tamarjacobson

Being in a phased retirement program at my university has helped me experience what it will be like to be fully retired from my faculty and academic position next June. Indeed, each year for the past two years and including this academic year coming up, I have leave from the university from December through September. While I have continued to write a book and article, facilitate professional development workshops for teachers, and present at regional and national conferences, I have not had to teach students or attend department meetings during that time. So, to all intents and purposes I have been slowly phasing into retirement. It has been interesting to be sure. The pace of my life toned down away from the intense life pitch of years gone by. In the beginning it took a bit of getting used to. I found myself anxious at times when I did not have the usual running around schedule of full-time work outside the home. Slowly but surely, though, I got into the new rhythm, and now enjoy it very much.

This morning during yoga exercises and meditation, I suddenly realized that retiring from my full-time work does not mean I am retiring from me. I am not my work. I am me. Retired or not – I will always be me. It sounds almost like a cliche, and for some this might be a given or superfluous for me to say. For me, though, it felt like a large discovery – an epiphany. Indeed, it made me smile out loud in the midst of deep breathing as I sat crosslegged in an almost lotus posture. There was a gentle breeze through the window that brushed my head and hair as I straightened my back feeling as if someone was pulling the back of my head upward toward the sky. It was thrilling. I am and always will be me complete with my beliefs, interests, desires, ideas, emotions, relationships, interactions, activities, loves, anxieties, creativity, intensities – all! My self worth is not tangled up with a pay check or business card. I cannot imagine I will stop traveling around the country or world sharing my passion with other early childhood educators. Instead, I will do it as me, not as belonging to thus and such institution, but I will always be my own kind of institution. Just an ordinary human being connected to many others through community – or communities as a citizen of the world – a citizen of humanity. I felt a different kind of energy for the rest of today. Warm and exciting, as if I had discovered something very special, precious, and important.

Last weekend a dear friend made a party for me, my family and friends, in order to celebrate the launch of my new book, which came out last month in Texas. It was a beautiful affair – classy, warm, friendly, and shiny with people dressed up, all of whom had come to celebrate and support my accomplishment. My friend had made all the delicious food herself, and there was much happiness in the room. As I stood and read a passage from the book, and answered questions that people asked, I spoke as me – not as a professor who belonged to any specific institution. I shared my thoughts and feelings openly and with full heart with people, who were genuinely interested, loving and supportive.

It is hard for me to express my gratitude for my friend, Helen, who made this beautiful party for me, for I think it helped me celebrate not only the launch of my new book, but also the beginning of a new journey for me – one, that I am excited to embark upon. I feel strengthened and supported by a vibrant and caring community, and look forward to ending my academic position but never retiring from me.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Pay attention to children with an open heart

Quote of the day

I have yet to see a serious act of violence that was not provoked by the experience of feeling ashamed or humiliated, disrespected and ridiculed. James Gilligan, Psychiatrist and author, NPR. April, 2015.

For awhile now I decided I would not talk about our political situation neither through this blog nor through social media. Our President behaves in a way that I cannot abide. I do not identify with him in anyway, and am deeply ashamed that he represents me as "my" leader.  

However, now with this deplorable policy of terrorizing and separating innocent families from their children, my heart is breaking. This country that I came to thirty years ago seems alien to me. At the time I had been so curious, proud, and joyful to become a citizen of the so-called "great" United States of America. But now the administration is ugly, mean-spirited, and immoral in every possible way, and its Republican members of their party support cruelty in a way that is horrifying to me. Indeed, the country feels torn apart, and broken hearted.

How can people be so cruel? How many times during the course of history are we forced to ask this question? I believe it begins in our earliest childhoods. When children are humiliated, wounded or hurt they learn to humiliate, wound and hurt others. We learn our humanity from those we love and who love us. But love is a complex emotion, for as young children we learn that love is very often accompanied by pain, beatings and insults. 

So, our President, his Republican party leaders and members, the border guards – the people, who believe in, nay even seem to enjoy, being cruel to innocent young children and their families by terrorizing and separating them – they have surely had devastating emotional trauma in their own childhoods. Harsh discipline is not discipline at all – it is punishment: mean and often cruel – causing emotional degradation and physical pain.

Discipline is kind and guiding, firm and comforting. Will we forever sift our ideas about discipline through the emotional memories of punishment that we have repressed or stored away in our brains? When will we, as responsible adults teaching, guiding, directing, or even ruling a people, stop and reflect on all this, and choose a different path to the one we endured as we grew up? 

I am feeling helpless and broken hearted in the face of our leaders' collective cruelty and deplorable behaviors to anyone who is in need or "other." I can join other activists and donate to organizations that are working hard to counter all this depravity.

And I can write, write, write … if only someone – anyone – will hear me and make the change we need in this nation's terrible, awful, excruciating struggle to become "a more perfect union."

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Reflections on self-regulation

Yesterday morning I buried a small opossum. He had been lying on my lawn for two days. Each day I examined him and checked whether he was dead or just playing dead as opossums do. After three days, I was convinced that he had well and truly passed on. He lay nestled on the lawn that I had mowed a few days before discovering him. He had a small smile on his face and looked as if he was sleeping peacefully. His tail was curled under his soft, whiteish, gray body. I wasn't sure if he was a toddler or adolescent. So, I took out the large gardening fork that is really good for digging deeply into the soft, cold ground underneath the Stewartia tree in the corner of my back yard. I dug deep among the sapling ferns that are beginning to sprout with the spring morning. Then I gently gathered up little opossum with a shovel, and carried him to his newly dug grave. I shed tears telling him how beautiful he was and how sorry I was that his time had come. After covering him up with the dark brown soil, I planted a small columbine sapling over this grave, and quietly sat awhile next to it, reflecting on the nature of death, passing on, and letting go. 

Just lately I realized that I have let go of a myth that I developed as the core of my emotional survival as a young child growing up in my family. Spending the summer a few months after my mother died last year writing a book about young children needing attention helped release me from a delusional reality that I have lived with for over sixty years. I had started thinking about this, and even wrote a post about my initial reaction to my mother's death exactly one year ago. What a coincidence, I thought, as I sat cross legged on the grass next to little opossum's grave. 

I had written that I had been waiting for my mother to acknowledge or validate me in some way right up until she died. But recently I understand that it is even deeper and more complex than that. It's true that I spent my whole life longing for her to notice me, which of course spilled over into all of my relationships, as I transferred that feeling to everything I tried to accomplish, or with whomever I tried to love. But in order to feel worthwhile, as I waited to be acknowledged, I developed a myth that, in fact, in secret I was actually my mother's favorite. With her death and the silence that came with it, I realized once and for all that the "secret," was mine alone. It was a fantasy – not reciprocal – not reality. Acknowledgement would never come. Indeed, I would have to do the acknowledging and validating my self.

What a release, as I discover that I am not waiting for nor seeking acknowledgement from others any longer. This feeling that I am good enough with who I am just as I am is strange to be sure, and new. I have noticed the shift in small, significant ways. For example, I take less selfies, and post less on Facebook. It hasn't been intentional. I just realized this, as I sat next to the little opossum's grave reflecting about the past months. Also, since last summer I have been less hungry. Consequently, I have lost 24 pounds weight.

More importantly, though, the feelings of longing, the constant ache as if I have some kind of hole in my soul, these have all abated considerably – therefore making way for a feeling of peace that has come over me. 

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Holding out for a sign

Dear blog,

I have not forgotten you, nor have I lost the urge to write about anything and everything. It seems that I have been so busy learning about what it is going to be like when I retire from my full-time professor job. For example, I have started reading novels, and am enjoying it very much. Plus, I adore taking long walks and having coffee or breakfast with friends in my community. 

I decided to take me on as a challenge to be healthy and fit so that when I go into my seventies next year, I will be able to stand firm and face whatever the new developmental stage of old age will have to offer. So, I have been eating healthy, walking more, doing strength training and yoga exercises. I am enjoying this. Taking care of me. It feels new and different. 

I can't wait for spring and summer, and I seem to be enjoying all my time spent learning to do things that I love. Recently I read Ursula Le Guin's, No Time to Spare, a compilation of her blog posts about aging. I especially loved how she described the idea of "spare time:"

The opposite of spare time is, I guess, occupied time. In my case I still don't know what spare time is because all my time is occupied. It always has been and it is now. It's occupied by living.

Having the spring semester off means I am home a lot more. And Oscar and Mimi love having me around. They gather around me wherever I plant myself – by my computer or with a good book. They snuggle around me and keep me warm. This past weekend when I was feeling poorly with the latest stomach flu that I might have caught on the planes flying back and forth from Israel, they kept me as warm as can be. 

Don't get me wrong, blog. I am still working. I completed a book and it will be published this July. I am particularly fond of this one, and look forward to holding it in my hands. It will come out exactly 30 years since I immigrated to the States from Israel. I think I might want to have a party to celebrate both its arrival, and my thirty year immigration anniversary. And, blog, I am still presenting workshops and lectures here and there all over the country. So, even though I only have one full academic year left at my professor job, my plate is full and glass is overflowing.

Oh – before I forget … did I tell you that I spent ten days in Israel recently visiting my mother's grave for the first year memorial after her passing last March? I think I might have forgotten to tell you that. My sister, Elise, has been taking care of her grave with such dedication and love. Indeed, she created a rock garden on it just as my mother would have loved. She tends it weekly by watering and adding new succulents she brings to plant from her own garden. And every Friday, she lights a memorial candle. Here is a photograph:

As I stood by the graveside, I felt peaceful, grateful and happy to see the flowers and cacti enveloping my mother's memory with such creativity and love.

So, dear blog, I will be back again to tell my stories, and write out my emotional theories about this and that. Thank you for being so patient with me. I love knowing you are here, always quietly waiting and supportive, a vessel to carry my ideas and thoughts, emotions and words out into the Interwebs. 

Much love always, Tamarika.

What a storm that was! Forceful winds whipping and plastering heavy, wet snow and ice to the trees, burdening them to crashing to the ground atop buses and cars demolishing them and pulling down power lines leaving devastation in their wake. Being left without power for days on end without an end in sight creates a situation with many different feelings. The first is one of being out of control and naively thinking it will end quickly. Then reality sets in and there is a brief period of frustration, anger and sadness. Hopelessness that we will live like this forever: cold to the bone, dark early in the day, with none of the usual media outlets that kept me so preoccupied and distracted all the days of my life, it seems. And then, acceptance. Here is the situation – force majeure – and nothing to be done about it. What seemed like an uncontrollable and unbearable situation becomes day to day life. I start to realize that there are things that I can do to make life more bearable again. Purchase a kerosene space heater that will take the chill out of the air; reach up for the coffee press pitcher so that we can have coffee in the morning; fill a hot water bottle to put under the cats’ bed clothes, so they can feel comfortable and warm, and then take it to bed so that sleep becomes peaceful and bearable again; discover that there are other ways to reach media: library, iPhone, a visit to friends, reading before the dark sets in; and most importantly developing relationships and connections, discovering a community of people who are going through similar experiences, and hearing from an extraordinary number of supportive others, who offer us their homes, showers, food – whatever we might need.

There are many moments of gratitude that our fate could have been so much worse but isn’t. For example, we have a gas water heater, so we can have a hot shower each day. Plus, our stove top is gas, so we can boil water and cook food. It is cold enough that even though the fridge is out, the food doesn’t spoil as fast. We have the means to purchase a kerosene heater at all. We have blankets and plenty of winter clothing to keep us warm. Each day, I reflect on all the many, many people out there in the world who have lost their homes, who constantly live out in the cold and are not even sure where their next meal is coming from. What about all those refugees running for their lives, living in terror each second from murderous bombings, plundering and homelessness? Our lot is really only one of inconvenience and discomfort that will certainly end if not in the next couple of days, at least by the next week.

Before we know it, we will be back to being distracted by all the comforts and our millions of media outlets. I only hope that when that happens and we return to our former lives, we don’t forget this experience and what we have been through. I want to hold onto feelings of gratitude and appreciation for the support of all our friends in the community. I want to remember how much I cared for our cats with love and tenderness. I especially want to hold onto the feeling of strength and resourcefulness when I realized that there were things I could do to make our lives bearable again – different and disorienting, yes – but bearable even, at times, to the point of joy.

Last year at Mining Nuggets: Openings

Quotes of the Day:

I worshipped dead men for their strength, Forgetting I was strong. Vita Sackville-West, in Steinem, "Revolution From Within."

Once we were old enough to have an education, the first step toward self-esteem for most of us is not to learn but unlearn. We need to demystify the forces that have told us what we should be before we can value what we are. Gloria Steinem, Revolution From Within.

[Both quotes are taken from the book I authored: "Confronting our Discomfort: Clearing the Way to Anti-Bias in Early Childhood."]

February rolled around quickly this year it seems. Before I could blink an eye, I find myself almost to the middle of the second month of this year. The past year has been one of tough, emotional work. Painful, challenging, and, at times, daunting. But as I climb up and out of it this past month and a half I sense a shift. Of course, it has been happening within me for some time now, but lately it feels real and here to stay. A few days ago I read an excerpt from Geneen Roth's upcoming book: This Messy Magnificent Life.

The million-dollar answer to the question that most people aren’t asking about why weight loss is so difficult to maintain, is that along with the exaltation come less positive feelings. The lightness that accompanies an unencumbered body feels vulnerable. And if we’ve used our weight in any way, even unconsciously, to keep us safe, the joy of weight loss can be overlaid by a wash of terror. In my experience, the unspoken reason that people don’t maintain their weight loss is that they might not want to be thinner more than they want to stay protected or hidden.

While Roth is talking about physical weight loss and the mind-body connection, her words spoke to me. Feeling lighter emotionally is also a weird type of disconcerting feeling. I am used to feeling weighed down by traumatic, emotional baggage. As I shed it more and more, the peaceful feeling and lightness that is emerging is not like anything I have felt before. What can I say: it's empowering! And feeling powerful has always felt dangerous to me. As I write this sentence I suddenly remember that I wrote about this in Chapter 4 of my first book (see above). The chapter is titled, "In and Out of Confidence," and I open it with a story about a mother of a child in the Campus Child Care Center of which I was the Director at the time. She described to me feeling excited about feeling powerful ("in confidence," as she called it), and that it could be dangerous – that she could move mountains. Somehow there was danger in that. A couple of other women coming in to pick up their children overheard our conversation and agreed. They too felt it was dangerous when they felt powerful. 

I know that my fear of my power or assertiveness comes directly from my childhood days and the wrath I incurred from my mother when I tried to disagree with her, or when I dared to tell her what I needed emotionally. However, I also know that society in general reinforces women's fear of being powerful. As Germaine Greer wrote: "It's time to get angry again!" And I hear the call to power all across the country and world lately with the #MeToo movement, and women running for office all over the nation. 

This is a complex topic – women and power in a patriarchal society where many of our mothers themselves were/are the gatekeepers. This needs a chapter in and of itself instead of just a blog post. However, it reminds me that shedding pounds of weight or emotional baggage can make us feel lighter, full of energy and freedom of spirit. Carrying around all that physical or emotional weight kept us safe and hidden behind intricately woven survival techniques since we were children. 

What courage it must take to lose it. And, even more daunting is to hold still with the fear that arises when I shed all that ancient baggage I have held onto for so long. When I lose the labels and myths that dragged me into the emotional abyss time after time. When I take off my sunglasses and see with clarity the reality of who I am today. Indeed, I become vulnerable and exposed to myself as I show me how I really can be in my own chosen skin.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Closure

A year ago I wrote:

Because of the book I am now writing, I am constantly thinking about children needing attention. Today, I thought about how adults want young children to learn self-regulation. Somehow they see children's need for attention as getting in the way of learning self-regulation. Their lessons are so behaviorist in approach: do this and that to please me, your teacher, parent, significant adult – or I will show you how displeased I am. I will ignore you or punish you until you succumb and do it my way. I think to myself, "How will children learn about empathy, compassion, or to make a stand about anything, when they are learning only to please others?" I remember from a very young age learning to do anything for the significant adults in my life just so they wouldn't ignore me. Being ignored makes us invisible when we are children.

How can we learn about who we are or what we need when we are being ignored? Indeed, shunning is so much more powerful even than physical admonishment …

And now the book is done and will be published this year.

Little did I know how emotionally painful it would be for me to write it. For, three months into last year, my mother passed away, and I took up the book project in the summer, just three months later. With her death, I somehow finally gave myself the permission to dig deep into my own childhood, and remember the ways in which I was taught to self-regulate. I was able to feel it viscerally with an intensity that was acute. At times it felt like emotional surgery. Over the months since completing the book, I am increasingly aware of how and why I chose again and again to be in relationships that were hurtful for me. I am also much more understanding of how little self-worth I had. It is, as my therapist says, like taking off the sun glasses and seeing things clearly in the reality of daylight.

The shouting and wailing that I incurred when I hinted at needing attention or having emotional needs met as a child, were nothing compared to the ignoring and shunning that came after. Indeed, to this day, when I am shunned I am gripped by a chilling fear, in the pit of my stomach, as if my very life is in danger. I understand to the core of my being why I would be attracted again and again to people who did not like or want me – only to try and convince them that I could be worthy of their love if only they would give me a chance. And I developed delusions that I was needed more than anyone because secretly, in the end, they (being my mother of course) loved me best. 

These are all amazing revelations for me. Shedding illusions, and realizing my self-worth can only release me – free me up, and clear the way now for a different way of perceiving myself, interactions, and my relationships. And so I dedicate this, my thirteenth blogging anniversary to clearing the way more and more, to unpacking the understanding of my past life choices, and in making ones that bring more peace and self-acceptance. But even more importantly, it has all only made my passion for early childhood education ever more fervent. It has made it even more urgent for me to help adults realize how important their relationships with children are for everything: attachment and confidence, socialization, academic success, and especially for feeling valued.

And on this anniversary I want to thank all those who have supportively accompanied me on my blogging journey these past thirteen years. So many people really, but especially those I started out with thirteen years ago, and especially Danny Miller, Frank Paynter, Neil Kramer, and Mary Frazier Brennan.

Early this morning I looked at Oscar and Mimi sleeping peacefully close up against the heating units. It was dark outside with decorative lights from the house across the street twinkling through the window. Snow began falling softly. I realized that my cats are darling companions, who will accompany me into 2018. They are interested in everything I do and look up when I speak. They lie close while I write or when I sit and read on the couch in the living room. They purr and meow, and are always there somehow in the background of my day. 

It got me to thinking who else will accompany me into the New Year. What a heart warming feeling that was! For, companions come in all forms.

My husband, of course, and members of the community, who have become such good friends and neighbors. My son and his wife, even as they live at least a train ride away in a neighboring city. Family and friends near and far. Facebook and blogger friends. My therapist, publisher and editors. All my plants inside and out. My trusty old car, and the neighboring gray cat, who visits our yard each day. Trains and buses. Our Co-op and coffee shops. My computer and iPhone that keep me connected to the world and close to home all at the same time. 

The reality of now will accompany me, and holding still in the moment, even as memories and illusions of nostalgia try to distract me. Baking my old trusty chocolate cake, or cooking a pot of chicken soup. Routines and spontaneity. Weather and early morning light.

Companions come in all forms.

Quote of the day

I have some goals for my New Year. They are part of my wintry mix: writing the new book, sharing my emotional life with others, allowing myself to face more and more of my uncomfortable or frightening feelings, and becoming more healthy – physically and emotionally. From: A Wintry Mix 

Reading over last year's December posts, I realize that I actually fulfilled all the goals I had set myself for the new year ahead, even though once I had written about them, I immediately forgot them!

I'm getting the hang of looking back and thinking forward. I find that reflecting on, and understanding the past helps me make the changes I want for my future in the present. Being an adult is enormously freeing. Indeed, the older I become, the less fear I have about feeling, thinking, or acting differently.

For this coming New Year, I have only one goal, and I do believe it might be the hardest one yet. I want to learn how to ask for what I want and need without fear. In my upcoming book, which will be published next year, I deepen the research for my self, and really come to grips with how I learned not to feel deserving of anyone's attention. I realized while writing the book, that I am unable to ask for what I need, if I don't feel deserving in the first place. I discovered it – not as some kind of cognitive, intellectual act – but viscerally, physically and emotionally. It felt as if all the years of therapy finally came together and showed me a well-lit path from far away into my childhood leading me out into my present reality. This "awareness" thing that I so longed for is, in fact, excruciatingly painful, like having deep surgery into my emotional memory. 

I must admit that I welcomed the pain, as uncomfortable as it was throughout the summer months and into early fall. For, it is being followed by healing, clarity, and freedom from fear. I have become even more passionate about the importance of strengthening our quality relationships with young children. I know from personal experience that they need our understanding and validation in order to thrive emotionally. They need us to be present and to connect, while taking them seriously, and showing them how worthwhile they are.

We all need that.

For the New Year, I am setting myself a goal: to feel deserving enough to ask for what I want and need without fear of being thought of as demanding, a burden, trouble, or in the way. I am going to try and change the paradigm of my self and feel worthy enough. I realize it is easier said than done, and like last year I will probably forget I set this goal as soon as it is written.

However, for some time now I already sense a stirring, a shift in how I perceive myself. So … I think I am already on my way …

Okay – here is a third try to write something for December. Writing a blog there are no crumpled pieces of paper strewn all over the floor. But ideas are strewn all over my brain. At first I wanted to write about awareness and how my self exploration  and understanding has made me more aware and clear about who I am and how I got here. But then I realized that there was way too much to write in one blog post and I did not feel like delving into painful realizations.

Then I started to write about the year that was and how I am thinking ahead to the new year. But that felt so cliche and expected at this time of the year.

Finally, I wanted to write about the changing weather and how getting older this year has been gratifying because I feel so much more alive and authentic than I have ever been. I was about to include in that some of what I was thinking about as I completed the final draft of my upcoming book. None of those pieces felt worthwhile to post.

And so, then I tried my hand at some political activist writing where I explained that I made a conscious decision this past year not to discuss politics on my blog or Facebook page. It was not out of fear, or even sorrow that President Obama's term had come to an end. It was simple. I did not want the name of our current President to sully my websites. I did not want to give him any kind of attention. But mainly, his name, actions, comments, behaviors, and interactions are shameful, and I did not want that to taint anything that came from me. But that topic fell, well, flat on its face.

My brain has been rambling on and on today making me think of so many different things. In the end I suppose I am glad that the semester is winding down and I am looking forward to the winter holiday season with family and friends. That's as banal as can be but then so is life mostly – ordinary and day-to-day. It doesn't have to be exciting and surprising. It can be just that – visits with friends, baking a cake, and feeding the cats. Walking in the woods and gasping with joy at the blooming Christmas cacti in the breakfast nook.