Intimacy

Communication in relationships is an important key to their health and happiness. It seems also quite elusive, and some relationships seem resilient enough to survive without any semblance of it. I will always remember the answer of a man who was married 35 years, and who was asked what the secret to his marriage's success was : "Don't talk to each other". Archie Bunker would readily have agreed, and his reticence emotionally was a constant source of annoyance and grief to his long-suffering wife Edith in the super popular sitcom of the seventies, "All in the family". That was a comedy, so the talented writers were very able to make us laugh heartily at Archie's complete lack of sensitivity and insight. But I think that when we deny communication in real life relationships, it causes a lot of anxiety and stress, and unhappiness. To feel valued enough that you can think aloud without fear of ridicule, anger, or shame is very crucial to a healthy relationship, whether it be a marriage, a friendship, a parent-child connection, or any relationship between human beings where people who care about each other are trying to make a go of it. Personality is certainly a factor. A shy person will deal with communication in a different way that an aggressive person does. I think the challenge comes when one person dominates the other person, obliterating any chance of a fair relationship by severally limiting or challenging communication. On a large scale that is clearly demonstrated in dictatorships, whether they lean to the extreme right or extreme left. Nothing frightens those tyrants more than free speech. On an individual scale, you end up with domestic violence, where it becomes the most vile when children are beaten into submission. Safety and communication go hand in hand in healthy, happy relationships. Safety to be free to be yourself, to be allowed expression of your  mind, heart and soul in all its colors and shades.To deprive another human being , whether in a personal , cultural, religious or political relationship of their sense of self by severely restricting their communication with you, out of a perverse need to control them, is always wrong. In physically close relationships, the denial of free communication often impedes true intimacy, because that can only exist if you get proverbially, as well as physically naked. Because if physical intimacy was the secret to a happy relationship, prostitutes would be the happiest people around. Facts contradict that notion. Prostitutes are often victims of physical and emotional abuse when growing up, and are often in abuse relationships as adults, apart from their professionally abuse connections, and often drown their lonely hearts in substance abuse. So, no, physical closeness real intimacy does not make. Open communication does. But that takes effort. And so the circle is complete. How much do you value your partner, wife, husband, friend, son, daughter, shows in how healthy your communication is. And when you can say those relationships are valuable enough  to you,to allow and encourage free communication, then you can say you have truly intimate relationships with the people in your life.

Open, Closed

From the time my son was very young, a steady stream of friends would come over to our house, and he had an abundance of playmates. Several of his friends 'parents became good friends of ours. Every year, from the time Nicholas was two, we had a large Birthday party for him and my husband, whose Birthday is only four days apart from my son's. We had friends over for dinners, barbecues, we would go over to their house, it was a fun, normal social calendar. When my husband turned sixty 3 years ago, he decided he no longer wanted a party. When my son turned 16 four years ago, he just wanted to invite his friends, and no longer wished to celebrate his Birthday together with his dad's. About the same time, my 44 year old sister died, and my father died of complications of Alzheimer's disease, and my alcoholic mother died a few months later. Somehow, that made me agree all too readily to reduce our social life. And our world shrank. It closed. I am trying very hard to open it up again, but my husband is very reclusive socially, and my son just goes to his friends' houses if he wants to see them. It makes for a tough job, as I am still feeling the scars of isolation I hid in to recover from all the family trauma. Open. Closed. I sure preferred our world open. I do not think most people with a gregarious life style are aware that their world is open, versus people whose world is closed. And it becomes a challenge on an almost hypnotic level, to try to break through that closed door. It is at this point a difficult task, and one that makes me grateful for social networking, as I seem to have gotten the hang of at least that part. It is also I know a challenge to overcome a hesitation to start over, as my trust was so violated by my mother, and it left me with a very bruised sense of self. That is fading, and I do find strength in my writing, as it allows me to share and hopefully bring some insight and perspective and inspiration to my readers. My husband is completely content with the closed door sign on our social life, so I am not getting much encouragement from him. I wanted so much to include him in my insight, but to no avail. It just is not important to him. So, after the fall from grace, I am dusting myself off, and starting over, and we will see where it leads. My mind is open to new connections, let's see if my door will follow suit.

The Other Side of Empty

As winter nears, with its darker and shorter days, the loss of family as the Holidays near sometimes feels like hollow steps inside the ache in my soul. There was a time when I tried to tune that loss and its emptiness out, but I recently decided to embrace it, to accept it. Acceptance is a strange thing when it comes to the pain of loss. It somehow sets you free to stop running away from it, to yell at it and chase it off, so to speak. I decided to invite it in, to try and walk to the other side of that dark pathway and accept the shivers and cobwebs along the way. And a funny thing is starting to happen: I feel more at ease. The perfectionist in me wants to understand everything, square it away neatly, define it exactly, the why and how. But maybe our lives are more like watercolors than oils. Maybe there is room for vagueness, for the unknown, the incomprehensible, the absurd, since it is hard to see the entire picture all the time, when everyone around us only shows us half a picture, at best. So maybe uncertainty is acceptable, even in those of us whose dreams were shattered like so many shards of a vase, and we are left to put the pieces back together, and we realize that in spite of our best efforts, and therapy, and rationalization, and time, we end up with a vase put back together with quite a few rough edges, askew, and pieces missing like a surrealist's interpretation on sculpture. It's all right, because when you step two steps outside your door, imperfection is all around you, and there is great love and beauty in its courage to just keep going anyway. Order is a relative thing, and a bit of chaos and uncertainty can free the mind to see beyond the obvious, to approach our own dreams and those of others with a bit more tolerance, a bit more kindness. On the other side of empty I am trying to meet a wiser, smarter, more generous self. I think it may the the start of a beautiful friendship.

Gratitude

Every year in this country we celebrate Thanksgiving Day, and it is understood that we all take a few moments to specify what we each are thankful for in our lives at this juncture. My husband is a therapist who often works with the disenfranchised, with people whose endurance has been severely tested, either physically due to illness, abuse or a terrible accident, or emotionally and mentally. He puts things always in stark perspective for us each Thanksgiving Day. To have a warm roof over your head, a warm bed to sleep in, enough food, to live in a country that is not war torn, where you have access to education, health care, and a decent chance at a job, where you can speak your mind without the risk of imprisonment, beatings and torture, where you can vote for your leader in free elections, puts you ahead of the majority of people on this planet. My husband grew up with an abusive father, but he had a chance to get away and get a college education. I grew up with a manipulative alcoholic mother but I too had a chance to get away and get a university degree. I live as a woman in a country where women have equal rights, especially now that President Obama is re-elected, and as a woman in this country we do not have to worry about the clock being turned back 50 years on women's rights. I am 55 years old, and have always lived in a peaceful country, in Belgium where I lived until I was 19, and then ten years in Texas, and now 25 years in Washington State. My parents remembered bombings during WWII, and my deceased father in law fought in the Pacific during the second World War, and in the Korean War. Wars are stories I heard, or footage I see on TV. If that is not cause to be grateful, it certainly should. Millions of people go hungry every day, many of them children. Even here in Olympia there are children who go to bed hungry and go to school on an empty stomach. To sit down to a delicious Thanksgiving meal courtesy of my gourmet cook husband, is a blessing and a reason to be thankful for love and abundance. I grew up in luxury, but my parents destroyed our family with their bitter marriage, leaving nothing but death and dust in their tracks, and emptiness in our hearts. The Holidays are often a challenge to me emotionally speaking because I cannot believe that a family that had everything tore at itself until there was nothing left. That left a hole in my heart that I have learned to live with, a wound that will never truly heal. But I always manage to shake those under the floor blues with the spiritual guidance of our wise Pastor at my church, and the love and devotion from my solid as the rock of Gibraltar husband and my wonderful son. Our home is small and crowded at a 1000 square feet and two cats and a big dog, and one bathroom, but I feel so fortunate when I realize all the blessings our little house holds, and the gladness I experience at having found a new family with my husband and son, and appreciating that gift that grew out of destruction and despair. Gratitude I have come to learn, also has to do with humility. Humility allows you to fully appreciate your blessings because it shows you how fortunate you are in that you do have what you need. Some people have everything and still want what their neighbor has. A humble heart is often wise, and often happy. Gratitude means you are learning what you need to learn in this life, in this destiny, and you are thankful for the help and mercy along the way.

Marriage

To write from a place of pain is an interesting challenge. The pain, whether physical or emotional, can act as an anaesthetic that inhibits a clear picture, a clear head. My parents and my husband's parents both had terrible marriages. My mother was an alcoholic with a masterful skill to manipulate and lie, my father was too weak to stand up to her. My in- laws had an equally miserable relationship, with my husband's father being an abusive alcoholic and his mother an enabler with a penchant for emotional cruelty. My brother's marriage lasted 12 years, my sister's was cut short by her premature death at 44. My youngest sister never married and committed suicide at age 35. At the time, she was living with my parents, whose marriage was by then brutally toxic. Michael and I have been married 26 years. We have had very happy years , and years that were difficult. With our family history, I am amazed we are doing as well as we are, most of the time. Both my husband's younger brothers have been married 23 and 11 years respectively, and both have children. From all accounts, their marriages too are doing well. The hardest part of my marriage are the times when my husband's solitary and very private nature clash with my extroverted, gregarious nature. The trauma of all the family loss, and the mark of having grown up with a mother more interested in her lovers than her children's emotional growth and development, make me at times  struggle with basic confidence issues, like going where I want to and need to go, and doing what is important to my happiness. Writing has become a way to break through that glass but very thick glass at at that, barrier, that at times saps my strongest resolve, as I feel unworthy, unloved, invisible and defeated. My husband is a very good man, but as a clinical therapist he has a tendency to analyze and categorize me, rather than see me as just a person in need of a helping hand, and a good conversation. I have come to understand over the course of the years that his detachment is his way to have overcome the trauma he suffered growing up with a violent father and a mother who failed to protect her children. He feels he should try to fix me, and cannot, just like he could not protect himself and his younger brother . So, I now know, many years later, that he has little to do with how I feel. Our mother was forever blaming our father for everything, effectively destroying any decent relationship we could have had with our father, and tragically isolating us from him, and him from us. I am responsible for my own feelings, and sorrows, not my husband, and as obvious as that may sound to most of you, it is a revelation to someone like me who grew up with a very manipulative mother who craftily blamed everything on her husband. Marriage is hard, and it takes a lot of work, even after 26 years. But if you have two people who truly care about each other, in spite of profound challenges, it can work, if both people want it to. There are days when I think I'd rather be anything but married. There are days where I feel a deep satisfaction at having persevered, and where the happiness and warmth make all the sacrifice and effort worthwhile. There are many days where it all feels like part of the larger mystery of life, and marriage just happens to be the map I chose to travel the path of my life on. There are days it feels like the best decision I ever made, and there are times when I look at my husband and feel he is going to fry the last nerve I have left. Most of the time, all goes smoothly, but there are certainly always bumps, hurts, challenges, exasperations, ahead that are inevitably mixed in with the love, devotion, humor and tenderness. Twenty six years into it, I would certainly agree, with a benevolent chuckle, that marriage is not for the weak of stomach.

Tears

It is interesting to notice how our attitude can change so much from day to day, our perception of ourselves, our circumstances, our talents, value, hopes and dreams. It was a Monday like any other, starting of with rain and a bleak looking November sky. My husband was in an irritable mood, and somehow I took it to be a reflection of my inadequacies, whether real or just perceived. After he and my son left for the day, I felt a wave of sadness engulf me, like a warm but unpleasant surge. I have a hard time crying since all the loss of family in the last 15 years, but sometimes just snuggling with my cat Tigger helps release the resistance to tears. So, this time too, the tears came, very quietly, very modestly, and as always, my sweet cat sat stock still, as close to my chest as he thought was comforting to me without being too intrusive about my sorrow. It never ceases to amaze me how the most every day phenomenon like tears do not really explain the mystery of their existence. They release toxins when stress builds or sadness, or pain, but they are so strange, a seemingly poetic touch the gods added to ease their conscience about our human predicament on this planet. Like laughter and smiles are a celebration of the joy and ecstasy life can bring, so tears are their opposite. But nothing really explains the necessity of suffering, logically speaking that is. It can be explained on a philosophical, spiritual or religious level, but those interpretations are purely subjective and as a result, so far no truly satisfying answer has been provided. We come close, and that has to suffice. But the fact that tears exist is in and of itself a profound mystery. There is something sacred about tears. When we shed them in private, they attain a warmth and despair that can be almost unbearable. When shed with others, they can heal, they can inspire, move, or they can harden the heart of cruel people even more. Tears have a beauty, a power that defies precise definition. Perhaps the gods felt they needed to do something poetic, to make our existence more agreeable, also in their eyes.

Frozen in Time

Yesterday morning the temperature here had dropped to 21 degrees Fahrenheit, a low not seen on that day since 1978. My tender carnations were covered in a thin coat of ice, looking frozen in time. At 5:30 in the morning, in the predawn darkness, there was an eery silence and my steps crunched in the grass. Yet, as the morning progressed,and the sun came out in the early afternoon, the cold silence had a strangely soothing quality to it. A quality of silence I was familiar with from frosty mornings since I was a child. I have always been fascinated by these silences that accompany frosty winter mornings. Perhaps because they create the illusion that time is standing still, at least for a while. The comforting part for me comes in the break from motion, from the 24/7 machine of modern madness that never sleeps in its myriad forms from cell phones to highway noise, to overhead airplanes and kitchen televisions, computers, coffee machines, war machines, factory machines, and nature right along with all the motion and noise from wind, water, birds, frogs, or cicada, owls, depending on where you live. When a good frost hits, things seem to stop. And somehow that feels like a relief. We can comprehend stillness, whether in rapture or agony, it is motion and all its consequences that has us unnerved, so we don't even try to make sense of it any more, we just keep going , all the time, because we are afraid if we stop, we will lose our mind in the bottomless lake of peace, quiet, an experience modern man is desperate to avoid. With our souls surrendered to the thrill of the moment, whether it be the latest gadget, fashion, trend, idea, attitude, relationship, we are terribly afraid of silence and the deep answers it can bring in all its unpleasant demands. Frosty mornings feel outdated in that context. Maybe if we could add a sound effect, a light show, the silence would not be so obliterating to our beings that scream for silence, only to be ignored by our blunted, deafened appetite for more noise, more stimulation, bringing us one step closer to becoming the ultimate machine ourselves, right along side the machines we worship.

A Golden Moment

The tension before the 2012 Presidential election was exhausting at the end. I thought our President would win with a very modest margin, so I was thrilled to witness the excitement of election night, with the President declared the winner, without even needing crucial swing states like Ohio and Florida! It was unbelievable. Democracy works after all, after all the lies and shenanigans from the Republican side to block voting, making me feel  I was watching an election in some obscure dictatorship ruled country. The obstruction of a right as fundamental as voting, smacked of fascism on the part of the President's opponents. Shameful! The relief I felt that President Barack Obama earned a second term was real and heartfelt. His acceptance speech was full of wisdom, humility and a true sense of community and humanity. I felt hope surge through my entire being. YES! This is a victory for the good guys. I am so relieved, for this country, for the world, for the old here, for my son's generation in college, for all people in this country who are trying to believe in life and hope, in dignity and the realization of their talents and dreams. I am an immigrant from Belgium, and as the right political wing kept squeezing the life and hope out of the majority of its citizens, promising only worse and more apocalyptic scenarios, with their agenda that was bent on turning the clock back 50 years, I started to wonder why I ever left my country of birth. President Obama brought that hope and faith in this amazing country back. I feel like a weight was lifted off my heart and soul. The same way the cloud of despair was lifted when he was elected in 2008, and he saved the world from another Depression after his predecessor's disastrous run, that left our country in a stranglehold. All the lies, all the money, all the obstruction from Congress, nothing stopped this courageous man from getting this country back on its feet. Since President Obama took office, I feel proud again to be an American citizen. Under his predecessor, I felt so discouraged and disgusted, I wanted to move to Canada. But the people have spoken! Democracy is still alive , and kicking and it sure feels good. The President's acceptance speech felt like a golden moment, a moment where the world made sense, and it did not feel crazy to believe in continued decency, prosperity for all, to believe in civic responsibility, compassion, integrity, happiness and health.