“Thank you for your column that appeared 18 June 2009. I have been feeling particularly sorry for myself after the death of my wife 18 months ago. The added responsibility of bringing up a family on my own and holding down my job has made me feel this way. I guess it is just time to grow up and get over myself at my age? You are so right. I am the only person who can change my life!”
This letter makes it worth it.
A little health on your part can shift an entire community...
1. Mind your own business – you know, the tasks you are employed to complete.
2. Take care of every aspect of your own job before you give time to noticing what someone else is, or is not, doing.
3. Never initiate or perpetuate gossip of any kind – it is always a sign that you are avoiding your own stuff, trying to deflect the attention off something you are hiding.
4. Tell the truth. Anything less will ultimately run you down.
5. Apologize when necessary and try to learn from your mistakes.
6. Get “you need” and “you must” and “you should” out of your vocabulary when you are talking to adults. Children need guidance and instructions. Trust the adults around you to be adult.
7. Stand up to anyone who asks you to do something unethical or immoral.
8. Thank and affirm people who are doing a good job in a manner that gets the person the greatest amount of positive exposure. Resist affirming others to make yourself look good. Teachers seem particularly good at this. (“I want to thank Joe for the wonderful work he does -at making me look even more wonderful.”)
9. Resist frequent reference to your past personal achievements and how long you have been in education. Unfortunately, no one is really interested and, besides, it gets really tiresome.
10. Realize you are at school to work. You are not at school to make friends, or to ease your loneliness or find your lost childhood. You are there to work and feed and support your family and to further the goals of the school.
You frequently write: “steel yourself” and “hold onto yourself” and “take up your life.” What do you mean?
Take up your life
The “answer” to your life’s issues (if there is one – you might have to go with an approximation), no matter how large they may appear to you, or how trivial they may appear to others, always rests first with you. Healing begins when you gather up your metal, brace yourself for change, and decide to “take a hold of yourself” and address head-on the problems and complexities you face. “Steeling yourself” is gathering your strength (even if it is minimal) to do what you must do to begin your own process of recovery, healing, or untangling from unhelpful entanglements.*
Even if you have been a victim, grew up in severely adverse circumstances, and both your parents were alcoholics while you were destitute and hungry, your healing and maturity pivots, not on more sympathy, more empathy, or more understanding. it is not “out there” in some book you are yet to read, or on some website you are yet to discover, some guru you are yet to run into, or on some lover you are looking to meet. It is ALWAYS dependent on your acknowledgment of your role in how your life has unfolded (your response to whatever has happened, is currently happening, and will happen to you) and will continue to unfold. It is dependent on you shedding yourself of ALL “victim thinking” and of ALL blame. It is ALWAYS dependent on you taking personal responsibility for your decisions as much as you are able at THIS time (now, today!). This is what I mean by “take up your life.”
I am very aware of this being an unpopular message in an age and a time when “quick-fixes” are offered at every click of the mouse, pointing of the remote, and book shelves abound with every Tom, Dick, and Sally’s offer to deliver you into a perfectly fulfilling life. Sorry, it just doesn’t work like that. Until you become your own “Knight in shining armor” you might always remain a “damsel in distress,” albeit an insightful one!
* For me, a helpful metaphor is to imagine a diver on the edge of a high diving board. He or she STEELS him or herself before taking the leap.
Full color A is for Autonomy by Rod E. Smith
“I appreciate your insights and agree with you 99.9% of the time and the other 0.1% of the time I could be wrong. The only time I have found myself to be at variance was a recent article. There was a thought that caught my attention namely ‘Love at first sight does not exist.’ This is a reality for some people. I had love at first sight with a girl (aged 15) when I was just 17 years old. Never loved a person that much from minute-one, till when it all split up after six months. For 20 years thereafter I wished everyday (all day) that it would somehow magically come together again as it had done on that first evening we laid eyes on each other. There is an important clarification needed here! Love at first sight is not something that really happens to people in their late 20’s or 30’s or 40’s and so on. It is something that can only really happen before one becomes jaundiced and suspicious. It is most likely only going to happen with your first love. And ideally, for it to happen, the heart of a person must be soft and easy and not yet battered and bruised.” (Letter edited for length)
“My husband is working overseas and I recently gave birth to our second son who is now 4 weeks old. My husband has told me he doesn’t love me anymore and wants a divorce. He told me this when I was 8 months pregnant. I do love him but he said it isn’t going to work.”
Take up your life
[Reminder: it is impossible to communicate effectively with someone who is already moving away from you. He, in this case, will only hear whatever reinforces his case.]
This does not mean I think the marriage will, or even should, end. He’s the one asking for the end of the marriage, let him deal with that. Your first calling is to yourself and to your child – and this is NOT selfish.
In short, try to separate “what went wrong” from “what must happen now.” Your future is in your hands, not his. Your well-being, and the baby’s well-being, are powerfully attached to your persistent ability to remain calm and non-anxious even in this anxious time. This is very tough to do, but the alternatives (chasing after him, falling apart, losing all sense of who you are in the attempt to get him back) are tougher in the long-term. Find your legs AND stand on them. Find your voice and USE it.
It is essential that you reach out to a support network of family, friends, neighbors, who are able to help you with the baby, the physical issues and adjustments of having just given birth, the legal process of divorce, and custody and financial issues.
Parenting is for adults. Even in the midst of these tough circumstances I believe you will have what it takes to be the parent and to be the parent your child both needs and deserves. Mine the rich reserves, the steel, already placed within you and put it to full use.
Take up your life
When people are emotionally and psychologically healthy they can be in close relationships because they choose to be. Nothing feels forced, obligated, manufactured, or pretended. Sarcasm, using words to intentionally hurt someone, is avoided.
Conflict is not considered as necessarily negative. They know people can love and enjoy each other and disagree at the same time. Hurt, fear and loneliness can be talked about freely. Winning and losing are not as important as honoring, loving, and respecting each other. They do not “corner” each other in order to feel love. Healthy people expand each others options, they love spontaneity, and embrace and encourage diversity.
“I’ve been a stepmother for 7 years. It’s misery. I would never do this again. I have no one to blame. I saw perfectly well that my husband’s ex was a ‘basket case’ for the three years we dated. I saw that my stepdaughter was truly a spoiled brat. Lots of ‘divorce guilt’ led her to getting whatever she wanted. I saw that my husband was not cut out for serious parenting and yet I married him. He’s got many other great qualities including being a good stepfather to my son! Our marriage is solid but the amount of turmoil his daughter stirs Take up your lifeup is more than tiring. His ex hates him so much that she has literally ruined any chance of us having a sincere relationship with my stepdaughter. I have a great relationship with my ex, and his wife, and so does my son does with his stepmother, but my husband and stepdaughter’s is deeply flawed.” (Edited)
Your observation that your husband is not cut out for “serious parenting” is pivotal. Under functioning is more dangerous than a “basket-case” ex. Things will change if he notches up his functioning to fully fulfill his role. You’re protecting him. Your mutual relationship with the daughter is not primarily in the mother’s hands. In a day or two I will write more about ‘under-functioning’ – it is pernicious and has far reaching consequences. Its effects can impact a family for generations.
I will try and teach you to love the power of love more than to love power. I will honor, respect and love your mother/father and hope that you will do so too. I will help you on your journey and tell you the truth even if it might seem easier to lie. I will give you the best of everything I have and everything I own.
I will try to say yes more than I say no. I will risk more, play more, and laugh more than I have in the past. I will respect your freedom (even babies and children need freedom and “space”) and I will allow you as much freedom as possible according to your age.
I will not jump to your every call, wipe your every tear, or give you everything you ask for. I will not protect you from any of life’s “little dangers” or expected risks. I will not be anxious if you are bored, or dissatisfied because things failed to go your way.
I love you, I want you, I am committed to you – but for my sake and for yours, and with wisdom and necessary accommodations I will continue to do many of the things I enjoyed before you were born.
Take up your life....
The love that prevails is sometimes born in people who know how painful life can be. I say sometimes, because tough events can also produce bitterness, not love, in others. Prevailing love is not about good feelings, about an emotional high, nor is it about being known or rewarded for good deeds.
The kind of love is born or developed in the wake of suffering prevails because it has learned that there is goodness in others, that there is hope in the world, that there is reward in believing in the goodness of others.
Love people today. Do something counter-cultural to the spirit of self-seeking in your office, at the hospital where you work, or at the school where you teach. Offer a open hand of love and generosity to a struggling person. Turn your own reservoir of pain and suffering into an act of love.
Love prevails, and it wants to prevail in you.
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