I Made A Trip To The Hardware Store For Bread

In my defense, I thought I was going to the bakery. I was wrong.

I recently wrote about capacity. Capacity is someone’s ability to do anything really, but the focus of my writing was someone’s capacity to give and receive love. There are people in this world that have a 10 gallon hats worth of capacity for love, empathy, understanding, and comfort. There are people in this world with a 1 gallon hat capacity for love, empathy, understanding, and comfort. Neither is wrong or bad but it is good to know your own capacity and that of others. This can help you set your expectations of the other person correctly. You cannot know that a person is a one gallon person and expect 10 gallon love from them, it isn’t fair to either of you..

Tonight I got a lesson, a hard lesson, in capacity. It hurt. Ouch. Because even if you understand capacity and what your capacity is, you can be mistaken about someone else’s capacity and it can hurt. I’m an optimistic person and I think positively about most people unless I have a good reason not to. Many times I just assume someone is a ten gallon person unless they have shown me they are not. I trust people until I have reason not to. It really hurts me sometimes but I cannot imagine going through life the opposite way. Especially as a teacher, mother, friend, it serves me well to believe that anyone could be anything they want to be. I may have been born a one gallon capacity person but life has worn me by experiences that have carved me ten gallons deep. I believe that anyone can be worn deeper and deeper by life or by willingness. Sometimes I confuse comfort with capacity. Just because I’m comfortable with you doesn’t mean you have the capacity I might expect.

When I turned to a friend tonight, I was very specific about what I needed. I explained it clearly and asked if they could meet me in the space I needed to be met in. I needed to let my guard down, be irrational, be vulnerable and have them feed me certain words I knew I needed to hear. It was a weird but simple request. They accepted. I picked up the phone and let myself go to a place I only show to a very select few people in my life. They are my bakeries that I know will always have fresh bread for me. They can meet me in the ten gallon depths. I wasn’t positive that this person was a ten gallon friend and I didn’t know if they were a bakery, but I had basically written a script for them to follow so that they could bake the bread even if they weren’t sure how. I literally gave them the words that I needed to hear back and told them when to say them to me.

Painfully, there was no bread. No bakery. No ten gallon depths. Instead of a warm bakery I suddenly found myself in a cold hardware store full of hammers, saws, and sharp, hard objects. Opinions I didn’t ask for were given. Harsh words about getting over it and moving on and being happy were said. Judgement of my state of vulnerability, grief, and emotional state followed. The listening I had asked for was cut short with questioning and the words of comfort I had requested were never said. Ouch.

My first reaction was to sit in shock, but then for some strange reason, I started to try to explain myself. I would not recommend taking this path if you should ever find yourself in the hardware store when you thought you were entering a bakery. Hardware store people do not understand bread, they just don’t. Next time, I hope that I will simply say “Oopsie, I suddenly find myself in a hardware store and I was looking for bread, I have to leave now.” Learn from my pain. Sitting on the phone trying to explain your heart to someone who can’t hear you is abusive to yourself. I forgive myself for participating longer than I should have, I was just very surprised. I don’t open myself to many people and my very small group has some ten gallon people in it. I guess I didn’t realize that this person was not capable. I’m sure I hurt both of us with the assumption that they were.

I can see how difficult it would be to find yourself in a situation where someone you know and care about is crying and hurting and needing something from you and you don’t know how to fix it. I had not asked to be fixed, to be clear, I had asked to be listened to and to be given words that I provided, but that isn’t what was interpreted by this person. They felt like they needed to fix it, to make it better, and to offer advice and opinion that wasn’t needed. Wires were crossed and it was very uncomfortable, yucky, and it hurt. We won’t continue to be friends after this. Not out of anger or revenge or anything other than self-preservation. I cannot be in relationship with people who cannot see me, hear me, or meet me in the ten gallon depths. We can say hello at the grocery store, we can like each other’s dog pics on Facebook, and we can wish each other well in the future, but we cannot be friends.

It is a privilege and an honor to be invited into someone’s inner world, into their depths. It is a sacred space where people are allowed to be vulnerable, irrational, deeply hurt, contradictory, and to be given space to be perfectly imperfect and human. It is a space where grief lives alongside love, where reality gets mixed up with the ghosts of the past and you need someone on the outside to just pull you back with a kind word. Shame is not allowed in this sacred space. Judgement is not allowed in this sacred space. Advise is not needed in this sacred space. What is needed is love, understanding, and presence. Sometimes you just have to let someone fall apart and lay next to them and say nothing except “I’m here. I don’t understand it, it scares me, I don’t have any answers, but I’m not going anywhere.”

I must confess that I got the hardware store/bread example from Al-Anon recovery groups. There is a reading or a saying that says going to an alcoholic and expecting them to meet your needs is like going to the hardware store for bread. You aren’t going to get what you need, they aren’t capable. So we can punish the alcoholic for not being able to meet our needs and shame them for their lack of capacity, or we can move on and find the people out there that can meet our needs. It is mean to stay in a relationship with someone and expect them to give you things that they cannot.

The journey to find out who is capable is hard. Sometimes you are pleasantly surprised by someone’s capacity and depth and sometimes you find yourself in the hardware store with no bread to be found. There is grief in going home empty handed and there is hurt if you found yourself on the receiving end of opinion, judgment, and harshness when you bear your soul to someone. Walk away, have a good cry, say ouch, call a ten gallon person and have a good laugh about your surprise hardware store visit. The one thing my ten gallon friend reminded me of tonight is that just because someone is incapable of giving us what we want, it doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with us. I shouldn’t feel bad for baring my soul and allowing someone in, I should not feel bad that I needed something or that I needed to fall apart.

Some people want you to be different because you make them uncomfortable. They would prefer you to suck it up, get over it, be happy so that they can be more comfortable around you. Do not listen to that bullshit. That is what people who don’t ever go below the surface say to people who frequently swim in the depths. I used to be scared of deep water too, of life and it’s pain and depths, contradictions and unfathomable complications. I’ve done my work. I’ve put on my oxygen tanks and I’ve trusted myself enough to dive deep into all of my pain and hurt and trauma and heartbreak. I’ve watched things coming in the distance that looked like sharks and I wanted to swim as fast as I could to the surface and never look back, but I didn’t. I stayed and sometimes it was a shark, with big fucking teeth that scared the hell out of me, but I stood there and faced it. I stayed down there long enough to learn what is a shark and what is just a parrotfish that looks like a shark in the distance but up close is just a big beautiful fish. It is frighteningly beautiful in the depths and there is nothing down there that is going to make you comfortable, you just get used to the uncertainty and realize that that is what makes life beautiful.

So if you find yourself in a hardware store when you really needed bread, leave. You do not have to spend long time comforting the hardware store person for not having what you need or shame them or convince them that they should look into stocking bread. Just leave that store, it is not your store. Get your butt back in your car and drive to the bakery. The place that you know will have bread. Go there.

If you think you might be a hardware store and you think you would rather be in the bread business, do your work. You can start with these little gems of advice:

When someone is crying in your presence, shut up. Do not talk. If you cannot bring yourself to comfort them with a hug or if you cannot just say that you don’t know what to do but that you are there for them, then at least just shut up and don’t try to stop the crying just so you can feel comfortable.

When someone warns you that they are going to show you something difficult, personal, and painful take a deep breath or two, shut your mouth, and practice saying these words in your head “I am here. This sounds painful and difficult and personal, thank you for sharing that with me. I don’t know what to do or say but I’m here.” If you can’t say those things, let them know that you don’t have the capacity right now and that maybe they should not share.

When someone is grieving, you do not get to tell them how to do that. Yes, I can post a montage of pictures of myself with my ex-husband on social media and say that I miss him on the day that he died. I can choose to remember the part of him that loved me deeply, just like I loved him deeply. That does not mean that I forgot all of the pain, the hurt, the traumatic experiences that I had with him. It means that grief, divorce, addiction, abuse, love and loss are fucking messy and complicated. You do not have to understand my journey to honor that I’m on it. You can be confused by it but understand that I am not. I’ve done my work.

Never tell someone to get over it, move on, and just be happy. Not when it comes to their life experiences. You tell someone to get over it, move on, and just be happy when they ordered no onions on their burger and the cook gets it wrong and they have to pick the onions off the burger. If you have not experienced the deeply personal, tragic, painful life experience that this person who is confiding in you has, do not ask them to kindly get over it so that you can feel better around them. If you cannot handle them, they kindly exit their life and do both of you a favor. Insisting that a person get over something and assuming that there is something wrong with them if they cannot is mean. Expecting someone to be happy all the time is denying that person their full humanity.

When someone isn’t handling something the way that you would, again, close your mouth. You need to sit back and let that person have the dignity to make their own mistakes, their own choices, and go through their own pain. Do you really think you know what is best for someone else? Do you really understand the complexity of their life? Do you really not trust them to do what is best for themselves? If you have not been asked specifically for advice do not give it. If you have been asked specifically for advise you can practice saying “I’m not you and I don’t know what I would do in that situation, but I know you will figure it out.” The only exception I have for this is if someone’s life is in danger. Feel free to tell them to get out and offer to help.

Last, if you find yourself face to face with someone who came to you thinking you were a bakery and you realize that you are a hardware store with no bread, do not be personally offended when that person has to leave because you don’t have what they need. There are plenty of people in the world that need hammers and saws and the things you have to offer. It doesn’t mean that you should change what you have to offer (though my local hardware store does have bread and donuts) but don’t chase after someone trying to sell them a hammer, trying to convince them to stay in your store and get what they don’t need and didn’t ask for. Point them in the direction of a bakery and let them go.

I’m physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. I’m a person with a large capacity to hold others and their truth, pain, and sorrow. I was looking for someone to show my own depths to, only wanting a few comforting words to tell me that the shadows I was seeing in the depths weren’t sharks, just parrotfish that wouldn’t hurt me. I picked the wrong person tonight. It hurt. I won’t do that again with that person but I won’t let it change me and desire to be met in the depths. I will let them go in love and I will remember that all is not lost. Just a couple of humans being human and hurting each other, it’s what we do. My reminder to myself is that I can meet myself in the depths. I can go there with my Higher Power and my wise self and tell myself those words I had so wanted to hear. So I’m off to have my own back, to comfort myself, and to tell myself that I was brave for trying.

Take good care out there.

Yes It's Your Path, No It Won't Be Easy!

When the way is clear but the path is difficult, keep going.

image credit: Bartley Terrill

The picture above is me hiking back up a clear path from a waterfall in North Carolina. We had found a roadside waterfall that was marked in our tour book and thought it would be a quick hike for a big reward, the waterfall. When we got there, the path was marked and it was clear we were in the right place. You could hear the waterfall but not see it. The path looked short enough but it went down steeply. We decided to do it. It was not easy. It was muddy and steep and a little scary at times. At the bottom, was a beautiful waterfall that I enjoyed very much. Then I had to climb back up that path and it was even harder going back up, but I did it.

Going down

This image of a difficult path came to me today. It is a Sunday afternoon and I am already exhausted thinking about the week ahead. I’m still exhausted from the week before. I’m on my path, and I know it is the path I am supposed to be on, but it is not easy.

This summer, I felt nudged to look for a full time teaching job. I applied for three and the third one offered me a job. I prayed about it, I talked with friends and family and mentors about it, and I felt really strongly that this was the path I was supposed to take. I had been a stay at home mom for eight years and had been working part time the last three of those eight years. I was always home, I always attended school parties and meetings, I always picked my kids up from school and always was able to be home if they were sick and needed me. All of that was about to change and I wasn’t sure it was going to work out.

I have a character defect that if I feel led to a path and I decide to take it, I want it to be easy. I want to be rewarded for taking the right path. I want the universe to keep reminding me that I’m doing the right thing by making my path and my journey clear and smooth. Never in the history of me following my path has anything EVER worked out this way, but dang it, I want it to. And I am disappointed and confused and frustrated every time the path is difficult. I don’t know where I ever learned this type of thinking, that everything was supposed to be right when you do right, but I am always wrong.

Here is an example. I decided years ago to disrupt the pattern in my life of living with someone in active addiction. I wanted the path before me to be lit up like the yellow brick road, filled with gifts and smooth travel. I was doing a good and noble thing, I was about to change my life for the better, I was changing my daughter’s life for the better too-bonus points! Wrong. While I did not have to live with an active addict on a daily basis I now had the challenge of salvaging my house from a bankruptcy, figuring out how to put gas in my car to get to my three part time jobs and my full time student teaching, figuring out who would watch my child while I had to do all of that work and homework, etc. I had to challenge every belief I had that caused me to marry, live with and have a child with someone in active addiction in the first place. I had to make time for my Al-Anon meetings and time for therapists. It actually would have been easier to stay and live how I had been living, not safer but easier.

Another example, I decided to get my master’s degree the year that I was getting married to my husband Bartley. We planned a destination wedding for about 30 people, moved myself and my six year old to a new school, a new city and a new house. The next year we decided that we wanted to add onto our family. What could be a more beautiful path?? I cried so much on that path that it was more like a river than a path. We found out that we were having two babies instead of one, I was teaching full time but so sick and exhausted from the pregnancy that it was hard to function. My graduate classes were in the write your thesis stage and my pregnancy brain was not allowing me to do my normal brilliant thinking. My ex-husband died suddenly in January that year and I had to navigate supporting my child through losing her father, finishing a master’s thesis, preparing my classroom for a long-term sub, gestational diabetes, and being unable to sleep or function normally because of the size of my pregnant body. I made it through. I got my master’s degree, navigated the grief journey of myself and my child, birthed twins, and managed to stay married, on my recovery journey, and sane (relatively speaking). I spent so many days and nights crying at the sheer height of the obstacles in front of me on my path, not understanding how on earth it would be possible for me to continue on the path. It was not easy, it was not simple, and yes-it was the path I was supposed to take-it was my life journey for the time.

Once again I am in the middle of a path that seems impossible. I am teaching full time in a new school district. My oldest child went off to college and one month into the semester, our dog got hit by a car and died. I was devastated. He was just a puppy and he was my little shadow. My classroom was challenging because I had started late, and that is always a challenge for everybody. It takes longer to bond as a class and I had less time to get my mind, classroom, and goals together than if I had known all along what grade and school I would be at. I felt behind in every way from learning how to send an email to not knowing how to make copies (I needed a number and didn’t yet have a number), to knowing all of the acronyms used in school notes and at meetings.

I found out that my teaching license (that I hadn’t needed the last 8 years) was going to expire in June and I had to take two college classes to get enough credits to renew it in time. So now I am taking two online graduate level courses and my new teacher brain is not allowing me to be my normally smart thinking self. I got a 65% on my last assignment I turned in. Ugh. We are doing home improvement projects that are taking time and energy and decision making and it has not been easy. We are navigating having a child in college, two eight year olds that are in sports and very active with friends and activities, job travel and stress for my husband, and deciding how to break old patterns in our life that we have decided don’t serve us anymore. I cry and sleep more than I would like to admit. I feel overwhelmed from the minute I wake up until I go to sleep everyday. I want to quit. I want to quit this stupid path that I know is mine and is right, but it is hard. Why? Because I don’t trust myself and I don’t trust God.

That is what it all boils down to. I think that because it is hard, maybe it is a mistake. I think that the right path should be easy and that if it isn’t easy, it must not be right. I forget about all of the HARD journeys I have been on that were so right for me and yet so difficult that I didn’t think I would make it through. I don’t trust that I’ll have the strength, the energy, the determination, and the faith to get through it. That means I think that it all rests in me and I forget that in my life, I’m supposed to be believing that a Higher Power has my back. That She will guide me and give me what I need to get through anything when I need it. I struggle with life and I struggle with faith. I doubt my strength and ability and I doubt God’s too. I actually get lost in the path and forget what I’m on it for, what is the destination? The path I’m on right now is moving toward financial independence and security, professional fulfillment, and on contributing my gifts to society by impacting children’s lives at the youngest school ages. My path is toward healing and growing and breaking old patterns. My path is toward becoming more authentically me and less trauma impacted and trauma reactive and doing what is easy not what is right and true.

So I’m going to cry, take some Advil, drink another cup of coffee and write another crappy assignment for my classes. I’m going to half-ass house work, do the bare minimum laundry to get through the week and ignore my desire to take a nap. I’m going to ask someone else to grocery shop for me, skip exercises, and probably shop for a dog online while I should be preparing for my week ahead at work. I’m doing the best I can. It is hard. My path is steeper, muddier, and longer than I thought it would be when it started. I forget that I’m walking toward the life I want and that when I get there, the view will be awesome. I’ll forget the mud and the scrapes along the way (for the most part) and it will be worth it…right?

Darkness and Confusion

Embracing the darkness and confusion in my life is hard but I’m doing it.

The hard truth is that life can be dark and very confusing. I always thought I had to stay positive, keep my chin up, and make it better. Well that is exhausting and it doesn’t work. So I’m learning to embrace the darkness, the uncertainty, and the confusion. The road to this space has been long and it is still a work in progress but it is good.

We are taught early on that the dark is scary. I remember being so afraid of our basement, closets, and attic space as a child because they were dark. I would avoid them, especially at night and was afraid to go in them alone. I really thought something in there was going to get me.

I spend so much of my adult life avoiding the dark as well. I didn’t want to face my problems, look at my own faults, investigate or sit with the ugly and uncomfortable parts of my life. Nope, I was just going to fix it all and make it positive and light. I was willing to do anything necessary to force myself and others to be bright, cheerful, light, and positive. If it was dark, it was my enemy. I was always fighting.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the reason I was so afraid of the dark was because I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust that other people could be good even in the dark. I didn’t trust that I would be as protected in the dark as I thought I was in the light. And most of all, I didn’t trust my own strength to protect and guide myself through the darkness and confusion. I lived in white knuckle fear of anything that didn’t feel good and safe.

I can honestly say that I have been dragged kicking and screaming through intense darkness and confusion, and darn it all if I didn’t live. It is really hard to keep a belief going when you have mounting evidence to the contrary. I had not in fact died when I traveled through the darkest times in my life. I even discovered a strength and a beauty in that darkness that I never would have found had my life been all light and clear.

An example of this is living through a marriage to an addict. It was so dark, so confusing, and so character building. I made so many mistakes just trying to keep the darkness at bay. I enabled, I was mean, I slammed doors, I had zero compassion, and I betrayed myself. I accepted unacceptable behavior because I thought it would keep away the darkness, I didn’t know it was the darkness. Betraying myself was my darkest experience.

In that experience I learned that the only way out of the darkness and confusion is through it. As I traveled, I gathered a support system in the Al-Anon program. I gathered a strength I didn’t know I had. You know what, that isn’t true. I knew I was strong but I didn’t know I had the right to act out my strength to protect myself. I learned from strong women how to set up boundaries and to enforce them in service of myself. I learned I was worth protecting.

The darkness was where I found a Higher Power . I always believed in God, but I thought God lived in the light and that if I was in the dark, it was my own fault, like I had betrayed God or something. When I was in the dark, I reached out, not even knowing what God meant to me, but knowing that I could’t do it by myself. In those early dark days, I could not relate to the God I grew up with in the church. God couldn’t be a male for me then, I couldn’t trust men at that point in my life. So God to me in those early days was the sunset, the birds singing, the seasons changing. I went to nature to find God because it was the only thing I trusted.

That God was so good to me. Slowly leading me out of dark spaces, letting some light into my life. Lifting the confusion and giving me moments of clarity and direction. I imagined wrapping up my baby girl in a blanket of love and protection every time she wasn’t physically with me and praying that she be returned to me safely, and she always was. The evidence was mounting that this protection could be trusted.

In those dark and confusing times, we also had so much beauty. There was a rawness and a realness to our days that brought strength and love forward. I knew I was being led and protected. I knew I was also leading and protecting. When you are struggling and people reach out to help you, you see the best in people. You see community and you see compassion. And in suffering you realize that we are all in the darkness at different times and sometimes you help and sometimes you ask for help. It is our humanity.

I have been feeling a darkness and a confusion lately. There is darkness visiting me and people that I love. I have confusion and I have fear. There are times that I think it is too much for us all to handle and I want to just be transported to the light. But then I remember that nature has dark and light and they are about equal. It cannot be light all of the time. Darkness has to have its time and it doesn’t have to be bad.

I now know that I can trust myself in the darkness. That I will protect myself there and that I am guided and loved by a God that has my back even in the darkness, maybe even more so there. I no longer feel alone in the darkness, in fact I know that some of you are there too and that we will find the light again. And when we get to the light we will be changed because we have been in the dark. We will see the light differently. We will be stronger because we have traveled through darkness and confusion.

I know from experience that lessons are learned in the darkness. Boundaries set, strength found and often more will be revealed that will take us toward clarity and light. I have to go through a lot of anger, rage, sadness, upset, and sometimes depression in the dark. I’m not wrong or bad for feeling any of those things. I might feel differently as the journey goes on and more is revealed but I will not shame myself for how I feel in the dark.

Today I’m releasing some of my darkness onto this page, along with some of my light. I can be both. So can you. I used to hope I could out run the darkness and enter a phase of life that was only light. That was a fantasy and there is no out running darkness. Today I can embrace the dark knowing that it comes to mold me, shape me, teach me. I can enter it protected by a Higher Power who has a view of the bigger picture and never leaves me alone in the dark. Some times I’m in the dark because I need to rest. I can trust that darkness is visiting me and that the light will come too. And that there will be this dance of dark and light for the rest of my life, and it will be good.

Why Is She So Crazy?

Man, she is a real bitch. Wow, it must be that time of the month, I guess. 

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Sound familiar? Maybe you have said it about some woman after you witnessed her behavior. Maybe you have thought it but not said it out loud. Maybe you hear this all too often directed at you. I am here to offer some thoughts...

I had an experience not too long ago on an airplane that brought this very line of discourse and attitude up. I wouldn't have thought of it as a lesson at the time but teachers and lessons show up in the strangest places and in the smallest of ways if we are open to learning. 

The Experience

We were boarding a plane from Dallas to Detroit. As we walked toward the back of the plane (we end up here often with three kids), I saw the following scene. A man was sitting with two little girls in the seats next to him. They were adorable and twins-I have no proof of this except that I have twins and I just know. There was a woman across the isle from him sitting by herself, she is his wife. They are speaking to their children in two languages and I'm not sure what the language that wasn't English was, but it doesn't matter. I am always jealous when I hear families talking two languages, so I liked them already. The girls were around two or three, again I have no proof of this, but I'm a teacher/mom and I just know. I can tell that they are spirited by the way that they are yelling loudly and climbing the seats. I like spirited kids who aren't afraid to play and yell and climb, so I liked them already. 

I always feel a connection to other families flying with children. I have empathy for those with young children because I remember those days and it is hard, and I have excitement watching parents with older children fly because I can see how it gets better and easier. So I can't explain it, except that I feel tuned into other families on airplanes. I hear them. I watch them. I pay attention. Maybe it is weird but I can't help myself. I study people. 

So the plane is about to take off. The girls sit down in the seats next to the dad and the mom is across the aisle. Seat belts are on, the family is chanting "I wanna go to Detroit" together, it is cute, and there is excitement for take off. My family is zoning out, and settling in, ready for the last flight of the day. 

Before the fastened seat belt sign goes off, and we reach our cruising altitude, all hell breaks loose. It is a hell that will last the entire flight and follow us to the baggage claim. If you were a passenger on this plane who was anywhere in eye or ear shot of this couple and their children here is what you would have witnessed:

multiple trips to the bathroom sometimes physically pushing themselves in front of others in line

spilled drinks

yells to stop hitting

yells to stop taking snacks from their sister

children running the aisles

children climbing over chairs 

children standing on seats and refusing to wear seatbelts

a mother yelling repeatedly at her children and them not listening to her

a mother and a father bribing with promises of iced coffee treats for children in exchange for good behavior and threatening to take it away for bad behavior

screaming

crying

a frantic mother and a desperate father

a giving up and letting the children shred to pieces the safety booklets, barf bags, and flight magazines

upset and angry passengers passing judgement on these children and their parents

children placing their hands on the baggage claim system with their parents not even close to them to see what was happening

children running around the baggage claim, pushing others, grabbing at luggage, and trying to climb on the luggage carousel and other passengers looking around to see who the parents were and  physically grabbing the children to keep them from getting hurt

Y'all, it was stressful. I heard so many people commenting about, "Where was their mother?" and why wasn't she watching her children. I heard people call the mother crazy, I heard them say she was a bad mom and had no control over her children. I heard a few grumblings about them as a couple, but mostly the mom. She was also pregnant, if I forgot to mention that part. So I heard whispers of how is she going to handle another baby also. She was loud, she was frantic, she was emotional, she was crazy! Or so it seemed. 

The Truth

I'm sure if you have flown before you realize that sometimes you hear a little more than you would like from the people sitting directly in front of or behind you. It is like people forget they are so close to people and are fooled into thinking that everyone around them is wearing noise canceling headphones. My seat was in front of the mother of the two girls on this flight. I came off of that flight frazzled, stressed out, drained and triggered. Not because of the behavior of the little girls, or the mother really, but because of the husband. I'll tell you why.

As soon as the plane was in the air, he turned to his wife and told her that because he was a doctor, he was going to have to apply for his fellowship soon. I did not go to medical school so I'm not sure, but I think that this is the optional part of being a doctor after your residency where you can pursue a specialty. I could be wrong. This was a surprise to the wife. She kept saying "What? Why are you telling me this now? What does this mean? I thought you were done. Seven years, seven years I have given up for this and now you are telling me there is more?" He has no reaction to her except to start telling her that they will have to move for this. He starts telling her the options. Miami, Philly, San Diego, etc. and she is in disbelief. From what I gathered by what I could hear, she had the understanding that they were moving back home, which I assume was in New York or New Jersey since I kept hearing her ask about possibilities near there. 

As he is telling her places, she is getting more and more distraught. He told her they were going home, she has given up so much for his career already, what if she wanted to work too? He basically tells her she is being silly and there is no choice in this if he is going to go after his goals. He laughs at her suggestion of working, asks her what on earth she could do that could make the money they need to support their lifestyle. She starts to clam up. 

He then suggests that they live apart for the year or so of this fellowship. He picks what sounds best for him and he will come visit her on weekends maybe. She shuts down. She starts to agree with him. She gets sad, I can hear it in her voice. He doesn't notice. 

All the while, the kids are running wild. They are sitting next to the husband but he is ignoring them. He has no games, no food, no activities or things for them to do. He ignores them completely as he talks to his wife and reads from his phone to her possible places he would want to go. The mom yells at the children from her seat across the aisle and shouts bribes, threats, and handles all misbehavior. Her yelling gets louder the more he presses her on where he wants to go for his fellowship and by the time he has beaten her down with his suggestion that he just move away and do his thing, she is all out crazy sounding when it comes to her children. She goes back and forth between irrational threats and yelling, and letting them do whatever they want because she has given up. 

The husband occasionally tries to reign the girls in but usually only when the flight attendant is around to witness. He comes off looking like the calm, cool and collected one while the mom looks crazy and out of control. 

Two men in front of me discuss how bad of a mother she is and how she is making their flight miserable. They even turn to me at one point and say that they haven't heard my children at all like it was a compliment to my skills as a mother. They said nothing to my husband about his parenting skills. 

When we were landing (early I might add), the man leaned over to the woman and told her that they better get off the plane and get their bags quick because he had to get to work. Ummm...you didn't know you had to work? You scheduled a flight that would make you late for work? I was confused. As I stood to get off the plane, the woman pushed her way in front of me and my family to get off the plane first. My husband and others were pissed at her for doing that. Then at baggage claim, she was frantically circling the luggage carousel looking for their bags. The husband stood and looked at his phone while the two little girls ran amok. I heard him say to his wife as we waited (our luggage was late on the carousel because we landed early) that if the luggage didn't come soon, he was going to have to leave to go to work. She looked at him and said, "What am I supposed to do I don't have the stroller, I will have the girls and all the luggage?" He basically told her tough shit. She starts her circling again at a frantic pace.

In the meantime, her girls remind her that she promised them iced coffee treats. So she leaves to go get the coffee, leaving her husband with the kids. He does not watch them. They leave after getting the luggage and I hear people talking about them. How could she give her kids coffee, why was she not watching them close, can't watch your kids but make sure you get your iced coffee, reward bad behavior with treats etc.

Impact on me

This window into another person's world rocked mine. I could have easily explained it all away with it was just a bad flight, it was just upsetting to watch, but it was more than that. I needed to see this. there was something all too familiar in this for me, there was a truth in this for me as a woman. 

There is a saying in recovery circles that basically says how do you know someone is an addict or alcoholic? Look at their family, look at those closest to them. They will appear crazy. Their behaviors in reaction to the alcoholic are irrational, desperate, crazy, and often louder and more noticeable than even that of the alcoholic. So the person with the problem, comes off looking normal, and they act like the person who is reacting to them is crazy, over reacting, and overly emotional. 

I'll give you an example. When I was younger I worked with my ex-husband at the same nursing facility. At work one time my husband borrowed a cigarette from a coworker on our lunch break. I got extremely upset and tried to knock the cigarette out of his hand. I yelled at him and the person who gave it to him and stormed off fuming. I heard all of the talk about me from friends. I was angry, I was crazy, I was a bitch, I was controlling, etc. Nobody knew that he had drank too much the night before and then woke up feeling bad and took it out on me. I was verbally and emotionally assaulted all morning and afternoon until we got out of the vehicle for work. I had heard promises of quitting drinking and smoking all the way to work. This happened regularly. But no one knew any of that. They just saw me act out. I acted it out. All that we had been through the night before, the hours before, the days, weeks, months, and years before was acted out by me in that moment, and I was labeled crazy, bitchy, controlling, and he was labeled victim. 

This man on the plane spent the entire flight contributing to this woman's breakdown and she was leaving with the crazy label. She was judged. She would be remembered. He would be pitied for having to put up with such a crazy wife. You know what is crazy? A man waiting until he is thousands of miles above the Earth in an enclosed space with a whole lot of strangers, to tell his wife they have to move for his next career move that he forgot to inform her of. Crazy is breaking the agreement that you will make decisions together for the best of both of you instead of running full steam ahead with your plans while asking your pregnant wife of twins to sacrifice everything for you and not have any thoughts or feelings about it. You know what is crazy? A man sitting next to his children and staring at his phone and ignoring them while his wife, who is not sitting with them, has to yell over him to try to keep her children safe on a plane. Crazy is telling your pregnant wife with twin girls that you will abandon them in the airport if your luggage doesn't get there in time to work the shift that you scheduled too close to your flight arrival.

I started to be reminded in the weeks following this airport scene that this is how society is set up. Since forever men in power have been telling women that they do not have a right to make decisions about their own bodies. They do this with laws, with societal expectations, with media and film, they do this with medical degrees and they do this from the pulpit. Women are expected to quietly agree with this agenda, with these expectations, and if they could do that nicely with a smile on their face, that would be great. But have a woman stand up and say no, maybe with a protest sign or a lawyer, or a megaphone and they will point. They will judge. They will say, look at her, she is hysterical. She is crazy, she is an ungrateful bitch, she should be judged or silenced. Do you know how much we women have usually taken in and given up behind the scenes before we are mad enough to grab that megaphone? Do you know how many years of quiet pushing and taking, and expectation, and trauma and dealing with the poor choices of men in power that we have to endure to get mad enough to feel like we have nothing to lose anyway? I'll tell you it is a lot. It was a lot for me and I'm a white woman. Yes I have years of oppression by men in a power position in every generation of my family but it is nothing compared to what women of color go through and have gone through. I cannot imagine the restraint it must take for a woman of color to hold back the reactions she would like to have toward men in power (that means white). 

If you don't believe me, you can just read recent happening in the news. Just this week Ben Sasse, a republican senator, said that the hysteria of protesters at the Kavanaugh hearings was unfounded. Really, we shouldn't be upset that men have been telling us what to do with our bodies for centuries? (After centuries, of having someone take a basic human right away from you-you can tend to get a little upset). Or look at Serena Williams being portrayed as a crazy black woman after she expressed her frustration at being told she got coaching when she didn't think she did at the U.S. Open final. One of the first things she said if you listen to the video is that she always has problems at the U.S. Open. This was a result of being quiet for too long while people in power told her what she could or could not do as a black woman athlete. Really, I'm not even a tennis fan and I remember men tennis players yelling and throwing things and it not being a thing that we passed judgement on them for. It was just a boys will be boys kind of thing. People will not point to the man in the chair in power over her and talk about the crazy things he did to create the situation and probably many before, instead we will look to the familiar scapegoat: the crazy woman. 

I have often sat in judgement on women in relationships of the people I know. I will see her acting like a wreck, yelling, acting insecure, trying to control everything. He is all too quick to roll his eyes as she yells at the kids, or to act the victim when she gets upset at him in public, or appears to try to control him or his behavior. On more than one occasion my eyes have later been opened to the reality. It isn't always as it seems. Sometimes behind closed doors he is emotionally or physically abusive to her and she knows what will happen if the kids upset him, so she looks like a crazy person trying to keep them in line so they or she doesn't pay the price later in private. She complains about the him wanting to buy concert tickets and have a night out with the guys. Maybe at home he is hiding an addiction that is destroying his finances and job, and family life, and she feels hopeless but tries to control anyway. You see the control, not the ravages on their home and marriage that addiction behind closed doors can have. Or woman is a push over and is always so meek and quiet, even when it comes to her children. They ignore her and do not behave in public, then dad steps in, says one word and they fall in line. We think she is a wreck as a parent and he has it figured out, well maybe he has beat her down in front of her children and they don't respect her, but they fear him. I wish I was making these stories up. I'm not, I'm pulling from my real life experiences with people I've known. Sometimes it was me. 

From now on when I want to judge a woman about her parenting, her appearance, her behavior, her choices, I'm going to pause. I'm going to resist and I'm going to remind myself of "airplane guy". I'm going to remind myself that I could be seeing the outward manifestation of an internal problem. I'm going to look at the surrounding people and try to determine if it is possible that they are in fact the problem and the other person is just acting it out. I am going to do the same with my own life. Instead of just taking people's judgments about me and taking them to be my character defects that I need to change and work on, I'm going to take a good long look at the before action circumstances. The "how did I get to this" part. I want to know and see if there are any "airplane guys" in my life and start to correct that quickly. 

The last thing that I want to say about this lesson I'm learning is this, sometimes we give our power away as women. No one forced that woman to marry that guy. No one forced her to have three kids and give up her career to raise them while he went to medical school. She just slowly became less important in their daily lives by giving away pieces at a time, until there she was, on a plane looking like a crazy person while her husband suggested he leave her to raise his three kids alone while he chased his dreams of success like that was a normal everyday thing people do. Society tells her to stand by her man, to be nice, to value the lifestyle and income being married to a doctor can bring over her own desires. Society will tell us to give our pieces away as women, they don't tell this to men. They tell them to grab and demand the pieces.

The reason I was on that plane and saw and heard what I did was because I've lost pieces for years. Not because they were all stolen from me, but because most I willingly let go, thinking I wasn't being nice, or a good mom, or wife, or employee, or friend, if I didn't. I gave away until I was the one looking crazy, looking controlling, looking unreasonable or weak. I have seen the mirror and I hope that maybe I've held one up for others now. Once you see it, you know it and you cannot unsee or unknow. In the words of Oprah Winfrey "When you know better, you do better". Here is to better, for me, for you, for airplane woman and airplane man and their family. Just better. Having a right to my pieces and to demand them back. To say what I'm feeling, what I need, to tell the truth even if it makes someone else look bad, and to never ever believe that I am a victim of someone else's bad choices. I want to be more powerful than that. I want to box up some of that power and send it to that woman on that plane. If I could give her words it would be this, "No". No to all of it. No to you first me last. No to blaming me. No to giving me all the responsibility and all the judgement. No to you calling me crazy for having a reaction to your imposition on me. No to apologizing for having emotions and feelings and anger. Just no.  

photo credit: google images

Seven Year Anniversary Of Your Death

There is no escaping grief

In Memory of Ryan Peter Jezak

This picture of a bird was taken by our daughter just about a month after you passed away. I found it today on our computer. I never realized I had it. I don't look at pictures from that time often. It's too hard. 

Seven years have passed. Is it easier? I don't know. It is always just different. The cells of my body remember this day and no matter what I do to prepare or ignore or forget, they jump up and down and demand my attention. It is less raw, time has passed. I've learned some tools to deal with these feelings and it helps. 

What I cannot figure out what to do with is the flashbacks to this day. The phone call, telling our child, the wailing, the drive home because I was at my mother's when I got the call, the next few days consoling our devastated child. I felt utterly inadequate as a mother because there was no taking the pain away for her. Just the sitting in it. The daily showing up and consoling.  I was not afforded grief in those early days, I was in all out mama bear mode. Not only did I have our child to comfort but I was growing two babies in my body. Giving up and giving into grief was not an option. Maybe it will fade in time, maybe there is a tool I've yet to learn. 

The grief has been spread out over these past seven years. It is probably for the best, honestly. We couldn't all fall apart at once. We talk about you, she knows so many things about you, about us, about how much she was loved and the challenges we went through. The years since you have gone have been filled with some things I don't like, relationships I would change if I could, situations I wish were different, misunderstandings, and complicated grief by all touched by your life and death. But so much good has happened too. 

Our child is amazing. She is funny, smart, beautiful, has nice toes (inside joke), is creative, a great friend, and a profound thinker. She has an empathy in her that is only gained by tragedy. She still loves Chinese food, how could she not, hitting up the Mandarin House with us since she was a baby. She looks like me but she has your eyes and dance moves. 

If I could go back in time, I would change how I handled things-I'm sure you would too. But it isn't an option. I have folders in my brain like always, the bad, the ugly, the angry, the regret, but my beautiful and good folders grow every year as I am able to separate from my hurt and pain and remember the beautiful person you were and the beautiful love we shared that led to our baby girl being born. Yes we were young, yes we had some really bad and immature ideas about what love and marriage looked like, yes addiction derailed our lives. We did the best we could. I don't regret it. I've learned so much from the adventure of having you in my life. 

Rest in peace. Be with us in spirit as we continue on. Watch over our baby girl.