and i'm out....

Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?”                    

  -ernest hemingway, men without women

...don't worry... i'll be back...

life lesson

 moving through...

two new clients started with me recently. both are going through very difficult breakups; a very typical therapy topic frankly. interestingly both are struggling with a lack of support from friends and family seemingly exhausted by their respective breakup drama. something many of us may have (silently, right?) experienced ourselves with friends that just can’t seem to “get over it and move on”. these are the complaints voiced repeatedly by my two new clients. they say their friends are now saying enough—move on!

but why? there is no victory lap, no blue ribbon won, no medal received for “getting over it” quickly. and what does that mean anyway? the truth is, none of us are “moving on”; we are all just moving through. every day.

so i say- no rush, no hurry. there is no set time frame for grief. move through. the grieving process is a tricky one. it travels in fits and spurts, with twists and turns. some days we progress, others we regress…still we move…sometimes we feel stuck, but that is just where we are In That Moment. we are still moving through our mourning process.

there is a saying in addiction recovery that sobriety isn’t always better but it is certainly different. i think that idea works with all changes in life. even though we rid ourselves of bad habit, a substance, relationship or job etc. and even though the motivation behind the change was a desire to improve our life in the larger sense, change itself doesn’t work like a magic wand casting rainbows and cupcakes in our wake.

working through loss, working through change is a process…the only guarantee we have is that our circumstances will be different than before. our only choice is to keep moving through life and experience it as it is, as it unfolds…

Ms.

“In a sick society, women who have difficulty fitting in are not ill but demonstrating a healthy and positive response.”                
                   
                  -charlotte perkins gilman

a family affair

i grew up in a big, rambunctious, extended family. often fun, often crowded, mostly loud, it was always intense. for all the laughs shared there were twice as many tears shed. like many other therapists, i come from a family of dysfunction and emotional complexity. as a result, i developed an escapist fondness for films and tv shows about loud, close-knit and corny families. bring on the schmaltz, the sentimental mush, all the better for me. even later in life, when i was in my late twenties and my little sister just finished college, she and i were living in the same city and formed a ritual “sister night” orchestrated around one of these super-family melodrama shows, we watched and gorged on pizza together. the unspoken understanding, carefully left silent to avoid tears, was our shared yearning to have a family that looked like the one we watched on our little twelve-inch set. although we grew up not really knowing each other, this was one of many small things we did that re-set our relationship and helped to make us close; as close now actually as the sisters we admired in fictional worlds.

this past week my niece’s high school soccer team played in her state’s championship tournament. my phone was a flurry of calls, texts, voicemails, photo messages and twitter feeds all week. everyone came together to support her and cheer for her team. i spoke to my brothers every day hearing them recreate her performance, parsing their anxiety and excitement. her older sister came home from university to cheer for her and kept me posted with live sms match commentary. my mom went to watch and joined in the texting frenzy to keep me in the loop. in short, we were all united- aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins- all because of my amazing niece. for a few days i lived in a hazy glow of fantasy family life—but it was real! i actually felt like my family resembled the kind i always dreamt of and it felt fabulous. simply, it was great to love and be loved and to be a member of something important- family.

i realised a truth about having kids. we all hope and try to do a little better job than our parents; we all want something a little better for our own kids. a friend of mine once used that premise to illustrate an aversion she had to parenthood, but this week i realised it is one of the most important reasons we have kids at all. in doing so, we improve and progress. in fact, that wish alone is what has allowed us to evolve and advance civilization itself. wanting to improve is a big aspiration; every small victory is a step forward.

my niece’s team lost in a double-overtime-penalty-kick-shoot-out. it was a real nail biter. they may not have won the championship but i can’t help but see it as a championship victory for my family.

masks we wear

if you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

                                                                                        -virginia woolf

halloween got me thinking about masks we wear; how we disguise or muffle our true selves. sometimes it may be tempting or it may feel safer to be someone other than ourselves. sometimes it may even seem like it would be better to be someone else.

but how hard it is to be false! what a struggle to be someone other than who we really are. sometimes we pretend in order to protect ourselves, protect our feelings, guard our emotions or our hearts. so many wonderful things, like love and friendship can often be scary when we feel vulnerable, and up go our guards, our fronts, our masks in full display.

what a mistake! to live as another is a lie that complicates and distorts. the real risk is that you can never trust if someone really loves you or the mask you pretend is you. take a chance. let someone love the real you...that is the only love  you can trust.

the truth is, it is easier to just be ourselves. it is the role we play best. no one else can be you...only you are you and you create yourself as you go...

photo: pedro almodovar, atame