Growing Up

I received some books in the mail the other day, a nice surprise. It turns out they weren’t intended for me – and that makes me appreciate them even more.

Especially the one called Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (How to Finally, Really Grow Up), by James Hollis.

That title struck a chord because, well, I turn 44 this week, and just the other day I went to see a spiritual teacher (upon the advice of my therapist, Kira MacDuffee) who had exactly two words for me: GROW UP.

Ana-Karyn Garcia, an artist and psychologist who founded the Bioenergetics Institute in Ottawa, the Ana-Karyn Foundation, and Club Yoga, and who teaches innovative tools that link the body, mind, and spirit is the person who didn’t mince her words.

“So, what can I do for you?” the Latin woman in a white turban and robe asked me when I sat down in front of her in Kira’s cute little cottage on the Gorge in Victoria.

I started crying immediately. “It’s my two kids,” I blubbered. “I have this 30-70 split with their dad that’s becoming 60-40, and moving to 50-50 in the next few years.”

“And?” She raised an eyebrow beneath that imposing turban.

“I’ve accepted that it’s good to be uncoupled. Their dad and I are creating an awesome relationship after being unhappy for some years. I’ve got a new man in my life who loves me and loves the boys. It’s all good. But I can’t stand being away from my children,” I cried, not bothering to wipe away my tears. “It’s just not right to be separated from them, not even for a day!”

“Oh,” she raised a hand to her forehead and pretended to swoon. “All this drama. Weeping and carrying on. When there is nothing to cry about.”

“They’re my children,” I insisted, quite certain that she doesn’t have any. “It’s not right for them to be away from me. They’re mine!”

“Yours,” she laughed. Then she became stern. “They are not yours!”

That stopped me in my tracks. Not mine? I was nauseated for nine months twice. I excreted what felt like two bowling balls from my vagina. I became sleep deprived, post partum depressed, and left the work force for them. Not to mention that I gave up the life I lived for 38 years to figure out how to incorporate these two new humans who came to me. And now that I have finally found my groove, I don’t intend to give up on being the best damn caregiver I can be. Which means, in my opinion, just being there with them.

I looked at her, a bit pissed.

“Not yours,” she repeated.

“Oh” I burst into fresh tears. “You mean like that poem that starts like
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
-- ” (Kahlil Gibran didn’t have kids either).

It’s nice and inspirational on one level. In reality, well, my stomach drops at the thought of my kids away from me HALF THE TIME!

“You are caught up in this drama,” said, more gently now. “Wasting your time with all this crying. Getting in the way of yourself and what you are meant to be doing with your life. You have an opportunity here. Everything is aligned for you. Take it. Don’t mess it up.”

Oh.

“Get on with this 50 and 50. You’ve been living like a teenager long enough. Grow up!”

“It seems evident that not everyone should be a parent,” writes James Hollis in that book Jeff sent me by mistake. “Perhaps at best only half of us are mature enough to undertake the role of caring for a child, a task which legitimately asks considerable sacrifice of our lives. Such sacrifice is well compensated because the parent-child experience can be so rewarding, and can powerfully charge our own developmental agenda through relationship with the intimate other. Still, for many, productive parenting is a task of which they are incapable, for they are unable to differentiate their own sense of self from the child’s. Until they can be wholly responsible for their own journeys, and not project it onto the child, such parents are not grown-ups either.”

My challenge now, as Hollis puts it, is to differentiate my own sense of self from my children’s.

Hmm, I’ll have to work on that. I hate it when they’re not with me. I notice that my mind goes into scarcity mode regarding time with the boys. I start obsessing: I’ll see them for half a day on Monday and all day Tuesday and Wednesday, but not again until Friday and then Steph’ll have them on the weekend... I move forward and back in time, searching, adding, subtracting. More, I always want more. And, given my needs to take care of my self, to generate income, to write, and to also build my relationship with Andy (and have fun!), it seems to end up that there’s never enough.

Good thing I had an eating disorder when I was younger. This is just like that.

In those days, all I could think about was food -- peanut butter on buttered toast, or ice cream and granola. I spent all my time formulating when I could have that food, and what I would have to do to earn that food. It feels like the same thing. It’s an obsession, and it’s based on a fear that there isn’t enough, that I can’t get enough of the boys, or that they won’t get enough of me.

So, what helped me with the food thing?

I stopped defining myself by my body image. I learned to love and respect myself. I believed that I deserved to eat enough. And I began to trust that there was always going to be more by actually eating enough every time I ate.

Is any of that applicable for me right now?

I do identify and define myself as a mother, frequently above all other expressions of myself -- writer, friend, daughter, sex kitten, et cetera. At a three-day contemplation retreat where I asked myself, “Who am I?” I didn’t get much farther than mother. I recognize that I place a higher value or importance on my children than I do on anything else. I know that being with them gives me great pleasure, it defines me, and it fulfills me deeply.

Do I love and respect myself? Well, that’s a work-in-progress. I put a lot of pressure on myself to be perfect when I’m with them. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m doing the best I can. That I am a great mother because I am doing my best. And that great mothers make mistakes. That mistakes are just part of life – after all, that’s what I want to teach them!

Do I believe that I deserve to eat enough? Well, I’m not talking about rice and beans anymore. I’m talking about writing and being me. All of me, just not mother.

“What usually has the strongest psychic effect on the child is the life which the parents … have not lived,” wrote Carl Jung.

Hollis says what Jung means by that “is that where the parent has stopped growing, is intimidated by fear, is unable to risk, then that model, that constriction, that denial of soul will be internalized by the child.” Feeding my soul is as imperative as feeding my body once was. That’s what I do when I’m not with my children.

Do I eat enough every time I eat? Oh, oh yes. When I am with my children. I am with them. I don’t think about writing, checking emails, or meditating. I watch them. I experience them. I incorporate them into my life. I observe them as mindfully as I try to observe my breath in meditation, or my body in yoga. I get my fill. Yesterday Primo rode his bike without training wheels. This morning Secundo spoke a four-word sentence: “Go Mama house ‘morrow?” He said it very clearly, and he pronounced house like howf. And then we saw three deer and Primo said, “This is deer world.” And he told me he’d never watched deer for so long before.

Do I trust that there’s enough, that there’s always more? I choose to believe that. Instead of cutting up time into the chunks of when I’m with them and when I’m not, and constantly coming up with too little, I believe that all their experiences are valuable and precious. Not just the ones they have with me. And I do the same for myself.

And I bloody well rejoice when they are with me.

“I want my mommy!” said Bill.
And the baby owls closed their owl eyes and wished their Owl Mother would come.
AND SHE CAME.
Soft and silent, she swooped through the trees to Sarah and Percy and Bill.
“Mommy!” they cried, and they flapped and they danced,
and they bounced up and down on their branch.
“WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS?” their Owl Mother asked.
“You knew I’d come back.”

Secundo always laughs when I ask,“ What’s all the fuss?”

And there’s such relief and happiness in our voices when I say, “You knew I’d come back.”