A Lot Can Happen in Two Years

A lot can happen in two years.

In two years I can go from married to divorced.

In two years Cub can go from living at home to a first-year college student three hours away.

In two years Chimp can go from being a little boy to a sassy pre-teen.

In two years the world can shut down and reopen again.

In two years I can be overwhelmed by personal, professional, and societal chaos, do some healing and crying and falling apart, and come out the other side back and ready to reboot the Fringy Bit and start up a new project or two.

But, perhaps more pertinent to you, lovely readers, is the fact that in two years KBear can go from a 12-year-old girl melting down nearly daily in amazingly aggressive ways, to a 14-year-old young woman who last had a major meltdown three months ago, is working a part time job, and is navigating life with more grace than I ever could have foreseen.

And so, for you who is facing a holiday season with a chronically intense and melting down fringy pre-teen. There’s hope.

Or for you, mom with a nonverbal 4-year-old who’s trying desparately to read into all her child’s behavior to understand what he wants and needs. There’s time.

Or for you, dad who is simply worn out and exhausted. It’s temporary.

A lot can happen in two years.

Or two months. Or two days.

If the past two years have taught us nothing, we know that life can change in an instant. And sometimes it changes in a more difficult way, and sometimes it changes in a way that brings ease and joy.

I know it feels like these meltdowns have been going on forever and will never stop.

I know it feels like there isn’t a way out.

I know it feels like grief and depression and anxiety are simply going to pull you under.

But, it changes. It shifts. You could not predict where you’d be two years ago and you cannot predict where you’ll be two years from now.

Even when you can’t be overly hopeful. Just remember, that a lot can happen and you will be ok.

Compassion & Justice Depend on Each Other

I feel sad. I feel shocked, yet not surprised. I feel helpless and overwhelmed. I know I am not alone.

This past week with the breaking and entering of the United States Capitol all of the fears and frustrations of all people within the United States came to a head. People like me watched as the signs from the past 4 years rose up to the next level of an attempted coup. People like some of my family and friends watched as the frustrations and building fears that they were losing their voice and country crashed through windows and broke through barricades.

As we all sat watching the images and videos in stunned silence, mired with anxiety and anger, we all hoped this would be the end. This would be the final straw that woke people up to the threat to our democracy. This would be the final show of force that pushed people into hearing those who felt powerless.

I write this three days after the attack on the Capitol. And sadly, it is far from over. We see posts and quotes threatening further assault and hear continued rhetoric aimed to incite violence and dehumanize anyone who doesn’t “see the truth”. I expect this and choose not to engage.

I will engage with those people who do share the philosophy and perspectives that I have. I write to the people who are appalled at the rhetoric against media, the rhetoric against the election, the rhetoric and actions that disregard human life and the democratic principles upon which this country was founded. I write to the people who agree with me that black lives matter, love is love, science is real, women are strong and deserve better, and humans are humans no matter how they identify or where they are from.

Among these voices I have heard that “Trumpsters” are monsters, deserve to die, that they are scum. I’ve heard people, who espouse that we need to see the humanity in all people, dehumanize the people who stormed the Capitol. I’ve heard some of the people I usually align with eager to see consequences and watch these threats to democracy suffer.

I do not know how to cross the divide in our country and world right now. But I DO know that villainizing the “other” will most definitely NOT be the answer. If we really want this divide to end, we must not fall into the trappings that anger and fear often lead. Hate, anger, and fear is what fueled the attack on the Capitol. Hate, anger, and fear pits person against person. Hate, anger, and fear inevitably leads to violent clashes, rage-fueled battles, and thinking of someone else as less than human.

The universe has been teaching me many lessons this past year and a half. One of the deepest has been  on the relationship between justice, forgiveness, boundaries, and compassion. Anyone who knows me knows that I will prioritize compassion above all else. I hear of a school shooter and I feel compassion for his family and compassion for the shooter himself, wondering what kind of pain and isolation he must have felt to come to the place where the ending of human life seemed the best answer. I’ve worked with clients who’ve committed atrocious acts and I feel no less compassion for them than for the victims of those acts. My mantra has been compassion, always compassion.

Yet in this past year I’ve recognized how this compassion has been used against me. It has been manipulated such that I have overlooked and tolerated things that I never should have. And as I began to grapple with the reality of this, with the reality of the cause of my anxiety and soul-weariness, I felt a crisis of identity and purpose. I didn’t want to be a person without compassion, but I wanted to protect myself and wanted truth and accountability for those who have misused and abused my compassionate nature. And then I came to a Truth.

Compassion and Justice are not mutually exclusive.

In fact, for true justice or true compassion to exist, they must exist together.

If we do not seek accountability and pursue true justice, we allow the people who committed atrocity  to continue in a life that is less than whole and less than they deserve. To be compassionate toward those who were brought to pain, we must hold the perpetrators of that pain to be responsible for the consequences. We cannot make true and lasting change without accountability and justice for the millions who’ve been oppressed and marginalized.

However, justice without compassion leads to punishment, violence, glee in consequences and pain. Justice without compassion leads to dehumanizing a fellow human. Justice without compassion fuels hatred and doesn’t allow for change, growth, and healing. Justice without compassion leads to recidivism, crime, and suffering. We cannot achieve true life- and world- changing dialogue without compassion and first trying to understand where everyone is coming from. We cannot right a wrong by committing the same wrong directed at different people.

And so I beg of you. ALL of you. Find the compassion. Seek justice. Do these together. Nothing will change until we see each other’s humanity.

I understand that there are people who will not engage in thoughtful conversation. I understand there are people who will not be swayed. And I understand that someone else’s actions doesn’t determine who or how I choose to be. And I will forever do my best to follow the Truth as best as I know it to be.

Yes, set boundaries and uphold safety when safety is being threatened.

Yes, hold people accountable and seek justice. And yes, see that they are people, not monsters. They are people who are angry and hurt. They are people who have lived something so atrocious that it has brought them to believe in anarchy or become violent or follow the words of a tyrant. They need to be held accountable, and if we are going to find a way forward, we need to dig deep and look through eyes of compassion.

Justice will not come until we can pursue it through compassion.

Peace will not come until we can help the unheard feel heard.

Unity will not come until we ALL choose to see the “other” as a person with whom we can unify.

Compassion and Justice are not mutually exclusive.

Compassion and Justice are necessary cohorts to achieve the same goal.

2020: a year of disintegration

dis.in.te.grate
/dis’in(t)ə,grat/

verb
break up into small parts, typically as the result of impact or decay

Anyone else feel the impact and/or decay of the year 2020? Please tell me I’m not alone in feeling like all of my insides and outsides, my mind and my soul have been broken up into small parts as a result of the ginormous collision of all the worlds’ ills within a mere 12 months.

It's been a year. A year that’s inspired pretty snowflake Christmas ornaments laced with the f-bomb. We all know the global events that have inspired these dainty baubles, so no need for me to list them out here, but without exaggeration we can claim to have lived through a year that has quite literally, and I do mean the literal definition of literally, brought every social scourge to the surface. It’s been a year when all the -isms have refused to stay quietly obscured and have demanded we take a position to act or not act while looking them straight in the eye. A year when every U.S. institution has been ripped open to show the skeletons desperate to remain hidden in the closets. Oh, and there’s been this crazy new disease spreading around the world, too.

One would think that life would take pity on us all and eliminate all the typical sufferings of being human, but nope. People are still being diagnosed with cancer. Babies are being miscarried. Psychotic breaks are still happening. Personally, I’ve seen my entire daily life disintegrate over the past 12 months. Pending divorce. Moving my business. Restructuring my business. Appliances and cars dying. Revisiting past traumas. Avoiding writing and podcasting. My entire worldview disintegrated.

It's been a heavy year. It’s been a dark year. It’s been a painfully good year.

In 1964, polish psychologist, Kasimierz Dabrowski, published his theory of positive disintegration. Essentially, he posited that in order for advancement and development and growth to occur, a person first needs to go through a phase of disintegration. Everything that person believes and understands needs to be broken into small parts in order for it to be rebuilt and addended to create a higher sense of the world, of the individual, and of the individual’s place in the world. Before we can grow, we must first fall apart.

This has been a new theory for psychology, not such a new concept for philosophy and religion and nature. The birthing of a butterfly requires the disintegration of the caterpillar. The birthing of a plant requires the disintegration of the seed. Jesus said, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit (John 12.24). Gautama Buddha said, “Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.”

The first steps of healing a wound, physical or otherwise, is to debride it. To clean out the infected tissues, beliefs, behaviors. This is painful, but without debridement, new and healthy tissue and mindsets cannot grow and therefore wounds cannot heal.

2020 has been painful. All that we have known has been disintegrating before our eyes. And it has been necessary. In the midst of the pain and discomfort, we must remember that we are positively disintegrating. We have to let our former ways fall apart, so in the rubble we can find the pieces we want to hold on to and rebuild something more beautiful, more enlightened, more well.

No one knows when this time will come, but there will be a time when we will stop disintegrating and begin to reintegrate. There will be a time when our collective trauma ceases and we will be left to collectively create new meaning. This is a time of hope. This is a time of required collapse and exciting opportunity.

Yes, 2020 has disintegrated into a shiny f-bomb ornament inspiring monstrosity. Thank f*%# for that.

I am grateful to be rejoining my online friends and colleagues in Hoagies’ Gifted BlogHops. Check out their interpretations of 2020 here.

Dear Exhausted Mom

Dear Exhausted Mom

It's exhausting to be the pre-frontal cortex for an entire family.  Of course you are bone weary.  You are but a mere human, yet have an entire household dependent on you to organize, manage time, regulate emotions, solve problems, all the things.  It is exhausting for any mom, but for a mom to differently wired kids who . . . phew.

I know that there have been days when you’ve sat with your anxious, empathic child for hours helping them breathe, cuddling them, soothing them, trying different strategies to alter their catastrophic thinking or help them find ways to contain their empathy.  I know that you have spent those same hours simultaneously having to do your own breathing, soothing, and trying different strategies to keep calm and supportive when really 500 other things were on your to-do list.

I know that you have been called names and had things thrown at you and stared sensory overwhelm and rage in the face as you were the calm eye in the middle of the hurricane.  I know that there have been hours spent physically keeping children safe, sitting silently by waiting for the storm to pass, whispering loving statements, all while you kept your own internal storm at bay.

I know that you’ve kept track of homework and appointments and chore schedules and birthday parties and shopping and careers and relative’s visits and therapies and therapy homework and oh so many other things.  You are the family calendar.

If you have a significant other, I know that you’ve spent time intervening to help them stay regulated and respond to our neurodiverse kids’ intense ways of being.  I know that you’ve struggled to decide when to intervene and when to stay back.  I know that you’ve felt like you were at the end of your rope, but still had to step in to relieve your partner.  And I know that you desperately needed to just check out instead.

I know you’ve patiently reminded absent-minded teens to close cabinet doors and put shoes away and do their laundry.  I know you’ve spent hours finding creative systems to help – a chart, a reminder on your phone, a planner, etc, etc, etc.

And I know there’ve been times when you’ve missed an appointment, forgotten about a volleyball practice, lost your patience, yelled at your kids.  I know you feel guilt about those times, because you’re supposed to be the one that keeps it all together.  But, you’re human, and just because the consequences when mom is less-than-perfect can reverberate throughout the walls of your home, does not mean you can avoid being less-than-perfect.

I know you.  You are not alone.  Of course you are exhausted.  Of course you can be scatter-brained.  Of course you feel like the emotional weight of your family is on your shoulders.  But, you are not alone.

Take care of you.  Reach out to other moms who get it.  Demand more of your spouses.  Retreat for a weekend or a week.  Let the house fall apart for a minute.  Allow yourself to be exhausted without guilt.  Because of course you are exhausted.  You are the executive functioning for your whole family.

Sincerely,

A mom who knows

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Heather Boorman, MSW, LCSWwww.boormancounseling.comwww.thefringybit.com715-977-2441