shooting for 99%

Someone I respect shared her sense that I still define myself, to a large extent, by family.  

Yes, I do.  Surprised at her mentioning it, because she knows I've been working to cut that down to size since 1976, the year it first struck me that I was a separate self from my sibs & parents.  

Although I am the perhaps the most transparent person on the planet about my search for self & clearer sense of separation from images/imaginings about family, am sure it's a fairly universal human quest.  

Am continually goose bumped by things that seem to come up in clusters, giving fresh insights & new meanings to longtime dynamics & memes.  Over the past couple days, I wrote a posting about a letter from Mike to Mom, reread the e-mail about still defining myself by family & went through the bittersweet joy of yesterday being Siblings Day, with friend after friend posting pictures of themselves with smiling siblings.  

There is no question that some part of me will always define myself by family.  What I've been working on for forty years - successfully - is to reduce it from 100% family, back in '76, to 99% me.

99% makes sense.  My experience of family has been fairly toxic, as has their experience of me.  Defining 1% of moi by family is enough to show the love I have for my sibs without a sicko longing for the more that once ate me up.  Getting it down to 1% is still a ways off, but working on it.

While I believe the family thing is a fairly universal quest, there is no denying that mine has the peculiar twist of defining myself by a family that never included me in their own definition!

This was underscored yesterday, looking at large & small groups of smiling siblings posted on Facebook.  I couldn't post one of our entire family because none exists.  With the arrival of each child, Mom & Dad had a formal studio picture taken - Peter & Mike, Peter & Mike & Mim, Peter & Mike & Mim & Ian (a full family shot).  They had a formal studio shot of me around 18 months or two - alone.  I find that interesting.

Yes, I define myself by family.  Family matters to me.  Always has, always will.   What I've worked to get past is it being all consuming.  Even after John, family filled up as much or more of my practical life as he did.  Mom lived with us.  I married, but my family remained, literally, at the center of my life.  

Having a healthy sense of self & a clearer sense of separation from images/imaginings about family is an active, on-going work in my life.  Have made headway over forty years, significant progress over the past fifteen, especially over the past two, particularly the last twelve months.  

The point to think about is not whether I define myself by family, but how much definition do I give myself as an individual.  Like to think I'm increasingly closing in on 99%! 

blindsided by joy

Best way to be blindsided - by joy!

When I wrote yesterday's posting that referenced letters from Mike & Mom, had no idea it was a life shifter.  Used the two tenderest notes from a small treasure trove of family letters to make a point that absolutely positively HAD to be made.  Mike spoke clearly from himself, Kerry, Peter & Mim;  Mom spoke for herself & all of us, which was everything.  

Wow...  After a lifetime for trying to come to terms with the woefully incomprehensible & pathetically unfathomable,  I write a posting & - out of the blue - decades family storm & strife were lifted off my shoulders, poofed away as if by magic. 

Actually, it was magic.  At least my definition of magic - when life works the way it was always meant to, ending up in the best for all.  

Bissfully blown away by the timing of family letters tumbling together as a collection, sending out into the dear void bits & pieces that spoke to me, the blessing of having the material ~ mindset ~ writing chops to distill heated words & convulsive rhetoric into four days of healing posts - Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday & Friday.

We can get great educations, seek training, attend workshops & seminars & all manner of eye-, mind- & spirit-opening events, but when it comes to the most important changes in our lives, all we can do is prepare a way for A Greater Power to find a way to turn things around, help to set things right.

When we're blindsided by joy, gobswoggled by wondrous change, one thing remains to be done - offer up the most heart-felt thanks to the dear void & the amazing Universe & All That Is.  

tender words

The most surprising thing that Mom experienced in her quest for a better sense of her own inner core was the distress felt by her older children, each of whom categorically opposed it.  

Peter openly scoffed at her search.

Mike & Kerry were both outspoken in their criticism of her search.

Mim saw no need for it & pegged all responsibility for Mom's search on me.  (Would that it were true - Mom finally sought help because of  Mim & Peter, not because of anything I said or did.) 

 

Initially, Mom felt blindsided.  When she'd reached out in her letter to each of us for our support in her quest, she wasn't requesting our active participation.  The work she did with the great Kevyn Malloy was about HER, not about us.  

Each one of them went way past questioning Mom's drive to find out what was important to her - they flat out denounced it.  

What would have seemed emotionally devastating - her older children presenting a united front of disapproval & ultimately distancing - turned out to be weirdly liberating.  She felt sad that her children could not see that this was something she was doing that had virtually nothing to do with them.  Who could have guessed how their responses stirred her mother's heart & soul in new ways?  

It struck Mom, especially after reading a letter from Mike, that her three oldest children could not comprehend that their mother was doing something for herself, not for anyone else.  And, for possibly the first time in her life, Mom processed their inflamed responses as information - then forged on with her quest, even when warned that continued counseling could push them out of her life.  I would describe that as "courageous," but am pretty sure Mom would say it was just what needed to be done.

Out of the small trove of letters recently rediscovered in the Big Dig clear & clean, two stand out as worth a look.  One from Mike to Mom; the other, her reply.  Individually & in tandem, they illustrate so much of everything Mom was experiencing.


From Mike's March 15, 1999 letter:
I would like to say that whoever you are talking to or having consul with is driving a large wedge between the family and you.  As you approach your 89 birthday, we should be getting closer, not farther apart.  We should be helping all the members of the family get closer to you and each other.  But it seems that it is not happening.  Kerry was very upset with your short note saying that you only trust John and me in what we say, or being safe.  I can't think of a statement farther from the truth when it comes to Kerry.  She has only your goodwill at heart as have I.  But she will also say what she thinks because she has a right to.  You are losing Kerry very fast and a rethink about people's right to voice their feelings should be looked at very carefully.  You have your feelings, too, I do know this.* 

No one can make you do or feel what you do, Mother, only you can.  Don't change that "attitude of mind" so much that no family is left to see the results.

* The last sentence is in much smaller print because that's how Mike wrote it - possibly added later rather part than of the original thought. 

 

Am including all of Mom's reply, because every word touches my heart & memories.  She put her heart into writing it, sitting in her big chair in the living room & on her bedside.  In so many ways, having the opportunity to respond to Mike gave her a key to expressing what she had set out to do & to take a loving look at what was coming from it.  

To put Mom's second paragraph in context, she is referring to the early summer 1997 emotional explosion, which still reverberated almost two years later.

March 30, 1999

Dear Michael
Your letter was received.  Here are a few of my thoughts.

Don't let the fall out of a few heated moments taint your life.  Set aside the unintended hurt and the disagreement, and focus on the intentional love.  I find comfort that no one intended to be hurtful.

I have a psychological counselor, a financial counselor, and spiritual counselors.  John is an influence, Elsa is an influence, and Peter is an influence, along with Taking Responsibility: Self Reliance and the Accountable Life by Nathaniel Branden, Stephen Covey, John Bradshaw and other authors.  I enclose a list of Branden quotations.

The key issue in this quest for self is me, not Elsa, not Kerry.

It is important to ask "Why?" rather than lash out if people say or do disturbing things.  Asking "Why?" acknowledges the possibility of a different point of view.  It does not mean agreeing with the response.

A reply is not necessarily a response.  Intentional silence is not a neutral response.  Stripped down to basics, life is about loving people for who they are, and not who we want them to be.

Love to all - 

Love, Mom

p.s.  My shoulder is punishing me for writing this, but it is a necessity.

Reading over Mom's letter, can totally understand why all of my older siblings discounted the person who wrote it, the person their mother was discovering within herself.  

OUR mother never went below the surface of whatever a person presented, never asked "Why?" or delved any deeper than what was in front of her.  She certainly would never ever had said that silence is not a neutral response - the woman who had done that all our lives now saw it as BOGUS??  

It was easier, safer to attribute the change in Mom to my influence or Kevyn's or anyone else, because it just didn't fit their image of our mother.

The very things that so many others felt & feel deserve celebration & deep respect were foreign to my brothers & sister.  And yet Mom still forged ahead.  

The emotional explosion that set off all that came after happened in early summer 1997.  The drama between myself and Peter & Mim played out over summer 1998.  Mom's group letter to her children about her hopes for the quest with Kevyn went out apparently in late winter 1999, with March & April responses from Mike & later Kerry.  And in February 2000, Mom sent out her first Mindwalker1910 e-mail to what would be a growing & increasingly devoted dist list.

When Mom was 87, 88 & 89.  

As someone who experienced her as massively passive-aggressive in her family dealings, as absolutely the way Kerry so often slammed as unwilling to see difficult realities right in front of her, with no idea that what she intended as benign neglect was still an action rather than a neutral response, the tender words she wrote to Mike were nothing sort of revolutionary. 

Katharine Reynolds Lockhart - personal growth rock star!

 

 
 

alas, worthy of Lemony Snicket

Today is my sister, Mim's, birthday.  She would have been 72.  Throughout the day, have found my thoughts turning to what remains of my family - me, my two brothers, my sister-in-law, nieces & their husbands & daughters, a married nephew & one who's single.  

Still feel my heart wince, remembering that the only one who reached out - beyond a Facebook post - when Mim was hospitalized & died, after her memorial tribute, was my niece, Karen.  Not a card or a call from the others.   

People have a seriously hard time accepting that it's not personal.  None of them - even my parents  - gave any sign they considered me within the family circle.  Not that I realized it, myself.  Was pretty clueless for my first 50+ years.  I knew that my drawing breath at the same time bugged them, but took forever to realize how much.  There I was, acting as if I had a natural, legitimate place in the family, when the folks who mattered knew it wasn't so.   

From reading the growing cache of letters recently rediscovered in our houseclearing & cleaning Big Dig, no one seemed more exasperated by my presumptuous presence than my sister-in-law, Kerry.

That AH HA! came out reading the letters as a cohesive unit instead of piecemeal.  Their timeline revealed how the emotional explosion of early Summer 1997 was a cascade of KABOOM! reactions of long-buried issues, triggered by actions I innocently set in motion.

Suffice it to say, the situation involved money - never a good thing to mess around with & all too easy mess up.  It involved money & a series of unfortunate events worthy of Lemony Snicket.

An unfortunate series of events that I bungled.  It mattered not one whit that I had only the best intentions, that I truly truly truly wanted to do what seemed fair for everyone, including me & mine. Looking back, can see in crumpled hindsight that the situation was predestined to blow up in my face and set off a string of long concealed resentments & rancor none of us saw coming.     

Yes, I was a total doofus to not realize how much & how long I'd gotten under my sister-in-law's skin, how many grievances she had against me that she'd never brought out into the open, never discussed.  

 

Then, again - why would I?  For a quarter century, Kerry lectured & hectored Mike's family for avoiding conflict, lacking the guts to look them in the face & bring them up.  Call me a dork, but my blunt, outspoken sister-in-law was the last person I expected to not walk her talk.  Sheez, was I wrong!

It's been healing, reading over the recently rediscovered letters, seeing how many times she was irked or outraged by me - and never said a peep.  Time & time again, she brings up things I did that cut deep - and that she kept silent, buried in her heart.   

Our great falling out - and her later falling out with Mom over another stupefying situation - was inevitable.  It never dawned on me that what Kerry said about being being addressing sensitive issues could be so much a polar opposite to her deepest feelings.  

The collected letters are a blessing from the Universe that surfaced in my life at just the right time, when rethinking family was thrust upon me.  It feels like a mitzvah from Mim.  Her death could have brought her sibs together, started a healing.  Instead, the blessing was in giving me a space to reimagine family.    

 

Am sad that my life experience with Kerry was dogged with not one, but (clearly, from her letters) many unfortunate series of events.  Looking over the letters, what she says & how she says it, can see why we'd be at such total communications loggerheads.  Maybe someday we will be able to reimagine family in a way that can include the other.  Maybe someday she might experience me as less Lemony Snicket, more SARK.