Break Up Letter

Dear Writer’s Block,

It’s not you, it’s me.  

You have been so accommodating, really.  You’ve tolerated my strays into the arms of Blogging with so much patience, welcoming me back every time.  You made life very comfortable and safe for me.

But you see, that’s part of the problem.  I’ve realized that I need to pursue, to dream, and to take chances.  In our relationship, I have let that part of me lie neglected and languishing.  I know you many not understand this, but if I stay with you, I will eventually be mourning the loss of that self. 

I am writing this letter to say that it is time for us to go our separate ways. This must be a total break.  I am sorry.  We cannot be friends, because I fear that we will again fall into an easy pattern of you letting me have little affairs here and there with the likes of Term Papers.  Please don’t try to contact me. It’s better for both of us this way.  My heart is not really with you, and I cannot be what you want me to be.

I was going to write a piece about how humans seek safety, but really, what is accomplished by being safe?  I was going to talk about how Aslan was not a safe lion and how well-behaved women rarely change history, but how can I do that when I am playing it safe myself?  How hypocritical to encourage my friends to be brave while I sit afraid to make changes. 

This may really hurt you, but I thought it would be less painful if you heard it from me instead of through the grapevine.  Once a week, I plan to have a date with Short Stories (from Given Prompts, in Writer’s Digest - you have met a few times).  This is very public, and we will be seen regularly in Ourselves, Reinvented. I’m sorry.  It is what I think I need to get me on my feet. 

I hope you find someone else soon.  Maybe someone like J.K. Rowling?  She might be ready to settle down.  It won’t take you long - you can be very engaging.  

Sincerely,

Tiffany

Welcome Summer!

Summertime! It hit an almost unheard of 97 degrees here in CNY this week. (Thank goodness I have one of the houses in the minority with central air conditioning).

My kids are not out of school yet. They are aware that the majority of the country is on summer break and are vocal about how unfair it is that they are not.  This has not stopped them from daydreaming about the things they would like to do this summer.

Remember that - the luscious anticipation of no school for weeks?  The looming stretch of lazy summer days where you could spend so much time doing whatever you wanted?  Especially when I got old enough to ride my bike all around town, that freedom was intoxicating.

I looked forward to picnics with unlimited amounts of my favorite food and big softball or volleyball games or water balloon fights and what seemed like minimal adult supervision.  I loved staying up until the sun went down, which was much later than my school bedtime, and chasing fireflies or playing flashlight tag, or going for ice cream.  I remember snatching up with delirious joy any invitation to go swimming (we did not have a pool in my yard).  I played tennis for hours, hit every jungle gym in every park in town, made forts under friend's porches.  We took trips to lakes, including the one my grandparents lived on in Northern Wisconsin, which was the uncontested highlight of every summer.

Don't you still look forward to summer?  In Michigan, it meant days on the dune beaches of Lake Michigan and camping trips to the UP. It meant I could plop my preschooler in the trailer and bike everywhere.  It still means barbeques with friends and excursions to the farmer's markets. We will take trips with friends and just with our family, and we will swim in lakes

 and wade in creeks.

 We will hike and canoe in the Adirondacks.  I will forget to put on sunscreen and a hat and ruin my skin and hair.  I will sustain a large number of mosquito bites, especially when I am pulling weeds in the morning in my garden.

 We will pick fresh berries

and make pies and muffins and just eat them raw until our bellies can't hold anymore.  I vow to squeeze every ounce of wonderfulness out of every sunny and warm day this summer.

Maybe it's because winter is too darn long and rough, but Northern summers are heavenly, and I am celebrating that another one is here.

Reverse Inspiration

Perhaps this is a negative topic.  I plunge ahead anyway.

Just as there are people who inspire us, there are people who don't inspire us, or to be more accurate, inspire us to not be like them.

A fact: we all have difficult people in our lives.  Whether it be the neighbor you try not to make eye contact with when you're outside, the coworker you can't stand, the extended family member who raises your blood pressure every holiday - we all can think of someone.  And in this post I'm not even calling us to find the good in them.

Nope.  What is that quality of theirs that makes every nerve in your body stand on end? Focus on that.  Why does it bother you?

For me, there is often a subtle similarity to that person in myself - a tendency of mine that if allowed to go wild, would manifest itself in the form of the behavior of the one irking me.  Opposite is not always what bothers us.  In fact, it probably intrigues us.  It's usually the traits we fight in ourselves that we dislike the most.

In the vein of the post yesterday about hearing our voice in our head vs. hearing our voice the way others hear it: I think these people in our lives can serve as the recorded version of our voices, so to speak. If someone caught you singing the song you don't want anyone to know you like with your earbuds in (because everyone sings loudly and off-key with earbuds in), recorded it, and then set it on a constant loop in the yard, cubicle, or couch next to yours - it's like that.

You may be thinking I'm a Meanie Jim (that's what we call it in our house, stolen from Junie B. Jones), but you gotta deal with difficult people somehow.  Live and learn.  When I am finding myself irritated to the point where I am about to bust out a nasty verbal lashing, I try to remember that perhaps, this is a reminder of what I don't want to be.  For example, if someone is complaining so much that I want to hit them over the head -  that's what I sound like when I complain.  That's what I look like when I'm being selfish and stingy.  That's what I sound like when I am being arrogant.  That's what it looks like when I sit on my butt and do nothing.

This method beats becoming bitter, anyway.  Not that I've mastered it.  It feels good to gossip like hell in the moment.  But of course that just opens an invitation to gossip like hell about me when I inevitably engage in the same behavior.  Hypocrisy is even harder to resist gossiping about.

So be inspired;)

Is That What I Sound Like?

My youngest daughter recently discovered that the way her voice sounds to others is not the way she hears it in her head. I remember when this happened to my older daughter, and even myself as a kid.  The discovery is accompanied by disbelief and then almost disgust.  "That's NOT what I sound like! Is it?" Each kid then went through a stage when they did not want to hear a recording of their voice.  They preferred not to be confronted with reality.

There is nothing a person can do about this. The acoustics of hearing your voice from inside your own head will never be the same as hearing them from the world outside your head.

This happens in many areas of life when exercising our faith and passions or carrying out responsibilities. Also recently, I discovered that my daughter's view of me as a mother is quite different than my own view of me as a mother.  I knew this was so, I just did not realize HOW this operated.  I assumed it was that I thought I was cooler than she thinks I am, which I was pretty sure was not at all. That I am dumb and clueless and she is smart and savvy.

Nope.  How about that she thinks I am always unhappy with her, and that I am difficult to please. And I thought I was so gracious and accepting.

Ouch.  More than ouch.  Heartbreak.  Especially when my husband has been aware of this.  And who knows who else.  I suspect many people, from the way my friends are always saying, "Tiff, you know she's a great kid, right?"

This mismatch of the way I hear my voice and the way others hear my voice occurs far too often.  I think I am a good ____.  And then I see someone else get the offer I was hoping for and it dawns on me that others do not share the same opinion.  Of course, my temptation is to say "Well, I AM a good ____ and they just don't see it" and carefully arrange circumstances so that I don't have to face reality.

I took voice lessons as a teenager.  While one can never know exactly what one's voice sounds like unless by hearing a recording, I had to learn how to change the quality of my voice to match what my instructor required of me. When you learn anything new, you are worse for awhile before you get better.  I always had a good ear, but I struggled through a period of time when I sang consistently sharp.  One day it finally clicked, and I went back to having good pitch and being able to tinker with all those other adjustments I was learning to make. 

In most of life, the stakes are usually much higher, as in the case of being a mother.  There are natural tendencies I am stuck with that I just have to learn to adjust around.  I can pretend things are fine - the problem is with everyone else.  Or I can open myself to critique and dig in and work hard to change what could be better. Which is usually worth it. The silliest thing would have been for my kids to start refusing to talk because they did not like the way their voices sounded in the ears of others. 

Sometimes, we know we sound good and someone is just way off base or jealously motivated to be untruthfully mean.  In which case you shake it off. Which is why it is important to develop a good sense. Because we can also learn to be hyper-sensitive so that we are ineffective and gun-shy and never develop the courage to exercise our voices. 

 We can march ignorantly ahead in the same dissonant fashion or quiet our voices at the barbs of our critics.  Or we can develop a relationship with trusted mentors and peers who are practicing as we are, who will give us helpful feedback and support.  Teachers who will guide us through the process of change, and honest friends who will praise or hold our hand when needed.

Why am I telling you this? Because we need the assurance that we are not the only one who got passed over for a promotion or who did not get asked to serve on the committee or whose submission got rejected.  Good singers don't always get the lead role. I might even still be an ok mom, because, after all, who lovingly dresses the track burn wounds or waits in dressing rooms in the mall for hours? (That's called "self pep talking").  None of us have perfected the upgraded version.  But that doesn't mean we don't stop trying to work the kinks out.

a baby step

Time for some honesty. When it comes to the struggles of women worldwide, I've not done a whole lot. My heart aches when I hear the stories, when I recognize that being born a woman in many parts of the world is a life sentence, in a way. Yet I haven't really found my way of making a difference. I've been an observer of the situations, not a participant in remedying them.

But I may have just stumbled upon something that is right up my alley.

Over the weekend, I hosted a byTavi open house in my home. byTavi and a sister program, Daughters, have both been featured here before. You can read what Tiffany's written about them here and here. There are also links at the bottom of the page for more information about what these organizations are doing for women in Cambodia.

It was my sister-in-law, Carrie, who first introduced me to these products, the organization, and the story. One holiday, she unloaded a huge bin of scarves and bags. I'm a shopper. A lover of beautiful things. And I was so excited! We "shopped" for hours in the dining room. I bought things for myself and gifts.

That was over eight months ago. That night, Carrie suggested that I have a party. A simple idea. I have people over, show them the byTavi products, tell a little about the story of byTavi, and let them buy if they find something they like.

And honestly, it took me eight months to work up the courage. It seems silly, doesn't it. Having to work up courage for such a simple thing.

It actually took the prompting of a friend, who had never even seen the products, to get me to do it. We are in a book club together and she thought it would be a great idea to have the products out and available to the book club members when they came over for the monthly gathering. So I did.

And then, since I had three tubs of gorgeous stuff, I decided to build up my courage and ask the rest of my friends over to see what byTavi makes.

It was a great evening. I sent out an email invitation to about twenty gals and gave them the website ahead of time so they could look at some of the products. Ten or so of them came to browse, try on, and check out the bags and scarves.

Basically, all I had to do was display the products and collect the payment, though I did also provide some fresh flowers, snacks, and drinks.

It was a great way to spend an evening. It felt great to introduce some of my friends to the lovely products and the good work that byTavi is doing for women in Cambodia. Women with children who are worried about things I've never even had to consider.

Thanks byTavi, CGI, and Carrie for letting me in on this amazing experience.

If you think you'd be interested in hosting a party like this, you can get in touch with the right people by going to the byTavi website. Again, the link is at the bottom of the page. Also, byTavi and The Center for Global Impact are on Facebook.

On Second Thought

I Corinthians 12:1-16?! "Man is God's glory, made in God's own image, but the woman is the glory of man." Get outta town, Paul. (He's telling women to cover their heads when they are praying, but men don't have to).  At least he admits that this is one of those topics up for debate, not the absolute truth from God.  I'll give you that, Paul.

In one of my past lives (no, it's really the same life - I just have, er, made some sharp turns in my journey) I was a nursing student, and had to take LOTS of anatomy & physiology and such.  The difference between men and women is a different cocktail of chemicals. Powerful chemicals, yes.  But the same exact stuff is in all of us - just different amounts of hormones and a little chromosome.

If you are taking a walk or run or a long car ride or have some time to kill I STRONGLY recommend listening to Testosterone, and if you are really short on time at least listen to Act Two, about a person who decided they were really the other gender and started taking testosterone.  It is really fascinating and causes you to really explore the subject of gender in ways you may not have. 

I wonder if "This American Life" is available in Heaven....

Summer Reading

June is summer in my mind.  Even if my kid's aren't out of school until the end of the month.  Summer means vacation, fun, etc. You have a whole month to read The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg for a book discussion with Amanda in July.  This is a lighter, quicker read than the others we have done.  A summer read. Perfect for lovely June evenings:) In addition, if you can get your hands on it, we'll be discussing it's companion essay "Martin's Letter to Nan" in Berg's Ordinary Life,  a compilation of short stories. (As an aside, you simply must read the title story just because it's fabulous). 

Pull of the Moon is a series of a woman's letters to her husband, and the short story is his response (already, isn't it interesting that what she has to say fills a book, and what he has to say is a few pages?)  It will be fun to talk about the 2 together, but there's plenty to discuss in the book alone.

If you haven't joined the book discussions before because they seem to heavy, this would be a great one to jump in on.