Courage: Showing up in the arena with no guarantees

I've lightly referenced my swimming in the deep waters of Brene Brown this year.  Since January, I've read her two best selling books, Daring Greatly and I thought it was me, but it isn't.  I've also taken a ten week workshop on her work, because apparently, I like to frequently sit in my own shame puddle.

No seriously, it was some degree of agony mixed with catharsis.  The work has changed me.  Made me more creative.  It helped me understand and come to terms with what happened inside my marriage. As we hit midlife, the marriage was no longer a vehicle for meeting our individual needs and most ardently not repairable.  I feel bolder to publish my thoughts.  I'm getting comfortable with that uncomfortable act of embracing my self regardless of who is looking.  So I've gone out and picked up her latest book Rising Strong, because apparently, I have more work to do.  I found an audio interview with Brene Brown that inspired this post.  The link is posted at the end.

I'm better at recognizing my shame triggers. Recognizing them reduces any harmful acting out we all tend to do when those triggers are tripped.  It might take me a few weeks to understand what's happening for me.  I'm aiming for getting to just a few minutes to process.  Still, at least some processing is happening.

To wear courage, one must first be vulnerable.  To be vulnerable, one must first get really intimate with shame.  We all have our own and unique "shame triggers".  Shame is a universal human emotion.  It washes over all of us similarly.   We each have our own ways of responding to and resisting shame which negates vulnerably and by default blocks courage and connection with others.

Brown's social research concluded that shame is not unique to women.  Men feel it too.  Where women's shame has been researched to be rooted in body image and one's degree of grace and accomplishment, men are found to hold shame around "do not be perceived as weak".

According to Brene Brown, a woman who has done her work is one that can just "be" with a man in his shame and vulnerability without rejecting him for it or confusing it as weakness.

In contrast, when a man can hold space for a woman in her shame and suffering...without trying to problem solve or fix... thats a man who has done his work...

Brene reminds us, "One of the deepest paradoxes about vulnerability (is this)...When I meet you, vulnerability is the very first thing I try to find in you.  And it's the very last thing I want to show you in me.  ...because It's the glue that holds connection together.  Its all about our common humanity.  When we own our stories, and  share our stories with one another and we see ourselves reflected back in the people in our lives, we know we are not alone.  It's the heart of wholeheartedness, the center of spirituality.  It's the nature of connection... to be able to see myself, and hear myself and learn more about myself in the stories you tell about your experiences."

I'm paraphrasing Brene here when she says...It is a willingness to show up and be seen in our lives. Courage is born completely in vulnerability.  I would argue, so is love.  If we haven't come to terms with all of our shame triggers, then how can we fully love another?

Common shame triggers are often rooted in getting hurt, feeling rejected, abandonment.  I could write an article about what my particular shame triggers are, but I'd like to leave a shred of mystique.

Working through, in and among shame and vulnerability is the practice of being in the arena and being uncomfortable.... it does not go well all the time for any of us.

Brene extracts the lyric from the popular song Hallelujah. 

"Love is not a victory march.  Its a cold and broken Hallelujah"  - 

Enjoy the my very favorite acoustic version of Hallelujah right here....

Showing up in the arena - with no guarantees - helps people around us get braver... I think that's why Brene Brown is an accidental best selling author and why 20,000 people have accidentally looked at this blog.  We crave authenticity and honesty and vulnerability.

"It's when we lose our capacity to hold space (in these) struggles that we become dangerous.."  When you figure out and master all of the above, the million dollar question becomes, what do YOU do when you are witnessing another in shame?  If you are like much of the general population, you are just glad it's not you.  Maybe you are just a little grateful that it's someone else getting mauled in the arena this time.  When was the last time you set foot in the arena?  Have you ever, really-ventured-in?

When talking about sharing our life struggles Brene's interviewer offers,  "What goes wrong for us is part of our gift to the world.  It's what enables us to connect and be compassionate."

Regarding Midlife crisis or what Brene calls Midlife unraveling..."There is a place and time in our lives where we realize that growing up, when we felt pain, when we felt small, when we felt unseen....We constructed walls and moats and we protected ourselves and we shut down parts of ourselves.  This happens in midlife where we realize - Oh God -  to be the person we want to be, to be the partner, to be the parent; we have to take down everything we put up that was supposed to be keeping us safe and that has not served us."

When we shut down vulnerability - we shut down joy.  Many ask themselves,  "Do I take this all down and be seen?  Or do I keep it all up?  Most keep it all up and it is just so heavy."  She attributes this to those who age poorly or rapidly, when we cannot get on top of and master our shame demons. They are mastered by speaking them.

"If courage is a value that we hold as important then vulnerability is the only way in and through."

Most of us are brave and afraid in the exact same moment all day long."

Here is the hour long audio clip where much of this material was extracted...

https://soundcloud.com/onbeing/brene-brown-the-courage-to-be-vulnerable

Ciao!

Whole Foods Bones and Death Star

I donated blood for the first time the other day.  I've always wanted to do it, but wasn't quite sure what was involved.   I felt it was time that I donated a part of my healthy body to those who need it more than me.  I can make more.  Some people can't.

They took a pint.  One pint is equal to two cups.  More blood loss than this in childbirth and midwives consider it a hemorrhage and are breaking out the life-saving medicines.  Donating blood is a significant act on our bodies.  As I waited for the procedure to begin and asked how much they would be taking, I realized I had not eaten much that day and started to get a little nervous about how my 5'3" 115 lb frame would handle the loss.  I spaced eating.  What a dummy!  I probably nibbled here and there leftovers from my toddler or other children but it was just a busy day where I had neglected to eat well.

Well nourished women can withstand a normal blood loss of about a pint in childbirth and go on as if nothing happened.  Slightly anemic women with busy homes and other children to care for often take weeks to feel normal after blood loss in childbirth.  The Red Cross requires about 8 weeks spacing between donations to allow the body to recover.  This is almost as long as midwives treat the postpartum period and how long most surgeries take to recover from.

I am a total and utter morning person, but I woke up the next morning (12 hours after donating blood) feeling like I could sleep for days.  I begged my smallish children to let me sleep for a few extra minutes.  No dice.

I decided to give myself the standard midwife prescription that we ask mothers to prepare after giving birth to speed recovery.

Bone Marrow.

I dragged myself into Whole Paycheck - I mean, Whole Foods - and grabbed a bag of Marrow Bones and some veggies to make a nourishing broth.  Here is one of my favorite funny clips about Whole Foods to get you in the mood:

As I navigate the murky waters of divorce and feel generally balanced, happy, accepting and ready for a new future, my blood shortage took me physically and emotionally a step or two backward where I found a return to my personal divorce-survival rule of not making eye contact with anyone in public lest a conversation or human interaction start.

I give off the "DON'T APPROACH ME, I'M AN INTROVERT" vibe really well.  It's getting harder and harder to pull this off as I feel more and more healed and ready to step out socially.  But my depleted blood state tossed me right back into that "safer" isolated emotional place today in public.  Implement: No Eye Contact (NEC). A DEFCON 5 day. 

As I loaded my bounty onto the belt in the check out line, an older gentleman behind me broke through my DEFCON 5 and said,

"What are you using those marrow bones for?"

 The voice inside my head said, "Mr., You seem really nice and harmless and all but I have not given you eye contact and therefore not given you permission to acknowledge my existence, are you really talking to me? CAN'T YOU SEE THIS DEATH STAR IS AT A DEFCON 5?!?" 

I was polite and divulged to him that I donated blood for the first time and it kinda took the wind out of my sails and hoped a soup with bones would do the trick.

He pressed in asking me questions about how I planned to prepare the Bone Marrow and had I considered making a spread, and did I know gourmet restaurants charge $30 an ounce for a pate that I could easily make at home with my bag of bones, etc?

I was more shocked at why he bothered to ignore my OBVIOUS DEFCON 5 that I was intrigued and listening to what he had to say.  He had immediate credibility.

Maybe I'm not doing a good job with the DEFCON system when I'm feeling anti-social.  Maybe he used The Force on this Death Star.

In all actuality, the work on vulnerability I'm doing in area of Brene Brown is showing outwardly.  After donating blood, and feeling empty and lethargic, I had four irritating hours strait of Brene Brown between a workshop and my monthly book club.  Between losing half of my blood volume and feeling drained from self-reflection, my Death Star defenses are rendered useless.  Gone.  Gonzo.  Not a chance of coming back, especially walking around short of a pint of blood.

Whether I like it or not, strangers are talking to me - in the grocery store, at the gas pump - and I'm responding and ready to have human connection.  Maybe wholeheartedly and consistently for the first time in a long time.  It's good!  Because what came out of it yesterday is a new and quirky pate to try and share with you and a feeling of connectivity with another human being that I will never see again.

I smiled and relaxed as I thought of trying a gross pate made out of marrow, feeling it work in my body and telling you all about it.

Because I was already through checkout, I loaded groceries in the car then returned into produce for the herbs he suggested.  Walking around a pint short of blood started to feel better just from a little human connection that I fought and resisted going in there.

I'll post the Bone Marrow Pate separately.

Ciao!

Dating Land Mines and Bizarro

I am concurrently reading two Brene Brown books Daring Greatly  and I thought it was just me ~ but it isn't.   Brene Brown has her PhD in the areas of shame and vulnerability.  One I am reading for a women's book club I'm in, and the other is for a 10 week "vulnerability class" I'm taking.  Being Mormon and not holding my marriage and family together,  I am working through a ton of shame. And if I want to embark on a new relationship I have to put all the hurt behind me, tear down any remnants of walls around my heart and be utterly vulnerable to a man. The end of this article looks at the Latin origins of the word VULNERABLE and it turns out, that we've gotten the word Vulnerability wrong all this time in our language!  No wonder we fail at finding and keeping love! 

 I'm a strong woman capable of living on my own.  I enjoy it.  One of the most frequent comments aside from what a beautiful family I have is "you are so brave and strong".  I've educated five children completely at home and helped them become accomplished athletes.  I am also licensed to deliver babies born at home.

When my former husband had a public and humiliating affair, I took the children and a U-Haul trailer 2000 miles to Utah to give everyone some space (and maybe run from my problems).  This takes a fair amount of strength and resilience.  But if I really hear the feedback coming out of my marriage as it dies,  maybe I lost my marriage and family in the process of being strong.  Maybe I need to tease out and hold onto the resilience piece and abandon some of the strong piece.  They are not quite the same.  I'm exploring the ways that these maternal strengths may have hindered me in intimacy.  The former husband has actually described me as pushing him away.  I've got to take a look at this.


I have not yet begun round two of dating.  I'm not sure what is holding me up.  All I'm clear on is that it is not quite time to step back out there.  To recap, in December and January I had four dates with four men.  One culminating into a late night meet the following evening to exchange baked goods before Christmas and and maybe go in for that quick kiss we avoided on the first date.  I guess it was like a mini "re-do" on ending the first date.  This is my first foray into dating Mormons (I converted to the faith after my marriage so I've technically never dated a Mormon man before).  Our kiss was textbook Mormon-esque.  Just a peck.  Maybe two... or three....  Lips firmly closed... No big deal, right?  Sure, except I parted thinking about it so much that I drove about a quarter mile home in the dark with my headlights turned off.

It left me feeling like..."Yep! There is something to the Mormon business of chastity."  I'm excited to parent teens embarking on dating having experienced both avenues of dating.   One can experience a simple kiss and have it consume your thoughts as much or more as if it had been way over the top involved.

But this article is more about the multitude of ways that many of us push others away in intimacy. This man turned into Caspar the Ghost just days following the intense encounter - either due to total lack of interest or due to his integrity and understanding that my marriage was not legally terminated yet.  I'd like to think the latter, but in reality, it's probably the former.  I like to live in denial that maybe he's just encased in cement in Jabba the Hut's lair like Han Solo.  Or maybe in dating he carefully constructs a mine field that no one can pass and come too close.

After all, who wouldn't want to just leap into life with a woman with FIVE kids including a toddler, whose divorce isn't quite finalized?  In some of the craziest moments inside my home where we've had several consecutive days of sports, the house looks like Bali after the tsunami and my toddler is in his season of screaming, I'll say to one of my married girlfriends, "Who wouldn't want to partake in all of this?!?"  "Take care of your marriages, ladies!!"  I'll say in a group text.

I'll review here some of the microscopic but significant things that went down to self-sabotage the endeavor before it even got off the ground.  Because next time around, I'd like to not lay a mine field  between the next great man and my heart ~ nor do I care to step along his carefully laid booby-traps, land mines and barbed wire on the path to his heart.

I'd like to be vulnerable and be a magnet for someone equally as sophisticated in the art of vulnerability.  If I lay land mines, I'll consequently attract someone who also lives in his own sabotaging minefields.

Let me share with you some of the detonated WWII-type mines I carefully placed.

1.  I might or might not have said more than once in person and via text "I imagine it will take me at least  2 or 3 years to find a committed relationship with someone." 

2. "I have to get my toddler out of diapers before I find a committed relationship."  Yep, I actually said that out loud.

3. My personal favorite commitment-phobe self-sabotage remark... "I can't imagine folding a man into my crazy life anytime soon."  

Now I've given up trucker talk unless I have a lapse and feel really emotional.  (Last week, I watched "the other woman" change her Facebook cover photo to her wearing my clothes and snuggling with my dogs.  So I may have used some expletives that day and if I were still Catholic, would be sitting in a booth with a priest.  Mormons just privately repent over and over and over and over...again.  I also scheduled counseling for some coping tools.)

But I just re-read #1-3 of what I typed - that which I actually said on my date.  And maybe via text - not to the men I didn't expect to see again...BUT TO THE MAN I DEFINITELY WANTED TO SEE A LOT MORE OF.  And I'm now saying... WTF?



I have issues.  I need an intervention.  I must morph into that DC Character, BIZARRO (click here for a reminder) where, when stakes are high, I communicate directly the opposite of what might actually be rolling through my brain requiring a translation.  I loved those episodes of Superman when Bizarro showed up.  Now I understand why.

Wait! It gets better!  If you subscribe to the notion that like attracts like, I may have attracted someone who does the same exact thing in regards to self-sabotage!  Here are a few mines he laid out for me to fall on....

1.  As he chose to extend the first date by an hour or so and talk...He says "I think I'm planning on traveling for an extended period to Europe sometime in the next year or so and maybe live there for a while."   In my mind I said "AWESOME! So why did we make this first date go longer and why does your online profile suggest you are interested in marriage?"  What came out of my mouth was a total support for this plan and suggestions he get a Eurail pass.

2. and 3. and 4 and 5.  all kind of go together and are paraphrased "I'm still wounded from my last long term relationship and am looking for just friendship.  We should go camping sometime. How far do you think we can get if we spend the night together?  I don't have physical relations before marriage. I want to get married sooner not later and you can't move fast enough for me as you are just coming out of your marriage.".

Again, a "WTF" moment in time and space.  With this, I'm like...OK enough confusing messages here that maybe it's just me, my crazy life, and he's obviously not remotely interested in exploring it further.  Or he's suffering from the same plague I have living on the square planet Bizarro occupies.

Either way, this is definitely NOT going to work.  Not at all!

I am learning that for me, I morph onto BIZARRO when I feel most vulnerable.  If one looks at the definition our culture gives to the word VULNERABLE...we associate it with" weak, impotent, open for attack, powerless".  No wonder strong alpha men don't want anything to do with that!

But if we consider the actual root meaning of the word and it's origins in ancient history....it originates from Latin BATTLE language and most closely means "open to attack", "difficult to defend" "bridge".  Even the most highly guarded defendable fortresses in medieval society had to have an entrance for food and survival.  Now this is the kind of vulnerability - just a footbridge toward my heart -  I can live with in search of love.  I imagine when we pick apart the word VULNERABLE in military terms this way, some men would see being vulnerable not as weakness, but a necessary part of the war of finding love as well.

When Bizarro shows up on my dates, that's probably a clue that I really like someone, but also a CUE for me to just STOP talking.  A little silence never hurt anyone.  But ultimately, Bizarro needs to understand that although he means well by protecting my heart, he's no longer invited to the party.

{Other clues I am pushing a man away...talking incessantly about my gluten-intolerance. That should be reserved for my closest friends who already love me unconditionally.}

Ciao!

Happy Anniversary C&W!

It has been a year since I started to write down my thoughts and publish them here.  Thank you for stopping buy in your busy day to read, subscribe, and just sit with me.  I feel like I am getting more comfortable with this and maybe ready to share a little bit more of my life.

Events last year created a vulnerability in me and as I review my writings, I can see that I I have withheld a great deal of myself.  There is some scar tissue there that feels like it is ready to be ancient history.

I love this photo a girl friend took during my third pregnancy that would give birth to Harleigh.  I post it today because I feel figuratively pregnant...with me. 

Last year, I took you on some homeschool trips and shared a few yummy treats as I felt like a big girl trying to impress guests with cooking and homemaking.  Yes, I'm a Mormon. For a funny read, check out:  Sister Bloggers: Why so Many Lifestyle Bloggers Happen to be Mormon.  For more on what I believe in, click here.

I think I will usher in this next year with revealing just a little bit more.  About my home and the people I share space with. About me.  Yes, I think I will fly my Freak Flag.  Maybe just a corner of it.  I warn you, that I am born of two corporate fiance professionals who worked for Fortune 100 companies their entire careers... Translation: I have to dig deep for those authentically creative pieces of ME and grow comfortable sharing them with YOU. This will be an exercise for me to journal honestly, and not be really flipping mad at myself for days after wondering if you still love me or not.

To prepare, I will be copiously reading Brene Brown's  articles on Shame and Vulnerability.

Ciao.