Michelle, your essay today reminded me so much of parts work in Internal Family Systems theory. I have been working on listening to my exile - the wounded child who cried but was not comforted - because she has been begging me to love her. No one else will. No one else does. But I know I can.
Thank you for the curated playlists on Spotify! I'm really enjoying these every week. Many of the songs are familiar and some great new ones too. The recommended Spotify playlists are sometimes hit or miss and often just pull from my existing favorite songs, but having a selected set that someone else puts together is really fun. It's a gift every Friday so thank you for that!
i've been meaning to go back and remake Michelle's playlists on YouTube for myself but I haven't gotten around to it just yet. I really enjoyed the first one and I've listened to it a couple times and I look forward to what the other ones hold!
It's so neat to be introduced to music or reintroduce to it through someone that we know and whose work we value!
This entire post resonated for me like a tuning fork picking up the vibrations of every boy and man that I am and have been. The ones I know, the ones I hide from others, the ones that I am afraid to name.
I keep driving down the highway of my personal and professional lives with the cruise control and driver assist on. Not really fixed on a destination but simply to keep moving forward, to stay in the "safe" cocoon of metal and glass, not seeing what is around me or even seeing how I myself am changing.
However, when I slow down, become present, and find the beauty around me, I become aware of something more, something magical, something that I cannot discern what it might be, but that I am being drawn to. Not like a moth to a flame, but like the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
And if I seek to escape the cocoon of cruise control, the scariest thing is not that I careen off the road, but that I find my own beautiful path.
that is so beautiful and meaningful Tom. I feel that that resonates with things that I have heard from many of the men that I love in my life. I wonder if the feeling of coming out of that chrysalis could be called vulnerability?
It's interesting too because with younger children or at least for me when my child was younger, I had to be a mom all the time pretty much. and as he grew and individuated in his adolescence, he gradually came to understand me more as a human although I will always be his mom and he always loves me as a mom. But our relationship has become one of equals and I still tell him to get to bed on time and make sure that he eats healthy and plans his lunch ahead of time which probably annoys him but why does he still need it at 27?
He has had to push aside some of those children that he was that endured abuse from other members of our family and so courageously spoke about it to me and reported it and dealt with the aftermath. He's supporting himself and working a job and he's a boyfriend in a committed relationship and I think maybe someday he might become a father and husband if he finds a girl who wants to share that with him which might be the girl he's with now because she's really amazing. But I know also sometimes he struggles with those moments of disharmony or feeling trapped or scared or triggered or threatened and there's almost like a taboo against men even discussing these experiences or acknowledging that they might experience them from time to time. I never realized how much I projected my expectations of men onto my husband and the other long-term relationships that I was in until my son went through those ages the early 20s when those men were tending to this woman when I was severely mentally ill with depression and dissociative disorders. They cooked for me and clean for me and listened to me for endless hours and help me when I cried and they tried so hard to help and to be compassionate and they took classes to learn how to support me and to get support themselves when it was needed.
Neither of these men talk to me now (I probably left a few scars and burnt some bridges at times) but at least now I can more deeply appreciate how courageous they were to love me when they did and how generously they cared for me and supported me and literally kept me alive at times.
seeing my son go through a similar thing with his first long-term relationship with a wonderful young woman who also struggled with mental health issues, just created this admiration within me for men's courage to love and their selflessness in being there for the women that they love even when it means that they're putting aside a lot of their own healing and suffering in order to just get through and take care of business and make sure the life is running smoothly or as best they can.
I wonder if you've heard the album jagged little pill by Alanis Morissette? I kind of loved and hated it when it came out because there were aspects of her art that were brash which is so ironic because my art was way more brash later, but the second half of that album is the most compassionate music about men and what they go through that I think I've probably ever heard. I mean Simon & Garfunkel you can't beat that but there's so much great music out there but if you have the capacity to hear the heart of Alanis Morissette on that album it's really beautiful and I found it healing and I wanted to share it with all the men that I knew.
if you have time or while you're commuting you might want to listen to Steve Burns podcast called ALIVE. he has a way of being present for his viewers and listeners that is really beautiful and unique and compassionate and he's humorous and he shares things about his own life and he's reasonably comfortable with vulnerability which is really difficult in the state and age especially in the last 10 years for men I think in America.
i'm thinking of the earlier chapter and Artist way about safety and how to build safety and I think part of safety is finding Relief. Whether it's a bath bomb and lighting a candle and turning out the lights and having a 40 minute bath to yourself or 30 minute or 20 minute bath, or whether it's a cup of tea before bed or really getting into reading a children's story to your kids in a way that brings smiles and sleep, it's all worthwhile.
Keely thanks for your thoughtful response. It has been awhile since I listened to Jagged Little Pill in its entirety. In the age of Spotify, it is so much easier to listen to tracks rather than albums, but I think I need to return to it.
I think that whenever we slow down enough to really listen to our needs it is an act of authentic vulnerability. An act that is antithetical to the culture norms of masculinity where a man "should" not be weak or uncertain and certainly not vulnerable.
Michelle, I see your story notifications in my email on Fridays but save your stories for the weekend, Saturday or Sunday, because I want to really sit with my coffee and I read slowly, think about what you’ve written, and then go back and read it again. I’m always in awe of how you turn feelings into words that land straight in the soul. And that photo of you…glowing then
You know I'm gonna say wow. Wow. What a strong little girl you have inside you and that you were in the past and that you continue to listen to and nurture. Wow. How exhausting. That is the kind of torture that exhaust your soul. I'm so grateful that you know so many healing modalities and that you have such good support and I hope that you continue to build your support network as I must to continue to grow and heal in my life and manage my responsibilities of choice and responsibilities of duty. what a brave brave little girl. This girl has wisdom. It must really hurt that the grown-ups did not protect her but forced her to endure these things and did not give her a break and did not give her safety.
We respond at different times in our adult life in different ways to those inner hurts as I know from my own experience. One of my favorite things to do is to hold still which is great for meditation but terrible for exercise and socialization. but it makes me feel safe to hold still and let my breath become light and shallow and pretend that I'm not here.
I surrounded myself with fantasies from novels and television and my own imagination and my curiosities in order to escape the discomfort of the memories that remained emblazoned on my unconscious flesh like a skin-shaped scar that no one could see. A hint skin that no one else could see that only I knew was there but I didn't really know it was there because my mind was divided.
what wisdom in letting this girl talk and speak her truth. For all of us who have inner children and who can create a time and a place to let the truth of that inner child speak.
The wonderful rewards that come after or something I never expected after decades of suffering. As my son grew up and as my mind and body healed and as I cultivated my life in healthier ways, I began to discover that those parts of me that hurt so much also had this living capacity in my consciousness to experience the world without filters in a way that was utterly beautiful and what some people might term as nearly psychedelic. The air was brighter and the colors more vivid and the textures and the joy of gathering flowers or fruit with my mom or petting the horses or the goat or the cats or the dogs in our little ranch were so pure and delightful and making mud pies with my sister and filling with the Indian grinding stones in our yards granite boulders with acorns and pretending that we were making acorn meal for our families or some of the most precious memories that continue to inform my adult identity daily.
thank you for this remembrance.
I had an event with a black box that I was trapped inside as well from when I was a little girl. although I can't go into detail about it here and it is not something I share except in personal company with people that I trust deeply and who have skills and tools to be able to hear it without being traumatized themselves or overwhelmed, those cries for my mom and dad that went unheeded because of the cruelty of this uncle type person and his insane unethical inhumane behavioral science experiments upon me - those cries are like scars on my psyche.
so many parts of my unconscious mind are fighting battles every day and I feel like when I have to fight and be defensive constantly against my father's voice in my mind and his denials and his hatred, I can't find that mother within that can spiritually tend to that inner child.
Cannabis numbed it cannabis was like a comforter like the Holy Spirit in a plant in a medicine. But cannabis has also become more of a risk for heart attack and stroke then I am willing to take. Which means that I have to learn again to balance tending my inner yourselves and tending my outer life and my relationships and my daily functioning.
I would never want to go through the things that I went through again. And I'm confident that I never will and I'm grateful to know that. However I also do not ever want to give up the wisdom that I have gained that I have learned to make useful to my fellow survivors and my fellow human beings so that we can begin to educate the world or continue the work that others started before us to "heal the world" ("tikkun olam" in Hebrew, the injunction that the God of the Old Testament gave his people from the start).
I was heartened this week when I watched a documentary on Netflix called "Murder to Mercy: the Cyntonia Brown Story" (2020). at 16 she was convicted of murder for and put away for life because she killed a man she was pimped out too by her trafficker and abuser to defend herself. In 2004 when she was convicted in Tennessee she was considered a criminal at 16 because she was a prostitute or so they said. But the laws have been changed by the excellent work of all those fighting to make the world a better and more just and more fair and more compassionate place. And at I believe 29 she petitioned her governor for clemency and many people supported her pro bono and I believe that she was able to get her sentence relieved and changed because instead of being seen as a criminal we better understand human trafficking and we see her as a survivor of human trafficking.
Sometimes the work of advocacy is slow and unrewarding. It takes all your time and energy sometimes and you earn nothing from it and it is some of the most difficult work that I have ever done. But it's also some of the most rewarding. Virginia's Law based on Virginia Guiffre's work of opposing Epstein after having been enslaved by him, will remove the statute of limitation for sexual abuse survivors and allow them to pursue legal consequences for those who have had their childhoods and hopeful futures stolen and betrayed by abuse.
I have had a very full and wonderful week. In the Sacramento area there is a huge community celebration all throughout the spring of the Royal Chicano Air Force aka the RCAF aka the Rebel Chicano Art Front. I feel like I'm on an Artist date every day all day. I have met up with old friends and mentors and former professors who are now friends and I have made new friends and I am meeting people in person that I only knew online before since I got off Facebook and I am learning so much more about this art movement that my friend was involved in and that he shared with me to empower my arts movement in my ideas and philosophies in 98 through 2000 and beyond. although a few of these men have passed away many are still with us and their families and community and friends carry on with the work of building community and empowering the people and empowering workers in the world so that we can have a good livelihood and enjoy good human rights and civil rights and maybe someday be as free as the monarch butterflies who can migrate all over the place without borders.
celebrating the art of the RCF is happening at museums and galleries and campuses and neighborhood organizations and poetry centers all over town this entire spring and it is like Easter every day.
I think I did my morning pages almost every night this last week because I can't help myself and I need to document all this that is happening for myself and for future generations.
i'm so grateful that I pursued an education and imposed on my mother for support and that she came through for me and that my son did- higher education is probably the best thing I've ever done for myself in addition to becoming a mother and being committed to being the best mom that I can be and the best person that I can be.
although I was completely exhausted after 4 1/2 hours of an art history seminar and a lecture and a reception today, I got inspired to do some cooking tonight and I'm so proud of myself because I purchased and made steamed oysters and baked lobster tails and I've never done that as an adult and it was the best food that I have tasted ever of those varieties. Or at least up there with the best experiences I've had enjoying those foods!
I feel like I've been working so hard to get back into the groove of the Artist Way practice and I am really experiencing the fruits of it now because I'm able to engage with the creative community and when I was a closet writer and a closet poet I had no idea that I was missing out on the best part of being a creative person which is being a valued member of a very open and free enriching society and culture.
I feel so grateful for this group because I don't feel like I would be here right now without the solidarity of our little meetings and our talks about how many pages we do and what we're doing this week and hearing from everybody else and all the different ways people are approaching it is so excellent to me and it just is making me feel really excited about the second half of my life.
thank you Michelle and thank you to the other participants here!
It's so hard to know how to connect with others when that voice inside is screaming, isn't it? It feels like too much, too scary to be authentic, yet so deeply needing of connection and understanding. At least, that's how it is for me.
And so I do the work of tending that inner child alone, until she quiets once more.
Michelle, your essay today reminded me so much of parts work in Internal Family Systems theory. I have been working on listening to my exile - the wounded child who cried but was not comforted - because she has been begging me to love her. No one else will. No one else does. But I know I can.
Thanks for reminding me of this.
sometimes we are the only ones who know how she needs to be loved... looking forward to our next live conversation!
Oh, yes, Michelle, we need to DM and figure out a date/time for another Live. I’d like to do it on my Ghost Mother publication.
❤️❤️❤️
Do you want me to message you, or did you want to message me, Michelle?
Thank you for the curated playlists on Spotify! I'm really enjoying these every week. Many of the songs are familiar and some great new ones too. The recommended Spotify playlists are sometimes hit or miss and often just pull from my existing favorite songs, but having a selected set that someone else puts together is really fun. It's a gift every Friday so thank you for that!
i've been meaning to go back and remake Michelle's playlists on YouTube for myself but I haven't gotten around to it just yet. I really enjoyed the first one and I've listened to it a couple times and I look forward to what the other ones hold!
It's so neat to be introduced to music or reintroduce to it through someone that we know and whose work we value!
Completely agree with your observation about Spotify, and also these Playlists are amazing!
This entire post resonated for me like a tuning fork picking up the vibrations of every boy and man that I am and have been. The ones I know, the ones I hide from others, the ones that I am afraid to name.
I keep driving down the highway of my personal and professional lives with the cruise control and driver assist on. Not really fixed on a destination but simply to keep moving forward, to stay in the "safe" cocoon of metal and glass, not seeing what is around me or even seeing how I myself am changing.
However, when I slow down, become present, and find the beauty around me, I become aware of something more, something magical, something that I cannot discern what it might be, but that I am being drawn to. Not like a moth to a flame, but like the butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
And if I seek to escape the cocoon of cruise control, the scariest thing is not that I careen off the road, but that I find my own beautiful path.
that is so beautiful and meaningful Tom. I feel that that resonates with things that I have heard from many of the men that I love in my life. I wonder if the feeling of coming out of that chrysalis could be called vulnerability?
It's interesting too because with younger children or at least for me when my child was younger, I had to be a mom all the time pretty much. and as he grew and individuated in his adolescence, he gradually came to understand me more as a human although I will always be his mom and he always loves me as a mom. But our relationship has become one of equals and I still tell him to get to bed on time and make sure that he eats healthy and plans his lunch ahead of time which probably annoys him but why does he still need it at 27?
He has had to push aside some of those children that he was that endured abuse from other members of our family and so courageously spoke about it to me and reported it and dealt with the aftermath. He's supporting himself and working a job and he's a boyfriend in a committed relationship and I think maybe someday he might become a father and husband if he finds a girl who wants to share that with him which might be the girl he's with now because she's really amazing. But I know also sometimes he struggles with those moments of disharmony or feeling trapped or scared or triggered or threatened and there's almost like a taboo against men even discussing these experiences or acknowledging that they might experience them from time to time. I never realized how much I projected my expectations of men onto my husband and the other long-term relationships that I was in until my son went through those ages the early 20s when those men were tending to this woman when I was severely mentally ill with depression and dissociative disorders. They cooked for me and clean for me and listened to me for endless hours and help me when I cried and they tried so hard to help and to be compassionate and they took classes to learn how to support me and to get support themselves when it was needed.
Neither of these men talk to me now (I probably left a few scars and burnt some bridges at times) but at least now I can more deeply appreciate how courageous they were to love me when they did and how generously they cared for me and supported me and literally kept me alive at times.
seeing my son go through a similar thing with his first long-term relationship with a wonderful young woman who also struggled with mental health issues, just created this admiration within me for men's courage to love and their selflessness in being there for the women that they love even when it means that they're putting aside a lot of their own healing and suffering in order to just get through and take care of business and make sure the life is running smoothly or as best they can.
I wonder if you've heard the album jagged little pill by Alanis Morissette? I kind of loved and hated it when it came out because there were aspects of her art that were brash which is so ironic because my art was way more brash later, but the second half of that album is the most compassionate music about men and what they go through that I think I've probably ever heard. I mean Simon & Garfunkel you can't beat that but there's so much great music out there but if you have the capacity to hear the heart of Alanis Morissette on that album it's really beautiful and I found it healing and I wanted to share it with all the men that I knew.
if you have time or while you're commuting you might want to listen to Steve Burns podcast called ALIVE. he has a way of being present for his viewers and listeners that is really beautiful and unique and compassionate and he's humorous and he shares things about his own life and he's reasonably comfortable with vulnerability which is really difficult in the state and age especially in the last 10 years for men I think in America.
i'm thinking of the earlier chapter and Artist way about safety and how to build safety and I think part of safety is finding Relief. Whether it's a bath bomb and lighting a candle and turning out the lights and having a 40 minute bath to yourself or 30 minute or 20 minute bath, or whether it's a cup of tea before bed or really getting into reading a children's story to your kids in a way that brings smiles and sleep, it's all worthwhile.
thanks for being here.
Keely thanks for your thoughtful response. It has been awhile since I listened to Jagged Little Pill in its entirety. In the age of Spotify, it is so much easier to listen to tracks rather than albums, but I think I need to return to it.
I think that whenever we slow down enough to really listen to our needs it is an act of authentic vulnerability. An act that is antithetical to the culture norms of masculinity where a man "should" not be weak or uncertain and certainly not vulnerable.
Attention is an act of creation
Michelle, I see your story notifications in my email on Fridays but save your stories for the weekend, Saturday or Sunday, because I want to really sit with my coffee and I read slowly, think about what you’ve written, and then go back and read it again. I’m always in awe of how you turn feelings into words that land straight in the soul. And that photo of you…glowing then
and still glowing now.
You know I'm gonna say wow. Wow. What a strong little girl you have inside you and that you were in the past and that you continue to listen to and nurture. Wow. How exhausting. That is the kind of torture that exhaust your soul. I'm so grateful that you know so many healing modalities and that you have such good support and I hope that you continue to build your support network as I must to continue to grow and heal in my life and manage my responsibilities of choice and responsibilities of duty. what a brave brave little girl. This girl has wisdom. It must really hurt that the grown-ups did not protect her but forced her to endure these things and did not give her a break and did not give her safety.
We respond at different times in our adult life in different ways to those inner hurts as I know from my own experience. One of my favorite things to do is to hold still which is great for meditation but terrible for exercise and socialization. but it makes me feel safe to hold still and let my breath become light and shallow and pretend that I'm not here.
I surrounded myself with fantasies from novels and television and my own imagination and my curiosities in order to escape the discomfort of the memories that remained emblazoned on my unconscious flesh like a skin-shaped scar that no one could see. A hint skin that no one else could see that only I knew was there but I didn't really know it was there because my mind was divided.
what wisdom in letting this girl talk and speak her truth. For all of us who have inner children and who can create a time and a place to let the truth of that inner child speak.
The wonderful rewards that come after or something I never expected after decades of suffering. As my son grew up and as my mind and body healed and as I cultivated my life in healthier ways, I began to discover that those parts of me that hurt so much also had this living capacity in my consciousness to experience the world without filters in a way that was utterly beautiful and what some people might term as nearly psychedelic. The air was brighter and the colors more vivid and the textures and the joy of gathering flowers or fruit with my mom or petting the horses or the goat or the cats or the dogs in our little ranch were so pure and delightful and making mud pies with my sister and filling with the Indian grinding stones in our yards granite boulders with acorns and pretending that we were making acorn meal for our families or some of the most precious memories that continue to inform my adult identity daily.
thank you for this remembrance.
I had an event with a black box that I was trapped inside as well from when I was a little girl. although I can't go into detail about it here and it is not something I share except in personal company with people that I trust deeply and who have skills and tools to be able to hear it without being traumatized themselves or overwhelmed, those cries for my mom and dad that went unheeded because of the cruelty of this uncle type person and his insane unethical inhumane behavioral science experiments upon me - those cries are like scars on my psyche.
so many parts of my unconscious mind are fighting battles every day and I feel like when I have to fight and be defensive constantly against my father's voice in my mind and his denials and his hatred, I can't find that mother within that can spiritually tend to that inner child.
Cannabis numbed it cannabis was like a comforter like the Holy Spirit in a plant in a medicine. But cannabis has also become more of a risk for heart attack and stroke then I am willing to take. Which means that I have to learn again to balance tending my inner yourselves and tending my outer life and my relationships and my daily functioning.
I would never want to go through the things that I went through again. And I'm confident that I never will and I'm grateful to know that. However I also do not ever want to give up the wisdom that I have gained that I have learned to make useful to my fellow survivors and my fellow human beings so that we can begin to educate the world or continue the work that others started before us to "heal the world" ("tikkun olam" in Hebrew, the injunction that the God of the Old Testament gave his people from the start).
I was heartened this week when I watched a documentary on Netflix called "Murder to Mercy: the Cyntonia Brown Story" (2020). at 16 she was convicted of murder for and put away for life because she killed a man she was pimped out too by her trafficker and abuser to defend herself. In 2004 when she was convicted in Tennessee she was considered a criminal at 16 because she was a prostitute or so they said. But the laws have been changed by the excellent work of all those fighting to make the world a better and more just and more fair and more compassionate place. And at I believe 29 she petitioned her governor for clemency and many people supported her pro bono and I believe that she was able to get her sentence relieved and changed because instead of being seen as a criminal we better understand human trafficking and we see her as a survivor of human trafficking.
Sometimes the work of advocacy is slow and unrewarding. It takes all your time and energy sometimes and you earn nothing from it and it is some of the most difficult work that I have ever done. But it's also some of the most rewarding. Virginia's Law based on Virginia Guiffre's work of opposing Epstein after having been enslaved by him, will remove the statute of limitation for sexual abuse survivors and allow them to pursue legal consequences for those who have had their childhoods and hopeful futures stolen and betrayed by abuse.
I have had a very full and wonderful week. In the Sacramento area there is a huge community celebration all throughout the spring of the Royal Chicano Air Force aka the RCAF aka the Rebel Chicano Art Front. I feel like I'm on an Artist date every day all day. I have met up with old friends and mentors and former professors who are now friends and I have made new friends and I am meeting people in person that I only knew online before since I got off Facebook and I am learning so much more about this art movement that my friend was involved in and that he shared with me to empower my arts movement in my ideas and philosophies in 98 through 2000 and beyond. although a few of these men have passed away many are still with us and their families and community and friends carry on with the work of building community and empowering the people and empowering workers in the world so that we can have a good livelihood and enjoy good human rights and civil rights and maybe someday be as free as the monarch butterflies who can migrate all over the place without borders.
celebrating the art of the RCF is happening at museums and galleries and campuses and neighborhood organizations and poetry centers all over town this entire spring and it is like Easter every day.
I think I did my morning pages almost every night this last week because I can't help myself and I need to document all this that is happening for myself and for future generations.
i'm so grateful that I pursued an education and imposed on my mother for support and that she came through for me and that my son did- higher education is probably the best thing I've ever done for myself in addition to becoming a mother and being committed to being the best mom that I can be and the best person that I can be.
although I was completely exhausted after 4 1/2 hours of an art history seminar and a lecture and a reception today, I got inspired to do some cooking tonight and I'm so proud of myself because I purchased and made steamed oysters and baked lobster tails and I've never done that as an adult and it was the best food that I have tasted ever of those varieties. Or at least up there with the best experiences I've had enjoying those foods!
I feel like I've been working so hard to get back into the groove of the Artist Way practice and I am really experiencing the fruits of it now because I'm able to engage with the creative community and when I was a closet writer and a closet poet I had no idea that I was missing out on the best part of being a creative person which is being a valued member of a very open and free enriching society and culture.
I feel so grateful for this group because I don't feel like I would be here right now without the solidarity of our little meetings and our talks about how many pages we do and what we're doing this week and hearing from everybody else and all the different ways people are approaching it is so excellent to me and it just is making me feel really excited about the second half of my life.
thank you Michelle and thank you to the other participants here!
Wisdom is so precious because few of us would be willing to pay the price upfront.
Those are my word, but I am sure there is a more eloquent quote in Bartlett's (if I were to pull my copy out.)
It's so hard to know how to connect with others when that voice inside is screaming, isn't it? It feels like too much, too scary to be authentic, yet so deeply needing of connection and understanding. At least, that's how it is for me.
And so I do the work of tending that inner child alone, until she quiets once more.