Engineering Wholeness

I am going to start this post by saying that I am about to reveal something about myself that very, very few people know. There are several reasons for this “shame” around this part of my life, but here it is. While I have never really found traditional tarot useful for me, I do practice the use of divinity through cards. I primarily use Jamie Sams Animal Medicine Cards.

Yesterday, after talking with my spiritual director, I realized that I had no regrets about the things I had been letting go, but I did have regrets around things I have been letting go in attempts to “fit in.” I have regrets about the things I don’t say, the activities I don’t participate in, the things I want to do, but don’t make time for. While my path to wholeness is certainly about letting go of some of the things that I carry, that no longer serve me, this path also needs to include picking back up those things that do serve me. So I pulled the cards. Some of the revelations are ones I am still working to understand. But one came through loud and clear.

So I am going to continue to work on the letting go. The getting rid of that which no longer serves me, but I am also going to work on embracing the change. I will be doing this starting with two practices. I am going to use Jennie Lee’s book Spark Change and Ruby Seastone’s Art Life.

The truth is, that I have been progressing on this journey for most of my life, but the more I find peace with my outer life, the more I realize I need peace in my inner life.

Perhaps, Spark Change will give me a better sense of finding that inner peace then Finding Your F*ck Yeah did. I am often better at self-help when I am given ways of finding my own inner knowledge.

Welcome to the confusing, and often crazy, way my mind works.

I have a problem. I love to buy books that attract me for some reason, and I get really down on myself if I can’t bring myself to finish reading them. This is especially true of the self-help genre.

Several months ago (pre-COVID), I purchased a book called “Find your F*ck Yeah: Stop censoring who you are and discover what you really want.” I got this book in part because of it’s irreverent title. Most self-help books I read a deeply spiritual in nature, really getting to the heart and spirit of things, and so are written without profanity which sometimes makes me want to scream. Sometimes the work of healing involves the need for the use of strong language. This is hard, pain-full work.

I started reading the book expecting, that like most of my self-help genre, I would read a little at a time. I started strong. I covered the introduction and the first two chapters in no time at all. I accept the idea that my brain, and the mess of anxiety, depression, and need to please is a big part of why I can’t seem to feel authentic. The author talks about the science I know and understand. I appreciated the irreverent language and the “tell it like it is” mentality, even while feeling turned off by the snarky/angry undertones.

I started Chapter 3 feeling pretty good about where this would go even if I didn’t like some of the attitude, but I got stopped cold…Chapter 3 criticized a system that I agree is broken, but it was done in a way that completely discounts any understanding of the educational system. The view of science and the scientific method felt completely removed, and her previous irreverence turned into outright hostility to anyone who dared to question her.

I powered through chapter 3. Finding some of the work hard to swallow (supposedly because I am a butthurt GenXer who doesn’t really understand the true uniqueness of the millennial/iGen person).

At this point I am about 1/3 of the way through the book and have been given nothing to grasp besides what I am “not.” I am NOT a brand. I am NOT entirely individual. I am NOT an entitled brat. I am NOT… all of which are good to hear, and already things I buy, but hearing what I am NOT has yet to tell me how to embrace the myriad of things that I am, which doesn’t involve being passionate or “great.”

I am honestly not sure I can stomach the rest of this book. If it is going to continue on the path it appears to be on. A quick scan of the rest of the book tells me that she is not saying anything new, she is distilling down research I have already read and know. She is pushing the idea of “art” and “growth mindset.” One of which I have, and one I wish I had.

I know that it is hard work to read all the acclaimed books on Flow and Growth Mindset and belonging, but throwing soundbytes into a book that is marketed to make you better feels like an innovation fail. I think I would prefer just to read the original work.

I opened this book with the hope of finding something that would help me find a method that worked for me, but perhaps I am just going to have to find my own irreverence, free myself to speak it, and put aside a book that I clearly don’t want to finish.

Today, I send Alexis Rockley a huge blast of positive energy for finding her own “F*ck Yeah.” I hope her method works for others, but it isn’t for me. So instead of trying to continue to power through, I am going to toss the book into a “little library” on my way home today and hope it finds a reader who will benefit from it. Today, I am going to love that I am actually not so much of a self-help junky that I will just read anything to get a fix.

I don’t need to finish every book I start or like every book I pick up. So I don’t finish “Find Your F*ck Yeah,” ah well, I am still a good human. And I am still on my journey to wholeness.

Several years ago, I thought I might make a quilt. It sounded interesting and kind of fun. I thought I might enjoy the mathematics and the art of it. Yet, after spending hours cutting enough pieces to make a king sized, log cabin quilt, I managed to piece one square and quit. The fabric has been sitting in a drawer waiting to be completed. I just can’t do it.

I feel like I am supposed to be crafty. I am supposed to have this skill and desire that comes from the mountain women in my ancestry. Only, I don’t really enjoy the sewing and the yarn craft. I want to. I want to have the patience and the desire to sit and work on needle craft, but it just doesn’t move me. So, tonight with love for my both my grandmothers, I put the unused quilt pieces into the fire.

Next, went my paintings. I took pictures of them, but they aren’t good, they aren’t even really of anything. I love the act of painting, not really the product of it. I was never going to hang them. Hell, I was never going to show them to anyone.

The truth is, having them, knowing they were here, storing them has kept me from painting more. I didn’t want to look at them, but I couldn’t just let them go. I couldn’t experiment or use paintings for art journaling because they sat there, haunting me. Or better, taunting me. reminding me that no one (not even me) cared about my art.

Then I did the stamps. I picked out some that I will be using for projects that will be given away at Christmas. I picked out some that I will keep for my own personal memory, but mostly I have sent love to all those that helped me collect them out into the world.

Lastly, I sat, knowing that I still have a long way to go in my letting go, in my journey toward wholeness. But I am on my way. I am ready to find my path toward truth. I am ready to put in the work to find what makes my heart sing. And that means accepting that I once, was that very shy, very awkward pre-teen girl. It also means realizing that she is not the standard by which I am measured today.

Tonight, I sent that picture into the flames. I have been listening to her heart and I will continue to do so as I let go of the things that keep holding me back.

Just know, dear girl, I am taking you with me and we are going to be exactly what we need to be. I am here to love you and protect you. You are a part of me that I embrace with no regrets. I wouldn’t be who I am without you. You are loved, and you absolutely belong.

Ah…the joys of discovering my own judgmental voice. Okay, I haven’t really discovered it, it is pretty much always present and I have gotten better about ignoring it, but sometimes it is hard to let go of that judgment I have carried for a long time…especially when it is directed at me.

I mentioned before that I love music, and due to a lot of external issues, I gave it up, or at least I gave up having it as a near constant part of my life. Last week, I figured out how to connect my Google Mini in my office at UK, which means I can just ask Google to play something for me and she takes off. I LOVE Google for that reason. No need to find a radio station, she just goes where she goes and I enjoy it.

I discovered Jason Isbell’s song “Be Afraid” on Sirius Radio. I love it and it’s message, so I have started asking Google to play it. Jason Isbell is identified as Alt-country, sometimes Americana. Today this request led Google to playing, Drive-by-Truckers, “Thoughts and Prayers” which I now also love. They are Alt-country or Americana.

Honestly almost every musician I really love and return to time and again falls into this category of Alt-country/Americana. These are the people I turn to in my most emotional states. Honestly, it is probably the genre in which I write most of my own music. That said, until recently, if you had asked me if I like country music I would have denied it…vehemently.

I do love Rock and Pop music. I actually have some standards that I listen to in pretty much every genre of music, but country…I return to it quite frequently…in secret.

Malcolm Gladwell, gave me a wonderful justification for my love of country music in, “The King of Tears” episode of his podcast, Revisionist History. I was going to type out my justification, but honestly, releasing the judgment means that I don’t need to explain it, just embrace it. I really like country music, I just do.

I have a lot of carried shame from being from rural Kentucky. Don’t get me wrong, I love where I grew up. I would return in a heartbeat. But whenever I talk to people who aren’t from the area, I kind of hedge a little. Being from rural anywhere in the US comes with judgment, it is assumed we are stupid and uneducated. It is assumed that we are conservative, and all the “ists.” Those judgments/assumptions aren’t just in my head. I have heard them come out of the mouths of people I respect.

I am a liberal. I don’t hide it. I often feel like to fit in among the liberals, I have to deny the part of me that loves being from rural Kentucky. And when I walk among a number of my rural Kentuckians, I have to ignore that part of me which believes in a more progressive society.

I often always struggle with a sense of belonging. I often feel like I walk on the edge of different worlds never really “fitting” into any one. As long as I am denying pieces of myself to “fit,” I will never feel like I am accepted.

Today, I am going to let go of an unnecessary judgment. Today, I get to enjoy alt-country or even country music, I get to appreciate the rural area I am from, and I get to be progressive.

(I will deal with my other pieces later).

When I was in Middle and High School I started collecting stamps. My dad worked for the Sewer Commission and he would bring me all the stamps that came in with the bills each month.

Most of them were just normal stamps, the kind you used to get in the 100 count roll. But of course I lived in Berea, so when it got out that I was collecting stamps, a lot of the customers started buying the commemorative stamps to put on their payments. I collected a whole box full of stamps.

The box sits over in my bedroom on the floor. I sometimes look at it and think about what to do with it, but mostly I haven’t touched any of the stamps in it since something like 1995. At least that is what the envelopes are postmarked.

My stamps are worthless. They don’t have any monetary value and I didn’t even have the patience to put them in books. I didn’t love the stamps, though I did think the commemorative stamps were cool, I still buy them myself. What was fun, was having my dad collect them with me and help to pick out the nicest looking ones.

Sometimes we would see what kinds of things people would try to do when mailing their payments, like this one that used all 1 cent stamps.

I keep them because I keep telling myself I will use them for an art project some day. I keep them because it is a fun memory I had with my father.

The truth is, I will never really use them in a project. I don’t really want them any longer. I have no real use for them. I am going to go through them and pick out some that really move me, ones I find interesting and/or pretty. The rest…it is time to let them go.

James has a friend who says that when things are hard to release, the best thing to do is bury them in the back yard. I am not sure I can do that. My yard is enough junk and fill, but I do love ritual, and I especially love a ritual with fire.

After I pick a few I really love, I am going to put the rest in my fire pit and send good, healing, peaceful energy to all the people who helped me develop that collection.

I haven’t forgotten about my picture, and I am going to deal with her and with it, but that is a process that will be woven through everything. It won’t be easy, and while I am ready to deal with the hard, I need to go at my own pace, while doing some of the other things as well. The picture has moved from my wallet to my dresser, which keeps it as something I want to face rather than just pull out when I need to hurt me.

Plus, she is part of this discussion.

At one point in my life, I loved music. I loved singing, I loved playing. I hated practicing. By the time I got to college, I quit playing in Concert and Jazz band, I quit singing in choir. I was never going to be good enough, so why bother continuing it put effort into it.

So what did I do? I fell for a guy who was determined to play music.

The truth is, James’ love of music gave me an excuse to push that further and further out of my life. As he got better and better, and I stayed the same, there was less and less point in trying. Why bother?

Not only did I give up playing music, I gave up listening to music just for me.

I used to sit in my office and play music on my computer and sing. I got in trouble a couple of times for singing too loudly. I then had a friend who made me feel badly because I liked pop music. So I quit turning music on, even when I was alone.

What’s funny is that. I never got rid of my music. Even though James has shelves of CD’s and records, I never got rid of my CD’s. I just stopped listening to them.

I still have my flute and saxophone music from marching band.

I can’t bring myself to get rid of the music, but I have all but stopped playing, singing, or (until recently) listening.

I quit playing because there seemed no point. I wasn’t ever going to perform, I wasn’t ever going to play for others, and honestly, I kind of wish for a band (anyone know a bass player?). I quit listening because music was so important and having it questioned just hurt. I gave up because what I wrote, what I played, what I listened to was actually deeply meaningful and I was tired of having that questioned and criticized. Easier to quit than just be okay with being something other than the best.

It isn’t going to be easy, but there are things that I miss about listening to and playing music just for me.

The instruments we have are James’. Well…okay the keyboard and the Moog are mine. And I have a guitar.

I was actually going to write that maybe I needed to get a guitar of my own, but I have one. It’s not a Martin or a Taylor, it’s a Washburn. It’s an okay instrument, but while I haven’t played it in years, I can’t get rid of it.

I can’t get rid of it because it was given to me for my college graduation. Kent Gilbert and Liz Menefee (and their spouses) purchased it for me. They loved the music I played on my mother’s guitar and they wanted me to have on of my own.

These two people always did their best to let me know that I did belong. Liz Menefee spent many Sunday Morning hours talking with me about whatever religion I wanted to discuss and answering questions about spiritual life. Kent joined Union Church as pastor after taking the time to talk with an 18-year-old kid who desperately wanted to make sure that the new minister we were hiring wouldn’t treat any other youth as dismissively as she had felt treated by the previous minister. They accepted me, just as me…How crazy is that?

That guitar is my reminder that to some, I did belong even as the awkward, frizzy haired, me. And now I need to take back my music…just because I enjoy it. I will never be a rockstar, I will never even have an album produced, but the writing, the playing, the joy is something I need back. And if I want to play Taylor Swift covers…well, that’s my own damn business.

Time to clean off the dust, put on new/softer strings, and accept that I may only really be able to play three chords, but with three chords come an infinite number of songs that can be sung.

Sometimes…it is important to find the gratitude in with the pain.

I have a wonderful family. I had a good childhood. I am not complaining or blaming others for how my life turned out, but we all carry trauma. Those experiences that bring with it pain. One of my mentors defines trauma as, “any overwhelming emotion felt in isolation.” For me this is beautiful because it means, that just because I had a good home life and I wasn’t abused, I can still have experienced trauma and sometimes the memory of it can feel overwhelming. This is one of the stories that carries trauma for me.

I carry only one picture in my wallet. I have many pictures of my kids on my phone, but only one picture I carry in my wallet. It is my yearbook picture from 1990. On the back of it, is my name, the date and the word “ugly.”

The day this photo was taken, I was called in, unprepared, to have my picture taken because the photo place lost my first photo. I got to make it up on photo “make up day.” I doubt that my original photo would have been any better, but this one…well…it was traumatic.

I knew my place in the pecking order. I was near the bottom of the school popularity chain, I had be notified of that enough times to think any thing differently. And the moment I saw this picture I knew it was bad. Even my mom didn’t want to buy it. The copy I have is the proof, the only other version shows up in the school yearbook.

I hated this picture, I didn’t give out school pictures that year. Yet, I was completely unprepared for what was going to happen when it hit the school yearbook.

I remember walking into the gym where a few people I thought were friendly, if not really friends. And they were looking at the yearbook. One of the guys looked up and said, “Why are you here, don’t you belong with the other retards?”

While that hurt, I could write it off. The dude who said it was always kind of an asshole toward me. I was used to hearing what a dog I was from him. A guy I thought was one of the nice ones responded, “Hey. That’s not nice.”

For an instant I felt such pleasure, someone really did think I was okay, a brief moment where I thought I might, maybe, belong, but then the nice guy continued, “My cousin is one of those retards, you don’t need to insult her. She’s way better looking than Whitney.”

Heart…smashed. I don’t remember if I cried or not. I am not sure exactly when I learned that letting them see me cry only made it worse. But I do remember thinking that I didn’t know anyone I could tell that story to. I didn’t know anyone who I trusted to make me feel better.

That wasn’t the first time I was bullied, it wasn’t the last. I have heard a thousand versions of how unattractive I am, how much of a loser I am. Hell, it happened enough that those voices play a fairly significant role in my brain even today. They are a big contribution to my insecurity around my looks, my intelligence, my coordination, my…whatever.

I don’t look that much different today. I am a little lot older, but I still have the frizzy hair, the plastic glasses, the roundish face. I still don’t wear make up. And I still carry with me the trauma of that teenage girl. Sometimes, small things wake up all the pain she experienced and it is all I can do to hold it together.

See, I still don’t feel like I belong. I have built up walls, I have created tests, I have protected myself from allowing anyone to ever hurt me like that again. No one can hurt me as badly as I can hurt myself.

I have spent years in some form of therapy whether it is traditional psychoanalysis or spiritual direction. I have worked to the point where I am incredibly self aware, and extremely good at spinning the subject. I work very hard on myself, and yet there are areas that I will avoid and I will do my best to navigate others away from them as well.

I have come to terms with a lot of my past. But I haven’t really ever come to terms with being bullied. I haven’t wanted to. I didn’t want to deal with it…I don’t think I wanted to admit that I had been bullied. I think I didn’t want any of the people who were part of it to ever know or feel badly for it.

I don’t for a moment think I am innocent. I am sure that I have done unintentional damage to many people and for that I am truly sorry. I am sure I said horrible things to people a number of times. Hurt people, hurt people. And I was one of those hurt people. I also know that those kids that hurt me, the ones who picked on me, called me names, told me I was ugly, and some other not so pleasant things…they were hurting too.

Puberty sucks, and I have forgiven all of them, I don’t hold it against them. The people who were quite the little shits to me grew up into great people…most of them anyway :). But that forgiveness hasn’t changed the fact that those voices have and continue to significantly influence my thinking about myself today.

It is going to be hard, but it is time to let go of the bullies that live in my head and my heart. It is time to take that pubescent girl and let her see that I care about her, I love her, and I am big enough and tough enough to protect her, even if I am not convinced that I belong.

At this point you might ask why I carry that picture with me. It’s a good question…and one I intended to answer, though I did do my best to even convince me that I didn’t need to. I tell myself that I carry that picture so that I can see how far I have come. To remind myself that I am not that girl anymore. Perhaps there is a part of me that does carry it around for that reason. The real reason I carry it around (or one of them anyway) is because it keeps me back. As long as I carry that pain an that trauma, I have an excuse for keeping up the walls that prevent me from even really finding out if I could belong. It is the justification for why I don’t have to try.

“I have been deeply wounded,” is an excellent story to hold oneself back. I have been deeply wounded, but I have also survived and built a good life for myself. It is time to face my past, to really tell that young woman existing in that space between being a girl and being a woman, that she came through it, maybe not in the way she dreamed as a girl, but in a way that made her what she is today.

Next steps…creating a ritual to release that picture.

Last week, I started to feel really down. I needed a break. A break from work, a break from life, a break from reality. I went to the e-library and checked out a book. It was the first in a series, and it had been there for a while, so I figured it was no big deal and I checked out the first book, leaving the others for when I finished. It was a silly chic-lit book, one of those silly fantasy stories (not girl porn, but very chaste wizard romance). When I completed it 24 hours later, the next two were checked out. Someone had swooped in and decided to check out the second two while waiting for me to return book 1. But I wasn’t done with that escape from reality. I needed another book…so I put books 2 and 3 on hold, and went looking…

I stumbled upon The Year of Less by Cait Flanders. This wasn’t going to be chic lit, it was a memoir, but I thought it might be a fun little look into someone else’s life. A moment to be a voyeur into someone else’s journey into owning less. Little did I know that it would trigger some deep emotions in me. The story is just as it sounds…a story of a woman who decided to give up shopping, purges her material items and…well…finds herself in the process.

Let me say, I am fantastic at purging. I am really very good at getting rid of most of things I don’t use or need. I am relentless when it comes to books (that I buy because they look great and then I don’t read them) and I am excellent and clearing out my wardrobe (I add nothing without removing something else). I can go through my belongings and get rid of much of what no longer serves me. Yet…I still find myself shopping and buying things I don’t use all that often.

The planner is one of my favorite things to try. If I find the perfect planner, with the perfect options, I will get my life in order. This is my story. (Note: This is only one of the stories I tell myself).

Flanders writes, “Decluttering and purging 70 percent of my belongings came with different lessons. I realized I had spent 29 years of my life doing and buying whatever I could to be someone I thought I should be.” OUCH.

She goes on from there, “I kept so many things, and consumed the wrong things, all because I never felt like I was good enough. I wasn’t smart enough or professional enough or talented enough or creative enough. I didn’t trust that who I was or than what I brought to the table in any situation was already unique, so I bought things that could make me better.” DOUBLE OUCH.

I walked into the weekend, not yet ready to purge (again), but giving some serious consideration to why I was holding on to the things that I kept, and feeding a desire that sometimes just bought stuff. I looked around my room and saw the many unfinished projects, the books I tell myself I want to read, the clothes I love in the moment then never wear. I looked at my hard drive and the thousands of photos I will never revisit, the files I will never look at again.

Why am I keeping all of these things? Why am I holding on to all of this stuff?

I walked away, taking a break from social media, going so far as to let my phone select a new very complicated password and telling it not to remember it (hopefully to dissuade myself from going, just to check), so that I can find a way of trying to get healthy around my relationship with it. The all too easy interaction that would tell my brain I had connection, when my heart really felt like I was losing connection so fast. I am struggling with choosing to go back through my belongings.

I don’t want to face the unfinished barely started quilt. I don’t want look at my attempt at painting rocks. I don’t want to lament at spending thousands of dollars on photography equipment I only use sometimes, but have some good ideas for. I don’t want to look at the paints and canvases I will only rarely use and never share with others.

And yet…I need to.

10 years ago, I started seminary. I had finally reached a point where I had held on to so much self-loathing that I felt broken. I opened myself to really getting help and really following my heart toward a call I felt deeply. I was ready to heal and to learn to find what called to my heart.

Over the last 10 years, I have followed my heart into careers, lessons, places I never imagined I would go. I have made some of my dreams come true, yet…I still find myself holding back. I still tell myself I don’t deserve better. I am still figuring out my boundaries and what makes my heart sing, and I am still beating myself up when I try something and it doesn’t work.

I don’t think I am ready for a year of less. I don’t want to give up shopping, I don’t want to give up traveling. I am also not ready for a year of YES like Shonda Rhimes, where I open myself up to trying all the things. I am, however, ready to hold myself accountable for looking into why I am holding on to things that I no longer feel are me (maybe they never were). I may not be ready to let go, but I am certainly ready to look at why I am holding on.

I am starting to experience spring. Flowers are blooming, trees are budding, life is continuing.

Spring brings with it the “dream flowers.” Every time I look out at my yard when the dandelions have gone to seed, I think of the dream flowers, you make a wish and blow the seeds.

Now, in this time of slowing down, this having to stay apart, this being separate, this trauma. It is hard to keep going in the same vein. I am finding that I need to make a change. I need to recenter, refocus, and really think about my dream.

Today, is the start of a new pattern, it is time to really break down my path to wholeness.

My dream is to be a wholeness engineer, and that is what I need to do.