The Other Mother

This is a picture of me at a Halloween party with my daughter and her friend. This was shortly before I began to get the feeling that not everyone appreciated my elaborate face paint. First, it was the funny looks from the other moms, all of whom, without exception, were dressed as witches. Not scary witches. Generic witches with pointy black hats and black or purple dresses. Their looks askance didn't bother me too much. I thought, Maybe they're jealous because their costumes aren't as interesting. It was when three and a half year old Romeo saw me from across the room and collapsed in tears on the floor that I thought, Hm. Maybe I've overdone it a bit. When little Charley Mae, not yet two years old, began to visibly shake from the safety of her mother's lap, and yell, summoning her limited vocabulary, "GO 'WAY! GO 'WAY!" I had to face facts. I had seriously misjudged the situation. I had gone too far. These mothers were looking at me, not with envy, but with justified concern. I was scaring the children. 

Those of you who know me will attest to the fact that I strive, perhaps a little too hard, to be a very good mother. I rarely pay homage to the shadow side of this good mother experience. Robert Johnson writes, "The persona is what we would like to be and how we wish to be seen by the world... The shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know" (p. 4). He goes on, "But the refused and unacceptable characteristics do not go away; they only collect in the dark corners of our personality. When they have been hidden long enough, they take on a life of their own--the shadow life.... If it accumulates more energy than our ego, it erupts as an overpowering rage or some indiscretion that slips past us..." (p. 4-5).

Yes, and you find yourself, the loving, breast feeding, co-sleeping, super attached mom, dressed as a terrifying ghoul at a kid's party, scaring other people's children. What was I thinking? you wonder as you retreat to the bathroom to frantically remove your make-up with baby wipes, wondering if you should make a short speech attempting to explain yourself. "I'm an artist, you see, and I just haven't really had a chance to paint in a while, or to express myself creatively, in any way. I used to sing in clubs, I mean, I really had quite a life, and I was playing with the face paint before we left the house, you know, and I guess I got a little out of control... Did I mention I'm studying to be a psychotherapist?"

Better, perhaps, not to say anything. 

The shadow side of motherhood is dreadfully tabu. I remember flying into a rage when my daughter wouldn't go to sleep one night. I felt so awful, I wanted to die. I called my friend Caren who reassured me. "You're such a good mom. It's just really hard." It is really hard when you haven't slept for more than three hours in a row for months, and you haven't been able to be physically separate from your nursing baby, and you just want an hour alone before you start nursing again. You just want the use of both arms for a brief time. Maybe longer. And your baby is screaming her head off, in a way that is biologically designed to completely freak your system out, and the only thing that makes it stop is sacrificing everything you want for yourself in that moment and picking her up. 

After I talked to Caren, I googled "motherhood and rage" and found almost nothing. Thank God for Anne Lamott, who had a piece about screaming at her teenaged son. The dearth of acknowledgment of the dark side of mothering, what I like to call The Other Mother, was staggering and depressing and a clear communication: This is not acceptable. We don't talk about this. We don't write about it. 

Well, I do. I'm writing about it now. And hopefully it will provide solace for those who find themselves on the shadow side of their conscious desire to be what the culture expects of mothers--impossibly patient, endlessly loving, and above all, self-sacrificing. I would love to hear from other mothers anywhere and everywhere about how we can honor the shadow side of this experience in ways that protect our children and preserve our sanity. What rituals might we perform in honor of The Other Mother?

My Difficulty In This Realm

Feeling very much at a loss for words right now. Got The Moon when I drew a Tarot card last night. In Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom Rachel Pollack talks about how there are no humans on this card, only animals. I feel as nonverbal as the dog and the wolf. If I were less self-conscious, or perhaps more rural, I would howl at the moon tonight. That would feel appropriate. The Moon has been omnipresent for me for several months now, and is certainly the ruling planet of this website, as it symbolizes the unconscious. Pollack writes of the image on the card, 

"The road leads through two towers, suggesting a gateway into unknown areas. The gateway is a very common symbol among mystics and shamans, seen also in many myths. Sometimes a circular pattern, like a mandala, or some physical formation, like a cave (very often compared to the vagina), the gateway allows us to leave the ordinary world to enter the strangeness of the mind" (2007, p. 128).

I feel myself on the other side of the gateway these days, looking at life as an outsider, but from the inside of myself. It can feel a bit disorienting and I am nearly ready for a return to the simpler pleasures of The Sun, but drawing this card makes me think my stay in this eerie realm has been extended. According to Pollack, "The Moon... will not be denied, and the fears can get stronger the more we fight it. The psyche, operating under its own laws for its own reasons, has turned to the Moon. If we allow ourselves to experience it the fears will turn to wonders and the gateways open to adventure" (p. 129). 

I have spent the last couple days engaged in performing a ritual in honor of the dream I described in the post "Recovering Fragments of the Feminine" so it makes sense that the moon, symbol of feminine consciousness, would be my guide. I'll go into more detail about the ritual in my next post, including photos of the process. While doing the ritual, I've struggled with many feelings that seem impossible to name or describe. I long for some kind of integration. Actually, I long for a reasonable explanation, for my sense-making mechanism to spring into action. I want to make sense of it all. Yes, it is hard for me to stop making sense. 

I once took a little mind trip, never mind the means by which I did so, and encountered three colorful goddesses. I wrote a poem about the experience that exemplifies my difficulty in this realm. 

"I want answers!" I yelled. 

"That's no way to start a conversation," they said, 

Neon yellow, orange, red. 

I'm a serious fool, no fun in the head. 

Ask and you shall receive;

Demand and they shall recede. 

Don't think you know what you need. 

Don't think you know. 

Don't think!

Impossible. 

And it's over in a blink. 

Fashion Shadow

Are there items of clothing you would NEVER wear, never, not in a million years? For me, one such item is the pastel-parachute-track-suit-with-fanny-pack look favored by so many of our elderly citizens here in the United States. I'd take a polyester leisure suit over that any day of the week. The strength of my feelings in this matter tell me in no uncertain terms that herein lies my Fashion Shadow.

I have heard tell that Carl Jung used to have shadow parties in which he invited the guests to behave not as their usual persona selves, but instead as their shadow selves. I have never been able to verify this, but I think it's a fantastic (in the original meaning of that word) idea. I also think it could result in broken furniture, heartache, and possibly a lawsuit or two. As I'm unwilling to face that kind of external fallout, I've let go of the idea of a shadow party for my own friends, but a Fashion Shadow Party could really rock. 

As you're going about your business, and your pleasure, this week, look around and see if you can locate your Fashion Shadow. Most people have more than one fashion shadow, and if you are a true Fashionista, almost everyone is your fashion shadow, and you may have to move to Manhattan, if you don't live there already. If you want to work on it, though, you should go get a Hawaiian shirt, some non-designer label beige pants, ill-fitting, maybe from K Mart, and one of those pith helmets that old men wear when they go on vacation, as if they think they're in the jungle, even though they're just on the Venice boardwalk. And work with it. And write in and tell me what came up for you as you owned that look.

I know this is a departure into the shallow, but I need it. I think this may be one of the most important aspects of shadow work--knowing when you need to come up for some air. After this, it's back to Domestic Violence and surgery, so enjoy it while you can!

Exercising the Shadow

So I want to write a post that's sort of more fun, and that will engage any followers out there in the process of examining their own shadow material. I have a couple things I do that help me see some of the details of my own shadow. One thing is to think of someone who drives you nuts, someone you really can't stand, and to imagine that person as the manifestation of your own shadow. This is fun, but difficult, because we always think, oh my god, I'm nothing like that asshole. I would never say that, do that, wear that, whatever it is. And that's the point, really. This person you cannot tolerate symbolizes the aspects of yourself you can't tolerate and will not allow.  

Doug had us do this exercise in a class. We were to bring in three images--one of our shadow, one of our romantic/sexual ideal, and one of wholeness.

I brought in the image of Britney Spears you see at the top of this post and had a remarkable breakthrough. As I researched her on the internet, I began to see how vulnerable she is to attack, and how badly she's treated. It's easy to begin to see her as the victim of her family, whom she has been supporting since she was a child. She's a kid who has way too much money, fame, and power, and almost no one she can actually trust. Her false self must be so big and so overpowering that the question of who she actually is may forever be a non-issue. I can't think of many things sadder than that. And she is now a victim of a culture that loves to hate her--beat her down, build her up, beat her down again. I ultimately got to the point where I felt loving and protective over her. I even defend her now when people talk badly about her. 

It's even more interesting to take on your least favorite family member. As James Yandell writes in the introduction to Erich Neumann's Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, "Perhaps even more difficult than acknowledging our wickedness, which at least has a certain glamour, is recognizing our ordinariness; the banality of our foundation as mortal animals can be painfully deflating." The way your mother talks with food in her mouth; your sister's intellectual rigidity; your father's porn habit. It's challenging work, "But there is gold in the muck," Yandell promises, "and as shadow integration proceeds, one reclaims substance, energy, and creative imagination that have been consigned to the sewer or the devil. One has the strength that comes from being in accord with reality rather than in desperate defense of a false self-idealization, and one recognizes the high cost and true poverty of the previous identification with the good" (Neumann, 1990, p. 5). Wow! Take that in!

In working with Britney Spears as my shadow self, I reclaimed the energy of my own adolescent sexual confusion, all the bad choices I made regarding, at that time, boys, and later, men. I found a connection with and compassion for my own devalued feminine sexuality, my own exploitation, my own false performance. It has been a huge relief to emerge in a way that not only do I not hate her, judge her, feel disgusted by her--I actually respect and relate to her. 

I'll take on Paris Hilton when I'm stronger. 

If anyone would be willing to post comments, even just letting me know who/what you're working with in this arena, I would love it. 

On my own in a really deep way

Things are getting intense in my life right now. I just found out that I have to have surgery soon because I have cervical dysplasia. If you don't know what that is, you have to look it up because I just can't describe it any more. Thank Goddess for google. It's related to my cervix, obviously, which is about as female as you can get. It's the entryway to, and the exit from, the womb. The first bad case of dysplasia I had was healed when I gave birth naturally to my daughter. Earlier this year, I had a procedure called a LEEP, and now the dysplasia is back and my gynecologist is recommending a cervical biopsy. This requires going under anesthesia, a process that freaks me out. When I was young, I had an out of body experience with anesthesia. 

All this comes on top of a full course load in my final quarter of my masters program, an intense client load at the clinic, being a mother, and I could go on. 

As if this isn't stressful enough, I don't have health insurance, so my husband and I are paying for everything out of pocket. 

And if that isn't stressful enough, the reason I was "abandoned" at eleven months was because my mother had a hysterectomy and was on bed rest. I was sent to live with another family for two weeks or a month, no one seems to know for sure. My mother doesn't even remember the name of the family. Sweet, sweet denial! I didn't think this was such a big deal until I had an eleven month old of my own and then I was like, oh shit. That's fucked up. 

It's really fucked up.

At the same time, it is illuminating. My overwhelming fear of abandonment, my inability to trust anyone, and a number of other things about myself, finally make sense. 

Last night I woke up at 4 am and couldn't get back to sleep. I felt totally alone. Today I called an old friend whose heart has been tried and tested in some of the same ways mine has. In ten minutes, she helped me to get grounded, and then she sent me this gem of an email:

"You probably already figured this out but--

 

I think one of the things that is making you so unhinged right now

is the connection between your childhood abandonment because of your mother's surgery

and your own impending surgery--the sense that these things mean you will be on your own in a really deep way.

And so of course you don't feel like you can count on [your husband] right now--you're becoming your child self--about to be abandonded by your adult self and

he's the dad--and as we all know the 'dad' cannot be counted on.

 

These are feelings that need to get felt and understood with your whole brain.

 

Things are going to be okay."

It feels really vulnerable to share all this but it felt inauthentic not to, especially when this is the very essence of inner work--facing what you'd rather not be facing. And this also shows the power and necessity of doing inner work together. We need each other's eyes and ears. Just saying what we see in each other can be a lifeline. 

The Pain Comes Back

The funny thing about all this exploration of the guru phenomena is that, if I were in my twenties experiencing this, I would probably be a Sikh by this point. Instead, I am surrendering to a more complex, less dramatic way of being in this situation. I am remembering other times I thought I had found a way to escape pain--taking drugs, becoming manic, making art, falling in love, joining a religion, moving to a new city. I've tried all these things in the hope that they would be a one-way road out of suffering and I've found that none of them are. You always end up back at your own house, eventually, with a pile of dishes in the sink, unpaid bills, and concerned messages from your friends and family on the answering machine. I believe we have to tend to our own wounds most of the time. I'm not saying that having a teacher means you're not doing that; I'm just noticing that underneath it all, that's part of my motivation for wanting a teacher. 

Not only that, I've come to believe that suffering is not such a bad thing after all. Like the shadow, suffering makes us deeper, stronger, and more compassionate. So I've become interested in the fact that, in the presence of this teacher, my pain seems to go away--physical, emotional, mental pain--and that it feels so good. And I'm also interested in the fact that the pain comes back when I think I can't have that relationship in the way that I want to. The pain comes back when I feel "myself" again, or when I feel out of relationship with that experience. 

I think this dilemma is widespread right now. We are collectively trying to release ourselves from the patterns that hold us back, and going through that process can be a bit manic-depressive. The New Age thing, a la The Secret, goes too far into the light and therefore has a monstrous shadow side. This is true of most religious orders, too, and spiritual organizations. I believe this is true of the spiritual order my teacher belongs to. There is the perpetuation of the myth that we can live in a heavenly God realm free of pain and difficulty, if only we just learn to think right, or feel right, or find the right Guru. But as I live and breathe, I tell you, that's not true. Enlightenment, if it comes at all, comes with the understanding that we are both human animals suffering all the indignities and privileges that being in a body affords, and somehow also divine, numinous beings capable of things far greater than our physical incarnations would seem to allow. 

"loyal to paradox"

I wanted to share a Marianne Williamson quote that has been popping up in my life on a regular basis for the last ten years. My friend Ivy just sent it to me for my birthday, and it exactly addresses the Guru Dilemma in my previous post. 

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." 

Much to my surprise, as I examine the dark corners of my mind, I find that I don't want to be my own guru. She's right: I fear my light much more than my darkness. I don't want to save myself. I don't want to be "brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous." I want to be a disciple at the feet of a master. I want to disappear into the blinding white light of holiness. I want to be a baby in the arms of my mother. I want to be taken care of. I don't want to work hard. I don't want to be responsible for my Light. And these feelings are, even as I admit them here in this blog, very shadowy for me. These feelings are definitely in the "not-me" box in the attic of my psyche. 

I strive to project an image of total self-sufficiency, power, strength. I do not admire dependency, and yet I find myself knee deep in this swamp of wanting desperately to be rescued, to be saved by an other. It's that eleven month old inside me waiting for mommy and daddy to come get me. And until they do, she refuses to move forward or grow up.

I have been feeling this ache all week, or for several weeks. Or for most of my life. But I've been really feeling it lately, and I see how I run the guru fantasy as a way of escaping that pain. I want the pure bliss I feel in the presence of Amrit. But I've learned enough about life by now to know that pain is as great a teacher as bliss. One gives way to the other. Either one without the other is dangerous. So that's been my meditation. When the painful ache comes up, I try to just be in it. I try to just let myself feel really sad, abandoned, and lost I let myself yearn. I don't act on it. Eventually, the pain and yearning give way to joy, and I don't resist that either. The pain comes back and I try to keep steady with it, resist the urge to join a cult. 

According to Robert Johnson, it is the entertainment of this kind of paradox--pleasure/pain, bliss/sorrow, light/dark--that lies at the heart of true spirituality. In Owning Your Own Shadow he writes, 

"What has paradox to do with the shadow? It has everything to do with the shadow, for there can be no paradox--that sublime place of reconciliation--until one has owned one's own shadow and drawn it up to a place of dignity and worth. To own one's own shadow is to prepare the ground for spiritual experience."

The paradoxes I am working right now are:

• the bliss of dissolving into my teacher/the terror of being trapped alone inside myself
  
• the light belongs to my teacher/the light belongs to me
  
• bliss/torment
  
• vulnerability/strength
  

Johnson inspires me to remember that none of these pairings represent good/bad. He insists, "We must retrain ourselves to think that each represents a divine truth. It is only our inability to see the hidden unity that is problematic. To stay loyal to paradox is to earn the right to unity."

Are you my teacher?

I've been on the spiritual path for a number of years now, and I've encountered numerous teachers, and I've learned a lot from all of them, but I've never felt that feeling that people often describe upon meeting their Teacher, their guru with a capital G. Ram Dass just sobbed at the feet of his guru, having only just met him. I want that. I admit it. 

Margaret Mahler, the famous psychoanalyst, would say that I, like most human beings, am still struggling with the process of separation-individuation that I began in late infancy, and that because I have not completed that process, I need an idealized external object in order to feel okay, or fully alive. Whatever the case, about two weeks ago, I took a yoga class from a Sikh yoga teacher here in LA and by the end of the class, I felt like the boundaries of my heart were dissolving. Chanting near him, I was able to trust his voice so completely that I felt as if I was actually listening, hearing another voice, for the first time. I was able to allow my body to completely absorb the sound of his voice, and when I sang or chanted, I felt like my voice was flowing out of my throat like water. Without conscious effort, I sang harmony. There was a dissolving of the boundaries between my body and the room that reminded me of the ecstasy I felt after giving birth to, and nursing, my daughter.  

Two weeks passed and I didn't see him again, and I wondered what it would be like when I did. So I took my second class with him on Tuesday night, and it was the same. I told him what was happening to me, and he talked about how anything I'm seeing in him is my own divine nature reflected back at me. Teachers are mirrors, awakeners of what has been sleeping inside us. "So, are you my teacher?" I asked. He shrugged, "I don't know." 

I came home to my Robert Johnson book, Owning Your Own Shadow and was immediately immersed in his examination of the process of falling in love. "To fall in love is to project the most noble and infinitely valuable part of one's being onto another human being." He goes on to say that in the west, we do this in romantic relationships, while in the Eastern world, it is "confined to the relationship between a guru and his student." When I think of this teacher, I vacillate between feeling an ancient and intense longing and the complete fulfillment of that intense longing. When I am with him, I am in some kind of internal free fall that would normally be terrifying but because he is there it is bliss. If this belongs to me, this bliss, why am I projecting it onto him? 

I don't want to deny the power I feel in this teacher's presence, but I also don't want to abnegate self responsibility. Or rather, I do want to abnegate self responsibility, as badly as I've ever wanted anything, but I know that's dangerous behavior. And so I keep sobering myself up with the idea that I am just projecting what Johnson calls the "golden" part of my shadow--the light I refuse to own as mine--onto him. I counteract this by creating my own disillusionment, pinching myself awake from the dream of being saved by another. 

As I sit with this dilemma, I sit in pain. Instead of dissolved boundaries, my heart feels raw and arthritic. I wonder if I will ever heal from the hurts of my childhood--the abandonment at eleven months, the mental and verbal abuse. I wonder if stepping into the pain will kill me. I can't do this alone. I long for my savior, my knight, my guru. I want to run into his arms and be healed. Mahler would say I long for my mother, for those blissful early days of complete merger with her, for however long they lasted. I continually find myself in the middle of the primal wound, the moment when everything shifted from good to bad. The way it must have felt to be left at eleven months old. This meeting with this teacher has put me there. In the mirror he provides, I see myself hopelessly lost, and blissfully found, and lost again. 

Johnson writes, "At critical moments in life it is always possible to sort out what belongs to one and what does not. There is a moment of sanity when decision is possible." I feel myself there. 

Remedial Studies in Inner Work

My friend Matt recently mentioned that he was going to name his blog Remedial Studies in Inner Work. This was the first time I recognized the gumption I must have to be calling my blog ADVANCED Studies in Inner Work. I just want to enter a short post here in the way of attempting to defend, justify, explain, and/or excuse myself, lest any readers should go one day longer thinking, "What an ass!"

First of all, I'll knock our culture by saying that it doesn't take much to be advanced in this arena as an American. We are so extraverted that anyone who takes a moment to herself is regarded warily, at best, as a self-obsessed navel gazer! Americans are very skeptical of the inner life. We mostly don't believe it exists; or maybe we believe it exists, but that it is bad news and should be assiduously avoided. 

Secondly, I will say that, regardless of this, I, an American girl, got my first diary at age nine and never looked back. I remember the recurring dreams of my early childhood, and I always believed my dreams were important, even after my mother finally convinced me that dreams were not the same as real life. I have been a student of the Tarot for over twenty years and a student of the I Ching for almost as long. I have written so many journals that I feel guilty about leaving my children with the burden of dealing with them. It would take years to read them all. I have studied yoga, meditation, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I've been in therapy. I'm in therapy now. I'm getting my masters in clinical psychology. I write down my dreams, study them, and create artwork and perform rituals as a way of honoring them. I mean, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! If I've done anything in this life, and if there's anything I could claim to be working on at a deep level, it's inner work. 

So, when Doug suggested the title for this course, it felt like a course I really wanted to take. And that's how this blog came to be called Advanced Studies in Inner Work.