Parenting is Cheaper than Therapy

Lessons about victory and defeat are easy to come by these days.

When I was writing about blogging being cheaper than therapy I got to thinking about something else that is cheaper than therapy - keeping a journal.  Which reminded me of a book I read early in my illness called Writing Out the Storm: Reading and Writing Your Way Through Serious Illness or Injury by Barbara Ambercombie.  I remember this book being very helpful early in my illness so I decided to get out my journal from that time and see if I could use it to write a review of the book that would be helpful to other people.

The problem was that when I looked at those old journals it reminded me of a dark and difficult time in my life.  And so many of the entries were emotionally fraught.  I dealt with a lot of depression and loneliness and I poured a lot of mental anguish out on those pages.  When I first looked at them it was hard for me to see how it could have been helpful for me.  It seemed like writing it all down might have been a way to dwell in that dark place rather than helping me find a way out.

But today I found an entry that was much more hopeful.  It's dated June 10, 2006.  I was thinking about activities I did a lot at that time which felt like a waste of time.  I was thinking about what I would rather my life look like.  Here's part of what I wrote:

"Activity - "productive" activity, has become an obligation for me rather than a source of joy or pleasure.  Expressing myself is risky and part of me believes that the purpose of expressing myself is to correct myself.  Not for the joy of knowing who I am, but for the purpose of dealing with emotions, correcting faulty thinking, resolving old grudges, facing old fears, forgiving, remembering, letting go of pain, expressing anger.  These I feel are obligations - tasks I should accomplish because I should continue to grow and mature as a human being.  I have a goal - to become as emotionally healthy as I am capable of being so that my emotional health will not be a detriment to my physical health.  I am trying to be strong mentally so that I can deal with my physical weakness better.  I don't really want to know who I am, I just want to know how to deal with my past in a way that will allow me to view the present realistically, have motivation to do the things I want to do, and courage to face the future.

Many elements of this plan are good, but it has some basic flaws.  I will never have freedom to "do" until I give myself permission to "be."  I will never have motivation until I decide that I actually have the freedom to choose what I want to do.  I will not be able to walk away from anxiety until I find that there is victory in failure and beauty in imperfection.  Healing will come when I begin to believe that it is my right rather than my job.  My needs will become less overwhelming when I give myself permission to have them.  My anger will not be  able to hurt me when I can see it as a source of strength - not something that I need to have power over or that has power over me, not something I need to hide for fear of rejection and not something that everyone but me has a right to.

Becoming whole must be more than finding the parts that are broken and fixing them, more than dumping old baggage and learning to think more realistically.  Becoming whole must involve becoming aware of who I am, being willing to accept that person in the entirety and with no conditions.  Not "putting myself on project status" as Dr. Phil would say, but finding space to breath, coaxing my soul out of its hiding place and giving it ways to express the whole range of what it contains.  Censoring nothing, fixing nothing, manipulating nothing.  Wouldn't it be wonderful to know that even if I never accomplished anything for the rest of  my life I had at least known peace for one afternoon?  How much energy would I find if I could move by the motivation of my own desires, if I could lay down the weight of obligation and how much strength if I move away from the sting of disapproval?  What if I can learn to express myself for no other reason than to meet my soul's need for expression - not to be heard, but simply to speak - to cry, to laugh, sing, dance, run and fly, to scream and kick and punch, to break and build, to create and destroy, to stretch out, enlarge and reach beyond the limits?  Can I move because I want to and be still because I am ready to allow my soul to expand instead of moving out of obligation and being still because I am holding my soul at bay?

I hope so.  I hope I can find a way to being that balances pleasure and pain.  I want to find ways to move out of the cycles of disapproval and rejection to reject the myth that says that someone else knows better than I do how I should be.  I even want to move beyond believing that I know how I should be or even that I know how to get where I want to be.  I want to stop being so afraid of being lost and instead have the strength to look at where I actually am.  I want to know the relief of being who I am without any apology.  I want to be unfettered to know joy." 

It's interesting to me that becoming a parent has actually help me achieve some of what I was hoping for in this journal entry.  I think that parenting is a form of self expression.  I've heard people say that having a child means that part of your heart is walking around in the world.  I thought when I first heard it that this was overly sentimental, but I realize now that in some ways it's true.  Also,  I think that being a parent has helped me accept myself and learn to deal with my emotions in the following ways:

• It helps me smile every day.  Kids are cute.  They do funny stuff.  It's not hard to smile at them even when  they are exasperating.  Which they are so...
• Learning to deal with anger is an ongoing project.  Has a child ever looked you in the eye, picked a piece of food off of his high chair tray and flung it toward the corner of the room?  Lenny went through a phase where he did this at least once a day.  This is when I learned that it's possible to actually shake with anger.
• Helping little people deal with their emotions has helped me be more accepting of my own.  When I want to insist that my children STOP CRYING I don't because I want them to learn healthy ways to calm themselves.  Helping them through the process gives me more confidence in my own abilities.
• Knowing that I chose to be a parent - even though I didn't really know what I was getting in to - helps me embrace the challenges.
• Carrying on in the face of crazy and overwhelming times has helped me learn to find peace in the midst of chaos.
• Spending my days with my little ones involves actually building, destroying, dancing and exploring the world.
• Celebrating my children's growth and achievements has helped me realize that life is a process.  I feel more confident that I can trust it to produce growth in my life also.
• My children are beautiful and amazing.  Since they came from me looking at them makes it easier for me to believe there must be something lovely about me also.

I'm pretty sure that having children is not the only way to learn these lessons.  I think that being part of a community, doing fun, creative and amazingly difficult tasks can probably help anyone through this process.  For me, that happens to involve being a parent.  I hope that each of my readers, whatever your path, can be immersed life and learn to know joy.

In Which I Solve the Mystery of Mommy Blogging

I'm sitting on the bed in the clothes I've been wearing for the past thirty-six hours.  The baby in sitting on my lap with (just a little) sweet potato on his face.  He needs a clean diaper but you don't need to be seven months into the second baby to know that it's good to wait a few minutes on that one.  I have a head ache that pain killers and a sort of almost decent night of sleep barely touched.  I'm typing with one hand.

Why do I do this?  Why do I compose blog entries (in my head) while trying to get back to sleep at three in the morning or on my way home from dropping Lenny off at school?  Well besides the fact that it's pretty impossible to compose blog entries while on the way to drop him off because of all the questions and comments coming from the back seat. 

I figure a couple of different reasons work pretty well.  In more or less equal parts I....

• want to hear my grown up voice.
• am trying to impose some order on what otherwise feels pretty chaotic.
• want to remember this beautiful, crazy, super-intense time.
• like to keep in touch with family members.
• like attention and affirmation from the folks in my digital community.

About this last point:  I'm not proud.  I'll admit that being a stay-at-home mom can be lonely and thankless.  In the midst of a day of "mommy look at this" I sometimes like other people to look at me too.

Also, this is not my main "mommy blog."  I have another one that I started way back in the days when Lenny was a baby.  It's not a "how to" or a food blog or an advice or opinion blog.  It's just the story of our family.  And I wasn't really thinking about internet security when I started it, so it has lots of personal details about our family in it.  I sort of try to keep it hidden.  I may end up needing to password protect it. This blog, that you are reading right now, is an experiment.  An attempt to see if I can write "stuff" that a broader audience will be interested in.  Also, I'm trying to see if I have a "voice" - something I really want to write about.  Or something I'm good at writing about.  So anything goes at the moment, pretty much.

Obviously I'm not alone in feeling drawn to blogging.  I've been reading "mommy blogs" lately and there are literally thousands to choose from.  Groups of moms blogging together.  Moms with famous twitter feeds.  Networks of moms who pool ideas about what to write about.  There are sentimental, humorous, practical, honest, encouraging, self deprecating, tragic and triumphant blogs.  And of course many that have various of those elements at different times.  Just lots of blogs.

So do they all have the same motive I do?  Well without asking...any of them I would like to suggest that most likely they do.  Also I think that we all share the following motive, which I hadn't really considered until I read a couple of articles pretty much back-to-back and was hit with an epiphany. 

First of all I read this article about a Danish writer who is inspired by a Swedish film maker who said that seeking out solitude is important for writers because (my summary) writing is tumultuous enough without adding a bunch of drama. He said he felt like he contained "too much humanity" and it was squeezing out of him.  But this quote at the beginning of the article really grabbed my attention:

"Conventional wisdom tells us pain is good for art. Genius, the logic goes, is best drunk, unhappy, destitute, scarred by war or parenting, buoyed by illegal drugs or Merck."

"Scarred by war or parenting"?!?  I love it.   I don't know if I would write more or better if I had solitude.  I doubt it.  I actually had a TON of solitude for several years and mostly wrote tortured journal entries that I do not want to reread myself let alone share.  At the moment the humanity doesn't have to squeeze out of me like a defective tube of toothpaste.  It's swirling around me like....water about to rush out of a toilet bowl?  No, that's not right.  Wind in a tornado?  Maybe better.  It's definitely swirling around me like something that makes a big mess and leave me feeling breathless and traumatized.  And I don't know if it's producing some kind of genius, but it does compel me to write stuff down.

But why this story of my crazy, normal, beautiful and monotonous mommy life?  Why not make something up?  Is it just because it's what I know?  Or maybe the reasons listed above are enough.  But then I found another one which is more elegant and might just go right to the heart of the matter.

I saw an interview of Jennifer Senior, the author of All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood a few days ago.  It looked interesting.  She talks about why parenting has become such an intense emotional experience.  How we see our children as precious even as they have (historically) lost any economic "value."  Then I saw this review which had more detail and this great quote (I'm quoting the article, which quotes the book.):

Senior draws on the psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s distinction between the “experiencing self” that exists in the present moment and the “remembering self” that constructs a life’s narrative. “Our experiencing selves tell researchers that we prefer doing the dishes — or napping, or shopping, or answering emails — to spending time with our kids. . . . But our remembering selves tell researchers that no one — and nothing — provides us with so much joy as our children. It may not be the happiness we live day to day, but it’s the happiness we think about, the happiness we summon and remember, the stuff that makes up our life-tales.”

 That's it!  I write partly because the swirl of humanity compels me.  But mostly, I write - I "mommy blog" to become the "remembering self."  It's not just that I want to remember at some distant time in the future when the house is quiet and clean (ha!) and my little ones have outgrown my loving arms.  No.  I need to remember now.  I need to become the rememberer.  The one who finds joy in my children, who sees the beauty and the humor and the love in our every day crazy-making lives.  I need to find the self that is not overwhelmed, tired and just about fed up and listen to her for a little while.  I need her to tell me that the first sleepy smiles of the day, imprinted on my still-sleep-starved brain though they are, are precious.  I need her to point out the funny, ironic, and amazingly intelligent sayings of my children.  I want to see how they are sweet and compassionate and full of exciting potential.  I need, for a few moments, to become the one who sees my life that way.  As joyful, satisfying and something that I love.

Mystery solved.  That's why I do it.  And I think probably a few other "mommies" blog for that reason too.