I have become THAT ONE

So I sit here at Ghostlight Coffee, feeling a little guilty and conflicted. This is a different space and coffee shop than I usually stop into after my CrossFit morning. Smiling, I can hear my husband’s teasing toned voice, “Well, that’s a short putt.” Our vernacular for “it doesn’t take much for us to feel guilty and conflicted.” Which is true. The reason here? My traditionally favorite coffee shop stopped purchasing unsweetened almond milk for its espresso drinks. When I set aside time to breathe more deeply into my writer-self, I like to treat her to a latte, without sugar, which my body no longer needs or welcomes. So I came to Ghostlight to see if they had unsweetened almond milk. And they do. So I sit here…smiling into my writer self.

And listening to a voice inside: Really? I’ve become that one?

I traditionally hear that one with this guilty-sense about advocating or sticking to a personal choice over some collective one around me. I’ve become the ‘vegetarian-vegan-whomever-different’ who refuses the nourishment provided by a community, a collective, a whole. I’ve become the one who is difficult to invite to parties because she can’t or won’t eat what the host/ess is providing.

My husband’s Swedish-Norwegian sensibilities float up to the surface here, going a little bonkers inside me. I hold his energies, in other words, even though I have my own fear and inability to say what I really want. Encountering a vegan, or a Harley-Davidson motorcycle crowd, or someone who states a preference over a communal norm—he rolls his eyes and sighs, which I experience as him projecting his irritation onto those who clearly can and do advocate for what they need or want. This is not something that comes easily to him--knowing what he wants, saying what he needs. He has a tremendous amount of energy about those who eat differently than he does, or than a community provides. This used to be directed at me until I would cave and join him. I now have a strong-fitness-health community around me, supporting me. Makes the difference for me, to stay with what I want and need re: food. Anymore, when I encounter this tension or intersection of difference someplace, I tend to simply go quiet and remove myself from direct communication.

And now his beloved wife has become that one! He is faced with a conflict between his irritation and deep desire to be seen as a supportive husband. This means sometimes he now holds it in (though I can usually feel it rising anyway). Sometimes he does not, cannot, withhold his irritation and judgment of the one who is choosing differently from the norm, from what is immediately available in the community.

To be fair, both he and I struggle to discern, let alone name, what we need, individually, from one another, from others beyond our immediate family home of him, me, Nala (our dog).  Long family histories intertwine here, of course. His Minnesota-nice family that regularly avoids moving into any waters deeper than cultural-child-centered polite society. My long-churched, neglecting-our-feelings family intent upon serving the other to avoid any possibility of accused selfishness within. To name a need therefore pushes both Brian and me, each of us, for different reasons, into a vulnerable position of (perceivedly) being ‘needy’ or worse, ‘rejected,’ not having that need met by our partner.  We play this dynamic out hundreds of times each month, or week, perhaps. We excel at getting our needs met by those a little further afield than our home. Church, work, duty for him. Circle, spiritual companioning, creativity for me.

One of the great things today, however, is that both he and I are more intentional and practiced at loving the other right where s/he is. Each of us is genuinely trying to honor the other, in his/her experience just as it is, in his/her gifts, just as they emerge and become manifest. I think each of us is also trying to learn how to be more honest with our inner-self and the other about what we do need or desire. Come vulnerability. Come ‘rejection.’ Or not...

Because it’s not actually rejection on any grand scale. Each of us has demonstrated our capacity to stay-with the other, across anger, felt-betrayal, difference… We are not rejecting the other, but simply learning to stand more often in our own skin, Center, to trust the relationship between us to hold whatever it will, whatever it needs to, for both of us to become more than we are today.

And for me, in this new stream of bodysoul flow that is my life, that one has a new seedling-meaning that makes me smile. I am now that one who will act for what her body needs. I am that one who actually knows better what her body needs to be fit, healthy, whole. I am that one who is willing to endure greater social discomfort in order to choose what is healthy for me.

Clearly, I’m not yet the one who speaks gently and clearly to her traditional coffee shop about what that change has meant in concrete, practical terms. I’d rather write a blog-post to come to words about a desire, a wish, apparently.

I wish Wholly Grounds would return to the unsweetened almond milk they used to have on hand. The team of owners—Amy, Ti-Ti, Tony, and a fourth fellow whose name I do not know yet—is a beautiful collaboration that touches something inside me. Two African-American women, alongside an Irish older white man, alongside a fourth white man with workman style dress and quiet voice. Yet I cannot seem to lean into clear communication with them about this unconscious/unaware change in their supplies on hand. Does it matter, really? Does it need all these words? I wonder…

This is a nice space to write too.  Perhaps I should purchase the enamel mug they have on hand here: I need to overthink about it first…

Bounded Holidays with the In-Laws? Really? YES

Just do something. Choose fitness. Choose movement. 

These statements show so easily the ‘all or nothing’ mentality rooted deeply within me, in the oddest places. Especially odd because I am usually all into the gray-areas of both/and, compassionate perception, in so many other areas. Strikes me this pre-holiday day that there is something ‘here’ for me to name, somehow…

The presenting twinge, internally and externally, is a back muscle Melissa named with a Q and a number. Don’t remember what she said, in that way, but I heard how to care for it this weekend—lacrosse ball on the outside, gently moving in toward the spine; heated seats on in the car. Gentle recovery. Support with core-muscles whenever moving in a way to activate it. Some ibuprofen for the irritation. It’s 70% better already, and I’m impatient. Classic all or nothing there—if I can’t do what I did last Thursday, then I’m not (fill in the blank).

It was an interesting week, body-listening-wise. I could feel a sinus/headcold coming about Tuesday, I think. It’s the normal time for it, post-semester, usually turning into bronchitis right before Christmas. This year, I leaned into the Zicam nasal spray that seemed helpful. And it was. By Friday morning, the symptoms had mostly passed over me. I had had two days of 12- hr Sudafed, to rid myself of the runny-nose symptoms, but I took another that Friday morning, just in case it showed up. I think my experience of movement and exertion is different with antihistamine in my system! A bit shakier, but also adrenalin-like. Note to self…might have pushed into ‘more’ because of it. And yet it was fun to be there for the 'anniversary/Christmas gift card' thing--didn't want to miss anything like that.

The communal web of CrossFit, for my own steadiness—within me, with my body, with others—is an incredibly strong draw. I can see how that can push me into new behaviors to insure that the daily-weekly rhythm remains in tact. I’ve often just let my system weather the headcold, but this time, I tried the strengthen-the-immune-system approach because I didn’t want to not be there. This could translate into being there when my body might benefit from more rest, I can see. And yet…it holds my own heart to the primacy of my own fitness amidst so many other responsibilities that pull at me. I figure it will all balance out, in the end. I work too much, historically, and this insures more balance.

So I could feel the anxiety rise with the twinge injury on Friday, driving around Cincy for my various meetings. I felt like I escaped the headcold, only to land in a back-twinge. My body was speaking more loudly, so I'm listening. I knew it wasn’t wise for me to be anywhere but home, resting, enjoying a holiday weekend with B. 

I felt once again the fragility of my inner-steadiness…rather sweet, actually. I want to be in this new healthy sense of myself for the long haul, learning to trust I won’t forget, or it won’t be taken away, disappear. Something unexpected arises and I fear the rhythm will need to be different, like it will all disappear. More echoes of the old and earliest story in my life: what I need won’t be possible or present for me. It’s such an old storyline, so faint and already restored to a better story, a present story: I know best what I need and can name it with those who will listen, even those who can help me.

So I enjoy the feelings of a post-workout morning, gentle movement and care for what's best for me. I munch my plan-granola with tasty almond butter and unsweetened almond milk, await a friend for coffee at my now-familiar writing hole, and smile into the holidays this week. I know best what I need—even with the in-laws—and can choose to honor it, even name it with those willing to hear. Those who refuse it need not matter in the choices I get to make. Just do something. Choose fitness. Choose movement.

Makes me think this holiday in Minnesota could be different than the food-overwhelm and energetic-grief exhaustion, tending others' energies. Making the egg muffins to take with me; my seed-bread; almond butter; weighted baggies of nuts. Stretching and movement if it feels feasible; rest if not. 

Bounded holiday time with the in-laws? How odd, and how delightful to prepare and insure it too. I wonder what it will feel like, living into the new story with them?

Entering In...

I remembered to look for the white door, climbing the one flight of stairs up to her space. Incense was present, and the large living room was welcoming. She opened the door, big smile on her face, gave me a hug as I came in. She sat in the chair in the corner, I sat on the couch some distance away, bridged by two ottomans. Spacious. Bounded. Also grounded. She invited a “check-in” and some response to “why me?”, why her, for coaching conversations…?

As I had sat with that invitation from our phone conversation 10 days ago, I had watched myself choose and point to the outer reasons I knew to trust the Nudge here. I had first learned of her two, maybe even three years ago, without clear sense of what to do with knowing about her. The Circle-Way training work she does came at a time when I needed a way into circle that was more spacious than the current community in which I serve, learn, lead. The Fire&Water Leadership work I’ve observed from afar on Facebook resonates with the fire-water journey Lisa and I have been on for over five years now. And especially now, for this path for me seemingly opening outward in various ways: she’s an African-American, a woman, a leadership coach, healer, and spiritual seeker-presence…and more I have yet to learn, experience…Wind Warrior resonated with me…MotherPeace Shaman of Swords, a card I’ve often drawn.

When it comes right down to it, though? The integrative reason I feel drawn to work with her? I love her laugh and I trust her eyes. For all that she’s experienced in her life, in her own body, to have that laugh and the laughing-trickster eyes told my body that she’s a healer-warrior. I know I can learn a lot from her that I need to learn, in ways I need to heal in learning… Knowing this kind of work as I do, I also know I will be bringing stories and healing gifts to her as well. Working with me will nourish something in her or urge new connections in her path too. This is how Great Mystery seems to work with those who are willing…

I still danced in my words, of course. I named the Women Writing for (a) Change ‘spring troubles’, the spaciousness I feel in PeerSpirit/Circle-Way lineages of more ‘open-space technologies’ of gathering.  I named the draw I felt to her Earth-centric work, the elemental approach to our world today and living in energetic terms, spirit-worlds. “And,” I said, “I have a longstanding wound story that I think you might be able to help me re-write, hold differently, be in differently.” I couldn’t even name the one sentence description of my wound-story at first…I danced around it for a while…

Speaking without filter then? I have a long-standing wound story that black women hate me. Many, perhaps even most, have hated or perhaps softer, disliked me. Given the (academic, conceptually-violent) systems I’ve travelled in, I get some of that… I can rationalize this hatred, even understanding dynamics of it within the privileges I receive as a white woman in such pursuits. And I have taken on the pain that is theirs, foolishly trained to believe that such action was helpful for healing. My own patterns with black women are not very healthy…for me or for the various ‘hers’ I’ve encountered. They are healthier than they have ever been, but that’s not saying very much.

A long established pattern in my family of origin creates part of this dynamic: taking on the pain of those around me, to insure my own safety, security, being needed and not neglected. If I could anticipate and tend the pain or sadness or anger of my father, my mother, then my position in the family was secure. In a family conditioned against deep feeling, I was the deep feeling dumping ground, actively welcoming it and drawing it toward myself. This insured a relationship of need and desire with my father, my mother, “being special” with my uncles, the ‘favored one’ of the cousins, etc. (None of which may be as true as all that, but at least a seed of truth is there…).

This woman is writing a book—has been for years now—to offer a journey to freedom for women and men, African-American and White, after centuries of slavery largely untended (in healing ways) in our discourses today. A memory-paraphrase in my receiving of her words: anyone who enslaves another is also enslaved. As I sit with my own wound story, you could describe it in this lens: My ancestors benefitted and were not proactive enough in the horrific dehumanizing machine of slavery, so they and I have been enslaved in some fashion as well. Here, I would say I am enslaved to the anger of black women. Specifically black women, not men. I can speak enough ‘masculine’ that my relationship with black men has been different. It has danced a professional-courtesy and power-politic pattern.

I have my own anger, of course, or have had perhaps. It no longer explodes into rage the way it used to, so I’ve apparently done a lot of the griefwork I’ve needed to do—abandonment of the feminine in my family, emotional neglect, refusal of the body’s sacred wisdom, refusal of deep feeling and the essence of who I am. All of that remains, but now without the rage in me about it. It is this journey that has taught me a lot about anger—its sacred gifting, its power, its potential to warm and to destroy. I can honor the anger of black women and have learned to do so these last several years, as it came my way, directed specifically at me. I can do so from within my own experience.

I can see some ways I’ve been enslaved to that anger—giving it priority over my own safety, my own feelings; shrinking away from its power over me, making my own self small or hidden; taking on its pain, with hopes to participate in healing, in being human together in new and different ways.  None of these patterns is a seed of healthy connection toward wholeness. I shrink, horrified, afraid, and ashamed of our communal history.

There are other ways, liberating ways, that I’ve been able to hold my own center for life-giving being for all of us. Not enslaved then. I remember the mid-career theological faculty workshop that I co-led with a beloved mentor-scholar now teaching up at Yale Divinity School. The leadership team was a black man, Chinese-American woman, black woman, and me, a white woman. Wow did things explode in our two years and some of working together. I learned it was the easiest-hardest leadership job for me: my job became showing up and keeping my mouth and spirit completely shut. No matter what I said, it was not welcomed by the black woman, so the best practice was simply to be present and be quiet. Earning a lot of money to do so. Strange but also strangely satisfying, to honor and receive while holding my own and honoring her from a strategic distance.

I saw the white women scholars in the group degrading themselves in order to be heard in the largely African-American-Puerto-Rican-Cuban group, as a whole. Saying things like, “I know I’m a stupid white woman, but…[asking a question].” I made some foolish mistakes in our journey together too. I got publicly shamed for one of them. But I also knew the way forward was not to degrade myself publicly in order to participate. I apologized, tried to move on. No one is free where one of us has to degrade herself in order to be. I refused the apparently necessary “self-degradation to participate” pattern of the group as a whole. I became more and more voiceless in the group as a whole, but accepted that as a consequence I could live with.

So…even acknowledging then that I could have been holding onto some white fragility or defensiveness, I persisted in holding my own center, honoring my own voice and contributions in my journal-writing (because largely unwelcome out loud). I found ways to honor the anger in the room, the incredible woundedness in the room (which I did not know, could not know as they did), AND not be enslaved to it.

This was actually an incredible gift to me, the workshop leadership years. I saw writ large the inevitable power-politic of academic discourse, academic ‘community.’ It doesn’t really matter who is in control, which race or ethnicity is in the majority, the result is the same because the academic-social-architecture creates the self-and-other-degrading patterns in human beings. Good-hearted human beings, in old-guard structures, will do what has already been done to them. It's inevitable, in my view.

Those workshop years taught me that any new leadership task is to hold different containers, to approach initiation and formation in containers able to integrate and shape open-hearted, surrendering human beings. I know circle is one of those containers.

So yesterday, I entered in to a new stream of listening with a Wind Warrior Trickster-eyed, laughing-wisdom woman… I wonder what we will learn, together?