a yet to be titled experience

I had a whole plan to sit down and write a cute little newsletter about how the brain and the soul were the original odd couple; one loves control and order, the other wants to break into someone’s back yard and jump fully clothed into the pool. I wrote a cute little opening paragraph, found a suitable Albert Einstein quote, and then just stared at the screen, bored and agitated. Then Elizabeth called and by accident I said some dark shit to her about how I’m afraid that all the defenses that I have built in my life to protect me and keep me safe have kept me perpetually with one foot out the door in every single person, place, or thing in my life. I say I am afraid that I love nothing, that I keep a secret map of escape hatches in my back pocket. She says when I look at you, like when you look at me having a hard day, I know you are going to be fine. I think this lady has no idea what she’s talking about.

Last week I started the final essay in my book. It’s about the darkest period of my childhood, it’s about addiction and violence; about being 8, 9,10 and feeling wholly responsible and powerless. Ho Hum, I fell into a flow of writing, into the pull of a story, but then I stopped and said, sweetie this is your story. I couldn’t feel it, but I knew it. I read it to my boyfriend later that night and I said, Isn’t it weird that this happened to me? That this is my life. I am, as they say in Somatic Experiencing, under coupled; in an effort to survive and move forward I stashed different parts of the experience in different places and like a squirrel, I often forget where they are.

We are designed to not feel pain, to move away from it. Of course, life perverts us sometimes and we move toward the pain because our survival instincts get crossed or over coupled, because it becomes opposite day and we think what hurts feels good, or we think if we do something differently we can make it feel good again; this all happens too. But if we have labeled something painful we will do everything in our god given survival instinct power to get as far away from it as possible. Often we have labeled having an open heart painful, because it really can be! It is also the path forward, so we’ve got ourselves in a little bit of a pickle.

Elizabeth was looking at me with love, with possibilities. I was looking at me from behind the gates that I sometimes roll down in front of my heart like a jewelry store on Canal street; all I could see was, you are probably broken beyond repair and one day either everyone will figure it out, or you’ll never have a normal life because you don’t have a normal working heart, or add any variation on the theme here.

But here’s the thing, I said it out loud to a safe and loving person. I told her the truth of how I felt, and I believe in the power of the truth. I mean the prism of truth moves fast, but I caught it for a moment, and I handed it to my dear friend as witness driving to work on the 5.

Gregory Boyle writes in his latest book, Cherished Belonging, When we’ve made progress it’s because we’ve named things correctly and then pointed the way. I love this sentence. I was only telling her a feeling, not a fact. I have a huge heart that attaches to anything it can get it’s little valves on, even though I am often scared, I have lead much of my life from my heart. I once told someone I collected hearts, and she said, you do in all the people you love; I just meant like heart shapes and stuff, but she was right. But what I did name correctly was my fear, my shadow, my defense. And then I went for a walk.

I was listening to Greg Boyle talk about a loving god, or a force in the universe or kindness or whatever you wanna call it or not call it, and it pulled up the gates around my heart just enough for me to see that I had opened up a tender place inside of myself and my defensive structure was protecting it. Way to go defensive structure! Let’s all give a round of applause for all the grumpy days that were protecting us from a tender feeling hiding underneath, a round for the lion hearted anxiety moving so fast to distract us from feeling the pain knocking on the skin. But even though they are doing a really good job at what they do, I do not want to make decisions and assumptions about me and my life from a defended place, I want to make them from the love place, the possible place. I want to tend the wound, not make it CEO.

When I start working with someone, one of the first things I start to track is their defensive structure, the thing covering the wound; it is often this glorious structure that is the thing that is also standing between us and the big pulsing aliveness that we are longing for, the love, the connection, the healthy aggression to create a life that actually aligns with us. I start to work with this because you can’t just let a stranger into the wounded place and have them start rooting around. I make friends with the defensive structure. I sit down and say, tell me about yourself, oh cool, no way, oh that’s a really smart way to do that. I honor the Babysitters Club style forts that we have built around our hearts; a body constriction here, a negative belief about self there, some avoidance here. It’s a great fort, but is it working? Maybe, maybe not.

What if we allow ourselves to get to know our defenses, to do conscious defending; when we become conscious about a thing we begin to have choice, and when we have choice we get to say (maybe it takes a few hours or weeks or years) but we get to say, oh I opened up a wound and maybe I need to take a minute and figure out what I need.

It is an act of self compassion to shut it all down, to say I need a minute, I need to leave Disneyland, I need to take a nap, I need to stop trying to fix something, I need a break, our hearts need breaks from too much stimuli, we are not designed to be open hearted 24/7.

But we also need to open back up, a store that is always closed can’t support us. I took a minute and my perspective started to shift. I closed and then I was ready to be open again.

And when I was ready to open my heart a little bit I opened the door for someone, and then when I was leaving with my hands full of coffees and gluten free bagels someone opened the door for me, then they picked up the napkins that flew to the sidewalk, they opened up my car door so that I could lighten my load, and use my hands again. My heart opened more. I felt sunshine and I said Thank you; I nearly cried a little. This is a dainty and true parable, but I think you already got that.

I love you,

Jenny

Cy Twombly Roses