What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?

The other day, a writer explorer I know wondered if only one passion was allowed per person - one grand, consuming, life-guiding passion - or if maybe, satisfaction could be found in immersing herself in many loves both big and small. I remembered immediately the rush of Truth when I had spontaneously began making a list of all the things I Am Not

1. A non-profit President, Founder, Board Member or employee
2. A full-time schoolteacher or caregiver for other people's children
3. Caretaker/Savior of anyone's soul other than my own
4. Time waster or baby-stepper
5. Workshop addict/Self-help junkie
6. Unfinished
7. A beginner, a newbie, a novice, an apprentice
8. Superficial
9. A waiting-to-retiree

Midway through this list, I decide it may be a good idea to make a record of what I indeed AM

1. Mom to Zoe and Rae
2. Woman, Partner to Jeff
3. Listener/Observer for the purpose of uncovering/distilling/maybe giving insight
4. Wild
5. Capable
6. A figure-out-er
7. Team member with high expectations of my self and my team
8. Born with a raging thirst and a hunger to be free
9. A believer in the unseen and almost known
10. The sense of touch
11. Over-sensitive
12. Honest
13. Fierce
14. Storyteller
15. Seeker of participation with the eternal

As I shared with Chris, the first list was forged with Fire and Heat and Brilliance. The second list seemed more of a Spring rain - light, refreshing, nourishing. The first was born of full-on life experiences, of crashing and burning, and trying again. The second reveals the priceless gems left glittering on the workshop table of my soul after all had been said and done and swept up. Both lists live within me everyday.

The gift of feeling in my bones and in my cells who and what I know myself to be is a GPS tool truly worth having.

During my ten day treatment program at Schick Shadel Hospital, the obvious goal was to break down the addiction, to break loose a destructive behavior, to make "alcoholic" something I am not. Looking back on it now, something else I focused on during that ten days was just as crucial to where I find mySelf today.

One of the tools I took with me to work through why I drank too much was Carolyn Myss's phenomenal book "Sacred Contracts". It seems now that I couldn't let go of the drinking until I'd rebuilt the foundations of who I am. Or perhaps I couldn't get a grasp on who I am without letting go of the death grip I had on drinking. Books have always been my elders, my mentors. A quote from "Matilda" by Roald Dahl (movie version) sums this up perfectly:

"So Matilda's strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships onto the
sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone."

Books tell distinct, limited, coherent stories. Their presence in my life has enabled me to utilize what Carolyn Myss calls "symbolic sight", allowing me to pick out the structural plot, protagonist, and antagonist in the stories all around me. I've noticed especially in the last few years that my first reaction to the drama inherent to family and work is a fascination with the story elements more than an engagement with the drama itself. On every page of my own story are a hundred choices in what to say, how to act - ways to respond that absolutely affect the choices available to me on the next page of my story.

If I am only making choices based on who I am not, I can get stuck in a cycle of deconstruction. Generationally, you often see children rebelling against their parents' tightly held beliefs whether religious, political, social, or personal. Now though, that pendulum swing seems all amped up. We are a nation who voted in one president to bring dignity back to the oval office, then eight years later elected our next President because he promised Change and now just a year later, the majority party is losing elections to candidates offering an alternative to those 'unacceptable' changes.

Paradoxically, making choices based on who I want to be can be just such a destructive trap as well. In my last post, I shared what happened when I chose wrong action because I was willing to chase success at any cost. Pursuing a goal is not a bad thing. Dogmatic adherence to a predefined proof of that goal however negates the precious learning along the way. Whether you begin with what you want to be or what you want to be not, the end result of your efforts is unlikely to be what you had imagined at the beginning of your journey.

Maybe this is what all those self-help books refer to as Living in the Now. Making choices based on a good evaluation of what is offered on today's page of your story. It makes no sense to me to spend money as if you are wealthy when you have 42 cents to your name. On that day, money is not your wealth. But maybe strength of arm is a current asset and you can barter that wealth for food, return services, even more enhanced health, or fulfillment that comes from just helping someone who needs a strong hand.

This perspective on wealth and available choices though can only be had once you know who you are as well as who you are not. Don't tell me who you want to be. Tell me who you are today. Tell me a story of who you were yesterday so that I may catch a glimpse of your life's threads weaving together to create the choices you have before you today. If a thread is only a desire, take action today that will build your choices for tomorrow. John Michael Greer has posted a novel blog at starsreach.blogspot.com that I am completely enchanted by. His very first paragraph will show you why, and illustrate beautifully the art of weaving choices:

One wet day as we walked north toward Sisnaddi, old Plummer told me that
all stories are scraps of one story, one great and nameless tale that winds from
world’s beginning to world’s end and catches up everything worth telling on the
way. Everybody touches that tale one way or another, or so he said, if only by
watching smoke from a distant battle or lending an ear to some rumor in the
night. Other folk stray into the one story and then right back out of it again,
after carrying a message or a load of firewood on which the fate of kings and
dreams will presently depend. Now and then, though, someone no different from
these others stumbles into the deep places of the story, and gets swept up and
spun around like a leaf in a flood until finally the waters drown him or toss
him up gasping and alive on the bank.

It Won't Always Be This Way

I'm writing this essay on the seven year anniversary of completing the alcohol treatment program at Schick Shadel Hospital . During this weekend each year, I take some time away to celebrate my life, to be still, to mark the things for which I'm grateful, to touch base with the foundation of my belief. This year, I'm also writing as the tax season begins its short slide into the urgency of single-focus effort right up until 5:00 pm on April 15th.

And this “new” circumstance has shed a whole different light on my experience with alcohol addiction. I put quotation marks around the adjective “new” because although I've never before worked as a licensed tax preparer, I have faced the urgency of single-focus effort before. In fact, the most harsh of such experiences precipitated my commitment to the Schick Shadel program.

In 2000, I was very happily staying at home, mothering my beautiful little girls, restoring a 100 year old farmhouse, diligently working through the advanced Institute for Children's Literature writing program, and making a warm welcome home for my hard-working man. Then one day, someone I considered a close friend started talking to me about a service that was missing from their climbing business, exploring whether I may be interested in building a company to fulfill that service. I do so love a challenge.

Within a few hectic months, I moved from attachment parenting to kissing my little ones good night after they were already asleep and kissing them goodbye before they woke up in the morning . Seventeen hours a day. Seven days a week. But, I told myself, it wouldn't last forever. Just six months and then I could back away. Just six months and I had promised so many people that I could make this business happen that I just couldn't fail. I had to do whatever it took. Three months in and our partner quit. I kept working. I had to succeed at the task. I went to work every day feeling like I was full of broken glass. But I was ready to do whatever it took. I started having a beer for breakfast. And so on. And so on.

We sold the set up and equipment the next Spring for a sweet little profit and I tried to go back to my life the way it had been. Beer for breakfast though wasn't something my body could get over.

And it wasn't just the physical, brain chemical addiction. When I was working from that single-focus crisis point, my foundation was fear. I think it's that way in any crisis whether we fear the loss of health, of a loved one, of our home, of financial security. Basically, I become motivated by the fear of failure - failure to keep my promise, keep my health, keep my security. “I'll do anything” becomes “I'll give anything”. By the time the task is achieved, and there's no more need for the insane effort and sacrifice, sometimes, there's nothing left of the life you had before you shifted into crisis mode. Worse, sometimes there's no self left but the one who already gave everything in the urgent single-focus effort of not failing to complete the task.

Huh --- a scene from the Tom Hanks movie “Cast Away” just flashed in my mind. At the very end of the dramatic story, he delivers the package to a remote ranch in Texas. Then he sits at the crossroads. Without direction. He had survived and, against truly impossible odds, returned to his old life. But it wasn't there for him anymore.

It can happen without alcohol, without addictions of any kind. It can happen anytime I get so focused on not failing the goal that I forget myself. When I take so many steps down the “I'll do whatever it takes” road that the only motivation I can remember for continuing the task is the fear of not completing it.

Maybe that's why I spend this weekend away every year. Away from all the tasks, all the goals, all the things that must be done for someone else. I fence off a time and space where I'm surrounded by what really matters to me. Where I touch base with mySelf. I breathe in. I breathe out. And I breathe in again.

This year, I'll be making cottonwood balm and several healing tinctures, planting basil, thyme, rosemary, and poppies to grow in my office, repairing my NordicTrack, setting up a sewing table and long delayed projects, feeling the sun (and snow and wind and rain and the big ol' moon) on my skin, and letting my heart fill up with my lovely big girls and my hard-working man.

I am so lucky to have them. I am so lucky to have my life.