Reflections on Identity

I am going through a training to become authorized to facilitate workshops with Leesa Renee Hall's Unpack Biases Now program. I am really excited to be able to use such powerful tools, developed by a whipsmart and compassionate highly sensitive Black leader, in writing. Not only do I not have to re-invent the wheel myself, and I can use her amazing tools, but I also get to support and emanate out her style and approach, which has greatly impacted me in the last year or so.

Over time, I am investigating identity more and more with my Contemplative Writing groups. This has been a blindspot in my teaching practice in writing - not going directly for or into identity, especially ways in which access via identity privilege some of us more than others. My students are majority white, cisgender female, middle class. While I have a high percentage of queer women in my classes, in terms of sexual orientation, I have found for myself and others that "being queer" can only carry us so far in terms of compassion and direct understanding with People of Color. More often than not, it can actually serve as a bargaining tool, an "oppression Olympics" player piece. As in: "Well, I may be white, but I am also a woman, and I am queer, so I know what it is like to be oppressed," said in a defensive tone, especially when called out for having expressed a racist view.

There is so much wisdom in exploring our identities, especially the dominant identities, with a contemplative lens and deep curiosity. So I wanted to share, along the lines of blog posts I used to do more frequently, some of the reflections which have come up. These are anonymous, only occasionally direct quotes (when the person's articulation was stunning) but other than knowing they come from my classes over the last few weeks, I have removed any identifying factors. As a lot of you know, I so prefer to tell stories from first person, or relate them to a specific person. I generally avoid, "you," or "one," or "we," in writing, because I don't want people to feel if they don't fit into the description there is something wrong with them. However, when I am protecting identity, I generalize a bit in order to protect identity. So please keep that in mind.

Here is a wisdom culling from reflections on identity in class a few weeks ago. The prompt was on what we see in the mirror - and what is not shown in the mirror.

Money and Shame

For most of us, money and shame are a lot closer to each other than we'd like to admit.

I am really feeling this one recently. It's not like I haven't known I had shame about money, but it's coming up in an irrefutable way. My desire to not discuss it. The tears or anger when I do. All of my family's history in talking about it in odd ways or not talking about it.

When I struggle with it, I try to remember how universal it is, and how immediately sweeping away powerful it is for so many people. So easy to get on that ride of money shame and ride it all day long and all night long. I am interested in renunciation - not renunciating spending or material goods, which, while budgeting is important, totally reducing spending to nothing won't help. I am ready to renunciate samsara - the ultimate repulsive shame cycle carnival ride. But I know from experience that has to happen over time, bit-by-bit, again and again. These habits are deep and well-worn.

Liberating Inheritances

When people die, they always leave something.  Plenty of people lose parents and were left with, say, thousands of dollars of hospital bills instead of thousands of dollars of bonus inheritance. That is still  something. Whether we are left with negative or positive, there's an inheritance.

I have privilege. My parents didn't leave behind as much money, but their parents did. And likely because my parents died so young - in their fifties, and while I was a teen - the money from their parents, who were all gone by the time I was twenty-two - came to me and my brothers. Enough to help me get a house, help out with some debts and investments. Enough to give me security for my future as a self-employed contemplative arts instructor. That's a definite positive inheritance I wanted to acknowledge before I point out some less positive gifts.

I also inherited a strong sense of needing to blame: blame someone, find fault, or, if no one else can be pinned for it, blame myself. I know this is societal as much as it is personal - find someone in the Midwestern, middle class, liberal white world who doesn't either struggle with blame or shame or both, and you've found an exception, not a rule. However, the flavor of it in my family, when tied to severe illnesses - both physical and mental - and sudden or early deaths, took on a sense of importance above and beyond the usual.

Separating Truth from Shame

Loony Lunettes, Paris, 2015

Like a lot of people, I find it very, very tricky to engage with people who dislike me. Especially those who refuse to admit that that is the core issue, affecting their judgment of things such as "my unprofessional manner."

Yes, it is true that part of it relates to me wanting everyone to like me - survival skill! However, there's also an element of relentless meanness that sneaks in under the radar under the guise of shame. I often experience it as them exposing something "real" about me, something I feel ashamed of, my embarrassment flushing up. But I have come to see that actually when I feel that way - red in the cheek - that's actually a sign that someone is being excessive. Sometimes even bullying. Basically, mean for the sake of being mean. Trying to make me feel bad. And for awhile, it works.

Bridging the Gap of Shame

I met with a client this week via Skype. She lives in another country. We have been emailing weekly for the last six months or so. After she took some writing classes with me, first when I was visiting on retreat, then online, she realized she wanted to get back to other kinds of making. Writing isn't her main form - getting a regular writing practice got her into realizing she wanted to get back to other kinds of physical making - sewing, drawing, photography.

She was the first "client" really, the first official person to take me on in my newer capacity as creativity coach. I was nervous - could I help her get her creative juices flowing? I had all kinds of doubts - self-doubts, not about her - and went forward anyway. I am so glad I did.

Reaching Across the Gap

There are gaps between everything.

Who we think we are and how we manifest to others.
What we want to get done and what we actually get done.
What we write and how it sounds to ourselves, reading aloud later, and how it sounds to others.

These gaps are natural, normal. But where we have gaps, we often believe we are lacking.

I am about to teach my first week-long writing retreat.
How am I preparing?
Not by reading, not by writing talks. By walking, by shaking, by dancing and stretching.

Shame

Yup. There's no mincing around it. 
This is what has been coming up lately, in my life, in my wife's life, in my students' lives. 
Shame.

When I don't get done what I set out to do (PS I had unrealistic expectations)...
When I make a mistake - or even moreso, a series of mistakes - while teaching or in public...
When I choose to sleep in instead of meditating...
When I procrastinate...
When I feel sexually aroused in a situation I suspect I shouldn't feel that way in...

I feel ashamed.
Shame.
A heavy brick in my belly.
A punch to the gut.
Not a voice, not an inner critic, nothing that conscious or obvious or literal.
I don't THINK it, I FEEL it. In my locked up hips, my tightened legs, my triggered wrists.

More and more I am convinced that this is what Writer's Block, what creative resistance, what perfectionism, what procrastination ALL ARE - shame. Which is the cause and which the effect? Shame is like the fuel that powers the freezer that keeps us locked in one place. Not exercising, not writing, not exploring, not asking - all because some part of us, deep inside, believes we are unworthy. Anytime we make any kind of perceived error, it goes right into the evidence bin - not only have we done wrong, we are wrong.

For a long time, I have contended that Brene Brown's teachings on vulnerability and shame (click here to watch her stunning TED talk) are a perfect compliment to Shambhala's teachings on Basic Goodness (an article here demonstrating how the two are linked). Shame is our biggest block, our most underground and dug-in belief that we are not good. If we believe this, we can't believe we are basically, fundamentally good. We can't believe in bodhicitta, that we are all born awake and with full potential.

Shame is endless in its layers. Luckily my faith is also endless in its depths. Every time I find a new layer - this last week it was seeing that during a live online class I felt ashamed of myself because of technical errors beyond my control! - I react, I work with my body responses (through TRE or breathing) and then I slowly unpack all that was going on there. It can take months or just a moment. Over time, it gets easier to see, and easier to let go of the belief in shame, let go into the belief of my own - and others' - basic goodness.

What do you do when you encounter shame? How do you know it in your body? Do you know it? Does it have a voice? A story? Or is it more undercurrent? What is your relationship to shame and vulnerability?

And if I catch you using these questions, or my exploration, to compare yourself to, and shame yourself with, I'll come right over there and hug you and hold you while you cry. 

That is your punishment. I will mete it out mercilessly.

As Sakyong Mipham likes to say: "Be careful, or I am going to get gentle with you!"

Former Friends

Photo by Mandoline Whittlesey

 

Today I woke haunted by those who are no longer.           

People who passed through my past

ghosts before they were gone:

a Jessica, a few women named Amy, one Virginia, and many more.

As if they are states I once visited

but no longer possess a visa for.

They litter my contacts in voicemail and email:

I type in someone new,

and there they are, their former selves

smiling at me.

They are not smiling at me.

I am not smiling at me.

Last night I dreamt of a host of them,

a gaggle of them approaching me in anger. I felt shame like a virus,

gangrene infecting my leg, bacteria spreading

organically, as if this is always

how it ends.

I know forgiveness.

I know how to give it for another.

Where can I cauterize my self-inflicted wounds,

these dangling ends that stir in me

amoebas of what could have been

invisible spikes

of what I thought

was a beautiful and safe cactus?

My own mind became dangerous, found land mines

in these interactions. I cannot seem to let the hair triggers go

drop the reflex to defend

let myself really never understand

let myself know that I will never really know.

Stopping for Discomfort

(Photo from Lynda Barry's latest - and brilliant - book, Syllabus.)

So. I have a - what? Confession? Revelation? Insight? - little something to share with you. Sometimes I catch myself taking down other teachers. Disparaging other Dharma guides, ripping down writing instructors, pitching tar at other photo folk. 

I am sure you are not shocked to hear this - you know, better than I do, that I am imperfect and human and that's the only way I am ever going to be. But, of course, I have lots of shame and blame around it. And when I told my wife about the following story early this morning, she implored me to blog about it. It also happens to fit with the #quest2015 #stop prompt for this week, thanks to Charlie Gilkey.

Here's what happened.

In the tiny week of classes right before Thanksgiving, one of my most dedicated students mentioned she got into a workshop with Lynda Barry. 

Lynda Barry is a local yokel, who luckily is gaining more and more cred, now that she has published not just collections of Marlys and occasional memoir/novel action, but three books on the mystery of creativity. She went to school with Matt Groening (Simpson's creator). She's quirky, loud, funny as fuck and super smart. 

I've had the great fortune to attend talks by her over the years, and two of her writing workshops. To those who know her work, I've been known to say I would like to be a blend of her and Natalie Goldberg (with whom I have studied a great deal, and is also quirky, but a lot quieter and more, well, Zen, in the real sense). All of this is background to make the conversation I am about to impart all the more aberrant.

Said student announced to her small-attended class that week that she got into a workshop with Lynda. While Lynda is local, she is also very popular and it can be hard to get your "one-time" spot in one of her free workshops. So it was a coup. I was surprised to detect my first reaction - a bit of a scoff, mostly internal. Barely detectable.

The other students asked who Lynda is, what her workshops are like. No one else knew, so I kind of described her process. I have found it disappointingly one-pointed in the past - after two workshops I really didn't need more, since she always recites the same poem and gives the same assignments.

So what did I say to the students? 

Did I say I was disappointed?

Did I say that to do it once was amazing?

Did I acknowledge her broad and deep exploration of memoir, fiction and what she calls "image" - the deep well of memory and creativity that lives in us all?

Nope.

I said this:

(Gah I don't even want to write it!)

"Well, she's a bit of a one-trick pony."

As soon as it left my mouth I wanted to cram it back in: foot-in-mouth disease.

Now I know what happened: I did not stop to check my own discomfort. I got too easy, too informal and in an icky way, said something gossipy. I back paddled, trying to explain while also covering my own ashamed ass. The student attending the workshop looked a little sad, the others shrugged. 

I apologized for it again before class ended, but the damage was done. 

To them?

No.

To me.

At the time I had no idea what had happened, not really, besides being a bit mean and inappropriate. But I used it to beat the fuck out of myself for weeks after. Really. Like not-sleeping, rolling the bitterness over and over in my tongue without resolve, without any compassion for myself. It's when my wife said I should write about it, that clearly I was still carrying it around, that I finally felt myself soften.

And why did that happen? Because this week I caught myself - after the fact - blaming myself for some things a student said to another student in one of my classes. Perhaps because I was already overloaded with shame/blame background noise, I saw it faster, and saw the same thing was happening here.

Its all nice and good to realize it after, but ideally I can feel the discomfort that precedes such pinning down self-blame on the spot, before it morphs into crunchy, sticky self-denigration.

And how will I stop this?

I will practice stopping it - it will never fully go away! - by noticing. I will stop it by stopping. Stopping when I feel unsure, instead of leaping into idle speech. 

I will, as I said in a post awhile back, stop drop and roll: http://insidespace.blogspot.com/2013/04/stop-drop-roll.html?m=1

And when I don't stop until after? 

When the confusion lingers? 

I will stop as soon as I am able and get some compassion going. After all, this is meditation in action. Compassion as practice. Accepting imperfection as the only way it can be done. 

And I will also admit, discuss, lance the infection with some self-reflection. 

Let the disparaging that comes out of places of discomfort and disappointment stop as soon as it can, and re-route that energy into learning for the next time.

Privacy Versus Secrecy

Milwaukee, WI January 2012

I write memoir. It’s kind of my thing, has been for a few years now. I am a pretty public person, willing to talk with most folks about private issues, though I am discrete, or like to think of myself that way – trying not to over share, to have boundaries. Sometimes my wife has to remind me to speak quietly in a public place while having an intimate conversation on my cell phone.

I am very careful about confidentiality with my students, and set limits as to what gets shared about my own life with others, asking for confidentiality for myself. But now that some essays are getting published – on elephant journal, in the anthology Trans-Kin, I am beginning to realize what I have set up for myself here – a life of a writer sharing her life with everyone who will read it.

Passing Storms

"Apollo" Sculpture at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rottedam, Netherlands

My check engine light came on last night. As my brakes have been softening and my rear driver seat belt won't pull out, I figured this was the sign to finally bring my car in for repairs. My mechanic used to be just blocks away and is now located out by East Towne, a few miles of mall hell away. They have no drivers on the weekend to take us back into town. So I checked out the buses.

"Why don't you pop your bike in the back of your car and bike home?" Dylan asked, supportively but also uncharacteristically. We don't bike a lot, though we are in such a bike-friendly city. I am a bit embarrassed about it, actually, even ashamed. The seat on my bike, purchased a couple of years ago, meant to be super comfy, hurts my back. I need a new seat and somehow never seem to get it, so then I don't bike, afraid I will hurt my back. Then I feel bad about not biking, though I bus and walk nearly everywhere, save the mall.