tamarjacobson

Ada Mae – today

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: It’s party time

Logging into Facebook this morning, I saw that Alex Halavais had asked a question:

Any way (short of major drugs) to stop being so easily distracted and get my #*@($ writing done?

At first I laughed out loud. And then I experienced that support group type of warm, fuzzy feeling that comes with being understood. I replied immediately, my answer spilling out faster than I could type:

grrr … *tell* me about it! I wanna know how, too … as well … also …

I lit my candle and incense, switched on the little water fountain that tinkles gently in my study, turned on the CD player to hear The Passport Series, a collection of music put together as a gift for me by my friend Joe-From-Philly, back in those old passport-panic days, and proceeded to water the plants.

While I was watering the plants on the patio and in the living room I could hear the Jays screaming and squawking, probably announcing the food I had just poured into the feeders by the old oak tree outside our window. A slight breeze played with the leaves at the top of the trees in the woods and sunshine filtered through. A beautiful day to be sure. "Perhaps I could take a walk by the Wissahickon after I get done with the plants," I thought to myself. I opened all the doors and windows to allow the cool air to blow through the apartment, and realized I was still thinking about Halavais‘ question. A mischievous smile curled into my lips as I imagined sitting at the computer to write a post about distractions.

"What a great way to answer the question," I thought. How comforting to realize that it is plaguing other people out there. Bend towards, become it, drown myself in distraction, wallow in it, soak it into my skin, brain, soul, burning eyes, and down to my very newly painted toes. Experience the distraction! Fully, openly, completely and without fear. Recognize all its forms and sensations. Its callous cruelty, beauty, the way distraction becomes fun, how it causes shame and guilt to seep into the soul. To become acquainted with its insidious nature as it creeps around the psyche squeezing my brain with its dis-tractable tentacles. Examine its purpose, understand the importance of distraction for me, specifically for me.

I sat down in front of the computer and cast my eyes down to the piles of books strewn around my feet waiting to be used for the literature review I had just started working on before I clicked over to Facebook. I felt the guilt sensation: a kind of sickness in the pit of my stomach, emptiness in the cavity below my rib cage, eyes prickling on the verge of full scale burning. I sat with the discomfort realizing that this uncomfortable feeling had almost become like a friend to me. "Hm …," I thought. "So, I like to feel guilty. It is familiar, eh?" This time when I looked down at the books on the floor I breathed deeply, a sigh loudly escaping my lips, and relaxed.

Distracted again, I checked out when Message in a Bottle would be playing on television later today, because I had been interrupted trying to catch it on some channel or other yesterday just before friends came over for dinner. It was not a particularly spectacular movie but it had just become interesting when I had to turn it off. Okay. Now distractions are arriving even as I try to examine them. I am being distracted with distractions. The situation is chronic. Dire!

Or, perhaps, it is just that it is summer. My nineteen years of full-time work and study, writing and presenting has finally caught up with me and I had a particularly good summer this year. Maybe I just caught a play bug and want to play more and more. Perhaps distraction has nothing to do with guilt and shame and it is just that fun is more appealing. That is it! I just want to have fun.

And yet, I have been collecting books and articles on the topic for my next book for close to thirteen years now. It is a subject near and dear to my heart. A publisher, whose editor understands the importance of what I have to say, is interested, really interested. Contract in hand and deadline beckons. I think about how exciting it is when I get into the writing groove and enjoy watching the words flow up and out of the brain, through my fingers and onto the screen. Ah, so writing gives me pleasure?

Distraction = guilt and shame. Writing = pleasure. A picture is forming.

It occurs to me that distraction feels out of control. It leaves me without a choice. It takes me away from what I want to do, what I enjoy doing, that which gives me pleasure. I do not choose to be distracted. It happens to me. It is not that I write awhile and then stretch and say to myself, "Ah, that was a good writing session. Now I think I will do thus and such," and then do it with a relaxed and happy feeling. It is more like, suddenly I desperately need to arrange the photos in my photo album, check out when the latest movies are being released, or just have to see if FP has invited me to dance on Facebook … [Hold it! I think he just did!] And then, as I follow the uncontrollable distraction, guilt and shame creeps and seeps bringing on the blues, feelings of worthlessness and incompetence, angst, and, even, sometimes … panic.

If only I could let go of needing to feel bad about myself, I might be able to choose to take all kinds of pleasurable breaks that would, thus, enhance further the joy of writing – releasing myself from the burdensome feelings I have created for myself. That is, writing is a chore and not a pleasure.

Having become almost mesmerized by thinking about all of this, I suddenly realize:

Theorizing about distraction is itself a form of distraction.

And now, enough. I really must go and find something to eat …

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: The stand I will take

This just in from Marion …

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: Virginia, I become you

Well at least my study looks like writing is happening here. Books and articles are strewn all over the floor and post-it notes with bits and pieces scribbled all over them lie around the carpet. Whenever a thought crosses my mind, or someone says something interesting I write it down. For example over sashimi and sake last night, in our favorite crowded Japanese restaurant, Tom and I were discussing the concept of internal ethnography, a term he created for me about a year ago. He described it again last night as, "Making a deliberate, detailed account of our inner feelings … what academics [he was speaking for himself at this point – not about all academics] might call internal ethnography." I wrote it down on a napkin as he was talking. He had discussed it with colleagues in Paris last week while sharing with them what I do in my work. Our conversation about it had started while walking the Wissahickon yesterday morning. He had discovered that some people believe that external forces are to blame while others, very few, are willing to take account of their inner feelings and make connections about how those affect their interactions with others. Almost like two different belief systems, life attitudes, ways of viewing the world or, even, solving problems. I noted our discussion in my brain as we walked, holding onto its memory until we reached home and I could write it up in my journal.

People say the most interesting things. I think I have developed an inner third ear over the years. One that only hears interesting, challenging, humorous, mind-blasting snippets. Sometimes I spin around, do a double-take or focus in, when I hear a slight comment that no one else has noticed. And very often those pieces of seemingly unimportant remarks contain within them pearls of wisdom, keys to a person’s soul, or cries for help that would otherwise go unheard.

Here’s a post-it I found attached to a book I have recently been asked to review, called Unsmiling Faces: How Preschools Can Heal. I must have written on this particular post-it two or three years ago, perhaps while attending some workshop or other on behavior management or discipline or something. It reads:

… always the troubled kids that I loved the most. Most teachers hate those kind of kids because they feel so out of control – it’s not that they hate them as much as they feel uncomfortable and out of control – just don’t know what to do with them …

Writing is not just about sitting at the computer tap-tapping at the keys. It is all about listening, observing, thinking, watching, talking, holding still, being silent, imagining, wondering. It accompanies me in the shower, through my breathing exercises, on the treadmill, walking through the town, sitting by the sea, in my dreams, reading other writings, poetry, articles, books, when I am watching movies, all day and most of my night.

Talking of internal ethnography, I love this saying I found about twenty years ago. It accompanies me through my work, and I share it with all who work with children and families. I am sure you have probably seen it somewhere. You see, it is not about those people out there making our lives a misery, or doing stuff to us. It is related to the connections we make with our own inner feelings and the way we interact with others:

To ponder by Haim Ginott

I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I have a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: It’s my pleasure

This morning I awoke thinking about the friends I made in Buffalo. In all the nineteen years I have spent in America, not one of my Israeli friends ever visited me. Last year, finally, one of them did, but only because she was in the area staying with other friends of hers. In fact, two of whom I considered my closest friends while living in Israel have been to the States many times to visit family members and did not take the trouble even to call. I only found out about their visits when I saw them in Israel those times I went back.

A number of my Buffalo friends not only have been to see me, some have gone out of their way to do so, adding hundreds of miles to their journeys. They keep in touch constantly through phones, cards, and e-mail. I grew up in Buffalo. Even though I arrived there at age 39, I was like an adolescent in my emotional development. And we all know how some adolescents can be. Well, giving everyone the benefit of the doubt back then, perhaps I was a handful those nineteen years I lived in Israel. Perhaps people were actually relieved to see me go. Goodbye and good luck, with a wave of their hand, and "Don’t let the door hit you in the axs on your way out!" Or, at least, their consequential lack of interest in me and my accomplishments, or trials and tribulations, assures me of that.

Sobering thoughts, to be sure. Belonging to a bygone era. I saw a coffee mug when I was in Cape May last week. It said: Rise and Whine. I think I will treat myself to one for days like these.

Am not feeling sad about all of this, mind you. Perhaps a twinge of shame and vulnerability as I share these wonderings with you, the reader out there.

More than anything, though, this piece is a realization of the tremendous gratitude I feel for my Buffalo friends. Their constant support, love, and caring for me has truly helped me become the woman I am today.

Oh dear, my blog is rated:

I can think of one or two people who would not agree … but …

Have I become so boring? A prude? What?

Found it at: The View From Where I sit …

It is not over.

Summer, I mean.

But the playful fun part has – must – finally come to an end.

It is time for me to return to my senses and buckle down, settle in, and get serious.

My heart, mind and soul are full to the brim. Cup runneth over.

[click on all photos to enlarge]

I have seen the Irish Sea …

… paddled my toes in the Pacific …

… and swam in the Atlantic … right where the Bay meets the Ocean …

I have broken all kinds of bread …

… with all kinds of people …

  …

… and laughed long and hard along the way.

I have walked in the sun and through the rain, enjoyed countless movies of every genre, and climbed a steep hill or two. Holding hands on the way down, linking arms in the crashing turf, and raising many glasses with new and old friends.

I even painted my toenails! And also lost a couple of old broken, bruised ones along the way.

Yes indeed, I shed a tear or two. Sometimes from old memories and ancient hurts, but mostly with profound joy, and deep, heartfelt love.

This was the summer of shedding old baggage, shame, guilt, and ancient, aching anger, giving up the grief, and opening my heart to joyfulness.

I am hopeful that I remember to return to the rapidly becoming memories of joyful, loving moments this summer, to give me emotional sustenance and support. For, even as I embrace August faced with all the work ahead, I struggle to focus on what I want and need to get done …

… because right now, this moment? …

… I just want to play, and play, and play …

Slipping the laptop under my arm, beach towel over the other. New Eddie Bauer swim suit neatly folded in the bag and beach chair waiting patiently on the porch. My ride arrives tonight. Mira and Marion driving all the way from Buffalo. They will pick me up and whisk me away to Wendy’s cottage by the New Jersey Shore for a few days of fun in the sun: walks by the water, smelling the salty air, a glass of wine in our beach chairs at sunset. Wendy reports that right now it is fresh corn and tomato season in New Jersey, and that the weather will be hot.

I feel as excited as a young child the night before her birthday. My feet long to soak in the briny waters, body aches for waves to slurp and cuddle every nook and cranny, and my soul craves the comfort and support of old friends.

I’ll be thinking of all of you … from time to time …

The last hurrah before the great work begins!

I have looked at the title of this post for a couple of days now. It came to me when I was thinking about how much lighter I have been feeling lately. I knew what I meant when I wrote it, and, for some reason, I did not feel like explaining myself. In fact, as I write this now I am becoming grumpy. "Why don’t you all just know what I mean already?" I complain to myself in silence. "Why do I have to explain everything?" Of course that is absurd, because I am really talking to myself. It is not about explaining to you, out there, the reader. It is about how I confront this and understand it for myself. After all, I cannot kick a habit if I do not understand where it comes from and why I might not need it any longer.

Much of what I have been doing these past few years in therapy, and on my blog, is trying to understand the emotional memory conditioning I sustained in early childhood, and how it was necessary for my survival. Getting to know my survival habits. Those never-ending repetitive cycles – knee jerk reactions, within and without, to situations or interactions with significant people in my life. Exploring my delusions of self control when, in fact, I was feeling and reacting, seemingly, without choice.

Gradually, as I learned that I have a choice in how I view my reality, it began, very slowly, to dawn on me – literally, to shed light in front of me – and I was able to test out different ways of feeling or reacting about things. And so, it might feel as if one morning I awoke and suddenly I was lighter, baggage of my old emotional self shed and left behind on the path somewhere up in Northern England a few weeks ago. But, in fact, it has been a very long time coming, and has taken much hard work.

The way I see it is quite simple really. Bob-the-therapist described it to me over and over again and although cognitively I understood what he was saying, it did not seem to touch me on an emotional level. Bob spent a lot of time in therapy showing me that the collective family view, myth or stories about me, had absolutely nothing to do with the reality of who I am. It had everything to do with the way people chose to view me, and, more specifically, the way they tried to squeeze me back into a mold they needed to create in their minds about me. In order to survive, I developed a kind of script that went something like this: I must believe their world view, story, labels, beliefs, Truth about me, because a) they are bigger, older, stronger, more intelligent than I am, and, b) I need them to survive, and that is the only way they will love me.

Between January and March this year events took place within the family system that I am not going to go into here in any detail. However, for some reason all those hours and years of therapy and self-alteration, finally, kicked in.

I got it!

Just like that. Something snapped inside and I realized that each and every family member is entitled to their view or belief about me. They are also entitled to react the way that they do. In all that transpired absolutely nothing had changed. The repetitious cycle was crystal clear. The only thing that changed was the way I saw it. I realized, emotionally as well as cognitively, felt it throughout my being, that all the subtleties of interactions had absolutely nothing to do with who I am. It was not personal.

Ooh, it was painful. I cried, I raged, I hurt. For the full month of March, driving to and from work, in the shower, walking in the woods, going shopping, doing yoga, preparing dinner – whatever I was doing, I would burst into uncontrollable, violent sobbing. It felt as if my heart and soul were breaking. In fact, nothing was breaking at all. I was more intact than I had ever been. Instead, I was allowing the shield of illusion around me to disintegrate, rays of light to push through the cracks. Letting it out was like giving up the only real defense mechanism I had owned. It meant growing up, throwing out childhood notions and becoming an adult. It was exactly like the metaphor Bob, and my friend, Susan, had created for me years ago in Buffalo – I was like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. I was, literally, kicking the habit out of me.

It is not that I see myself as a perfect angel. Indeed, I am as full of all kinds of feelings, notions and behaviors that are as complex as anyone can have. I just do not see myself as all those names I have been called any longer – "rubbisher," "liar," "disloyal," "femme fatale," "destroyer," "Sephardi (whatever that means)" … and so on. More than that, I am able to see significant people in my life in a much more compassionate, complex and holistic manner, understanding that their view of me is clouded by their own vulnerabilities and insecurities, sadly for some of them, blinding them to who I really am. It has brought them all down to an equal size, no one larger or greater than me. Just all of us human beings like everyone else! All of us in this crazy, confusing, unexplainable, mysterious life together. No one solution for everything. No one size fits all. A great big messy mish-mash. And all we can hold onto, or know for sure, is loving relationships.

As I allow myself to shed those ancient molds, the family-system-created-role for myself, I find space to explore what I want and need, where to make necessary emotional changes, or how to open up to loving relationships that are so important for what remains of my life’s journey. I can tell where I am deserving, and past exclusions or losses of birth right become superficial trappings in the grand scheme of things. For I am able to create my own birth right, my own home, my own safe, emotional space within me.

As I allow myself to shed those ancient molds, the family-system-created-role for myself, I let go of so much of the burdens of shame and guilt acquired along the way – for those, too, were part of the illusions, myths, ancient stories I chose to believe about me – weighing me down and blocking emotional freedom and availability.

Kicking the habit, undoing all that emotional conditioning is tough. It is on-going, challenging and painful. It seems to take forever. However, there really is light at the end of the tunnel, a way up and out of the abyss, and dawn at the edge of night and break of day.

And, I suspect, that from now on it is just going to be a whole lot easier.

A year ago at Mining Nuggets: A real and serious blogger

Quote of the day:

Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate. Albert Schweitzer

That’s all she wrote …

… Oh, yeah, and did I say? …

… He decided to stay after all …