tamarjacobson

Quote of the day:

The daily sharing of my interior life made me stop and notice my world. MaryBeth Coudal

This morning I woke up and realized that it is time to celebrate my ninth blogaversary. I lay in the dark as Oscar spread his body out across my chest, purring while I stroked his head and ears, and suddenly I found myself thinking about my blog. Indeed, I have not been writing it so much lately. Mostly, I am thinking of the book I am writing, and in a way have abandoned blogging – even in my mind. But, this morning, I thought, "Hey! I have been blogging for nine years!" 

It felt like some kind of an achievement, and I remembered fondly and gratefully how blogging has helped me through some emotionally, challenging times. Doing the work with my therapist these past four years or so, I have confronted the lonely, frightened child I was growing up. In the past year, specifically, I have faced my inner child quite intensely, and as painful as it has been, I realized that so much of my loneliness and fears have nothing to do with the realities of life for me now. Incidents or interactions with others at times can still trigger those ancient feelings, but I am more able to see that they are irrelevant to me now. In fact, I step out and away from them quite quickly lately. I feel less lonely, more included, and belonging than ever before – with family members, friends, and, more importantly, with myself. And I wonder: "Was blogging a way for me to feel less lonely and afraid? And, perhaps I don't feel the need to blog as intensively as I use to, because I am feeling more open and belonging – less lonely and afraid."

All the work I have been doing in therapy feels like an achievement too. As I look back over these past nine years, I have come a long way in my psychological development. Writing has been a crucial part of self understanding and awareness. Especially as it is shared with others. For, having readers bear witness to my emotional life has made it real, vital, and, most importantly, valid.

Nothing heals more than the validation of our feelings. 

Starting 2015 with a blog anniversary, and writing another book opens different doors to my mind and soul.

Perceiving the world with an adult view feels like an adventure ahead with unimagined vistas to explore.

A new road to travel down.

It reminds me of the poem by Portia Nelson that one of my doctoral advisors, Tom Frantz, once quoted to us during a statistics class, and which I subsequently quoted in my book(Page 158):

Autobiography in Five Short Chapters, by Portia Nelson 

I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost … I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in … it's a habit.
My eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V
I walk down another street.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Holding still

There is nothing quite like this time of the year. Cold and wet, lights twinkling in the dark, and trees as bare as can be. On my walk yesterday afternoon, I could not imagine the trees with leaves. I become the time it is, and will have to be surprised and amazed again in the spring when new shoots are everywhere and the color green symbolises rebirth all around. Indeed, each year each season surprises me anew. Even the stark, dark, cold, wet, bare season of winter. It is the renewed amazement each quarter that makes me realise the wonders of nature again and again. I feel so fortunate that Life Partner and I share different holiday rituals. That way I get to celebrate the best of Hanukah and Christmas. And I especially enjoy the firm, gentle Buddha face over our mantelpiece looking out at our Christmas tree and Hanukiyah at one and the same time. Lately, I feel I need all the spiritual help I can get.

Somehow, settling into older age has been difficult for me these past few months. Realising that I am not immortal, and that I only have a couple of decades and who-knows-what left to me, has been sobering with one or two physical ailments that coaxed me into this phase. I wonder about these new aches and pains in the early morning – are they the stuff of new things to come? I would rather be amazed at the starkness of winter or glorious golden days of fall than dwell on what sometimes feels like the autumn of my life. 

There is still so much I love doing: writing, long walks, watching Oscar and Mimi snuggle on the couch, reading, gardening outside or pottering with my plants indoors, listening to my son playing the piano, singing – accompanied by him and Life Partner on the guitar, presenting, teaching, having coffee with a friend, flying to different places or traveling by train, commuting early in the morning before the rush sets in, counseling students and families … the list is endless.

I become as excited as a young child each December as we bring the tree into our home and decorate it with nick knacks from twenty years ago, always buying a new piece or two to represent the year we are in. This year it is a strange little white, hairy, winter sasquatch I discovered at a craft sale somewhere. He or she will join our bands of angels some made of olive wood from Israel, or tin from Kenya, peace doves from UNICEF, and our brown-skinned Santa. Most years, JJ sends us delicious cookies that she baked lovingly all the way across the country in Seattle. I await those with childlike glee just because she cares about us – and, of course, because they are so delicious. My body may be aging but my soul is often stuck somewhere between six and ten years old. 

I wonder, will I still be like that when I enter the winter of my life?

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Another option: When survival meets reality

Nine years ago at Tamarika: May I borrow a culture?

It is miraculous really. I have been blogging consistently for nine years. In January I will be entering my tenth year. I went from many posts a day, to a few a week, and now I barely write two or three a month. Many blogger friends have disappeared. Social media expanded, and other forms of communication have become more appealing. Facebook has been fun for me, I must admit. Connecting to old friends, reconnecting with newer ones. Discovering ways to be in touch that I would never have imagined only ten years ago. 

These days so few people read my blog. I have not tried to make it more popular by using all the different universal "feeds" that would help it become more widely read. Or, perhaps, I don't write about exciting, trendy enough topics. I have used the blog for improving my writing, as well as trying to explore how I came to be me – as a supplement to therapy and research for writing my other books. Just as I have done from time to time over the years, lately, I think about whether to keep the blog going. 

I wonder, is self enjoyment enough of a reason to keep on blogging as I do? For, I have learned that serving others is of utmost importance. And so, if the blog is not being of service to others, why continue? That could be one reason that makes me think of stopping. Then there is the idea that family members read my blog to make sure I am not saying anything they don't like. And if I do, they become hurt or angry, and even stop talking to me altogether. That has been quite a deterrent to authentic writing over the years. I even thought about changing the name, or going underground, but, thanks to friends and supporters, I soon dropped those ideas.

I love how Annie Lamott says: 

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.

To Ms. Lamott, I reply – easier said than done. Telling my story has been the hardest thing – when others became so hurt by it. For, I tell it so that others can feel free to explore their own. Or, at times I tell it to help others get to know me better. In the end, though, I probably tell my story mostly so that I can get to know me better. And writing it down seems to be a really good way for me to express myself. I wish I could have been a painter or dancer. But, writing is the medium that I feel most comfortable doing.

So, this morning, on the eve of Thanksgiving, and after much reflection these past months, that lead me up to this blog post, I am grateful for my blog, whether other people read it or not, or family members like it or me or not. I give thanks that I have a place to go to express myself for all the reasons mentioned above. Most recently, I discovered that life is short – shorter than I ever imagined, and I am grateful in an awesome way for each moment that feels good. 

And, if writing about my life is good for and to me – and good for others, who stop by to genuinely share it with me … then … onward and upward … and into this new day.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Busy, busy, busy

Flowers blooming through the frost; children bearing flowers and hand written notes; friend holding my hand and listening to me speak earnestly about my fears; friend from far away singing to me healing songs over the phone; watching Mary Poppins right after Saving Mr. Banks on the same afternoon; on a brisk, fall day completing my 4-mile walk with energy again; cooking a huge chicken soup with vegetables including kale, savoy cabbage, carrots, zucchini, onions, leek, dill, green pepper, onion and loads of garlic; surviving to thrive again, and again, and again; family, friends, neighbors, and the kindness of strangers; connecting and reconnecting; being in the moment – breathing in and out; early morning light.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Thanksgiving countdown continues

Surely I haven't said everything there is to say? As I start writing I realize that, in fact, there is so much I want to write! Some of it is private though. About inner feelings and thoughts of one thing and another.

"Private?" I almost exclaim out loud. It is early morning and the house is quiet – even the cats are not stirring. So I contain the exclamation to myself. I have hardly ever been private on this blog. Indeed, I have shared my deepest feelings and fears. Lately, though, I am starting to want to keep things private.

"Don't give too much of yourself away," Ziva, one of my therapists used to say to me. "You give too much in the hopes of receiving the same amount from others. And then, when they don't reciprocate, you are disappointed, and it feeds into your life script about not being wanted."

I have been thinking about Ziva's words from almost thirty years ago. In those days, I never quite understood what she was talking about.

But, lately, I get it!

Deeply.

To my core.

I have decided to tell a different story to me about me. I am literally in the process of changing my life script. I have to, because the old one does not fit the me of now – not in any way. I laugh out loud, alone in the dawn light of my study. It feels right – the slipper fits! Oscar and Mimi sense my joyful emotion, and start running about the room in play – chase and catch, chirping and purring as they do so.

Timing is everything, and I have been traveling toward this moment for many years. Arriving doesn't mean the end. Indeed, it feels like the beginning of something fine.

Peaceful.

Dare I say … happy?

I think I know the days, and moments even, when my journey began. There were catalysts and coincidences, and people aong the way, who opened doors, or gave me the tools to break down walls – some kindly and gently, and others, who through their conscious or unconscious mean spiritedness, rocked and shocked me out of comfortable delusion and denial.

And it fits too – as the season of reflection, forgiveness and gratitude is upon us – that I am genuinely grateful to them all.

And with this new story … I begin my countdown to Thanksgiving.

Well, on Sunday was the Historic Germantown House Tour in which our home was one of 6 houses people had signed up to visit.

Quote of the day:

The book says, "We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us." Magnolia.

Validation is key when one has been taught a different reality to the experience. Constant and consistent validation has unlocked the frozen within, and helped it flow out into the open. Sometimes it has been more of a storm than a flow, I must admit, causing my body to react violently with all kinds of physical symptoms. Anxiety and fear accompany me calling out in whispers, and sometimes yelling in my ears making me feel as if I am going deaf. They warn me not to rejoice in this new found freedom: adulthood, maturity, mind of my own. They threaten to kill me by raising my blood pressure to heights the medical doctors raise their eyebrows at. These past two months I am learning to stare directly into the face of my fears. To hold still with them and explore the feelings in my body and brain. Like the cold grip in my chest, or discovering my eyes are wild and exhausted. 

It has been a wild ride. And I am not sure it's over yet. But, for some reason this morning I sense it will be over soon. The storm, I mean.

Then, perhaps, the river of emotion will flow more smoothly, and not alarm me so. For they are my feelings, and they are real. For they were my experiences, and they were real. As a close friend said to me recently, "You don't have to absorb that stuff any longer. Return it to its owner." 

This past weekend, I picked up my trusty copy of Alice Miller's, The Truth Will Set You Free, and was reinforced. She writes:

… most of us are indeed on our own … but we would benefit tremendously from having someone to talk to about our childhoods particularly when we get older. As our physical strength fades, and we lose our youthful vigor, we are particularly susceptible to flashbacks to a time when we were helpless children. And that may be what makes us cling to a bagful of tablets in much the same way as we clung to our mothers for the help we urgently needed … we need an open door to our own past, an opportunity to take its very beginning seriously.

Indeed, taking myself seriously has been the hardest part for me. I often find myself telling a story about how someone hurt me, and giggling as I describe the events, as if it was funny or trivial. Again, Alice:

Laughter is good for you, but only when there is reason to laugh. Laughing away one's own suffering is a form of fending off pain, a response that can prevent us from seeing and tapping the sources of understanding around us …

In fact, taking myself seriously makes me anxious – for, growing up I was laughed at and teased for things I deeply felt or believed in, forcing me to take them underground: like loving my father, feeling spiritual and questioning if there is a God, becoming involved in a youth movement, becoming a yoga instructor, becoming vegetarian … on and on. Nowadays I know that the people who made fun of me had their own denials of pain, blindness to their own childhood fears and traumas. But still it is a challenge to take my own pain seriously. 

As an early childhood teacher educator, I feel an urgency to help teachers understand how children learn to defend themselves from pain. Indeed, lately, I feel that this is my calling – my quest. Recently, I wrote an essay on "spanking," for Asbury Park Press. I was amazed and dismayed to read the comments from people saying that spanking was good for children, and that it had worked for them. In my despair at the unkindness of these comments, I turned again to Alice Miller:

All a beaten child remembers is fear and the faces of angry parents, not why the beating was taking place … the child will assume he had been naughty and merited the punishment. What kind of beneficial pedagogical effect (is there) in that?

So, all those memories we block or deny because they were too painful to bear as children – we continue to hold onto them believing that we must have deserved it. As one of my students wrote to me years ago, at the end of taking my course in applied child development: "You don't have to hurt me to teach me." For her it was a revelation, as she had been hurt emotionally and physically very much as a young child.

Giving up the denial and illusions that have protected me all my life has been the most difficult part of therapy this past year. Embracing my right to my feelings, and validating what I experienced as a young child, while deeply healing, is enormously frightening for me. At the same time it is allowing me to give up being a victim to my life, or a masochist. I am starting to believe, for real, that I no longer have to absorb any hurtful stuff any longer, and can, instead, return it to its rightful owner.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Activist

Wouldn't we all just love to leave the past behind? Especially all those painful and uncomfortable memories. I have been working very hard at that through therapy, reading books and poetry, and even in writing this blog. Getting to know myself in order to lay down the burdens of the past, and walk ahead into the light free and clear. What a mission! What a goal! People write about it everywhere – sing songs and wax lyric on and on. Being in the moment – here and now, not looking back or thinking forward. Ah yes. Noble ideas indeed. Freedom from pain and discomfort seems like the loftiest, most rational goal of all. Facebook is packed with slogans that invite and encourage us to do just that – leave the past behind.

Lately, though, I realize how futile this struggle to free myself from the past is becoming. Indeed, I think it is impossible. Unrealistic. An illusion that gives me hope and comfort thinking that it is a possibility at all. For, the more I understand how our brain functions, and how, as very young children, we store our earliest emotional memories never to be erased – I realize that leaving the past behind is impossible.

Repressed and buried emotional pieces – traumatic or otherwise – will forever rise up at the oddest moments when we least expect them, and interfere with present situations. The trick is in recognizing and welcoming them when they occur. Understanding they are forever part of who I am, and who I have become, I might greet them and, if I am able, make peace with them. Indeed, integrating and accepting them as part of me makes me the complex human being I am. Negotiating with those memories I learn when they are helpful warnings, or if they block me from opening up. I realize I don't have to forgive everything, nor should I forget some things. I have a choice if only I allow myself to accept that the past is always a part of me. 

I always thought there was something lacking in me because I seemed unable to forgive and forget all, and just let go of the past. I worked so hard to achieve the impossible, and then reinforced the feeling of failure over and over again.

As I start to release myself from these illusions, I am able to accept myself as being a human being like everyone else – eternally struggling to be free, when, instead, we could be facing and integrating our shadows into who we are forever.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Coming of age

Bearing, as a gift, seeds that fly away all over the garden. Isn't that what we do with our own children? – bear them as gifts, who fly away all over the world, rerooting themselves over and over again perpetuating our species on and on …

Autumn is here. I felt it in the air this morning as I walked out to greet the plants, shrubs and trees, inspecting each leaf or flower examining how the change of season was affecting them. I breathed in deeply as if to draw it all into my lungs, and my precious veins whose blood pressure is starting to simmer down and find its normal pace – finally. For a moment it felt quite peaceful. Days of reflecting into atonement and penitence for all this past year's wonderings and misdeeds are upon me. 

I feel the presence of these days of awe more than ever this year, as the past couple of months have been truly, emotionally stormy. My former Buffalo therapist used to encourage me to fall into the emotional abyss I feared – and lately, I took the plunge. Falling in, I have discovered all my childhood fears – starkly – powerfully – staring me directly in my face – nothing left for me to do but confront them head and heart on. Sometimes weeping with fear, at others laughing out loud with exhilaration to realize I have survived! Most of it happening during my brisk, long morning walks.

I am not sure that I have reached a point where I am able to embrace my fears with compassion and acceptance. Perhaps I could resolve to work toward that this coming year. For there is no going back now that I have allowed myself to develop this deep of an understanding.

Things just don't look the same any more.

Integration is key now. Drawing in the ancient fears, and combining them with my new found confidence and faith in me, all the while appreciating the strength and courage it has taken to survive. 

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Companions

As the rain falls outside the window of our library, I sense a blessing happening here.

It has been such a great few weeks. I have been happy, living in the moment, and allowing myself to feel all kinds of emotions. In short, I have felt more whole than ever in my life. Enjoying feeling included and wanted – being part of my father's family at a wedding celebration, realizing I am angry or disappointed in the moment, speaking out about things that irritate me, and taking it all in my stride without alarm or anxiety … or so I thought …

For it seems my mind and body had other ideas. While I have been working hard at rewiring my emotional memory circuit, living out a new life script, and breaking rules that I learned to keep safe as a young child, my brain called out hysterically, "Whoa ho there, lassie! Not so fast!" pushing my blood pressure up so high that I found myself racing toward the emergency room at two in the morning. Nurses and doctors searching and prodding, prying and exploring and finding nothing to support the craziness of blood pressure numbers. Finally, a tall, slender doctor looked into my eyes, and said quietly, "You look anxious. Don't be anxious." And I burst into tears.

Unbeknown to me, it seemed the anxiety had been quietly bubbling up, accompanying me as I broke emotional rules and patterns within me. The volcano erupted and now I am fighting back, for I will not be dragged back into the prison of ancient, survival habits and beliefs about myself. I am enjoying feeling loved and wanted, worthwhile and belonging, and I am especially relishing the ability to identify when people are not treating me kindly.

It all makes me wonder. Being released from prison is not as simple as I thought. Old memories that had been stored away, repressed so that I could survive day-to-day living, are rising up at all times of the day or night – making me feel deeply sad, or very angry. In short, while my life is improving at every level: emotionally, in my relationships with significant others, and professionally at every level – the anxiety and pain of old wounds are excruciating.

Yoga, meditation, and long walks are good medicine, as well as a steamy bowl of oat bran, honey and walnuts topped off with an assortment of fresh berries in the morning. The best healing, though comes through the tender love and support of Life Partner, good friends, and an expert therapist, as I continue to release myself from the chains of paradigms past.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: You can never go home again