The New Conventional Femininity

“When she stopped conforming to the conventional picture of femininity she finally began to enjoy being a woman." -- Betty Friedan


I wanted no part in it.  My whole life I wanted nothing to do with the trappings of being conventional -- I shunned conformism, creature comforts, and practicality for a gypsy life of travel and solitude well into my twenties.  Then I found true love with Jimmy and through the twin sisters of fate and destiny we landed a beautiful baby girl into our laps.  I still would not give in to the traditional convention of family life.  I would not allow myself to get comfortable with the idea that being a wife and mother could in and of themselves bring me joy.  So what happened?  Why now? Why do I feel content and full in these rolls to the point of wanting to do them really well, to the point of being invested in them 100%?  The answer lies in how my view of myself has changed over the past decade.



I have noticed lately a deep rumbling in my being to experience - well the only way I can describe it is -- a deeper connection to the fabric of my family, and my home.  That is, basking in the beingness of my role as wife and mother. I spent years running away from  what I thought "wife" and "mother" meant, the conventional rolls I thought they would force me to play.  It scared me, frankly.


When I look back at my personal history and connect the dots, almost everything scared me.  I was skeptical of anything and everything.  I know that my negative and fearful attitude created the conditions for cancer to thrive in my body, in my second chakra, in the place of: life, beginnings, relationships, money, stepping out into the world with others.  Getting cancer was the trigger that showed me that I had to shift out of my negative place of being yet I had no idea how to do so.  One of my biggest awakenings occurred when I realized that the negative and fearful way I felt about having a conventional life -- marriage, kids, family -- translated to other areas of my life.  Negative and fearful was the thread that ran through most of my thoughts.  Skepticism lay like a smoky haze at the root of my being.


It's more than just a mellowing with age that has happened here.  My faith in myself grew with the planting of my dreams.  With every step toward a dream I noticed those voices got louder and stronger NOT in my favor.  For many years I put off getting my training in the healing arts, "now is not the time, your not ready," said the skeptical voice. When we found the ranch, the first thought that popped into my head was, "don't get any big ideas here that you can't fulfill."  It was a constant negative influx of words, thoughts, and feelings feeding my brain like a drug dealer pushing crack.

"WOW!" I realized.  That skepticism and negativity doesn't only show up in my relationships with others, it's that way with me too!"  What an eye opener.  That's when I stopped identifying with them.  "What a relief" I thought. "That's not me.  Those are only feelings that I'm identifying with -- as me."

Now I can begin to mellow.  I'm no longer frozen in paralysis when the dragons of fear and skepticism show up for a fight.  I'm getting better at noticing what triggers the fears that come up around how I'm running my business and how I'm caring for my family as a wife and a mother.  I'm learning how to manage them rather than feed them.  My identification with my conventional rolls no longer scare me, I welcome them with open arms. My femininity no longer carries the trappings of the past, it expands with the beginning of each new day.

Embracing Vulnerability

The state of being vulnerable is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "Open to the attacks of a non-physical nature." Vulnerability is something that society tells us is weak, I mean, who wants to be open to attack? Isn't it better to be prepared for battle with our armor on? Herein lies the conundrum of vulnerability - with our armor ON, those not so wonderful feelings of fear, anger, sadness, anxiety, worry, dread, distrust, etc. get to feed off of us and live a Bacchanalian existence in our being.

Vulnerability is the key to freedom in love. Vulnerability requires that we not take our physical nature too seriously. That means a healthy dose of time spent as the observer of our own experience rather than the sole identity of it. It's the old, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." It's being immune to the verbal and other kinds of nonphysical  attacks from others by remembering that we create our existence, we create every single experience that we have and through choice we can choose to create a different experience and a different reaction simply by changing our perspective.

Embracing vulnerability lies in choosing those things that support us and that feed us as individuals. This requires the awareness of what we are allowing to seep into our being, rather than just letting it all seep in and then trying to categorize it all into various compartments after the fact.

So today, as the moon obscures the sun in a total eclipse, take note: what is it that is obscuring you? What armor - the memories and beliefs from the past - are eclipsing your heart and obscuring you from seeing the full light of your being?

Open to your vulnerabilities. Stand in their strength and you will know the power of love.

Belize Memories - Senora Choc

Your wide smile lights up the darkness inside your one-room kitchen. How do you cook in there? How do you cut with a knife? Fry chicken? Thread the needle into the fabric of your family with your food in that dark space?

Sra. Choc, if I could see with those deep Maya eyes would I see a man I love drinking his life away? Or would I turn a blind eye and focus on those things that bring me joy?  Sra. Choc, your beautiful eyes and bright smile lend you a faint youthfulness as your children grow.

Could your secret be found in the dark. In your kitchen?

Belize Memories - Tika II

I recently returned from a trip to Belize with my father. We traveled into the jungle, working for a few days at the archaeology site where I did my Master's research. Then to the reef for tarpon fishing. I was dad's host in the jungle. He was mine in the Caribbean waters near Placencia that are so familiar to him as a flyfisherman. Here is an essay from that trip:

Here kitty! Kitty!

I stare at you through the chain-link fence that separates us. I call to you as I would call a tame, domestic kitty cat. Your deep green jaguar eyes stare right through me. A voice speaks from a distance. Your soft golden ears perk up as you stare in the direction of the sound. Is this the voice of the one that feeds you? Because many other voices buzz all around and you give them no attention.

Your focus, sharp and stealth is my envy. Teach me your instinctual secret. I ask this of you though not out loud. I ask your permission from a place where you and I are one -- where our minds meet.

When you jumped down from the hollow log where you had been napping and ran toward me I should not have been so surprised.  I think of more silent questions to ask: Did you really hear me? Did you jump down to answer me? I searched the moment for a clue.

This time you stared me straight in the eye. And when you rolled over on your back as if you wanted to play I knew I had been taking myself too seriously.

Quashing the Kryptonite of Anxiety

Storm clouds loom to the Southeast and the Northwest of me this afternoon.  It rained all morning.  A hard soaking rain poured down onto the bulbs sprouting up in my yard.  Runoff dove down the side of the cliff and raced toward the Brazos.  Clouds to the South claim with their thunder that this storm may be repeating itself this afternoon.  Yet for this moment there is a calming peace accompanied by the promise of a clear sky directly overhead. 

This scene as a metaphor for life is not lost on me.  To the contrary, I sit at my desk watching a female squirrel acrobatically taking sunflower seeds out of the bird feeder.  She has an urgency about her - maybe it's the storm, maybe it's her knowing that I am here, that Nigel the Yorkie could come bursting out of the door at any moment to chase her; maybe she's still nursing the young squirrel standing on the sidewalk not quite knowing what to do. 

It is in her urgency that I see myself, her manic addictive urgency to complete this task at whatever the cost, even at the cost of ill health or death.  What I don't see in her Godlike animalness, is a thinking and rethinking about what she is doing -- whether or not she's doing the right thing, whether she has prioritized properly for the day.  She systematically collects and eats, collects and eats stopping occasionally with keen awareness to check on her baby and look for intruders.  Indeed, what before looked to me like urgency I now recognize in her as stalwart focus.

My question is: Does she anthropomorphize - Beatrix Potter style - when she gets home and force herself to feel a sense of relief about the day's accomplishments; or is she really just a little squirrel Buddha that recognizes the concept of accomplishment as simply another form of suffering?  It is here that she laughs in my face with her squirrel cum George W. Bush snicker revealing that she doesn't bother with either of these over-thought-out ideas.

I bring all of this up because the other day in a moment of clarity - you know, when you realize that you are not being mindful and just allowing your thoughts to throw up all over you all through the day - I caught myself in a panic. I realized that I had created anxiety about my day and then acted as if checking off my todo list was going to save me and make me feel better thus bringing relief to my anxiety.  That's the way the world works, right? That's what the old familiar voice was trying to tell me, "Check it off the list, then you'll feel better, then you'll be safe."

Well, I realized, I'm done with this rollercoaster - up, down, up, down, safe, not safe, relief, anxiety. I recognize my addiction to anxiety and how I create it in my daily life by setting up situations to feel angry, scared, and frustrated so that I can justify feeling relief.  Anxiety has been this outlet for me for most of my life.  Anxiety has been a distraction, an excuse to create confusion.  It has been my kryptonite weakening my attentiveness to self-discipline, self-motivation, and commitment.  It has blocked my clarity and hampered my judgment far too long.

Even though I no longer recognize anxiety as part of my identity, it still creeps in when I'm not paying attention. It is not me. It is not a part of this clear moment of cloudless blue skys.  It is a part of the storm that whirls to my Southeast and Northwest.

Ms. Squirrel continues her task of pillaging all the bird seed in front of my eyes.  She has taught me a simple lesson today about distractions and persistence - that with focus and awareness I can get the job, any job done even with the promise of dark clouds on the horizon.

Unfurling the Flag of Freedom in My Spine, Pt. 1

Scoliosis.  The word entered my ears in terror and fear as a young girl, about age 6, my daughter Ruby's age.  My grandmother was one of those overprotective women who's body had survived The Depression of the 1930's but who's innocence had been stripped away by lack - the fear of not having enough, and the loss of her father to spinal meningitis at the age of five. 

Her early childhood trauma combined with very little familial nurturing created an adult that knew best how to operate within the realms of fear and high drama.  As her only granddaughter, I was her focus.  She taught me to plan for the worst so that I would be prepared for the worst, for that is how she learned to survive. 

Scoliosis, she told me, was a curvature of the spine, and I would probably get it because my mother had it and her paternal grandmother had it.  My grandmother did not have it because it was from her husband's side of the family, she reasoned, not hers.  She had me regularly checked by a doctor and told me it was important to catch it right as the curve begins because if it is not treated properly - either by back brace or by - God forbid - surgery, I would end up all twisted over with a big hump on my back. 

Surgery.  The thought sent chills of terror through my body.  Having rods placed on either side of my spine sounded like torture.  Yet I dwelt on the thoughts, just in case they happened. I imagined differing degrees of severity and how they would effect me and my social life.  Would this person still like me? Would that person make fun of me?

I thought about how, depending on it's severity, advanced stages of the disease could affect me early in life - for the rest of my life.  With this information, the good Girl Scout I was wanted to be prepared so I imagined myself with a big old hump on my back, just in case it did happen. I thought how I would not be one of the ancient old ladies hunched over in church; I would be more like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, only female, coming down from my tower immortally grotesque to ogle boys that would only spit back at me.

Like Ugly Betty I persevered.  Before too long it came to pass -  I was wearing a back brace.  Mine was the first back brace fitted at Scott & White hospital in Temple. It was clear the doctors there did not have much experience treating scoliosis. They molded a back brace cast onto my body many times before they made one that fit me properly. This took many weeks of my family driving me the 2 hours to the hospital for the fitting and hour after hour of grueling skin tear and bleeding.

Imagination Revived and Revised

A few days ago Ruby asked me a question and I zipped my mouth closed.  She laughed and I unzipped my mouth to laugh with her.  In a few minutes she asked, "How do you do that?" 

I answered that everyone had a zipper on their mouth, she just hadn't found hers yet.  Then she said something like, "You're making that up.  That's not real!"

"That's not real!  That's not real!"  I cried?

I can't believe it, she's only six!  It's not already happening, is it?  Has she already given up on imagination?   Is she heading down the dark hall of "REALITY" in full throttle?

I told her that imagination fuels every movie that's ever been seen, every fairy tale that's ever been written,  and all the advertisements that are made (well, maybe not ALL the advertisements.)  Commercials are the thing that sends her Dad to Dallas every day, he uses his imagination and then gets to come be with us at the Ranch every night. 

Imagination is everywhere.  I explained to her that there are two kinds of people -- those that honor their imagination by creating and those discard and distrust their imagination.  The distrustors must rely on the creators who tell the stories, paint the pictures, and dip into an infinity, a treasure trove of expansive ocean fronts and way out wests.  The creators hold the title to their imagination real estate.

Ruby's eyes lit up and her smile sparkled.   I felt the shift when she gave herself permission to play without judgment.

"Hey mom!" she said, "You want to play pretend?"

"Sure I do," I said, "you want me to help you find that zipper?"