Hello readers!
When I created the Forked Road it was to help keep me afloat after my mother died. I promised myself to write every day, post every day for a year so I wouldn't fall into a pit of despair. Along the way, most of the rest of my family died and this has been a place where I worked things out. It has been good.
Over the last year, I have dusted off a novel I started about ten years ago and this week, I finished it. When I had gotten close to finishing it I decided I would need an official author website and bought a domain. It will be too much work to keep up both websites, so this may be the final posting here at Forked Road.
I have loved sharing with you and I appreciate every time you stopped by to read one of my posts and to comment your opinion. If you would like to follow me still in all my new writing adventures, you can find me at aleathiadrehmer.com
I hope to see you there. Please remember to follow me there. I post poems, stories, book reviews, and publishing updates. I throw some personal pieces in there as well. Hope you are all doing well in this time of very scary disease. Stay safe and stay inside.
Love,
Aleathia
Thursday, April 2, 2020
Thursday, February 6, 2020
Movie: Marriage Story
Aleathia says:
Over the last few weeks, a friend of mine has been bugging me to watch a movie that he really enjoyed. The movie, "Marriage Story," is a Netflix original and has a great cast with Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, and Alan Alda. It's hard to argue with those heavy hitters who have been in some of my favorite movies over my lifetime.
Maybe it was the wrong time of night to watch this movie, or the wrong time of the month. The height of winter, especially February, does strange things to my emotions. I generally stick to crime shows that are predictable and standard. Nothing sneaks up on me. Especially not...feelings. So there I am at eleven at night watching this movie on my phone. There is a TV on my wall, but for some unknown reason, I chose the five inch screen over the thirty-six inch one.
Over the last few weeks, a friend of mine has been bugging me to watch a movie that he really enjoyed. The movie, "Marriage Story," is a Netflix original and has a great cast with Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, and Alan Alda. It's hard to argue with those heavy hitters who have been in some of my favorite movies over my lifetime.
Maybe it was the wrong time of night to watch this movie, or the wrong time of the month. The height of winter, especially February, does strange things to my emotions. I generally stick to crime shows that are predictable and standard. Nothing sneaks up on me. Especially not...feelings. So there I am at eleven at night watching this movie on my phone. There is a TV on my wall, but for some unknown reason, I chose the five inch screen over the thirty-six inch one.
I don’t want to give the movie away, but it is about divorce and that painful process. For anyone who has ever had to go through this, no matter how well it was handled, it takes a toll on your heart and mind. The thing that crushed me the most were the letters each of them had to write for a divorce mediator which outlined all the things they loved about the other. Scarlett Johansson’s character decided she didn’t want to read the letter because she didn’t like what she wrote, so neither of them hears the other’s thoughts. As a consumer of the film, we get to know what the letters contained.
What struck me most ,at the end of the movie, was that if they had read those letters to each other it could have mitigated all the painful actions in between. It showed me how far away we get from the reasons we fall in love in the first place. This can happen outside a marriage, in any relationship that starts to turn sour. When we begin to push away from our partner it is as if all those joys and idiosyncrasies that made the person attractive become the bullet points for an argument against.
My separation was a long time ago and the divorce followed slowly as we tried to be nice to each other and I fretted over paperwork not wanting to involve lawyers. A year or so ago we actually talked about the divorce for the first time. It had been twelve years. What we found was that neither of us knew what the other had felt or thought about the whole process, and lack of communication on both sides had destroyed the marriage. There were some great lessons learned through that conversation, but I’m not sure it would have saved the relationship at the time. It would have made the parting better for all parties, including our five year old.
After the separation and divorce, I had a series of unsuccessful relationships, each ending worse than the one before until the last one left me feeling like love was never an option again. Love is hard. It feels great but it is work and communication mixed in with all the mystery and wonder of meeting a new human. For me, love is always laced with fear. I do a lot of waiting for the other shoe to fall, and I know this makes me less likely to enjoy those moments of heart flutter and smiling.
“Marriage Story” is a great movie, but be warned that it can be triggering. It isn’t to say that I didn’t need to look at these things in my life and inspect why I react this way to love and the end of relationships. Grab a tissue...a box of tissues. Buckle yourself in. Have a friend on standby.
Wednesday, September 25, 2019
The Surprise (or Learning How to Be a Friend)
Aleathia says:
A few weeks ago I was asked by one of the people in my writer’s group to go to a concert. No big deal, right?
Wrong.
Let me lay the groundwork for you. I’m nice, but awkward. I have a hard time making friends because trust is a hurdle for me. I am nice to everyone and I can carry a conversation if you start it. I understand the basics of friendship, but in my life I have had about 5 true friends. These are people that get me. They put up with my social ineptitude time and again. They make me feel worth it.
Anyway, the concert. So on the outside this woman and I don’t appear like we should be friends. Read that sentence again, it’s petty, I know. As you may have seen from other blogs, I am working on shedding a life based on body image. I’m not there yet. I have spent a life handing out forgiveness for being too awkward or too fat or insert-something-that-annoys-another here. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but it takes time. I’m middle aged and overweight. She is younger and a Cross Fit body builder. I’ll give you a moment to make the image.
The take away from this concert for me was huge. We could’ve seen an orchestra or Liberace. It wouldn’t have mattered. It was the time in between the music that held the most meaning. On the hour drive there, we talked about our lives in trauma and with writing. Underneath our exteriors, under the skin, we slowly found that we were of the same tribe. Over the years, I medicated with food and she medicated with lifting. I didn’t ask her outright if that was the reason for the intense workouts, but from either point of view--food or weightlifting--it’s about control. People of trauma crave control, and as she put it, certainty.
We shared our recent journeys in love and how we arrived at the present moment sitting in my car, splitting the countryside with our collective pain. Many times she apologized for speaking of her traumas on our first outing as friends. I didn’t acknowledge the apology because it wasn’t necessary. Car rides are the best place for people of trauma to spill demons, because the other person can only listen. There is no fixing, only understanding and clarification.
Once at the venue, we went to buy water. She was going to buy mine because I drove. I refused and grabbed my wallet to pay for my own because it is what I do. Owe no one anything. I have lived that motto for my lifetime. She looked at me and said, “Let me buy this. This is what friends do.”
Imagine standing in a lobby of humans and being invisibly struck by lightning.
We talked some more as the first band came on, sitting while everyone else was standing. This was less trauma and more writing. When the band she wanted to see took the stage we stood, side by side, and something happened to me for the first time. Amongst a sea of young college students, next to this woman who is physically one of the strongest people I know, who is beautiful, and I found myself not caring about my body. I stood surrounded by beauty not worrying about how old I was, how fat I was, or whether or not I deserved to be there. I simply, was.
The music was good. The light show amazing. The life lesson, priceless.
In the land of healing a lifetime of traumas, these small wins feel like gold medal performances. This connected me to another human who has run a similar path, who is still working on healing and trusting and moving forward. I thank her for reaching out to ask me to do something, for noticing me, for making me feel like a valid individual. Score one for the home team.
Thanks for reading. Be kind to each other. Write. Read books. Share your world.
Aleathia
A few weeks ago I was asked by one of the people in my writer’s group to go to a concert. No big deal, right?
Wrong.
Let me lay the groundwork for you. I’m nice, but awkward. I have a hard time making friends because trust is a hurdle for me. I am nice to everyone and I can carry a conversation if you start it. I understand the basics of friendship, but in my life I have had about 5 true friends. These are people that get me. They put up with my social ineptitude time and again. They make me feel worth it.
Anyway, the concert. So on the outside this woman and I don’t appear like we should be friends. Read that sentence again, it’s petty, I know. As you may have seen from other blogs, I am working on shedding a life based on body image. I’m not there yet. I have spent a life handing out forgiveness for being too awkward or too fat or insert-something-that-annoys-another here. You can teach an old dog new tricks, but it takes time. I’m middle aged and overweight. She is younger and a Cross Fit body builder. I’ll give you a moment to make the image.
The take away from this concert for me was huge. We could’ve seen an orchestra or Liberace. It wouldn’t have mattered. It was the time in between the music that held the most meaning. On the hour drive there, we talked about our lives in trauma and with writing. Underneath our exteriors, under the skin, we slowly found that we were of the same tribe. Over the years, I medicated with food and she medicated with lifting. I didn’t ask her outright if that was the reason for the intense workouts, but from either point of view--food or weightlifting--it’s about control. People of trauma crave control, and as she put it, certainty.
We shared our recent journeys in love and how we arrived at the present moment sitting in my car, splitting the countryside with our collective pain. Many times she apologized for speaking of her traumas on our first outing as friends. I didn’t acknowledge the apology because it wasn’t necessary. Car rides are the best place for people of trauma to spill demons, because the other person can only listen. There is no fixing, only understanding and clarification.
Once at the venue, we went to buy water. She was going to buy mine because I drove. I refused and grabbed my wallet to pay for my own because it is what I do. Owe no one anything. I have lived that motto for my lifetime. She looked at me and said, “Let me buy this. This is what friends do.”
Imagine standing in a lobby of humans and being invisibly struck by lightning.
We talked some more as the first band came on, sitting while everyone else was standing. This was less trauma and more writing. When the band she wanted to see took the stage we stood, side by side, and something happened to me for the first time. Amongst a sea of young college students, next to this woman who is physically one of the strongest people I know, who is beautiful, and I found myself not caring about my body. I stood surrounded by beauty not worrying about how old I was, how fat I was, or whether or not I deserved to be there. I simply, was.
The music was good. The light show amazing. The life lesson, priceless.
In the land of healing a lifetime of traumas, these small wins feel like gold medal performances. This connected me to another human who has run a similar path, who is still working on healing and trusting and moving forward. I thank her for reaching out to ask me to do something, for noticing me, for making me feel like a valid individual. Score one for the home team.
Thanks for reading. Be kind to each other. Write. Read books. Share your world.
Aleathia
Friday, September 13, 2019
The Lock on the Inside of My Door
Aleathia says:
Often in life we require the unabashed courage of others to be on display before we can look inward to find our own. This happened to me this week.
Yesterday, I finished the audio book of "Hunger" by Roxane Gay. This was a raw book about sexual assault and its lasting effects on the body and mind of a woman. Telling this story to the world had to be an excruciating, difficult task. The general public doesn't want to read about the ugliness that has happened to women, men and children. It makes them uncomfortable, and maybe, it should.
Gay's story was preceded by the fact it was story about her body which she has struggled with since her sexual assault. She spends a lot of time drawing attention to her body and how others have treated it and still continue to treat it as a woman of size. But as I listened, I spent most of the six hours nodding my head. The trajectory of her life was oddly familiar to me.
I have been suspicious all my life that my step-father (now deceased) sexually abused me, but I have no distinct memory I can reference. There were outward things he said like "you'd be really hot if you lost 20 pounds" or how he'd stare at me from across the room like I was a trapped gazelle he was going to rip apart with his teeth. There was his making a point to be naked around me in the common areas of our house or trying to get me to go to the nudist camp as a teenager with "the family." I did go, but I kept my clothes on in defiance. There was the eating disorder I developed and the hatred of my body that grew each year as it got bigger and bigger. There were later thoughts of suicide, body dysmorphia, and a distinct dissociation with society on a human level. There was the time he threatened the life of my brother and mother if I left the state. These were some of the things that shaped my life.
I wanted to fit in at school. I wanted boys to like me, but in order for that to happen, I would also have to be simultaneously attractive to my step-father. When I did bring boys home to meet my parents, my step-father would come down from his bedroom, dressed as Rambo, complete with a Bowie knife between his teeth as if he were marking territory. When I was fifteen, my own mother placed a lock on the inside of my door. This action, though a safety measure, crushed me more than anything because she knew what her husband was capable of and would rather risk my safety than be alone. I buried myself in food, books, writing and work. I joined every club I could so as to not be home because it wasn't safe for me.
When I left home I became reckless with my body sexually and physically. There were several times I risked being raped or killed because I didn't care. I couldn't see any worth in myself beyond being a sexual object. I learned quickly that how I looked mattered to men. If I were willing to give up some of my morals, then I was worthy of their time. Except for the man I married and later divorced, I chose men who were not always kind. If they were kind, they were alcoholics and so severely depressed that they took up all my time. If I cared for others, it followed that I didn't have time to care for myself. Self care? What's that?
I never spoke up because like all children, I didn't think any adults would believe me. When your own mother turns her head to look away then you figure the options to share your truth are very small. I wish I would have had someone to tell me it wasn't my fault, someone to save me.
My last long term relationship devastated me. Living with a narcissist is not recommended. He still haunts me around unexpected corners, but over the last two years I have nearly exorcised him from my life. He took away my trust of men, but what he gave me was an unexpected openness to my own self. Surviving a man like that woke me up to learning how to find my voice and stand up. Through all of the personal traumas in my life I have always tried to find the lesson or the silver lining. If I had to suffer through something so scarring then I better damn well learn something.
Several times during Roxane Gay's "Hunger" I found myself in tears. I was empathetic to her story though I feel my trauma was so much less than hers. I know trauma isn't comparative because they are personal events, but I still feel mine is less. Her story lead me to look at how much a person can achieve after such a damaging event. She says she is still healing herself in her 40's. I'm still healing myself as well. She is helping us all heal. She is making us visible. She is standing at the front of the line giving a voice to those of us who have been quiet too long.
If you need help, someone is there at the National Sexual Assault Hotline
Thank you for reading. Be kind to each other. Write. Read books. Share your story.
Aleathia
Often in life we require the unabashed courage of others to be on display before we can look inward to find our own. This happened to me this week.
Yesterday, I finished the audio book of "Hunger" by Roxane Gay. This was a raw book about sexual assault and its lasting effects on the body and mind of a woman. Telling this story to the world had to be an excruciating, difficult task. The general public doesn't want to read about the ugliness that has happened to women, men and children. It makes them uncomfortable, and maybe, it should.
Gay's story was preceded by the fact it was story about her body which she has struggled with since her sexual assault. She spends a lot of time drawing attention to her body and how others have treated it and still continue to treat it as a woman of size. But as I listened, I spent most of the six hours nodding my head. The trajectory of her life was oddly familiar to me.
I have been suspicious all my life that my step-father (now deceased) sexually abused me, but I have no distinct memory I can reference. There were outward things he said like "you'd be really hot if you lost 20 pounds" or how he'd stare at me from across the room like I was a trapped gazelle he was going to rip apart with his teeth. There was his making a point to be naked around me in the common areas of our house or trying to get me to go to the nudist camp as a teenager with "the family." I did go, but I kept my clothes on in defiance. There was the eating disorder I developed and the hatred of my body that grew each year as it got bigger and bigger. There were later thoughts of suicide, body dysmorphia, and a distinct dissociation with society on a human level. There was the time he threatened the life of my brother and mother if I left the state. These were some of the things that shaped my life.
I wanted to fit in at school. I wanted boys to like me, but in order for that to happen, I would also have to be simultaneously attractive to my step-father. When I did bring boys home to meet my parents, my step-father would come down from his bedroom, dressed as Rambo, complete with a Bowie knife between his teeth as if he were marking territory. When I was fifteen, my own mother placed a lock on the inside of my door. This action, though a safety measure, crushed me more than anything because she knew what her husband was capable of and would rather risk my safety than be alone. I buried myself in food, books, writing and work. I joined every club I could so as to not be home because it wasn't safe for me.
When I left home I became reckless with my body sexually and physically. There were several times I risked being raped or killed because I didn't care. I couldn't see any worth in myself beyond being a sexual object. I learned quickly that how I looked mattered to men. If I were willing to give up some of my morals, then I was worthy of their time. Except for the man I married and later divorced, I chose men who were not always kind. If they were kind, they were alcoholics and so severely depressed that they took up all my time. If I cared for others, it followed that I didn't have time to care for myself. Self care? What's that?
I never spoke up because like all children, I didn't think any adults would believe me. When your own mother turns her head to look away then you figure the options to share your truth are very small. I wish I would have had someone to tell me it wasn't my fault, someone to save me.
My last long term relationship devastated me. Living with a narcissist is not recommended. He still haunts me around unexpected corners, but over the last two years I have nearly exorcised him from my life. He took away my trust of men, but what he gave me was an unexpected openness to my own self. Surviving a man like that woke me up to learning how to find my voice and stand up. Through all of the personal traumas in my life I have always tried to find the lesson or the silver lining. If I had to suffer through something so scarring then I better damn well learn something.
Several times during Roxane Gay's "Hunger" I found myself in tears. I was empathetic to her story though I feel my trauma was so much less than hers. I know trauma isn't comparative because they are personal events, but I still feel mine is less. Her story lead me to look at how much a person can achieve after such a damaging event. She says she is still healing herself in her 40's. I'm still healing myself as well. She is helping us all heal. She is making us visible. She is standing at the front of the line giving a voice to those of us who have been quiet too long.
If you need help, someone is there at the National Sexual Assault Hotline
Thank you for reading. Be kind to each other. Write. Read books. Share your story.
Aleathia
Friday, September 6, 2019
Come to the Light, Carol Anne
Aleathia says:
After my vacation in August I returned to work. Back in the ER for the 13th year. To say the least, it has become monotonous save the time I get to teach new nurses how to work in the ER. On my vacation, I enjoyed doing yoga and meditation daily, writing and sewing, and various other creative endeavors. My life has been about self-care and this journey to do something more meaningful.
Going back to work in the ER felt like a prison sentence. I'm good at what I do and it isn't like the work doesn't have an element of excitement, but it is also very taxing emotionally to be "on" 12 hours a day, so I applied for a new job at Planned Parenthood. In my 20's, this organization saved my life when they found pre-cancer of the cervix and I was able to have surgery to remove it before it spread. At the time, I was working two minimum wage jobs with no insurance and had put off going to the doctor for five years until my boyfriend at the time, dragged me down there because he was tired of seeing me in pain. I had been looking for a way to repay this debt for 20 years.
There had been several coincidental signs that pushed me toward applying at PP. I set about inquiring about financial things to see if I could even afford to make a change. I would have lost a substantial amount of money, but what I thought I would gain was time everyday to do yoga and meditation, daily writing time, a chance to participate in local things on weekends, holidays off, less driving and shorter shifts. This was all appealing. The only thing I thought I'd miss was my writer's group on Thursdays because I would have to work late in Hornell that night.
I sent a resume and was emailed in an hour to set up a phone interview the next day. By the next week, I had a face to face interview. This interview changed my life.
Let me set some background. I have been a Buddhist since 1997. I have been a nurse since 2004. Both of these things lend to the betterment of human kind. They are in service of uplifting life and having compassionate care for other human beings. These are distinct choices I have made in my life. I did not go in blind to this interview about the nature of abortion at the clinic. But I have long been a firm believer in women having the choice over their own bodies. Who am I to stand in the way of that based on my own belief systems? No one. I thought that I could handle such practices with all the death and tragedy I have seen in the ER in my lifetime. I said I could handle it, but there were a few things said in the interview that sat with me funny.
I would have been responsible for things I could not have lived with in the termination of a fetus at 24 weeks. I'm not going to get into details because this post isn't about abortion, it's about choice and realization of limits. One of the interviewers said that helping women through that particular procedure was "rewarding." Excuse me? I don't know. Maybe the writer in me frowned at that word choice, but it jarred me and I couldn't get it out of my head. But they also asked me what I liked about my current job and I talked about this role I have as a Preceptor of new nurses and students. One of the other women asked me why I would leave that? I didn't have a great answer.
Here is what I learned:
Though I am tired of the daily grind in the ER, it is still important work. WE SAVE LIVES...as a team.
The stress of being on point all day is less heavy than the stress of knowing you'd taken lives instead of saved them.
I have a moral limit to the things that I am willing to do professionally. My heart is bigger and more tender than I give it credit for.
If I need to, I can live on less, but I don't need to.
I can make my life more simple by not running away from my responsibilities.
I could not have lived without my writer's group. They have given me back my love of writing. They teach me things both as a writer and as a human being. They are my friends. They are a second family.
I am a lucky and blessed woman.
I have an amazing boss who let me spread my wings towards a dream I thought I had and didn't try to stop me or make me feel bad. And when I found it wasn't the dream I had thought, she welcomed me back into the fold, knowing, someday there would be another dream.
This whole process was extremely emotional for me, but sometimes we need to take bold leaps to get a good look at the place we were just standing in. Sometimes we can see our nose in spite of our face.
Thanks for reading. Be kind to each other.
Aleathia
After my vacation in August I returned to work. Back in the ER for the 13th year. To say the least, it has become monotonous save the time I get to teach new nurses how to work in the ER. On my vacation, I enjoyed doing yoga and meditation daily, writing and sewing, and various other creative endeavors. My life has been about self-care and this journey to do something more meaningful.
Going back to work in the ER felt like a prison sentence. I'm good at what I do and it isn't like the work doesn't have an element of excitement, but it is also very taxing emotionally to be "on" 12 hours a day, so I applied for a new job at Planned Parenthood. In my 20's, this organization saved my life when they found pre-cancer of the cervix and I was able to have surgery to remove it before it spread. At the time, I was working two minimum wage jobs with no insurance and had put off going to the doctor for five years until my boyfriend at the time, dragged me down there because he was tired of seeing me in pain. I had been looking for a way to repay this debt for 20 years.
There had been several coincidental signs that pushed me toward applying at PP. I set about inquiring about financial things to see if I could even afford to make a change. I would have lost a substantial amount of money, but what I thought I would gain was time everyday to do yoga and meditation, daily writing time, a chance to participate in local things on weekends, holidays off, less driving and shorter shifts. This was all appealing. The only thing I thought I'd miss was my writer's group on Thursdays because I would have to work late in Hornell that night.
I sent a resume and was emailed in an hour to set up a phone interview the next day. By the next week, I had a face to face interview. This interview changed my life.
Let me set some background. I have been a Buddhist since 1997. I have been a nurse since 2004. Both of these things lend to the betterment of human kind. They are in service of uplifting life and having compassionate care for other human beings. These are distinct choices I have made in my life. I did not go in blind to this interview about the nature of abortion at the clinic. But I have long been a firm believer in women having the choice over their own bodies. Who am I to stand in the way of that based on my own belief systems? No one. I thought that I could handle such practices with all the death and tragedy I have seen in the ER in my lifetime. I said I could handle it, but there were a few things said in the interview that sat with me funny.
I would have been responsible for things I could not have lived with in the termination of a fetus at 24 weeks. I'm not going to get into details because this post isn't about abortion, it's about choice and realization of limits. One of the interviewers said that helping women through that particular procedure was "rewarding." Excuse me? I don't know. Maybe the writer in me frowned at that word choice, but it jarred me and I couldn't get it out of my head. But they also asked me what I liked about my current job and I talked about this role I have as a Preceptor of new nurses and students. One of the other women asked me why I would leave that? I didn't have a great answer.
Here is what I learned:
Though I am tired of the daily grind in the ER, it is still important work. WE SAVE LIVES...as a team.
The stress of being on point all day is less heavy than the stress of knowing you'd taken lives instead of saved them.
I have a moral limit to the things that I am willing to do professionally. My heart is bigger and more tender than I give it credit for.
If I need to, I can live on less, but I don't need to.
I can make my life more simple by not running away from my responsibilities.
I could not have lived without my writer's group. They have given me back my love of writing. They teach me things both as a writer and as a human being. They are my friends. They are a second family.
I am a lucky and blessed woman.
I have an amazing boss who let me spread my wings towards a dream I thought I had and didn't try to stop me or make me feel bad. And when I found it wasn't the dream I had thought, she welcomed me back into the fold, knowing, someday there would be another dream.
This whole process was extremely emotional for me, but sometimes we need to take bold leaps to get a good look at the place we were just standing in. Sometimes we can see our nose in spite of our face.
Thanks for reading. Be kind to each other.
Aleathia
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
Unapologetic Inquiry #2: The Comparison
Aleathia says:
Can you recall an occasion when you compared yourself to someone? How did the comparison impact your self-esteem and self-confidence? How did it impact your ideas about the other person?
I have to admit that I snickered when I read this question. I can’t remember when I started comparing myself to others, but I know I was very young. I compared myself to every woman I met, especially if I found them attractive physically or mentally. Each time I was in the room with someone I felt was the prettiest girl in the room, I would start down a head to toe comparison list. Each line on that list I’d find myself inadequate. To be honest, I thought I was never pretty enough, smart enough, or interesting enough to be in the same room as them.
(Image by Laura Callaghan. I do not own this image.)
As I got older, I knew I had some desirable qualities and I could manifest understanding of them, but only if I wasn’t in the presence of other women. I didn’t have any confidence about my gifts and abilities. I was always overweight and I narrowly believed this excluded me from being truly loved and desired. It caused me to have bulimia in high school and though after high school I did not partake in that practice exactly, it did give me an aversion to dieting. Restrictions were never safe and threw me into an obsessive nature. A year ago I tried to “just watch calories” and my child told me to stop because he couldn’t stand the person I was when I counted calories.
Sadly, the woman across from me became an enemy of the state with her beauty and talents which I didn’t think I measured up to. I have spent a lifetime without very many close female friends and these relationships require a significant amount of energy from me. I have to fight myself to be nice and kind and not think the other woman is out to get me. It sounds insane and on some level, it is. I’m sure these reactions developed out of my relationship with my mother, but that is another story for another time, I’m sure.
Thanks for reading. Be kind to each other.
Aleathia
Can you recall an occasion when you compared yourself to someone? How did the comparison impact your self-esteem and self-confidence? How did it impact your ideas about the other person?
I have to admit that I snickered when I read this question. I can’t remember when I started comparing myself to others, but I know I was very young. I compared myself to every woman I met, especially if I found them attractive physically or mentally. Each time I was in the room with someone I felt was the prettiest girl in the room, I would start down a head to toe comparison list. Each line on that list I’d find myself inadequate. To be honest, I thought I was never pretty enough, smart enough, or interesting enough to be in the same room as them.
(Image by Laura Callaghan. I do not own this image.)
As I got older, I knew I had some desirable qualities and I could manifest understanding of them, but only if I wasn’t in the presence of other women. I didn’t have any confidence about my gifts and abilities. I was always overweight and I narrowly believed this excluded me from being truly loved and desired. It caused me to have bulimia in high school and though after high school I did not partake in that practice exactly, it did give me an aversion to dieting. Restrictions were never safe and threw me into an obsessive nature. A year ago I tried to “just watch calories” and my child told me to stop because he couldn’t stand the person I was when I counted calories.
Sadly, the woman across from me became an enemy of the state with her beauty and talents which I didn’t think I measured up to. I have spent a lifetime without very many close female friends and these relationships require a significant amount of energy from me. I have to fight myself to be nice and kind and not think the other woman is out to get me. It sounds insane and on some level, it is. I’m sure these reactions developed out of my relationship with my mother, but that is another story for another time, I’m sure.
Thanks for reading. Be kind to each other.
Aleathia
Monday, August 19, 2019
The Body Is Not An Apology: Unapologetic Inquiry #1
Aleathia says:
Here I am again, random, as always with a topic that falls from out of the blue. I’ve had a week off from work and instead of going places like originally planned, I stayed home. This was no lazy week off. I have been cleaning out my house of the remnants of my toxic boyfriend. I have been cleaning out my soul. Personally, I am still reeling from the Philadelphia trip and it is hard for me to shake the feeling that even when I thought I was being still enough to unpack my lifelong luggage, I was still running. I am definitely afraid of the ugly I will find and have to claim with a flag of my country. No one wants ugly.
I took the rare Sunday off to take my son to the Ithaca Market. When I had weekends off we would go all the time. It was a nice little trip to share coffee and a pastry, conversation, and sometimes a walk. We’d soak up the sights and smells of an open air market and feel good about life for a little while. Our usual bakery wasn’t there and it gave me a little panic because things would not be “like they always are”. I scoured the market three times for them each time hoping they would appear until Kai pointed out that a place we passed three times had perfectly beautiful pastry. This meant I had to step out of my comfort and try something new. I’m not opposed to this concept at all because I love new things, but I had been testing my mettle all week and looked forward to the comfort of sameness. The pastry was delightful. The time was not spoiled.
We went to the Commons and walked around. It was hot and we were overdressed with the hope of fall. We were sweaty and getting cranky. We stopped in the DeWitt Mall because Kai wanted to go to the guitar shop. He is dropping chorus this year in favor of guitar lessons. He wanted an instruction booklet to help him along at home. I picked up one for my Ukulele that sits sad and underplayed. I took a cue from his playbook. I need to dust off my life and make time for all things. We stopped in the Buffalo Street Books. I don’t go there often and I’m not sure why. It’s a very lovely shop. I also have been trying to not buy too many books since I have shelves of unread wonders already.
A book immediately caught my eye: “The Body is Not An Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor. It’s colorful and flashy but something in me made me tiptoe to reach it from the top shelf. I opened it and saw things in myself that made me cringe and I put it back on the shelf. I walked around looking at other things. I found a pencil sharpener for my specific pencils I found in Philadelphia. I found a poetry book. And then, I was standing in front of this book again with a feeling of dread and panic. Then I was at the register buying it.
In the quiet of my house, I read the prologue and sobbed. Do you know that kind of sorrow that is mixed with the realization that you have been so cruel to yourself for a lifetime? Yes, it was that sort of sobbing. I recognized myself. I had forgotten what I looked like underneath the shame.
I’m in chapter one and Sonya professes that she is not going to fix my problems with self-esteem or self-assurance, but she is waking me up to myself. She calls it radical self-love and maybe this is what I need after 40 years of putting myself down, hiding who I am, being something for someone else, harboring abuses not meant for me, and being quiet when inside there was screaming. There are “Unapologetic Inquiry” bubbles in this book. Questions to be answered honestly without worry of shame. Normally, I would keep such things to myself, but I feel like this process needs a wider opening. My average post gets 30-40 visits. That is wide enough. So without further ado, here is Unapologetic Inquiry #1:
“We all live in multiple intersections of identity. What are your intersections? How do your multiple identities affect each other?”
I am a middle aged white woman, divorced, and single. I am a product of childhood trauma. I am a mother of a transgender son. I am an emergency room nurse, an artist, a writer, and a Buddhist. I do all these things living with a thyroid and an ovarian condition, arthritis, depression, anxiety, and adult onset ADD.
The childhood trauma informs all my other identity intersections. It was the base of my life. It was how I learned to do everything. It steered me to choose a career that is filled with trauma everyday from strangers. These traumas change the way I look at the world as an artist and a writer. These traumas give me something to meditate over. The combination of my health issues help me with my self shame for being overweight. There are wheels that spin so fast I can’t get off without feeling like it will send me into a depression, so, I stay on the wheel. The childhood trauma made me strong and allowed me to stay alive and achieve, but it made me go about it in the wrong way. I have achieved goals without letting people in my life, without sharing the best parts of me because I don’t trust them to not break them and walk away.
In the last month, I have started to see how these intersections behave with each other and this might be the key to recovery if I can be brave enough to keep looking. I am not going to profess that I will be any less random on this blog, but my hope is to share these Unapologetic Inquiries in case you can’t find the book or you don’t have access to it. Ask yourself the same questions and see what comes up. I’m tired of living in a world that is defined by others who don’t know me or care about me, and who think I should look, act, feel like something that pleases them. I’m not sure how many years I have left in the world, but I would like to know at least some of the time I staked claim to them.
Thanks for reading. This was a long one. Be Kind. Love each other.
Aleathia
Here I am again, random, as always with a topic that falls from out of the blue. I’ve had a week off from work and instead of going places like originally planned, I stayed home. This was no lazy week off. I have been cleaning out my house of the remnants of my toxic boyfriend. I have been cleaning out my soul. Personally, I am still reeling from the Philadelphia trip and it is hard for me to shake the feeling that even when I thought I was being still enough to unpack my lifelong luggage, I was still running. I am definitely afraid of the ugly I will find and have to claim with a flag of my country. No one wants ugly.
I took the rare Sunday off to take my son to the Ithaca Market. When I had weekends off we would go all the time. It was a nice little trip to share coffee and a pastry, conversation, and sometimes a walk. We’d soak up the sights and smells of an open air market and feel good about life for a little while. Our usual bakery wasn’t there and it gave me a little panic because things would not be “like they always are”. I scoured the market three times for them each time hoping they would appear until Kai pointed out that a place we passed three times had perfectly beautiful pastry. This meant I had to step out of my comfort and try something new. I’m not opposed to this concept at all because I love new things, but I had been testing my mettle all week and looked forward to the comfort of sameness. The pastry was delightful. The time was not spoiled.
We went to the Commons and walked around. It was hot and we were overdressed with the hope of fall. We were sweaty and getting cranky. We stopped in the DeWitt Mall because Kai wanted to go to the guitar shop. He is dropping chorus this year in favor of guitar lessons. He wanted an instruction booklet to help him along at home. I picked up one for my Ukulele that sits sad and underplayed. I took a cue from his playbook. I need to dust off my life and make time for all things. We stopped in the Buffalo Street Books. I don’t go there often and I’m not sure why. It’s a very lovely shop. I also have been trying to not buy too many books since I have shelves of unread wonders already.
A book immediately caught my eye: “The Body is Not An Apology” by Sonya Renee Taylor. It’s colorful and flashy but something in me made me tiptoe to reach it from the top shelf. I opened it and saw things in myself that made me cringe and I put it back on the shelf. I walked around looking at other things. I found a pencil sharpener for my specific pencils I found in Philadelphia. I found a poetry book. And then, I was standing in front of this book again with a feeling of dread and panic. Then I was at the register buying it.
In the quiet of my house, I read the prologue and sobbed. Do you know that kind of sorrow that is mixed with the realization that you have been so cruel to yourself for a lifetime? Yes, it was that sort of sobbing. I recognized myself. I had forgotten what I looked like underneath the shame.
I’m in chapter one and Sonya professes that she is not going to fix my problems with self-esteem or self-assurance, but she is waking me up to myself. She calls it radical self-love and maybe this is what I need after 40 years of putting myself down, hiding who I am, being something for someone else, harboring abuses not meant for me, and being quiet when inside there was screaming. There are “Unapologetic Inquiry” bubbles in this book. Questions to be answered honestly without worry of shame. Normally, I would keep such things to myself, but I feel like this process needs a wider opening. My average post gets 30-40 visits. That is wide enough. So without further ado, here is Unapologetic Inquiry #1:
“We all live in multiple intersections of identity. What are your intersections? How do your multiple identities affect each other?”
I am a middle aged white woman, divorced, and single. I am a product of childhood trauma. I am a mother of a transgender son. I am an emergency room nurse, an artist, a writer, and a Buddhist. I do all these things living with a thyroid and an ovarian condition, arthritis, depression, anxiety, and adult onset ADD.
The childhood trauma informs all my other identity intersections. It was the base of my life. It was how I learned to do everything. It steered me to choose a career that is filled with trauma everyday from strangers. These traumas change the way I look at the world as an artist and a writer. These traumas give me something to meditate over. The combination of my health issues help me with my self shame for being overweight. There are wheels that spin so fast I can’t get off without feeling like it will send me into a depression, so, I stay on the wheel. The childhood trauma made me strong and allowed me to stay alive and achieve, but it made me go about it in the wrong way. I have achieved goals without letting people in my life, without sharing the best parts of me because I don’t trust them to not break them and walk away.
***
In the last month, I have started to see how these intersections behave with each other and this might be the key to recovery if I can be brave enough to keep looking. I am not going to profess that I will be any less random on this blog, but my hope is to share these Unapologetic Inquiries in case you can’t find the book or you don’t have access to it. Ask yourself the same questions and see what comes up. I’m tired of living in a world that is defined by others who don’t know me or care about me, and who think I should look, act, feel like something that pleases them. I’m not sure how many years I have left in the world, but I would like to know at least some of the time I staked claim to them.
Thanks for reading. This was a long one. Be Kind. Love each other.
Aleathia
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