Clarity - Part One...

So, let's see if I can write a couple of posts summarising all of these insights into something clear and concise and meaningful to everyone not living in my head, that doesn't take you 10 minutes to read!

First set of insights came last week, after a conversation with my housemate's daughter-in-law, about what the future holds for their family now my housemate has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and what would be best for my son and I to do in that - stay or leave...

In that conversation, I mentioned to the daughter-in-law that my housemate and I had had a huge row over how my son and I are living in this house, about my slowness to unpack and settle, about how I am raising my son and about how the household should be maintained.

The daughter-in-law shrugged off the comments from my housemate about how we are not as neat and tidy as she would like, remarking that last time she was sick and in hospital (15 months ago, with necrotising fasciitis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necrotizing_fasciitis - from which she nearly died, spending 3 weeks in a drug-induced coma), relatives came in and cleaned up her house of 11 years' worth of clutter and mess.

She also confirmed my views that my housemate has issues with needing to be in control... which run completely contrary to her Buddhist teachings and practice.

I had never visited my housemate's home before her illness, so I only saw the 'cleaned up' version... And she gives off this energy of being totally together and with her life all sorted out...

And that's all OK... we all have our masks and we all tell ourselves  and the world the lies we must to make living with our pain and need for love and approval bearable...

But what the knowledge did for me, was put our row into context ... It showed me where I had been triggering my housemate's buttons, rubbing salt into her unhealed wounds...

I saw how my being able to live in "chaos" highlighted her discomfort with chaos.

I saw how my "mess" probably triggered feelings of shame and lack of self-forgiveness that she had allowed her own house to fall into such a state; I know I have been completely embarrassed and humiliated when friends have come to help me cope with my mess twice in my life, times when I have been overwhelmed by change.

(I'm actually quite a neat and tidy person usually - my 'chaos' usually revolves around stacks of paperwork scattered around the kitchen and my office space and piles of unfolded clean laundry!)...

And I remembered how I had reacted to a young woman from England I had living with me for three weeks a few years ago.   She  had a young child and was homeless because her Australian partner was abusive.   I spent those weeks driving her to the relevant social agencies to get the help she needed and giving her whatever moral support I could.

At the end of three weeks, I had to ask her to move on.   Not because of anything she had done to me, but because I was judging as wrong  and frivolous, something really innocent she was doing to make herself feel better that cost a lot of money.

I had an unforgiven place inside myself from the past, where I spent money to make me feel better in hard times, money that pragmatic people might have said I ought to use for me and my children, for things that were a higher, more urgent priority.

And that unforgiven place, that guilt, shame and humiliation were projecting themselves out in how I was relating to my young friend.   For every finger I point at someone else, there are three pointing back at me! 

And that, I think, is going on for my housemate...

She and I are doing a dance about power and control.   I can help her with that if she will let me, and I think that is why we have come together...

I think she was meant to 'die' during her last illness; she says she died three times and each time her lama (her teacher) brought her back from the Bardo.

My shamanic self thinks she stayed on the planet because her daughter (20) is not ready to be an adult.   

My housemate (60) has had a year to think about her own mortality, to make the normal, sensible preparations (such as wills and allocating power of attorney) and to begin to prepare her daughter to leave the nest.    And she has a loving, accepting, extended family to help her with that...

None of that has been happening... 

Her daughter has not been told the extent of her mother's illness, as she "freaked out" last time her mother was sick.    So she gets no chance to get prepared, no chance to step up, no chance to practise being an adult while she still has her mother's support and guidance.   

My housemate denies these needs and the reality of her own death happening sometime in the not very distant future...  

I have purposefully not stepped forward, even to take over household tasks, so as not to enable this process of avoiding...  

We have not talked at all about this situation, so my housemates probably think my actions (or inaction) confirm that I am a "fat lazy slob", but that's just how it has to be...

I haven't found an opening to begin any dialogue that might provide a space of holding for my housemate and her family.   And I don't think my housemate is open to hearing what insights I have to offer, that might help her in her transition.

So, we are leaving this house as soon as an alternative presents itself - either the move to Australia or to another situation here in Seattle.

I have felt guilt about that, as though I am a rat leaving a sinking ship, but as a wise woman said to me today, my housemate's death process is not my ship leaving the harbour for places unknown, is not my voyage...

Shooting Myself In The Foot...

On a purely personal note today, I have become increasingly conscious of how often I "shoot myself in the foot" and take actions - or more accurately NOT TAKE ACTIONS - that result in more 'difficulty' in my life than is necessary...

Compared to 4 billion or so other souls on the planet, my son and I are living well; we have somewhere warm and dry to live, clothes, food, transport and people around who care what happens to us...

Compared to others who are similarly or more privileged, there's a lot in my life that could be 'improved'.

We are living day-to-day financially which is stressful and not how it has to be.   And that's because of several factors:

• Politically and personally, I find it almost impossible now, to participate in the current economic and social paradigm - it's  anti-life, dysfunctional and toxic...

• Because of that, I'm choosing not to work in the corporate madhouse (though some might say that with 25% unemployment in the US that is not a choice I - as an older, over-qualified, woman - am making necessarily)...

• The journey here in the US has been completely intense, complicated and difficult, comprised of getting into and then getting out of a situation of domestic violence and experiencing cancer... This has taken much of my focus and a great deal of energy.   And it doesn't seem likely to end anytime soon, as my son's father continues to play power and control games (mostly now around money) and I go back to court tomorrow to ask  for the renewal of a Protection Order for yet another year...

• Single parenting my son takes time, focus and energy that would otherwise be available for money-making activities.   I don't have the same amount of energy as I did when I was raising my first family, and I choose to give my son first call on the energy I do have - everything and everyone else has to queue up behind him...

BUT.... there are things I can do that would both add to the positive in the world and bring in cash...

I have plans to start the Purple Dove Foundation to raise money for and awareness about (and the eventual eradication of) the horror of domestic violence.

The Foundation would do what the Komen Foundation does in the field of breast cancer - raises billions of dollars and then distributes it to organisations working to cure breast cancer and to individuals living through the experience - basically acting as a clearing house for funds...

The Komen Foundation is successful because many people can't deal with facing their own mortality... fund raising for disease-fighting is quite easy...

But most people don't want to talk about domestic violence - it's the nasty little secret thing that happens to other people, behind closed doors in the house down the street...

And that's just not true... it happens in one-in-five households and is probably happening to your next-door-neighbour as I write and you read this... or it's been happening in your house, or in the house where you grew up...

It happened in my house where I grew up, though I didn't know what it was and that it was not 'normal'... and a form of it happened in my first marriage, though again I didn't recognise it for what it was until much later...

Did you know:

• One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime.
• An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year.
• 85% of domestic violence victims are women.
• Historically, females have been most often victimized by someone they knew.
• Females who are 20-24 years of age are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence. 
• Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.

- Domestic Violence Fact Sheet

I've had this in my head for five years now - a fully fledged, perfectly sound, perfectly viable  idea that only needs implementation...

And I have begun taking small steps to make it a reality... 

BUT... something inside holds me back from taking the big strides forward necessary to make this idea really come alive in 3D...

My inner critic says it's because I'm lazy and afraid of failure, all talk and no action...

I know I'm not lazy - I've worked hard all my life...

I know I'm not all talk and no action - I've done things in my life that have changed reality for quite a few people.   I've walked the talk and put my money where my mouth is...

Am I afraid of failure?   I have put myself out there, laid it all on the line in the past and sometimes that has cost me a lot AND I kept going, no matter what, because it was the right thing to do...

Am I afraid of exposing myself, telling the story over and over again, perhaps being pitied or shunned?

When I teach - in the personal growth/spiritual arenas - I always use personal experience as the main teaching tool... after all, I'm the only person/thing I am an expert on... and being prepared to be vulnerable and to take myself down to my students' "level" gives them permission to open up and share... the most amazing learning/shifts happen all around...

I believe in equalising/leveling the playing field...that's what's real and takes the "power over" element out of teaching/sharing/nurturing.    

I tell my students (and my kids and the kids I teach electives to at school) that in some aspects of life, I'm a master, in some I'm a novice, in some an apprentice, and in some a scholar, as are they... And in some areas they're the masters whereas I'm still a novice or an apprentice...

Am I afraid I wasn't really a "victim" because I got out before it got really bad - I didn't end up in the hospital with broken bones, that I'm just a fraud?

Just as  I wasn't really a "victim" of cancer because I  'only' had a mastectomy and reconstruction - I didn't need radiation and chemotherapy, my hair didn't fall out, I didn't spend days huddled over the toilet puking up my guts?  

I know, quite ridiculous really, but that's how the uncontrolled mind works for many of us, especially women...

Am I afraid of success?   What would the world look like with no violence in it?

Maybe I'm just plain mad, mad, mad, having a huge temper tantrum that my life isn't all peaches and cream... a case of sitting on the pity-pot crying "why me, why me?"...  What is it they say?    "Shit, or get off the pot already"!

Maybe I'm just plain mad at my supposedly intelligent self, for having made certain choices that have gotten me/us to this place...

And yet, I know this particular section of my life's journey was 'meant to be'... I don't think any other experience would have led me to recognise what was the pattern of abusive relationships the female line of my family has endured, for generations, and to decide "It Stops With Me"... 

And it has stopped with me... my daughters and sons now have knowledge I didn't when I was young and they need not make the same dysfunctional choices I did, as my mother and grandmothers did before me...

Indigenous people say that what you heal in this life time, heals seven generations into the past and seven generations into the future, so maybe there was a worthwhile point to all this after all!

But there is no complete peace in that; there's still anger, rage even, at the men who carried out this abuse - sexual, physical, emotional. 

To them - dead and alive - I say: "I understand your pain and why you did what you did... You did the best you could with what you had, as we all do... 

BUT - please, accept, own and live with your guilt instead of denying it... live with your guilt as I have to do with mine, for not protecting my children as I should have, just as my mother did not protect me..." 

 

Maybe I (still) want to be rescued - have the proverbial white knight  come galloping in on his charger, solving all my problems, whisking me and my son off to the always sunny land of happiness ever after, flowing with milk and honey, all rainbows and cherubs playing heavenly music!

Maybe I'm just resistant to change in my own life...good at helping others handle/achieve change in their lives, but when it comes to my own little world, Life has to drag me kicking and screaming through the hedge backwards!

Maybe my ambivalence about being in this country is what's getting in the way... If I put in more energy creating something, that means on some level that I'm committing to staying here, in a place I dislike...  I like, love even, many of the people in my life here, but this society gives me the creeps... I want to go home, but where is home now?

Or maybe I'm just tired... too much needs attention in this world and I'd rather just sit back, take care of me and mine and let all the rest go to hell in a handcart...

We shall see...

 

 

 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Richard Burton, Robert Hardy & John Neville