Hmm…

What I did this summer, or how I got to be the way I am

I started out with humble roots, with Eastern European roots, in a family that was larger than life—somewhere between Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill.  My answer was to be cranky but to begin to play “psychologist” at 11, thinking what I could understand could set me free.  And by the way I had decided on freedom for all though what did I really know.

I started by being shy and not disagreeing with a teacher ever and feeling stupid amidst smarter people at home and in school who knew the answer to everything. 

I wrestled with the fact that the going theories and the big shots with the cigars of know it all sureness, in fact knew little about me.  I decided that I knew better about my first child than all the books, but it was not an arrogant decision.  It was painful and lonely and insecure and I came up against my insecurities and doubts at every turn.  People who see me as funny (which I am) and confident (which I am sometimes) shy away from knowing this was not born…it was earned and fought for.

I love foreign languages, and accents as well…I love film, and Pilates and water exercise and travelling…I feel most at home in the country of Italy where the warmth—though never complete or with no strings at all—embraces me.

I am still a lonely girl living in a larger world where community seems based on religious or social membership and not the simpler sharing of ideas and favors and interdependence.

I have a lot to teach and to learn, and my manuscript on distraction brought me to the knees of my own sadness and ignorance and some magical awareness that could be helpful.

Yes, I believe in magic—not quite as in divine—but in terms of being open and ready for information and people making a difference.  And yes, my work is spiritual in the sense that once I see the thread of authentic meaning, I am willing to travel for awhile without certainty.  Certainty is something I have begun to see as an illusion.

My therapy is creative, in that I feel every person should have the opportunity to have a life fused and fueled with passion, and for everyone that is a different path.

This is more a section about how I got to be me— a very abbreviated version…and one which might change as my perceptions of the past will be fluid.  In that way the present changes the past, because we who are the authors or our memories grow into seeing things differently if we grow at all.

In my mind of today, a pivotal point was my “big Babba’s” living in my apartment for a year when I was five.  She was old, my grandmother on my father’s side.  I could take her hand and pull her gently but securely into the living room where we would play out a ritual of “Tell me about the farm”.  She managed a hotel in the Catskills and she would tell me that she had told me yesterday; did I really want to hear it again?  In her Yiddish accent she would spin a yarn and I would be filled with the warmth of knowing she was there for me, and that enchantment could be for some minutes predictable and safe.  I am in the process of accessing the little girl of five that was me, a thin and sturdy little girl who knew what she needed. 

That little girl will never be enough for going outside in the bigger world.  But taking her back inside of me will hopefully make me stronger as I brace against the winds of easy rejection by the powers that be towards any information that ruffles their feathers.  I have learned that information comes to us in many ways, and that intuition and insight are as valuable as anything else.

This is an affirmation for me as much as for anybody: Just because authorities or bullies say something is so, doesn’t make that true…