Superhuman strength (or weakness)?

"Vulnerability is subversive. Uncomfortable. It's even a little dangerous at times. And, without question, putting ourselves out there means there's a far greater risk of feeling hurt. But... I can honestly say that nothing is as uncomfortable, dangerous and hurtful as believing that I'm standing on the outside of my life looking in and wondering what it would be like if I had the courage to show up and let myself be seen."

This is a quote by Brene Brown from her latest book, Daring Greatly 

I’ve decided to start blogging again in 2013 and thought this quote was a good charge for the New Year.  I think Brown is suggesting that when we are hard-hearted or hardheaded we slowly loose touch with our deeper, more intuitive self.  As Carl Jung would say: our ‘real’ self. 

You know the experience: when you spend all that time on your Superhero get-up and the guy or the friend is unimpressed because they really just want to hang with your Joe Shmo self, that uncomfortable skin you’re trying to glitz up, for them. And they don't ... uh, care.  You find yourself either pissed-off or puzzled.  Or both. Maybe you haven’t been to therapy yet (or in a long time) and think all the pomp and circumstance is actually YOU. Illusions haven’t been disbarred.

The pissed-off version: Why can’t they see I’m a Super Hero, with super strength and powers and poise and all that.  They don’t appreciate me!!!   Think red-faced emoticon. 

The puzzled version: Why can’t they see I’m a Super Hero, with super strength and powers and poise and all that.  They don’t appreciate me???  Think tilted-frown emoticon.

Vulnerability is ultimately dropping the cape. The side show. Not trying to sell yourself or others on your amazing-ness.  Instead you get to quietly be the amazing human you already are.  Quietly noticed and loved by other human beings.  Other humans who love and worry, surprise and disappoint you, and eventually gets wrinkles and have root canals, just like you. And when I say you, I really mean me.

(Thank you Ms. Carolyn Snell for the cliff note version of Daring Greatly on your fabulous blog!)

Book recommendations


articles:
how to land your kid in therapy
head case
panic attacks explained
social animal

psychology:

Out of the Shadows, Patrick Carnes, PhD

Sexual Anorexia, Patrick Carnes, PhD

Emotional Alchemy, Tara Bennett-Goleman

mindfulness: 

A Life Worth Breathing, Max Strom

relationships:
Passionate Marriage, David Schnarch, PhD
Getting the Love that You Want, Harville Hendrix
The Verbally Abusive Relationship, Patricia Evans

divorce:
Helping your Kids Cope with Divorce the Sandcastles Way, Gary Neuman
The Truth about Children and Divorce, Robert Emery

parenting:
Parenting with Love and Logic, Foster Cline and Jim Fay
Reviving Ophelia, Mary Pipher, Ph.D

spirituality:

Thirst, Mary Oliver

Blessed Relief,Gordon Peerman
Waiting for God, Simone Weil


fiction:
You Deserve Nothing, Alexander Maksik

Grace

At the end of a therapy session, a woman I work with asked me if I could tell her what grace means.  The question took me off guard, as my headspace was in the area of scheduling and collecting payment.  Floundering a little I said, “Well, from a theological perspective I think grace would be accepting something that we don’t deserve.  From an artistic perspective, grace is beauty.”  Although she seemed satisfied with my intellectualized answer, I wasn’t.  Grace is not a cerebral insight, I reminded myself.  I thought about the expressions of grace in my own life: my dogs persistent affection, friends that show up, the children I'm wide-eyed with,the baby geese that are waddling behind their moms every spring, at the lake across from my condo, and my condo, then my country and my safety and freedom.  There’s also grace in the smile of an Ethiopian child, who will never know the simple charm of waddling baby geese or the comfort of a condo and a free country.  Their skinny bodies sheathed with tattered hand-me-downs: they embody grace.  

In the end, grace is vulnerability; an elegance of the heart, I decided. 

Endings

One summer afternoon, after someone I care about ended our relationship, I went to a friend’s garden and gathered a heap of fresh basil to take home.  On the way I stopped at the market for ripe local tomatoes, garlic and an assortment of nuts.  I thought to myself, I’ve been wanting to make pesto, brushetta and Ina Garten’s chipotle and rosemary spiced nuts for a while now, that’s what I’ll do today. I could tell he was uncompromising this time.  It’s really over.  All the private history: the long tails of grief, tears, unprompted smiles, discoveries, tedious ho and hum, then the ambivalence, from both ends —it’s over and done with, fini. Things got in the way and we didn’t recover, like we thought we would. I wanted us to stay invincible. He reminded me that everyone is vulnerable. I turned on music when I got home. Adele. As a bonus Madeleine Peyroux shows up in that mix.  (It’s a “smart mix” from my iTunes library, and it picks up the “adele” in Ms. Peyroux’s name.)  I simmered the garlic while I diced my tomatoes and sprinkled them with sea salt. The basil’s scent wafted through my kitchen, a deep olfactory pleasure, like warm linens straight out of the dryer. I’m quietly aware that I’m drowning out a realization by stimulating three of my five senses: taste, smell and sound.  Four if you count sight.  I had a vase of fresh-cut roses on my working countertop.  All that was missing was touch. 

I went out with friends that night.  I floated in and out of the stories and the laughter, feeling like a modern-day vagabond on the outside looking in, or inside looking out. 

I cried later, when I was home alone.  I called a friend and told her the scoop.  I said that I had homemade pesto to prove it, which made us both laugh. Transition is a bitch, she said.  I agreed.  But necessary and often best understood in retrospect, the stalwartly therapist in me said.  After my friends midnight counsel, I flipped to TBS (looking for "very funny")and watched the last bit of Spanglish, during that pivotal scene where the mother uproots her daughter from her fancy, made-up life and takes her home. Of course it all seemed relevant and I sobbed my way through a box of Kleenex, feeling more connected to Penelope Cruz than anyone in the entire world. In the end, I drifted off to sleep.


This song makes me think of my friend and the happy sad feeling that comes along with letting someone go, when it's time. 

When the Roses Speak, I Pay Attention

“As long as we are able to
be extravagant we will be
hugely and damply
extravagant. Then we will drop
foil by foil to the ground. This
is our unalterable task, and we do it
joyfully.”

And they went on. “Listen,
the heart-shackles are not, as you think,
death, illness, pain,
unrequited hope, not loneliness, but
lassitude, rue, vainglory, fear, anxiety,
selfishness.”

Their fragrance all the while rising
from their blind bodies, making me
spin with joy.

-Mary Oliver

Fear

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

-Nelson Mandella