2010 Brene Brown's 4th book (Women & Shame/2004; I Thought It Was Just Me but it isn't/2007; Connections - a 12-session psycho-educational shame resilience curriculum/2009).
Rest & play are easy to get short shift, but regular, significant amounts are as crucial to our good physical & emotional health as nutrition & exercise, fresh air & sunshine. x
Loving ourselves is even more essential to wholehearted living as knowing & understanding ourselves. xi I created others who loved me & radiated back my visibility in their world - fantasy playing an essential use of holding place until reality caught up.
"People may call what happens in midlife a 'crisis,' but it is not. It's an unraveling (a reveal of what is rather than a hankering for & holding onto what was) - - a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you (are ready to step into, that's a reflection & deepening of your Now rather than your yesterdays. And your yesterdays might have been GREAT, they can take a bow for bringing you to this opportunity to enrich what you do or strike out in new directions. But being in the Now as our Wholehearted self requires we do something super tough - let go of outdated attachment to all that came before. In general, humans will cling to an ill-fitting famliar than lean into something of-the-moment that truly suits.)
The Universe is not short on wake-up calls. We're just quick to hit snooze. ~ As it turned out, the work I had to do was messy & deep. I slogged through it until one day, exhausted & with mud still wet and dripping off my traveling shoes.
I was healthier, more joyful, and more grateful than I had ever felt. I felt calmer & more grounded & significantly less anxious. I had rekindled my creative life, reconnected with family & friends in a new way, and - most important - felt truly comfortable in my own skin for the first time in my life." xiii
02/21/16 - - a BIG aha day
Hey, Kerry - I wasn't rude, I was brave.
COURAGE COMPASSION CONNECTION
LOVE BELONGING WORTHINESS
How do we define happiness & why do we spend so much time hustling for it rather than believing in it?
Play is an essential component of Wholehearted BEing. (she is another mega fan of Stuart Brown)
Definitions spark controversy & disagreement, but I'm okay with that. I'd rather we debate the meaning of words that are important to us than to not discuss them at all. WE NEED COMMON LANGUAGE TO HELP US TO CREATE AWARENESS & UNDERSTANDING, WHICH IS ESSENTIAL TO WHOLEHEARTED LIVING.
When I find myself dog tired & bone weary, emotionally exhausted & mentally spent, remember to slow down, step back & DIG:
Deliberate in my thoughts through prayer, meditation, or simply setting my intentions.
Inspired to make new and different choices
Get going - take action
Prayerfully, playfully & thoughtfully do something RESTORATIVE
Brene did not chose her area of study - it chose her. Same thing happened to John & me - the work chose us.
Compassion is something we all want, but are we willing to look at why boundary setting, saying NO is an essential component of compassion?
Belonging is an essential component of Wholehearted living, but we must first face perhaps our most daunting challenge - - cultivating self-acceptance. Why is this so hard?
Before I start writing, I ask myself, "Why is this book worth writing? What is the contribution that I am hoping to make?"
Coming at this work with a full idea of how the shame tapes & gremlins work to keep us feeling afraid & small allows me to do more than present great ideas; this perspective helps me share real strategies for changing our lives. If we want to know why we're all so afraid to let our true selves be seen & known, we have to understand the power of shame & fear. To move forward, we must standup to their never good enough & who do you think you are?
"Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. Embracing our vulnerabiities is risky but not nearly as dangerous as giving up on love belonging trust - the experiences that make us the must vulnerable. Only when we are brave enough to explore the darkness will we discover the infinite powefr of our light."
This is at the very core of the command to honor our father & our mother. We cannot see them as human, rather than villains or even heroes, without getting a glimmer that the same is true about siblings friends others - including the one harder to accept as human. Our self.
You learn to swim by swimming; you learn to courage by couraging. (Mary Daly)
Shame love secrecy. When we bury our story, it metastasizes.
In sharing my shame moments, my ideal listener is someone who won't "get thrown into the storm," who won't excuse but also won't snap with judgement & blame, won't try to fix me or buck me. Just be present, maybe share some of her own vulnerabilities. I (elm) need to feel exposed & loved & embraced. I need courage compassion connection (three things gremlins DETEST). John gets that, so does Karen C & Janina,
COURAGE
It was John who first noted - before we married - that it was safe to speak honestly & openly with the other about who we are, about our feelings & experiences, We felt the "ordinary courage' to put ourselves on the line with the other (and, in doing so, with ourself). Per Brene, that's pretty extraordinary in today's world.
Mom was her bravest when she stood up for her self - her actual SELF - rather than continue trying to be what others wanted. She had nothing to gain - I was past caring what she did & the others liked her just as she was.
A searing moment for me happened when I was old enough to have parties with alcohol. A friend put the heavy glass stopper back on a decanter sloppily & cracked the glass. I bristled. Almost as soon as I did, wanted to take it back, knew it wasn't possible. Now, when a similar moment arises, my intention is to go immediately to wondering aloud in my head, "How will I feel about this in two hours or tomorrow?" then respond.
Did that today with John & a distressed field mouse on the driveway; I called him out of bed, he carefully (with gloves & a separate surface) placed her under the bushes. I'd pulled out of the drive, headed down the road, when I thought, "How will I feel about this tomorrow? Will having place it in a relatively protected space be enough?" - stopped, opened the door & asked John if he wanted to take the wee critter up to AARK, which we did. Turned out SHE wasn't injured - she was having a difficult time giving birth!
When we share our own stories of imperfection & vulnerabiity, we are practicing courage.
Courage can have a ripple effect. Every time we choose courage. we make everyone around us a little better, the world a little braver. And our world could stand to be a litter kinder & braver. p.15
Mom seeking counseling to gain a better view & understanding of herself modeled bravery to me, not to my sibs. To them, her courage made them want to shut her down or out.
COMPASSION
"Compassionate practice is daring. It involves learningto relax & allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. " Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare Us
Compassion means "to suffer with." Brene doesn't think compassion is a natural default for most of us - that would be to self-protect, which can be evidenced by blame or by dropping into fix-it mode.
Compassio draws from the wholeness of our experience - our suffering - our empathy as well as our cruelty & terror. Everything. Compassion is a relationship between equals. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity. (PC, p. 16) It's when we are there as a presence, not to alleviate or fix or advise.
Boundaries & Compassion
One of the greatest and least discussed barriers to compassion practice is the fear of setting boundaries & holding people accountable. Understanding the connection between boundaries accountabliity acceptance compassion has made me a kinder person - less judgmental resentful angry on the inside. Many of the truly committed compassion practitioners were also the most boundary-conscious people in the study Brene was stunned to discover that compassion people are boundaried.
THE HEART OF COMMPASSION IS GENUINE ACCEPTANCE. It's tough to accept people when they hurt us or take advantage of us or do us harm. If we really want to practice compassion, we have to first set boundaries & hold people - others & ourselves - accountable.
We live in a blame (not a solution seeking) culture, which leads to a surge of self-righteousness & a precipitous decline in compassion. WE DON'T HAVE THE ENERGY TO DEVELOP MEANINGFUL CONSEQUENCES AND ENFORCE THEM. It's way easier to shame & blame - or excuse - than to hold accountable.
Seems to me that excusing could be added to shame & blame as a barrier to compassion.
When we don't follow through with APPROPRIATE consequences, people dismiss our requests. Mom explained why she didn't ask Peter or Mim to do anything - "Why bother when I know they won't do it?" She was right, they wouldn't BECAUSE they knew there would never be any consequence. In a similar (?) vein, they knew they could be mean & horrid to her IF their final words cold be distantly interpreted as "I love you." All they had to do was leave space where she could infer it, fill in afforded blanks.
Peter & Mim knew how far Mom would go to avoid discomfort, yet Brene points out that we need to lean into the discomfort that comes with straddling compassion & boundaries. Holding someone accountable is a sign of love, not dislike disrespect rejection.
Mom felt overpowered by circumstances. Her father was seriously ill from at least her mid teens & died when she was 19, a death she felt like she could have prevented - talk about unrealistic boundaries! On his death, she was given responsibility for Gran's well-being. Gran, a woman described by Peter as evil, made herself the center of Mom's universe. Although she would have been horrified by the comparison, Mom wanted to be the center of mine & ways in many ways. The difference is that I could survive it without being subsumed because I allowed myself to be frustrated upset angry at circumstances over which I felt no control; another difference - I knew that one thing holding me back from walking away was my own belief system, the deeply rooted principle that someone had to be there for Mom & it couldn't be Peter or Mim (who lead subsistence lives) or (for reasons I didn't know until Mom's last weeks), Mike or Kerry. Being there for Mom was not a default for me, but a conscious decision based on an unacceptable outcome of forcing her to move to Australia (my probably erroneous belief that her anger at me would make her friends, aka my community, hold me responsible for her heartbreak & separation from those she loved, the place she lived for most of her married life, where her Pete was buried - in reality, they very easily could have said, in chorus, "About time!")
It was a STRUGGLE for Mom to understand what Dad so easily got - that we can be compassionate & accepting at the same time we are holding people accountable for their behaviors. When Dad told me that I could not go trick or treating due to the double-whammy of my dissing Mom, then saying I didn't care if it resulted in my being grounded on Hallowee, it never occurred to me to think he didn't care about me, that he was doing it from a meanness of spirit - - it was my assumption that I'd stepped way across a line & he was treating me like someone capable of much better. Interesting that PRL did NOT experience it the same way, that he felt Dad acted monstrously.
Brene hits the nail on the head - Dad addressed what I did, not who I was. He believed that >I< was above such wretched behavior. PRL still can't see that. Strange.
Interesting that John & I didn't truly connect until AFTER the opportunity came up for me to attach a consequence to another's action, or to let a distressing situation slide, which would not only have left me feeling used & mistreated, it would have made more of the same acceptable.
We cannot practice compassion from a place of resentment.
elm - power of familiar & comfy but somehow harmful or not helpful vs. unfamiliar, disquieting, uncomfortable yet helpful healthy wholesome
CONNECTION
Aka the energy that exists between people when they feel seen, heard, valued; when they give & receive without judgment; when they derive sustenance & strength from the relationship. p.19
Connection begets connection. Ashley told Brene, "I can't tell you how glad I am that you called me that day. It helped me so much to know that I'm not the only one who does stuff like that. I also love knowing that I can help you & that you trust me."
Our biology is wire for connection. We NEED connection to thrive emotionally, physically, spiritually & intellectually. The connectedness we experience in our relationships impacts the way our brain develops & performs. p. 20 Sheez - a lot of meat on those bones!
Our biology is wired for connection. In my family, Mom & Dad were connected, heart soul mind, in a beautiful partnership, but, at least by the time I came along, the kids were not connected to each other or (in a healthy way) to Mom or Dad. What was the source & outcome of them NOT connecting with me but me reaching out to connect with them? Per Mom's account of Peter's explanation of what ultimately connected him to Mim, what brought them together was a mutual disllike of me. Am fascinated that, in the face of not finding connection within my family, I created a fantasy world where that connection could thrive. I used fantasy to stay grounded until John came along.
We NEED connection to thrive emotionally, physically, spiritually & intellectually. What does it say about the emotional physical spiritual intellectual stability that there was only disconnection within the family as a whole? Mom & Dad had each other, but not, as far as I could tell, with their children in that they saw what they wanted. Dad seemed to understand the boys & seemed to get me, but how he experienced Mim was always a mystery to me. Neither Mom or Dad appeared to set any limits for PRL or Mim, never - to my knowledge - expected them to act like members of our family. Beyond my ken.
Just because we're plugged in doesn't mean we feel seen heard value Too many people confuse communication with community, connection. Digital devices can be awesome tools to promote nurture deepen genuine connection, but that is way more today's exception than rule. John is totally analogue; I promote being low tech as a way of being more in touch with real people. The internet is a wonderful way for Angela to see her grandfather in Australia, but it is no substitute for holding her in his arms after she tells him she's going to give him a new great-granddaughter.
Until we can receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart. when we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help. p. 20
"For years I placed value on being the helper in my family." To this day, I only have visibility within my family when I am needed to help. Valued? Not going to happen, not under any circumstances. They are not wired for it. It is their issue, not mine. John helped me figure out that I had value back when I asked why we always did what he wanted, not what I did, and he answered in his short, direct-to-the-point-way, "I know why. I tell you what I want." He was right - I didn't. Because I didn't know what I wanted. My decider had been what others wanted. I didn't come into it. Nor did anyone expect want wish me to make my wants a factor. Consider the Christmas that Peter was utterly beastly to me, even though it was MIM who was baiting him - - and EVERYONE expected that I'd swallow it & drive him with his kids to the Daylesford Road house. Took years, but John brought me around to seeing that first I had to know what I really wanted & then let it be known.
I will say in my defense that I did consistently ask for help & support, did not let the stream of no or ignoring put me off asking again.
The Wholehearted Journey is not the path of least resistance. it is a path of consciousness & choice. And, to be honest, it's a little counter-culture. The willingness to tell our stories, to feel the pain of others, and stay genuinely connected to this disconnected world is not something we can do halfheartedly. To practice courage, compassion, connection is to look at life and the people around us & say, "I'm all in."
My reality was that I had no experience of connection with Peter-Mim-Mom, iffy with Dad, who knows what with Mike, Ian was gone too soon to have any idea of what it may have been. And Mom experienced being seen heard valued as an unfamiliar (ergo uncomfy) aberration.
EXPLORING THE POWER OF BELONGING & BEING ENOUGH
Love & belonging are essential to the human experience.
The only thing that separated people who felt a deep sense of love & belonging and those who struggle for it is a belief in their worthiness.
If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worth of love & belonging. That we are worth of them NOW. As is.
We gain access to our worthiness when we let go of what others think and own our story.
Defining Love & Belonging
A constant until John was never having the sense of fitting in, of belonging that always seemed to me our natural state. But I always had a sense of worthiness. What I couldn't get from people, I whipped up out of my imagination. And I understood the purpose of those fantasy friends admirers lovers - got an A for describing them, taking apart their purpose & putting it back together in a Psych 101 research paper. I researched me, coolly & analytically. Rex Jeff Napoleon Jarrod Percy Peter helped hold me in a safe place until a real friend came along.
Let's never forget my Omega 2014 experience, transcending time to give the message "Stay whole" & I was loved.
My family would not tolerate a conversation about the meaning of love. I'd tell Mom "You treat love as a noun & I consider it a verb." To her, it mattered to say it, she didn't see it as an action.
Loving was one of the things seriously messed up by Mom's bedrock misunderstanding of HOW we are supposed to act. Mom absolutely believed that one of her faith's core doctrines was that intentions were more important than actions. Believed that heart & soul. A fundamental reality that I only discovered over her closing five weeks. It explained why she would be distressed with ME when I'd flip out over her saying, as she often did, "Why are you upset? I'm only doing what Mim wants; I agree with you." That seemed lunatic - until I understood she'd totally bungled the teaching that an action is only genuine WHEN it is conjoined with its intention. It was bad enough seeing her do things that not only went against my best interests & hers, but EVERYONE's. It's possible she died not understanding that there is a world of difference between a want & a need.
Peter wanted to belong to the Harold Pitcairn family; he wanted to fit into the Phila social whirl but shut himself out because he wasn't himself. Mike, if he'd wanted, could have cracked it in an evening.
A big reason I didn't feel any grief at being single was knowing that loving & belonging leaves me coping with their attendant uncertainty. Neither can be measured & both are interwined.
We are biologically wired to love & belong.
Love
To cultivate love, we have no option but to allow our most powerless AND powerful selves to be seen & known.
From that deep spiritual connection of vulnerability & power grows trust, respect, kindness & affection.
WE CAN ONLY LOVE OTHERS AS MUCH AS WE LOVE OURSELVES.
The withholding of affection - driven by shame, blame, disrespect, betrayal - damages the very roots from which love grows. Such grievous damage can survive such grievous injuries, but ONLY if the damage is identified ACKNOWLEDGED healed. Love can survive such terrible assaults, but it is rare.
Belonging
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEvlK-JkQt4
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