Mindspace

Family of Things

 

My favorite new book on my Kindle is Recovery the Sacred Art. I've read a bunch of books on the 12-step now -- Richard Roher's Breathing Underwater and The Codependent's Guide to the 12-steps but this one seems to be hitting the spot.

I think i love the author's integration of Buddhist concepts and mindfulness based exercises.
But the story that has been sticking in my mind

since i picked it up is the story of a woman who's son has died and was deranged with grief. The wise person she approached with all her questions about death and the goodness of God -- sent her on a mission to go to every house in her village to ask for an egg. 
Indignant and outraged, she complied. By the time she returned, she was so struck by how grief and death struck every home she entered and while it did not make her own sadness insignificant, she had more perspective about her own loss and sadness, more compassion for the world and more gratitude.
This story put into words what i have feeling since i've started work as a therapist. It's not like the pain of my own marriage has waned, but walking into the rooms of so many people's lives, i realize the human condition and how "unspecial" my own suffering is. It is isn't discounting or invalidating, but it just seats my pain side by side the fellowship of so many other brave men and women who are walking their own journey with courage and strength.

Going to San Damiano does the same thing, listening to the stories of people a decade older than me, watching them reach the end of their lives grappling with aging and regrets, watching them find wisdom and recovery, new life and oftentimes new love and new marriages -- these stories overwhelm me with gratitude and awe. 
I am not alone. And the fear that grips me, or the moments of hopelessness comes when i feel God has singled me out for betrayal or loss.

It's when i feel God has betrayed me that i teether on the brink of "losing it " to grief and sadness.
I finally figured out why my clients ground me, why i go back year after to year to a retreat that has retreatants meet 6 times over the weekend simply to tell our stories. It seems so simple but i watched the magic work again this weekend. No therapist, no cross talk, no advice giving.
But the mere act of listening to another's story makes ours seems less like the lone voice in the dark desert night. It reminds me of Mary Oliver's

poem

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Our stories seat us side by side each other taking our place in the "family of things ".

Chinese Speech Competition

Got the kids to school on time today. Proud and pleased with myself for not raging, for not yelling, for not dropping them off stressed and impaired for learning.
But i made the terrible mistake of working on the speech in the car. Aidan asked to hear his speech so i started and it went downhill from there. i heard Aidan's and then i wanted to hear Nally's and hers wasn't halfway ready and she was a sullen, reticient wet noodle about it.
And i told her calmly how disappointed i am with her, how she didn't keep her end of the bargain which was to memorize 1.5 pages of the speech over the weekend.That was the deal we made when they went skiing over the weekend. 
And for the first time, my child who always holds me tight when i drop her off, always has me kiss her a million times, just walked off.
My heart just sank. 
A part of me chided myself for working with Aidan and not Nally yesterday after homework and taking the easy way out of enjoying them and watching Modern Family with them instead. A part of me scolds me for trusting her when i saw her work on her speech yesterday by herself and not check to see progress.
It seems like every time i choose to let go and trust the process and trust the resources -- people fail. The school teacher doesn't translate, the tutor does a poor job. After having a fit about REFUSING TO DO IT THIS YEAR and being ALL OUT OF CHINESE, i have to rewrite it. 2 weeks and hours of Al-anon later i am still doing all the things i said i wouldn't do this time round because the whole process is just STRESSFUL and KILLS ME!
So this year, i am so determined to work my program. i decide the speech competition is just one giant metaphor for all the things i cannot control. What is written, how it's written, how much practice the kids get at school, what the tutor is doing with them since i am working.
i guess, this is the first year i don't have the energy and time and air time to work with them. And also,i  don't have the resilience to fight with Nally anymore. Part of me is so stuck in the space of "f-its", if you don't want to learn your multiplications, your speech, figure out your punctuation, learn to spell -- it's on you. i've been playing skip counting songs since you were two years old, i have offered to homeschool and work with you,i have paid through the nose for tutors, but now it's on you.
It's like i was talking to a mother of a 4th grader yesterday. " She's going to learn to not lie, manipulate, be late on her homework not because of you, but because of herself. You're not a good enough reason. "If only i can relinquish the residue guilt that goes with that. The lingering haunting refrains of perhaps somehow, in someway i could have done better. If i did it THIS WAY, with this theory, if i readjust myself -- you will finally take ownership for this crucial issues in your life. 
Bonafide co-addict behavior. It's the Al-anon anthem, the codependent pledge. i keep imagining these homeless kids or children of alcoholic families who learn to wake up in the morning, get the family going, fed and ready all by themselves because their parents are passed out in bed.
I did it with my husband's drinking, i am doing it with my kids. And i know better, working with mothers of teens, that adolescence is one giant period of grief work where we really confront the fact that we have little or no control over the outcome of our children's lives.

So this year, with the Chinese Speech Competition:

• I am going to offer my help at homework time.
• Work with only anyone who asks for it.
• Stop when it gets stressful.
• Let the tutor, school, life and maybe this whole experience create enough stress and urgency in them to get their act together.
• Guard my own serenity, well being, relationship with them at all costs
• Embrace daily the fact that they might go up there and bomb it.
• Decide that that would be the most valuable experience they could have
• Breathe, breathe, go to meetings and breathe
• Talk to my therapist about this

Twice a week

It's official. i'm seeing my psychoanalytic therapist twice a week. i am officially in psychoanalysis. i am officially doing attachment work.
It's funny "coming out" with it. I've been seeing her for 7 months now. i think it had the same "denial" quality of going to an Al-anon group. Why am i here? Am i really that sick? i refused to be on the coach flat out. i refused to consider seeing her twice a week.
Seeing someone psychoanalytic was bad enough. It was the closest thing to going to see a psychic ( which i am almost more open to going ). In ten years of therapy,i had seen Humanistic, Rogerian, Solution focussed, Behavioral, Process therapist but the one psychoanalyst i had had me in a fetal position week after week knotted up with anxiety. i realize now she successfully triggered all my fears around a withholding parent. Her silence felt intolerable. Her blankness alienating. i couldn't stomach it. i opted for "warm fuzzes".
A decade later, i must have grown stronger because i can stomach the ambiguity of the space more. It's nothing like how i work. It's sparten and bare and sometimes clinical. It is minimalist and unconscious and stream of conscious. It brings up all my abandonment issues, and fear of silence and my need for contact and constant verbal repartee and reassurance -- all the things that torment me in my marriage.
I guess now i am willing to do the work.
Even before embarking. i feel myself such a different person since i started therapy. I have no more illusions that a therapist is suppose to be perfect, to hold me, to know exactly what to say. i don't expect her to be the be-all end-all.  i don't expect her to be my only resource. i have to say a decade of therapy has "grown me up". 
Yet ironically in psychoanalysis -- we "grow down", we get back in touch with the little girls parts of us, acknowledge the loss, grief and needs we didn't get met and learn to comfort, need and depend. All of which are not my greatest strengths.
So for the sake of my clients, because i am starting to have clients who see me twice a week; because all of my dependency triggers are going off like alarm clocks, i've decided to work on my attachment issues. 
I can see the fruits of it working. And just how after a decade of therapy, i am such a different client. i have less expectations of my therapist. i give her less credit for my success or failure. i move into the space with more trust, or more honesty about my mistrust. i own my own work more and how it's really about my stuff not hers. i can laugh about it. i can tell her that i don't want to work on it. There is just so much more honesty than the fantasy of the perfect caregiver.
If you had told me simply 6 months ago that i would finally see a therapist 2x a week. i would have cringed, told you you were crazy and that that therapist is trying to make a killing off you.
But i am really seeing the benefits of creating a conscious space for the very young, very raw parts of you. Especially for me, who has spent my whole life being super strong, super high functioning. 
Some of my colleagues who have done this work say " Do it, now is the time. Get it down and over with " and a part of me is thrilled at the finiteness of this period. i know that i have spent a decade of my life avoiding this space -- of dependency and need.
WIth my clients, i see the fruits just in weeks. This relaxedness, this settling, this drop in anxiety. It is the power of a secure base, of finally carving out a time for themselves. More than that, it is the acknowledgement of a part of themselves they denied their whole lives.
So yes, i am broken. i have problems attaching and needing and depending. It takes me a long time to trust you. i need you to be double consistent, doubly strong, double reassuring. In the light of that i'll still mistrust you anyway. But hopefully, in time i will learn to attach.

Protected

Just finished a book called "My husband's Affair was the best thing that happened to me". It is this sickly sweet version of Pollyanna meets Sexaholic Anonymous. Since i now have hard core sex addiction/abuse textbooks for bedside reading, since our church has survived not one but 2 such casualites --  i was a tad skeptical and a wee bit cynical about embarking on such a read.
But granted, since i also have a startlingly low threshold for fiction, fantasy or fairy tales ( the kids and i are listening to Sonheim's Into the Woods which is this twisted version of the fairy tales )  -- i figured this would be an exercise in "willing suspension of disbelief". i.e. my yearly venture into fictional reading.  
Now you have to know i've been rehearsing said scenario in my head for years. Not that my husband has given me any cause to worry. He is unwaveringly faithful and chronically loyal and a blinding optimist when it comes to our marriage.
Yet something about growing up in a culture where history entails having multiple wives as a sign of wealth; of which's modern day version now translates into a mistress in each country, in a part of the world that deems infidelity as almost an asset to being a competent world leader -- i was almost raised to believe this the fundamental core deficiency in men.
As my dad said when Clinton got caught -- " I don't understand America, everywhere in the world it is understood that world leaders cheat, only Americans object ".
So i ran through the book as fast as i could without throwing up. I have to admit there were a couple of times i wanted to throw the book across the room. But when i finally got to the happily ever after chapter, when i forced myself to choke down this sickeningly sweet letter the cheating spouse wrote to his wife; after i highlighted all the instances of codependency, every feature of pursuer-distancer, after i diagnosed the exact brand of infidelity the couple had, and the process of reconciliation, and the blind spots and the probably DSM diagnosis each spouse had; after i wrote out a treatment plan about how i would do it differently both as a spouse, as the therapist of the author, as the friend of the author -- i heard God whispering to my hardened, jaded heart. 
" What if it didn't have to be so hard ? What if i could protect you from it all ? "
And the word was "protect".
i have to say that when this woman chose to respond the "godly way" and meet with the other woman and extend  compassion and forgiveness towards her, when she decided to make herself more attractive and seduce him back into her bed, those were the moments i had to bite down and clench my very sore jaws. 
Yet as i watch the husband respond with insight, with contrition and with repentance, i notice a part of me really protest that. i notice a part of me geared up for revenge, for his suffering, for him really experiencing the hell she went through.
i noticed myself wanting to tear up that sweet letter that he wrote apologizing for the hell he put her through and wanting to rip those pages out and say " NOTHING NOTHING YOU COULD EVER SAY WILL MAKE UP FOR THIS ! "
Um… a little countertransference : )
But as i drove myself to my Al-anon meeting this morning, i heard God whispering to me:
God:" What if i could protect you from that ?"
Me: " From what, the affair ? You didn't protect her! "
God; " Not the affair, but the hell she went through "
What if when i choose Him, i am choosing not just this Pollyanna blind faith that sticks it's hands or BIble verses in her ears and says " lalalala la Jesus loves me" but i am choosing me. My health, my serenity, my peace, my protection. And that it's not disassociation, or denial or what the psychoanalyst call "the manic defense".
What if it was the huge, meditative, extreme gesture of self care.
And that when i choose His way, i am not absolving the crime, the pain, the hurt, the inconsolable wrongness of infidelity -- i am just choosing to let Him protect me from the consequence, the hell that horrendous sin threatens to put me through.
"What you have meant for evil, God meant for my good".
This morning, God gently confronted me with this idea of protection. "I can do it" i tell Him, i am competent, i am strong, i am cut out for this.
I know, He says quietly. But i can protect you from it.
And i thought about all the serene places my Al-anon group describes exist amidst horrific places of pain their addicts put them through. I thought -- surely this must be the same place.
Protected. Not because i am incompetent and unable, but because i deserve to be protected. i can't prevent the sin, but He can protect me from the effects of the sin. He can shield me, and wage the war of justice and fairness, of healing and recovery.
And i can stand right in the middle of it all and be a sickeningly sweet Pollyanna.

New Years at Al Anon

Spent New Year's Eve at Al Anon. Was all set to go to a karaoke, kid-friendly party, then husband showed up 3 hours after he was suppose to and tried to convince me that he crossed county lines from Costco Monterey to Costco Santa Cruz in search of milk. After repeating what he told me back to him 3 times like a true therapist he finally confessed he went wine tasting.
I don't know what hurts me more -- that he so predictably lies about his whereabouts when he drinks or that he actually expects me to believe him. i call him up these days and instead of asking " Where are you " i ask " where did you stop ? " and he'll repeat his expected whereabouts -- work, an errand, dropping off stuff at the neighbors like " Don't you remember hon, we're homosapians, we live on earth " like i am the one that has amnesia not him.
A part of me is humiliated the whole time that he thinks i am so stupid, so gullible, that i don't get this sinking feeling each time he tells me he's going somewhere -- " Where else is he going? " The few times i am wrong, i am relieved and repentant. i attempt to convince myself that i dreamt this whole thing up to get attention.
The majority of the times i am right -- i fantasize of the day he can just straight up be honest with me. That way i can just deal with the grief instead of this incredulous rage. That way, one part of me can be proud of him.
But "i drove to Santa Cruz for milk."This one has got to top " Sake isn't wine, it's rice". One good days, i know that i am not dreaming. i don't have to take his blood alcohol level to know this is certifiable addict behavior of the purest kind. Even my sponsor who i suspect wonders if i just made this whole alcoholic thing up in my head -- said " Wow, i didn't realize he's gotten worse ". After 2 years in Alanon, i know better than to need others to believe me but  for a minute it was lovely to be finally validated. We're dealing with addict character of the purest kind here.
So i took a deep breath and went through the steps of what i always tell my clients -- what can you control. What do you need. How can you take care of yourself.
i had been reading Dry all day for some reason, and maybe God was preparing me because after finishing it i knew exactly what to do. I decided i wasn't going to the party, i was going to a meeting instead. i took deep breaths. Tried to check in. Did a litmus test for vindictive revengefulness which i am beginning to realize is my hugest character defect.
No, i wasn't rageful now, if i had to put on a smiley face and go to this party i would be at the end of the night.
So i waited until he came home,  told him i felt betrayed, told him that i didn't feel i could trust him. And left.
i haven't gone to Al-anon for 2 weeks now. i was so proud of myself that i was holding up. But yesterday, i realized, i needed to be there.
15 people in a room, reporting sorrowfully how Christmas is such an anxiety producing season, how their qualifier acted out, how their family was crazy. i needed to be there. In fact, if i had been there, i would have probably not been as reactive to my sister and mother this vacation.
But it was comforting to see how others were handling it. That i was in good company. That they were laughing. That it felt like family.
It was wonderful to talk to another guy with 2 kids who's wife is driving while drinking and confess my desire to control him by refusing to be the designated driver. There was both a sorrow and a peace about him, that i told him i really aspire to have.
But i left in such a good place. i came home humming. And i am guarding this serenity with my life. It's not bad, it's not good it just is. And for slivers of moments, i experience the incident shrink to being a speck on the wall. The last night of 2011. It's not about me. It's about his stuff, his issue. And the fact that i wasn't raging, i wasn't self-destructively cursing. That the last words my daughter said to me was " Mommy is smiling, that's not good".
It's progress. And it was a beautiful end to the growth of 2011.

Hard Core Morning

It's been a hard core morning. Apparently i was so upset tossing and turning in bed, it woke up my husband. A part of me is tickled pink because i've been only doing that for the last year. Only now he wakes up.
We had a bunch of really hard texts going back and forth and i realize, it takes all of me not to rage at him. And nothing gives him greater "pleasure" watching me lose control. Because at the end of the day, i look like the addict and he doesn't.
There is a standing joke in Al-anon about a well dressed person coming into a meeting with another who looks like a complete mess. Guess which one is the addict ?
i finally found the profile my husband fits -- he is the controlled addict. And a part of me is relieved about that, because at the end of the day, that is what keeps him in denial, which would probably buy us more time; yet another part of me knows, it will be a long way to the bottom.
But through the texts this morning, a part of me grieves that we are in exactly the same place that we were 5 years ago in therapy. I am the problem. Not him. And as long as that is true, my instincts are completely right --couples therapy won't work.
It makes me sad, that the epiphany i've been waiting for, never happens. That moment of co-ownership. WE have a problem ie.-- " Let me tell you how i contribute to the problem."
i've spent the last 5 years taking my own inventory. At the end of the day, it is one sophisticated codependent way of hoping he would take his.
So i can't wait, and life goes on. My serenity, sanity and happiness is at stake. He's right. I have a problem and the good news is i am getting help.i feel ashamed each time i rage, but the least i can do is take ownership, apologize and ask for help.
My latest mantra : i choose to not rage not because he deserves it, but because i deserve to like myself at the end of the day.

拔萝卜奶奶 (Carrot Milk)

Aidan's taken a liking to carrot-juice.
The cutest thing is that he calls it "拔萝卜奶奶" which is literally translates into "pull the carrot-milk". We've always called carrot by their favorite song " 拔萝卜( a song about a dog pulling at a carrot )" and it's so amazing for him to map it to a brand new beverage in his 2-year old brain. You know they've really grasped a language when they are branding their own beverage !

One ounce of Quiet Time=One ounce of patience

It's funny how my quiet time in the mornings directly correlate with my patience with the kids. They have been wearing on me lately. Aidan with his incessant, unrelenting nagging and even Nally's polite " Excuse me mommy" has been making me sigh " Yes what Nally ? "
But today, just 10 minutes of quiet time gave me more patience for the day. It helped me relax and not throw my usual tantrum at BSF, because my first born is innately a Zen, mindful, reflecting, slow-motioned contemplator and is impossible to hurry, no matter how hard i yell.
Today i managed to get them both to BSF, just before i get turned away from my class. i got to watch them play at the playground while eating lunch. We got to drive the car-cart at Safeway which was a treat for them. i got to muster up all my energy to drop them home and then take Nally for gym.
i had been planning to take her for a mommy-n-me visit and she had suggested the same " Can we go to the coffee shop and write ? ". We had sat there, while she did her kindergarten workbook, and me chat with daddy.
We had gone to do some errands on University. We had come home and done some marble-art work. We had done some water experiments in the bath. We had read Noah's ark in Chinese and learnt about how our body worked. i had lasted till bedtime.
Present, patient, awake, aware and not yelling.
Nothing short of a miracle.

There is One God

Nally: "  There is only one God"
Tania: " Really" ( impressed by Bible Study Fellowship's monotheistic education ) " How come there is only one God ? "
Nally: " Because it'll get squishy in the sky "

Homeschooling chocolate

i am on chomping down on a home-schooling love-fest. This one i am relishing with the same meditative, teary eyed, bleariness as book on contemplative prayer ( Open Mind, Open Heart ) -- i am weeping with resounding amens and swirling every drop of his thoughts and ideas the same way my husband savors the tannins of his wine.
It's called "Homeschooling and the Voyage of Self-Discovery" (David H. Albert, David H. Albert).

It's a home-schooling devotional.
It is unschooling at its finest. The author is eccentric, slightly verbose writer with run-on sentences that make my writing style look tight. He holds multiple degrees from Williams, Oxford and University of Chicago. He is well-regarded authority in home-schooling circles but oh so charming. He hits "my spot" for people i would love to hang out with. He is tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic, speaks mostly in parenthesis ( the way i was raised ), is ever brilliant, inter-disciplinary. He is so laid back, so trust in the spirit of the child, so humble and bemused i am tickled pink every minute i read him. Oh, and he is Quaker to boot.
i couldn't get past the introduction. It was written by Joyce Reed an associate dean of my alma mater, Brown University. She home-schooled her 5 kids while working as a college dean for many years. When asked if she was a walking contradiction since her stance was to stay away from any required curricula, textbooks and study time -- she says she sees the same inclinations in a home-schooled  child in a successful college student -- "the ability to dig deeply into material, to seek out conversations with and supports from faculty, to become passionately involved in their academic and co-curricular lives, to reach out and support their fellow students, and to model for them a satisfaction with their studies based purely on the enjoyment of the learning process."
When i think about my experience at Brown, it made total sense. College wasn't a place to learn anything new. Me and my room-mate would sit and read our course-bulletins cover to cover, wide-eyed like kids in a candy store. We had spent our lives, doing everything to "get here". We get to pick now. She finished her MA and BA in 4 years in Spanish and English Literature. i finished my BA in Semiotics while cross-concentrating at RISD.
We redesigned our majors, met with advisors, researched study abroad programs. We got to take charge of our learning now.
It suddenly clicked. The home-schooled child is ready for college. They've spent a life-time preparing them for it. We start now, instead of throwing them in same-aged groups force feeding curriculum down their throats. After a decade of school, we expect them to arrive in college, excited, self-initiated, wildly excited to learn, passionate, innovative, creative and broad thinkers when we've spent their lifetime beating out every ounce of self-initiated learning out of them.
But Brown boasts of a special interests in home-schoolers and Oxford a vast majority of matriculates homegrown. i am tickled pink to relish the beauty of the argument and how it totally makes sense.
So i am saving each chapter like the special chocolates i used to have as a child -- bite by bite, little by little before it all runs out.