I'm Included

I had my first epiphany when I was 11. That was when I found out I was a child, not a parent, and it was a Very Big Shock indeed. Here's how it happened.

The whole family was in the kitchen. Dad, mum, me, Julie, Polly, Maria, Angie. In that order. We were getting ready for our usual Sunday family picnic. It must have been winter because mum was filling the big green thermos with steaming Wattie’s tomato soup. Dad was leaning against the bench, finished buttering the white Sunday bread, probably thinking about the racehorse he’d put a bet on. I think he liked to spend his winnings in his head a few times before he actually won them.

Mum and dad were having a conversation, probably something ordinary like what time to leave, or which beach or bush to go to given the weather. I was standing by, as I did, watching and waiting for instructions. My four sisters were playing about in a girly tangle, as they did, giggling probably, and being told to behave themselves by mum. Or dad. Whoever got irritated with them first. Then mum said it to dad, or he said said it to her... I don't remember the details, but it was something about ‘the girls’ that clearly included me. First it puzzled me, then concerned me deeply, and then caused me to look at them both and ask “Am I one of the girls?”

If you knew my father, you’d know how deep and meaningful his laugh was when he heard something ridiculous. He laughed a particularly good one that time. Mum said something, but I wasn’t listening, because dad’s laugh said it all. And all I could think as my world view crashed around me was “What an idiot! I don’t even know who I am.”

I honestly didn’t know, until that day, that I was one of the girls. I am the oldest, and they started coming thick and fast from when I was three until I was ten. In practically every childhood photo after age three, I have a baby under my arm. The communication between my parents and me was mostly like this: “Are the girls ready?” “Where are the girls?” “Can you call the girls for dinner?” “Can you put the girls in the bath?” “Time to read the girls a story... get the girls in the car... put the girls’ coats on...” It never occurred to me that I was one of them. I was part of the mum+dad+me girl herding unit. Those four giggling tangled up creatures were the girls.

Anyway, dad eventually stopped laughing, mum finished filling the thermos, the girls got themselves untangled long enough to get into the car and tangled back up again, and we took off on the Sunday picnic. Life quickly got back to normal -- or so I thought.

I don’t tell this story for sympathy. Not at all. I loved that job. I loved those girls. I watched them grow from babies, to toddlers, take their first steps, speak their first words, suffer their childhood illnesses. I doubled them to school on my bike. I dressed them, and wiped their cute little noses, and sang to them in the car when they were wailing with boredom or car sickness. That was my job, I was really good at it, and I loved it.

I tell this story, because I've recently had another epiphany, equal and opposite to that one.

I've been listening to Tara Brach's teachings about self compassion; she's the reason I even thought about that situation when I was 11. During one of her meditations, I realised I've been still stuck in that "What an idiot, I don't even know who I am" story, all these years later. It's an intensely anxious feeling, and I've spent a lifetime numbing and zoning out and desperately trying to disprove it.

It's played out as hanging about on the fringes, shrinking, second-guessing, isolating and not trusting myself. I've quietly thought the good things in life apply to other people, not me -- things like the law of attraction and book deals,  for example!  I expect to be whacked from behind, when I least expect it, and I've spent a good deal of energy making sure I'm ready to counter-attack when this happens (which it never does, by the way.) I am very shy of strangers, terrified of mingling and networking events. I think other people will find me crashingly boring. I could go on, but you get the picture.

I've been living scared. I don't even know of what. Scared and anxious. Believing I'm not OK and not acceptable, not safe, and accepting the resulting low-level background anxiety as a normal part of life. This is crippling and limiting. And totally exhausting.

So. How cool is it to stare that one in the face and watch it back down? Very cool indeed.

Tara Brach explains the limbic brain, or reptilian brain, which humans share with other animals. It's in the back of the head, and it has very useful powers and lightning speed responses to keep us safe, alerting us to dangers and kicking in automatic reactions like fight, flight or freeze mode. It's responsible for basic survival. Useful stuff for sure.

We've also evolved another brain in the front of our heads which gives us other powers like compassion, empathy, discernment, kindness, creativity, love. Don't you just feel relaxed and gorgeous thinking about it?

The epiphany for me was: I get to choose which brain is running my show. And I choose the evolved one at the front.

I know I'm grossly oversimplifying, but lots of us live with the limbic brain turned to full-on automatic mode. When that's happening, life feels dangerous, we creep around, tense and afraid, believing there's something wrong with us, that something bad's going to happen. That's the limbic brain's job. It's not wrong. We need it at times, for sure. It just doesn't need to be running the show all the time.

Our other brain, the front one, is wired for a totally different experience of life. It appreciates the beauty in the world and the vastness of the universe. It feels the pain and joy of others. It brings wonder and enjoyment into the picture. I've been watching very carefully what brain is in charge, and seeing the incredible difference in my experience of living, when I switch from back brain to front brain, from survive mode to thrive mode. It's amazing.

At the moment, it's affecting how I'm experiencing myself. It's healing to remind myself that everyone in the world feels their own version of not being included, not good enough, not worthy. It's normal, and I'm included in that too. It's incredibly good to treat myself to kind, compassionate thoughts. It's empowering to give myself time and space to just sit and feel what I'm feeling, not fight it or numb it, just watch it and feel safe.

Over the past few weeks, as I've experimented with functioning more from the loving compassionate front brain, I'm noticing a huge dial down in anxiety. I just don't feel anxious any more. This has opened up a massive expanse of potential. Do you know how much energy gets sucked up by constant anxiety? A shit load!

At 11, I realised I’d made a huge mistake—a case of mistaken identity, of myself. It went down as just another hilarious event in our family’s hilarious history. But something shocked and froze in me that day, and stayed frozen -- protecting and preserving all these year. Realising this was a source of anxiety, taking steps to explore it and thaw it out, relaxing with it and accepting it for what it is -- is just wow. I feel like I'm under the protection of an infinitely kind, loving, warm, understanding custodian. It's just me, operating from a different brain space. A space where everyone's included, there's nothing to be afraid of, and, well, all is well.

Spitting it out

I've been doing the 'morning pages' exercise from The Artist's Way (Julia Cameron, Pan Books). Maybe I should say "again" because I've been on this path a few times before when I've needed to get unstuck creatively and psychologically. Technically morning pages are a writing excercise with the following rules:

• Every morning, soon after you wake up, write three long-hand pages in a journal.
• Don't think about what you're writing, just write, stream-of-consciousness style, until you've filled up three pages. No cheating with a tiny little note pad!
• Don't read what you've written. 
• Don't show it to anyone else. 
• Do it every day, whether you feel like it or not.

This time round, I've got the morning pages in my laptop, in Word, with the font size set so one page of single spaced text with no paragraph breaks is 750 words. I start with the date, note the time, and write until I've filed the page, note the total word count and time, save and shut the file. If I don't agonise, edit, or think too much, it takes roughly 17 minutes, so not a massive time suck.

Some good things are happening. I'm looking forward to getting up and writing every day. I feel no anxiety, no struggle to stay focussed, no burning impulse to vacuum or clean the windows before I get started, or half way through. And I'm feeling no pressure or block. I am writing, and it feels bloody great! Yay.

And not only that; I've been motivated to do my own writing again. A couple of times this week I even woke up thinking about story ideas for my blogs. This is massive. For the past year or so I've been waking up thinking about some work problem. Usually it's a writing problem because that's what I do for a job. More often than not, when I wake up properly I realise it's an imagined, not a real problem, but it hangs around, whining and bothering me, and stopping me from actually working, or ensuring the work I do feels like agony. It's also exhausting, so I've had no energy  for creative writing either.

But as I said, a couple of times this week I woke up with story ideas in my head. It is a much better day when I wake up feeling interested, motivated, excited to get up and write. A much better scene altogether!

So what's going on? I think the morning pages are a bit like housework. It's like I go into my brain every morning, and clean it out -- throw away rubbish, wipe up dust and grime, put stuff in its right place so I can find it when I want it. Wipe the benches, run the dishwasher, pick up clothes, do the laundry, take out the garbage, sort out that junk cupboard, give some stuff away. Think of all those things that make your house nicer to be in. When you don't do them, everything's harder, more stressful, a drag.

The morning pages are my brain's housekeeper, keeping things in order so I don't have to navigate around chaos and clutter when I'm working. These days I'm more likely to sit down to work feeling fresh and clear. A bit virtuous even, just like I feel when my clothes are picked up and the kitchen sink is sparkling.

Perfect Lies

I am perfect. Seriously. I don't say this in a boastful or gloating way. I say it in a whispery, almost embarrassed way. It's only taken me fifty two and a half years to get to this simple truth. I only just realised it.

I've been the victim of perfect lies. Mostly waiting for things to be perfect. Waiting for perfect timing. Waiting for the perfect opportunity. The perfect moment. The perfect outfit. Hairdo. Job. Holy shit, you could spend your whole life waiting for things to be perfect.

In the past year, the perfection thing has really been strangling me. I've been a writer all my life. I've written stories, poems, journals, essays, blogs, letters, speeches, emails. I write for fun. I write for a living. I love words and words seem to love me too. We're perfect for each other actually.

Three years ago I decided to write a gardening and cooking blog. It was an experiment to see if I could sustain a writing practice because I wanted to be a column writer in some future, perfect stage of life. I loved blogging. I wrote two or three posts a week, took photos and developed a sideline interest in photography. I loved my blog very much. It felt like an expression of the real me and my passions.

After a year of writing in quiet anonymity I started to promote the blog -- you know, to experiment with having other people read it. And that was pretty thrilling too. I got a lot of positive feedback and some followers. People left encouraging comments. I had site stats to analyse. I emailed a link to my favourite food writer, Nigel Slater, and he read it and sent me a gorgeous email that made me cry with happiness. I joined the NZ food bloggers' association and went to a conference. I handed out business cards and started getting followed by other food bloggers. The editor of Cuisine magazine started reading my blog. (She's my cousin, but hey, she's the editor of Cuisine!)

Awesome eh? Except as soon as I'd attracted an audience I stopped writing.

It's been excruciating, not writing. But I have felt totally unable to write. This block comes with a physical symptom -- like someone's standing behind me, holding my arms down by my side and pulling in on my solar plexus. I can't breath properly, I can't yell out, and I can't get away.

I realised today that this is the grip of perfection. Telling me that there's no way it's going to let me be a real writer. Telling me I'm not smart enough, original enough, creative enough, or strong enough to make it as a writer. It's yelling to stay away from the edge. Don't get burnt. Don't, whatever you do, open up too much, get hurt. It's OK to doodle around in a journal, and post on a blog nobody reads. But that's IT.

OK, so that was quite a shocking realisation. I haven't just got writers' block. I've got perfection doing a permanent Heimlich maneuver on me! Good to know. 

It's clear enough that perfection is the inner critic in this situation. It's a belief that I need to suffer and struggle and sweat and perform miracles to be good enough to get anything I really want. And believing that even then, I probably won't get it. I feel embarrassed and ashamed writing that. But it's true. The vice of perfection gripping me and holding me back is a just part of myself that's terrified -- of being honest, expressive, known, read. I'm sure it's not a coincidence that those are also the things I want the most -- to be honest, expressive, known, read.   

This is exhausting -- wrestling myself over what I want most and fear most. It's so exhausting I've had no energy to write. Which, perhaps, is the perfect truth of our struggle with perfectionism.

I was trying to meditate (perfectly of course) today, and all I could see was this big old self-inflicted fist fight; all I could feel was the pain in my solar plexus. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. So I called a truce. No fighting for a few hours, so I can write something.

This is it. It feels kind of exhilarating. It's a relief. It's perfect. I'm perfect. Just like this.