tamarjacobson

Mark Ruffalo quoting Joseph Campbell on Fresh Air:

Joyful participation in the sorrow of the living.

Driving home from work last night, listening to Ruffalo’s gentle voice sharing his life story, I felt akin to that quote. Deep within me. I fumbled in the dark for a pen and wrote it down blindly while keeping my eyes sharply on the road ahead, a couple of tears prickling into my eyes from the beauty of the expression. I thought to myself, "I must blog about this."

For I have always felt that I, too, participate joyfully, wondrously, in the human condition, even as my heart is breaking.

I say that the strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. George Eliot

Generally speaking, we regard discomfort in any form as bad news. But … feelings like disappointment, embarrassment, irritation, resentment, anger, jealousy, and fear, instead of being bad news, are actually very clear moments that teach us where it is that we’re holding back. Pema Chodron

When we, as teachers, are clear about why we do what we do, our interactions, decisions and choices will ultimately be beneficial for all children’s well being and academic achievement. We have an awesome responsibility. Our subtle and subconscious reactions to children when they need us most can affect them for the rest of their lives. Me

What a find at Frank Paynter’s place!

… and what a find at Lynette Van Duyn’s place!

What a great way to start my day.

… From my friend, Donna.

Dedicated to mothers everywhere: Download WilliamTellOverture.wmv

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Confronting our discomfort

Quote of the day:

If we don’t stand up for children, then we don’t stand for much.
Marian Wright Edelman from CCIE

Just before things become out of control busy I wandered out to feed the birds. One little squirrel came up to greet me. Hopped casually as close to my feet as she could and munched on a couple of peanuts comfortably as I replenished the feeder and hooked in some suet for the woodpeckers that come to eat daily. Ada called out from the porch letting me know she could see and hear me as I spoke softly to the squirrel, "Hey little fellow. You’re back again I see." I rummaged in the bin for a few more nuts and tossed them towards him. "Here you are," I said, "Are you an angel squirrel? eh? Are you?" She continued to munch, sitting on his haunches nibbling hastily before all the others would soon surely arrive. Ada called out again. "I’m coming, little friend, " I called back, "Hold on a moment. Just feeding the birds." I looked up around me wondering if the neighbors might be thinking, "There goes that crazy old woman talking to herself out there again." As I walked back into the apartment I heard the neighbor on the third floor singing scales, his voice rising and falling out the window and through the air, over and over again. Gray and cloudy this morning, a very tiny drizzle but temperatures warm nevertheless. The oak tree showering us all with huge leaves and as many acorns as to feed all the creatures of these woods surrounding us.

I sighed deeply. What a day!

And then wandered into the apartment to start sifting through the piles and piles of work awaiting me. For some reason I have been humming to myself all morning, "Human kindness is overflowing, and I think it’s going to rain today."

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Shedding

Ronni Bennett got me to thinking about where I blog. As I was photographing my space, I found myself looking from many different angles at the area where I sit down to commune with the Blogosphere. I realized the environment of my study is about connection, interaction, and relationships with people, plants or animals. For example, can you see the toy mice waiting for Ada to join me on my desk? They are on top of a little blanket my mother gave me the last time I was visiting her in Israel. It has become Ada’s favorite place to sit. The cat sitter recently told me when I returned from a trip out West, that Ada sits there when I am away. Each morning she and I bat the mice back and forth to each other in a "welcome-back-and-good-morning" type game to get the day started. Facing me on the wall are photographs of pets who have died, favorite postcards and some sayings that inspire and fill me with hope. Alongside the large window where I look out at the woods of Fairmount Park and especially at the huge old oak tree, there are an abundance of Christmas cacti and violets that I have grown from their own saplings and cuttings over the years. In a month or so they will all be blooming in a chorus of color, a celebration of the space they occupy. Plants have accompanied me all my life. I acquired a love of them from my mother – directly and completely. I have always marveled at how she is able to turn any environment into an interesting, exotic and beautiful growing space. And I have always adored the ways she talks about each plant. She knows their habits, likes, dislikes, and is always amazed and intrigued by what they do and how they grow.

I discovered blogging almost three years ago when we relocated to Philadelphia and, as many of you know, it has been my main source of social connection and interaction. In addition, it has been a looking glass into my psyche helping me uncover uncomfortable aspects of myself as I share them with supportive readers, some who have become what I consider to be close friends, more intimate than most because they have read my writings about my deepest and most difficult feelings. Recently, Ronni wrote a piece about the changing blogosphere and social connection waning through other ad-filled social media sites. Her insightful post, along with taking pictures and reflecting on "where I blog," brought me back ever so lovingly to my Mining Nuggets, this blog, which was born out of the ancient pains and tribulations of my first ever site: Tamarika: In and Out of Confidence.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Be back soon

Quote of the day:

I love the dark hours of my being. / My mind deepens into them. / There I can find, as in old letters, / the days of my life, already lived, / and held like a legend, and understood. Rilke

On the drive home from work last night I heard Phillip Roth talking to Terry Gross. I was particularly struck by their discussion about developing strategies for endurance as we grow older. While I have not reached the honorable age of the character in his latest novel, I too am resigning myself to losing the younger me and finding ways to accept the challenging changes as they unfold.

I laughed at myself this morning as I reflected on my doctor’s follow-up visit yesterday. Feeling emotionally contained and stoic as I jumped up onto his examining table I found myself blurting out uncontrollably, "Please don’t be alarmed by the condition of my toes. My feet were rather battered up this summer from a one hundred mile hike I completed in England." Needless to say, the doctor was not even entertaining the notion of examining my feet. He was an ob/gyn. Once those words had escaped my lips and were hanging out there, I continued, puzzled by my own outburst, "How strange. One never really knows where the shame will creep in … does one?" My voice trailed off and he smiled kindly saying something about he would never have noticed my toes in the first place. The day had proceeded with meetings and classes well into the night and concluded as I drove home exhausted and fell into bed.

This morning, I took my coffee out to the patio and reflected on my visit with the doctor. Blocking the anxiety of follow-up diagnosis and news I had focused my attention on my one or two bruised toe-nails instead of the matter at hand.

I suppose shame and fear accompany one another closely at times.

The beneficent old oak tree is raining acorns on the roof, in the garden, all over the grass and even in the bird bath Tom bought me for my birthday two years ago. Squirrels and chipmunks have been busy for days, scurrying and scuttling around collecting, eating, burrowing, and hiding the nuts. Ada and I sit and watch from the window. At times she clucks and chirps but mostly we sit together in silence, still as a Sphinx just being together, observing, eyes darting from side to side, turning our heads as if in one synchronized movement. I follow her lead for she notices the tiniest movement from the smallest corner of her eye.

Lately, my dreams have been about traveling along a rough and rocky terrain, sometimes dangerously high and narrow and at others through interesting swamps and forests. In an old white pick-up truck and also by train. And I am never driving. Always a passenger, tossed back and forth, with no control of where we are headed or how we will get there. I am always interested in the view and sometimes feel helpless and scared. People around me are in charge of the drive and I am not comfortable because as much as I depend on them and need them to steer the course, I do not always trust that they know what they are doing. I awake pensive, and wander around pouring my coffee, opening blinds, preparing for the day almost as if in a trance.

Autumn is always a reflective time for me anyway. Living in the woods with the huge old oak tree as my partner and all the animals and birds coming and going, I can’t help but feel the seasons deeply in my bones. As plants and trees shed and prepare themselves for the long sleep, I find myself reviewing the past year and looking towards new and different times ahead. And I feel as if I am heading into some interesting, and, perhaps, scary territory.

I just hope I get to steer the course from time to time. But for that I guess I will need to take some action and, even, reach for the wheel. Or, perhaps I might learn to sit back, relax, and trust that the drivers know what they are doing.

I awoke this morning realizing that I have my family back. It was a gentle feeling, kind and warm, and very, very peaceful. For the past, many years since I emigrated to the United States and left the family behind, I have been prodding, prying, exploring, delving, and probing deep into those dark shadowy places of my mind to uncover how I came to be who I am today. It was painful. No doubt about it. Confronting unrealistic expectations, uncovering my own story, finding my voice. I fought, cried, kicked and screamed within and without. But in the end was face to face with my self, over and over again. For awhile I pushed all my family members back, withdrew and shut myself out. I simply had to stand alone in order to discover where I began and where each person ended for me. Who was who, why was why, what was what.

These past two weeks, during the illness, my sisters and mother have rallied around me, calling from Israel and England every day to make sure I was all right, and give me comfort from afar. It was amazing for me. Each time I thanked them profusely they would say, "Well, what did you expect?" Each day as I was feeling afraid or sore they would offer to come out to help me and every time they did that I felt safer and safer, stronger and stronger. I realized they are there for me, for each other. They always have been. In my emotional turmoil and self exploration I have been pushing them away with outlandish expectations and blame for my own shortcomings and transgressions. Indeed, in the past, I might not have embraced those calls with the love and gratitude that I did recently. In fact, I realize that I am finally allowing them back in, allowing myself to be a part of my large, diverse, interesting, humorous, fun-loving, complex, loving family.

Of course, all of us have shortcomings. None of us are perfect. We have all done things to each other intentionally and unintentionally that have been hurtful, excluding, or unfair. But, in the end, we are a family and through my mother’s strength and determination, even though some of us are flung far and wide throughout the world, we are all in this together.

Tears fall like rain as I write this. Tears of relief and gratitude for the way they hung in there with me, remained constant and true and full of love if only I would allow it. I have not been easy with my complaints, criticisms and demands. I do not regret the fight I have fought even though I know I have hurt some people here and there, just as I have felt hurt. It was like surgery for me. Psycho-emotional surgery where I had to lift the bandage and get right into the middle of the wound in order for it to heal. What a thought. For I might have to go into a physical surgery after next week’s test results and, how strange, am not feeling as afraid as two weeks ago.

Sometimes, we just have to go right into the middle of the wound in order for it to heal.

Writing about teachers, children and anger, I cannot help but explore my own at the same time. And what a complex emotion it is! For, from a very young age we are taught (and teach) that anger is a bad, shameful emotion that one needs to get rid of, repress – anything, rather than confront it. And yet, it is a necessary feeling that rises to warn us that something is amiss, helps us take care of ourselves, fight for our rights and protect our integrity. It is not the emotion itself that is bad and shameful. It is the way we learn to express or repress it. Of course, this may not sound too new for many of us. We have gathered by now that it is not good for our bodies or souls if we hold in uncomfortable emotions for too long. Nor does it really benefit those around us whether in personal or professional relationships. Somehow, any how, anger seeps out in all sorts of ways: passively, aggressively, though illness and headaches, destructively, masochistically … on and on.

Some of you may remember Harriet Lerner’s book, The Dance of Anger? I reached for it again this past weekend because during my past illness I experienced quite a bit of anger. Constant niggling, simmering anger at my body giving in like that. It rendered me helpless and exhausted especially because mostly I internalized it into a mild kind of depression. Debilitating. There was other anger too, the details of which I will not go into here because it involves my personal relationships. Although I did not express it outwardly I was seething within. As I was re-reading Lerner’s book thinking that I needed to brush up on women’s expression of anger for the third chapter of my book, I came upon this:

Fighting and blaming is sometimes a way both to protest and protect the status quo when we are not quite ready to make a move in one direction or another.

I stopped dead in my tracks. All that simmering, seething anger (internal, silent fighting and blaming) was debilitating indeed. But serving me well as it held me down and in place. With all these years of self-alteration and awareness I had journeyed back to the very same place only to know it for the first time.

This morning I awoke much clearer than any of the days of the past two weeks. Not only did the illness really feel like it was finally dissipating, but I seemed less afraid and helpless about my future. Not a big deal revelation or anything. Just a reminder. Anger will always come and go. Sometimes I will allow it to hold me down and in place. But, perhaps, one day, I will recognize it for the helpful, warning sign it is.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Sun and life