the hurts he endured from me, his mother. He does not betray me by knowing his story. The very opposite occurs. Our relationship deepens and is enhanced by knowing each other better and, therefore, understanding who we are together as mother and son. I realize, too, that my couple of siblings who angrily and anxiously guard and protect my mother from this concept of betrayal with illusions of loyalty (as they describe it) are, sadly, betraying their own life scripts and hurts they endured growing up. I am learning to forgive them too, for their rage, confusion and dismay about/at me as I explore and speak out about my life script.

Childhood is not an easy time for most children. Being brought up by adults with so many unresolved issues makes for an excruciating journey. We are all, pretty much, walking wounded. So let us join hands, sit together, hold still with one another and listen, support, validate, and review our plays ...as ... part of our daily conversations.

Let us make it the norm!

Comments

[Winston]

Tamar,
You say "I know that most of us have been taught that even to think about about our childhood is an act of betrayal to our parents."

I feel for you having to suffer that indignity, which is the way I interpret it. I cannot imagine such and was not taught any such thing. Perhaps it is a cultural trait?

I'm groping and grasping here because I really have no basis for understanding, yet must reject the notion because it is so alien and wrong sounding to me.

[Tamar]

Winston, I corrected it from "most" to "many," and added the word "negatively" which might clarify what I meant. I am genuinely and truly happy for you that you have not had to suffer such an indignity, are unable to grasp that it is like that for others, and feel it is alien and wrong, therefore rejecting that notion. I would not say it is a cultural trait, instead it probably cuts across different cultures.

Through my personal life experience, work with children and families, many different friendships and acquaintances, and even through the stories shared with me via e-mails this past week, I am able to accept this notion.

[Joel Sax]

I think a problem is that the medium has been co-opted by bloggers who seek to become political pundits. A few have managed to become so and that fuels the others.

But look closely at this cluster of individuals and you will find a storm of impersonal speech and invective. They don't want to talk about their own life experience because, I think, they have things to hide.

Some of these things shouldn't be hidden -- not because we deserve to know about them and weigh our judgements about them accordingly -- but because the hiding promotes stigmas that harm others. I believe I've detected, for example, more than one fine blogger who suffers from bipolar disorder. Ultimately that diagnosis should be made by a doctor. Nevertheless, what does it help any of us for some of us to hide as if that meant that they were persons of lesser character and lesser intelligence?

OK, I am on my high horse again and riding it hard. But I don't believe that facing the details of one's life helps establish credibility. At least not with me.

Another problem could be that these writers fear details. Their details. What they look like. Deep down, they fear that they don't have much to say. And so they repeat the same themes without break. I understand that advocacy often entails repetition, but the surest cure is changing the subject.

Even if I see someone who writes about her garden all the time, I wonder: what is the big issue that you don't want to confront?

Bloggers can become like this schizoaffective I know who will go on and on for hours about the food he ate, the people he talked to, etc. without ever once facing the questions of real life. If you challenge him, he will tell you that he does it to avoid the shit of his life. So he is addicted to his episodes. And going nowhere fast.

Many bloggers seem to follow his course. They don't talk about the shit of their life past or present, regardless. Instead they take it out on others -- either public figures or other bloggers. And they can't stop.

But I will. Right here.

[Brenda]

"A calm came over me that felt warm, comforting, inclusive." I loved that, just when you were about to flee (once again). But you didn't. You were welcomed. I love that feeling of belonging, too. We all do. It's what we should be offereing to each other without question daily. But we're also fragile and senstive and easily hurt. And perhaps self-protection is over protection. I don't know the answers to these questions. One time, though, I did a lot of work on the 'root' chakra, specific yoga exercises, meditations and chants, guided visualizations, and what I mostly felt when I'd finished a session (I was doing them on my own, writing down what I experienced for my yoga training) was exactly what you describe, "calm...warm, comforting, inclusive." And so perhaps that sense of warm, nurturing connectedness is what it means to 'be grounded.' And if 'being grounded' is feeling warm, comforted, connected, whole and serene, then perhaps that is the 'Ground of Being' itself... xo

[Tamar]

Brenda,
Yes! Being grounded. I have done a lot of work with bioenergetics in the past and that's a concept within too. I like how you turn it into the "ground of being."

Joel, I think there is place for all kinds of topics in the blogosphere. I have chosen to "reveal my personal" side because I have been needing to work through some heavy issues and found the blog to be a good venue for that. I have found that having feedback for some of my thoughts and feelings, positive or negative, has helped me work it all out. It is a great feeling when someone *believes* me. Am not trying to "establish credibility" with all bloggers out there. When I spread out my personal explorations and look at them written in black and white, I allow myself to believe them finally for myself.

Sometimes a reader recognizes something about themselves in what I share and sometimes, as in the case with Winston here, definitely not.

And that's okay too.

[Richard Lawrence Cohen]

Tamar, A saving grace of my upbringing was that there was no taboo on honest discussion of our problems. This was first of all because my mother was a psychiatric social worker and therapy buff; second of all because my parents were so openly hostile to each other that it would have been impossible to hide their feelings. To explore the negative was our family pastime -- for better and worse. There was no betrayal because we weren't taught that there was anything to betray.

Re Winston's comment: If dread of unpleasant truths is a cultural trait, I don't think it's a Jewish one.

[Joel Sax]

Yes, I agree that there is room for all kinds of topics, but the onslaught of political blogging tends to delegitimize other kinds of blogging.

People get to my page and say "What is this? Poetry next to political discussion? What kind of loon do we have here?"

Well, I will just get on with being me. It's a low night.

[Tamar]

Joel, I know. Sometimes the political bloggers overwhelm me too!

Richard,
Yes, I know what you mean by by being openly hostile. I experienced that too. It is just taboo with some members of my family to openly question or discuss my memories *if* it might lead to the notion that my mother was not a good parent - which is not the purpose of the exploration.

[Sherry Stewart]

A sense of belonging.....so natural, and we struggle for it because the truth is we aren't alone. We are one, but the sense of separation, wow it can cause so much angst.

My lost lost cousin and I have connected, he is bigger than me, older, suddenly I feel a sense of safety that I had lost along with all my family members that died by the time I was 32.

I can't believe the change, Oh yes, it may in part be the estrogen patch, loving new friends, books that remind me that I am a "child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars."

I am happy to hear of your connection, I can feel what that feels like, because I know how mine feels to me.

Love your blog as always!

[Tamar]

Sherry, Yes, that sense of belonging ... so important. I always fought it, pretending I didn't want or need it. It's a relief realizing how much I do. Allows me to reach out, which seems to take so much courage for me. Good news for you about connecting with your cousin.