Finding me

                   Still kinda possessing my reunion experience, I know shocker! I can't help it I think life is a learning and unlearning experience.  I do not mean to be boring and keep droning on about but I had some things I learned about my self I had not seen or seen to the extent I did that night. I think some time seeing our selves in different lights shows us things I had never thought of.

                       First thing I learned about my self is I had no idea how much I hid behind my husband, No intentionally I just think he is amazing and really fun neat guy I am lucky to know let alone get to spend my life with.  The people there wanted to meet him too but they really wanted to talk to me. Even had around 10 or so people say that I was one of the people they were really looking forward to seeing. WOW really, for the girl who grew up thinking my just being there bothered people it to hear that from those I thought I bothered was awesome. I just don't see my self that way it was kinda nice, gave me confidence to be more out going: More present, more me. It was like finding me again finding that girl pulling her out and showing her all the love that had been around her that she could not see before because of all that was going on. Redeeming those days leaving that pain behind an pulling her out with all the people with me. Highly recommend this experience if you can go back and face hard time in your life or something that is hard for you:  DO IT!

                          The second thing I learned about my self that I had been kinda knowing but just realized more fully was that I really do have a better time If I know everyone is. If I see everyone is talking laughing I can relax I struggle seeing others struggle not finding their spot. I know this is probable this is a really deep seeded problem but I really noticed the difference in me when I noticed some one upset or being ignored.  There is a shift I pick up on right away, Even if I under the reason behind it I just feel that tension very strongly. I never could, I remember having my 5th grade or 6th grade birthday party I didn't want to leave anyone out so I invited all the girls from my class. It was a disaster I remember crying in the living room because the forming clicks from class were still there, I was devastated. All these years later I still do that. SO I guess what I resaw in my self was that did not change and is just as strong as ever.

                     The last thing I learned is that people are fascinating. I love people to talk with everyone I wanted it to be quiet and just sit with good coffee or the beer we had and talk about everything. Really I think the people in my class are surprising and warm wonderful people It can not be a fluke that this group was so dynamic, or maybe it is and Everyone should grow up in Beaver Dam. and last but not least: Friends will always be friends. You will act like a teenager with the people you were one with for the rest of your life. Enjoy it even if you lost touch and do not see each other when you get together again you will remember why you were so nervous about leaving after graduation even if you could not wait to go every year up till that point.

                        I do not know if this translates into anything good for anyone to read  or get anything from but I had to get  these thoughts out and I am done writing now about this and will have new subjects to talk about next time. I found so freeing thing visiting the past and I am so glad of the people I got to do this with. ('92 you rule. <3)

Who do we want to be

DO we think Oliver had it good?

AM I missing something? I do not understand the republican point of view have they no idea what history says about a people who have a few wealthy with the benefits and the poor with more burden. Have they never heard of the serfs or read any Charles dickens hell even seen some of the movies or plays from the times. There is a reason the robber stole from the rich and gave to the poor was the peoples hero. I hear the rest and it sounds so reasonable everyone should pay their own way, sounds fine till you look at the very poor who can not and the very rich who want to pay less. I am tired of the bashing of the poor, even if they are on drugs they have children that deserve to be able to eat why should they suffer because they were delt a bad hand. As Americans we can be so generous to starving people in every nation I was impressed by the hearts and that of those donating to Hatti and after the tsunami.

                                    If you live in America and are poor starving that is where compassion ends. There is this belief that if you live here you can pick your self up and if you are not making it you are lazy and it is your own fault. I have had friends who do not look like they need help that have needed help very much but have been treated badly by the very agencies that are supposed to help them. why is it our working poor work so hard and are still unhelped by their own efforts or the help of others. I am not talking about life time abusers of the system I am talking about hard working people falling on hard times. We as a nation are the 3rd worst nation for poverty in the developing world. One out of six people in our nation is being helped by some sort of aid, one out of 5 children are living in poverty. these are not someone's children across the ocean on another land or some imaginary line on a map this is our children in our nation and all I hear is how we need to stop caring for them. who is going to? are we willing to start seeing children looking like bones walking in our streets in schools?

                                    People are so afraid of loosing the kingdoms they built or being inconvenienced  they are willing to through everyone else under the bus. Right to work sounds great we want to work but right to work means you work with no rights. With employers who treat you like a trade-able commodity taking out life insurance on employees betting they will commit suicide or die and they will collect there inheritance from you. Not only working every last drip they can out of you but profiting if it kills you sooner.

                                I remember writing a paper about child labor and how it was ended reading about the thousands of children that lost limbs and fingers in the works of the factory, I was disturbed at the idea that the adults in control could use people that way. women and children where cheaper to hire. Do we really want to go back to those days? I think we are. Corporations being called people they are psychopaths as people. I have heard in history that is why the14th amendment was passed that is when companies started claiming such rights. Sad that even one of the shinning examples of something we did right can be twisted into ugliness. Is this who we want to be in America? DO we want to be the land of the free and the home of the brave or the land of the enslaved and the home of the afraid?

                                                

Facepalm

                       It is hard for me to write today the day after the day after the vote in WI is done. It should not be so hard but since I love to write about community lifting each other up and inclusiveness when I see a vote that to me symbolizes the turning our back on Women and children our future tossed out. Money from little men that toy and tinker with the world to make it suit them and their pockets to hell with everyone else and their right to education, health and equality: Even to hell with being able to stand up and say this is wrong. It makes it hard for me to write or feel like what I right matters.

                            I have never been particularly proud to be from WI, I admire things about it but pride was never part of that. I honestly have never wanted to live my whole life here a lot of my marriage I have been trying to convince my husband to move, thought that would have been easier since he is not from here. Last year was the first real pride I had in WI seeing hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters standing up fighting for others. In my experience here that was a rare quality not helping one another but to publicly do so with drums and vigor. There is a lot of neighbor leaning on each other people quietly being kind to one another standing up for this person or that but this was different this was devotion to something bigger than the packers. The thing that makes even the most hardened line backer love being part of a that team with such devotion: being pored out into the community into real life being used for a purpose other then sport idles.

                            The narrative I wanted to hear was that people cared that women were being set back, that people saw education and those giving their lives for other peoples children in more than dollar signs, that jobs were not more important that the strip mines that are going to poison an environment that has been cared for and preserved carefully, that men not even from here that pored money into an election to line there pockets would be seen through and a criminal that pits a states people against each other to concur it would be seen as decisive leading people to remove him and find common ground to tread. (I know huge run on sentence.) Instead I feel like I got bitch slapped with the fact that if you take peoples unsettled fear and uncertainty in life and blame others as the cause you win there devotion for doing so. With general sweeping declarations and fascist actions can win the hearts of a people. It is hard to put a word such a Fascist on to a situation we are in with out seeing Hitler death camps around, or for thinking the person saying this is being dramatic. When you look at that started and what is going on now in our country and my state I can not help but draw the parallels. I think we do not learn from history because we separate it into parts. the war is told here, the camps and repercussions are told there, this is the political time here,   and  the real life of people here. In doing so we strip it of the value we rely on it for to teach us. Germany was ripe for the fascist that took over when they did it was an unsure economic time people had been breaking out of conventional thinking taking on more modern ways, So in swoops this group that plays on their virtues and called people "back" to fiscal responsibility and the way things should be the old ways that worked for people before us "traditional" thinking. Need to retrain the minds hire Joseph Gerbbels to "show and tell" them what the "real" news was Fox news as the Gerbbel propaganda of our day doing the same all Preying on peoples deep insecurities about this new life and that changes happening would not bring new developments and possibly improve their lives no it would lead them to destruction and humiliation. It does not sound that different to me than the tea party people and Walkers brown bag ads.

                               Being an optimist people often seem to think I do not see the world as it is,  to believe better things than I actually see rose colored glasses and all. I long to think that money can not buy every thing or everyone,  people do not what to be lied to by the pied piper or at least recognize the tune and the death it leads too, and  criminals get punished not elected. I know in my heart these things happen regularly but the blatant ones get caught right? I hate the part in the story when it looks like the good person is ground into the dust and there will be no rise to stop the bad. That darkness will not only win but dominate. I cringe at it as much as I hate the sap ending the wraps it all up neat and clean it is so much worse when the bad guy is standing victorious. but I suppose either side of that is an extreme in life. But it how I feel right now. Life will balance out and the world will right it's self right? I suppose that is what the German people who resisted thought as they saw the rising Nazi culture too. (Que the Darth Vador music don don don don da don)

                        

I was not going to but...

Ok I am from WI and can not not say something about this historic recall going on. I have been waiting for this day since the teachers and public workers froze their butts off in Madison last year, or in front of palm trees depending if you watch Fox news or not. I was an independent for 5 years before all this happened in my state but can not be any longer. The way Scott Walker has played on people and torn our state apart is unconscionable. Wi is a pretty laid back state for the most part. People are good people. To have this burst out in such a way like this makes my heart break, and having a Governor who in his own words divided us intentionally. Shame on you sir. SHAME! It is no secret to who I am for, I am for the people of WI no people should be divided and concurred by an official who is supposed to be serving their best interests. More of the issues bother me and I could talk at length about then but am not going to because none is as important as this is. This is what democracy looks like! Recall WI!!!!!!!

I'm right and you are stupid

              When did we stop listening to each other? I get the people getting paid to sling mud being this way but as humans one person to another when did another opinion become a threat? Are we so insecure in what we think that we can not allow for others to have their own thoughts. This is just not in political arguments it is in all discussions if you can call them that. Listening to others can expand our own world, most of us are trapped in a very small world view, other people have other experiences that we do not.

            People wonder all the time why more people vote for Dancing with the Stars than give a crap about things that actually impact their lives. I think it is this kind of talk that is driving people to focus on the trivial. People are rabid about their ideas and even if someone is a little interested in something they get blasted as soon as they ask or look into it with negativity and hostility, they then just check out again.  We take our selves way to seriously, we are more than our opinions as humans. It is not a bad thing to evaluate our ideas from time to time. If they are worth keeping they will make it if they are not we should have the courage and humility to  admit it and move on.

                                              Is being right worth loosing relationship over or berating a person for? When did a need to be right become more important than another person? I am not saying we should not have an opinion or state said opinion in fact I think it necessary. However I am not willing to let that be all that matters.

The Others

           I have been thinking this morning about a challenge a friend of mine made to me to think of  the 10 things that are most important to me. with all the things going in politics here in WI and around our country I am thinking of Arizona and North Carolina as I write this One jumps to mind I wanted to share here. I have been noticing it all day in looking at the propaganda posts of all sides the cartoons and "news" posts is that the old ways are still effective. Making some one other than us makes them distant and then we can cast all our fear and negativity on them. It is dangerous in my mind to do so all propaganda has started this way all hate lives here. When someone is unlike us we distrust them because after all if they had the same information as us they would believe as we do, and if they do have the same information they must be stupid or evil wanting destruction of us all.

                 Look at the stereo types placed in cultures The Indians wanted to kill us, the Micks were rats taking over. IN our own day look what is said about people that are Arab, Black, or of Hispanic decent in the name of saving our people / protecting our borders or gay marriage. They are going to bring the destruction of us all. We will live in jejad, and the Mexicans are going to over run us, and the gays will bring about the down fall of marriage. The call for this is is that they are other than us they are not like us, their values are different so they are flawed. This has all been said before Russians in the cold war, the Irish in the turn of the century were going to over run our nation The end of slavery and Jim crow laws were going to bring down our economy and letting couples from other faiths or races marry was going to bring down the institution it self.

                               If the border thing is so true why is it always the southern border we worry about I am closer to the Canadian border both our our allies there are as many Canadian people here illegally as any other.  No one disparages the  pick up hockey team from there, or the very polite people at the coffee shop, But the very polite people buy salsa are so different? The equality of all people in our nation has done so much to enrich our lives as a people so many people from other cultures have added to us as a people not taken away.

         Couples inter marry with other religions and races (my self being one) and very live happy lives. This was not so in just the generation before us. Hundreds of thousands of Arab people live in our country and want it to do well for their children and them selves because it is their land too. That actions of a few horrible people should not taint our view of all people. Most serial killers have been white do other people need to worry that we will go all Dexter on them?
              The moment we make someone different from our selves an "other" it makes it ok to do things say things we could not do when we see them as our selves as valuable. It allows fear to rule us, fear makes a poor ruler. If someone is valuable even if they are different from us, if not only that but they can offer us a wider view of the world then we hold in our singular look at it. Giving perspective and wisdom to us that other wise would be lost showing things we would not want to see or would gloss over, makes us stronger. It takes hate out of it. How can you hate someone like you how can you hate one of us. Hate never rings perspective never brings growth it keeps one trapped. I listened to a TEd talk the other day about being wrong and the one thing that stood out to me in it is that being wrong has no feeling it feels very much like being right, till we are proven wrong. If all we do is hang out with those like us there is so much we could be wrong about and never know. I am a firm believer Love wins every time Love is stronger than hate. In Love for others there is not room for making someone other than your self they are like you human. Love can cast out fear, there is no reasoning with fear and hate. It does not make us free it enslaves us limits who are as a people: makes who we will be smaller then who we could be. Both as a nation a people and human-beings.

Authenticity and stuff through other stuff

              I have been listening to a women named Brené Brown Talk about Vulnerability and shame. I like such a cheat taking great research and ideas and restating them but I can not get them out of my head. There were things I have believed in my heart for years and struggled to make true in my life for longer than that. I have had this idea ruminating in my heart of what I wanted to write here for days, weeks, OK, well in between the Buffy episodes and the Holiday, any way, but could not quite get my mind formed around the notion I was grasping at.  After listening to them I ran across a quote I want to start out with, a quote from  Elisabeth Elliot "There is nothing worth living for, unless it is worth dying for." Amazing right, unless you look at all the things that kill us silently, we die all the time inside to protect ourselves 

from being vulnerable: from the feeling of standing naked in a room of people with all of who we are, spread out without guarantee of anything. People: unless they are nudest or expeditiousness die all the time to avoid that feeling, it is when we can go there that we will be free. not actually standing naked in a room of people that is crazy talk. The thing of nightmares for most but the nightmare of all: to be vulnerable with something more precious: our hearts and the real us to bear him or her and let that be OK, not only OK, the norm of how we live. Most of us would rather be in the room naked as horrific as that may seem to some; because we could blame it on the alcohol or at least hide the real us behind the shock factor or beauty; the image of our outer self holds. 

        Brené Brown is a women that researches and tell the story of what the data tell her, she has spent 13 years so far looking at shame and vulnerability. I am sure she has other things too but I am going on what the videos say.  she has found and written about  Vulnerability this well my notes an expounding on of it.... People who feel worthy have a strong chance of worthiness not because of anything other than they believe they are worthy. Those who think this way can be best described as wholehearted. They have the curage to be imperfect, compassion, to be kind to themselves and others, connectedness a result of being genuine letting go of the idea of who they should be and accept themselves as they are, and embraced vulnerability, is what made them beautiful and it being fundamental.

           Vulnerability it's the birthplace of shame, fear, and loneliness, but also joy, creativity, and love. In those three things, you can't have them if you are not vulnerable. To be creative is to put your heart out there to love, it's the same to feel joy is to let go and to experience it without worrying of the drop from having experienced full joy with your whole heart. Full Joy is the mountaintop experience but is not the same without the valley, it's Nebraska flat land. however comforting that may seem it is not real living. This idea reminds me of my father and what he used to say to me about emotions, not that it was healthy but it was said often whether I was very excited or upset and it was the life view presented to me "Rain in your emotions. if you let yourself go to the top you will have to go to the bottom, stay steady even keel" That is not the place I long to live in my life so I will take the pain too. 

                             Living in a way that can open us up to vulnerability is scary and hard to face, no one can live there all the time, we all numbing vulnerability with addictions, eating/ not eating, shopping/ saving,  drinking,  whatever they are.  When you numb one emotion (IE pain) you numb them all (IE joy). A not so looked at way of numbing ourselves it's making uncertain things certain. Look at our culture today: Religiousness, Politics, anything people hold a firm belief on: Star Wars vs. Star Trek, anything there is no common ground. We are right, you are wrong,  I am brilliant,  you are not. This idea of arguing our point or as some say having animated discourse (IE fighting) is keeping us away from the uncomfortable idea that there may be room for others to hold an opinion I do not share and that's a valid place to because then we would have to live in the place of uncertainty,  a free flowing place with little firm ground but much more room for not only ourselves but others. Another  numbing technique that goes along with this it's when we blame, this gives us  a way to discharge discomfort. Getting a little relief from feeling overwhelming,  feeling of  being vulnerable. So much easier to cast that on to others than to live in a place of nakedness and honesty with ourselves.

          Another  way we numb  it's perfecting ourselves, or our children, or those around us. It's the same principle to me as The standing in the room Naked idea.  It's putting the front out there so we don't have to be vulnerable. Children were never meant to be perfect, they were never meant to be looked at after they were born "I  told you are perfect I want to keep you this way". they are only perfect because they have not made mistakes yet, It's so much better to look at them in the honest light of "They are who they are and who they are is enough" no one gets through anything without mistakes, it's when we believe that is not the end, we can move on. This goes back to the people who feel worthy knowing they are not perfect and that being ok. 

              But when all that fails we have Pretending. Pretending  what we do doesn't have an effect on others and I would add ourselves to this, this is the choice of many putting our heads in the sand or fingers in our ears and LA LA LAing our way along/ because like the 5 year old playing hide and seek in the middle of the floor with just his eyes closed and nothing in front of them, if I can't see it or at least do not acknowledge it:  it is not there.

                    The only way through life without  numbing in both addiction type ways and the ones listed  it's to let ourselves be seen, deeply and authentically vulnerably, seen without guarantee people will get it or except it,  To Love with our whole hearts even when there is no guarantee that we will be loved back: practice love and joy in the face of rejection and pain, and believing we are enough, then we face those internal and external, telling us, otherwise to be strong enough to be  kinder and gentler to ourselves and those around us. 

                        I am drawn to the words of Jesus "Love others you as you love yourself"  You can't have compassion or real love for others if you can't have it for yourself. This mostly thrown out there as the idea that we are so full of ourselves, we can't love others, I would stand in the face of that backed up by this and other research that says "We struggle to love others because we struggle to love ourselves". We see Vulnerability as weakness, however Vulnerability isn't weakness. Vulnerability it's our most accurate measure of Courage. To stand in vulnerability takes more grit than to hide behind all the mentioned numbing techniques we all have perfected so well. It is also the birthplace of Creativity, Innovation and Change. Adaptability to change,  it's all about Vulnerability. How can you have any of these things while standing on the norm, they do not live there. The most extraordinary people we all know even look up too live in this place. You can't have success without failing, the two are intertwined. What stops us from living in that place?,The Critic. However,  Isn't The Critic that gets the credit,  the credit goes to the person doing the task because when he fails he does so daring greatly.  I have to say even though I loved Oprah before, her shows have been the background words in places of my life. I love that when she stepped away from her giant success of a show she tried something new and it has not gone so well and she has done it with grace and openness that people loved her for she stayed in vulnerably daring to fail but daring to do so greatly. 

             The Critic we all face, if we are honest with ourselves, if ourselves comes in two forms: Shame and Guilt. Shame it's two things: Never good enough and Who do you think you are? Shame and Guilt are different,  Shame it's focused on Self , Guilt it's focused on Behavior. It's the I am bad vs. I did something bad. I am sorry I made a mistake (Guilt) vs. I am sorry I am a mistake (Shame). Shame is correlated to: Addiction, Depression, Violence, Aggression, Bulling, Suicide, Eating Disorders. Guilt inversely correlated with those things. 

                The only people who do not experience Shame are those that do not have the capacity for connection or empathy; a sociopath as I said before,  so stop shaming yourself for having it. I think it's the better choice. Shame has a different relationship connected through each gender, both feel it, again as humans without sociopath  tendencies. For women "Do it all" and "Do it perfectly and Never let them see you sweat" A web of conflicting competing expectations about Who are supposed to be? "Bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and make you man happy"  while being everything for children, family of origin and friends both making new and keeping close ties with the old. You can see the plate spinner running and juggling one after another,  It is exhausting and unobtainable. for men is not it, it boils down to one thing,  "Do not be perceived as weak"  Men see the world as people needing them to be on a white horse, unable to "Fall down" or "Step Off". I propose there are some man that refuse to even get on the horse not letting other trust or rely on them They,  are out of fear of falling, never get on the horse. Make no mistake this in not just their friends, coaches, bosses and other men, this is women too. I would say this is women more. Shame is an ugly place, lonely but for most it's safer than Vulnerability.

                                   A women that can sit with a man in real Vulnerability and fear, and she has done some incredible  work. a man that can sit with a women who has just had it and he really listens rather than fixing it he has done a lot of work. Shame is an epidemic in our culture, we need to find our way out from under it to find our way back to each other. Empathy is key to find our way back to one another. Empathy is the antidote to Shame, Shame needs secrecy, silence and judgment. Guilt is so much easier to cope with than Shame. I would say every time we give in to shame and guilt  we betray ourselves and reinforce them in our lives.  But to sit in this place not only ourselves but to have the Grace to let other do the same it's the essence of real love and loving.  For some they will have no more than what the picture shows, one touch, one little piece of it, finger to finger and it's enough to sustain their whole life. But , Why would we settle for such scraps when we can move to a place of more connection? We have to understand shame and it's role in our humanness. Everyone is washed in the ill tides of shame, keeping us from being able to do so much more than can be summed up here by any other words here but Life or Love.

Here are the videos I referred to from  Brené Brown.
http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html