Category: Gender

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Not at Memoir

I didn’t want to write a memoir! I tried every other form I could, yet each one fell short. Stubbornly, I kept searching for anything-but-memoir.

I knew that an academic exploration of the big topics couldn’t bring the level of transformation I was seeking. I also knew that some of my experiences would be needed to illustrate my point. But surely, I told myself, essays sprinkled with a few stories would be enough.

In the end, memoir was the only structure strong enough to carry all that is held in Big Topics at Midnight. Ironically, it wasn’t just one memoir—my ancestors showed up wanted their stories included too.

Memoir kept my exploration personal. No generalities or “people should” or finger pointing. I had to keep diving back into my own life to wake up again and again to what I saw and didn’t see, what belief I assumed was true that was, in fact, true and what wasn’t. Little details of memories gave huge information—for instance noticing that the fact we had called our black maid “Mary” and not “Mrs. Henderson” said volumes from the lips of a good little girl who ALWAYS called adults by Mr. or Mz. (Texas slang for Mrs. or Miss.)

The more I saw of my life and my assumptions, and the more feelings that got stirred up, the more I had to stop and do my own inner work to bring my actions in line with my heart and values. I had to change.

I had to learn new tools to do this demanding work. I am skilled in the methods affirmed by school and home—logic, rational thought and hard work. Those were helpful, but proved woefully inadequate for the task of waking up to the ways race, class and gender had become tangled and divisive in my own mind and in the world around me. And the old ways were definitely inadequate in helping me to access my intuitive wisdom, learning to listen to my body, the earth under my feet, creativity or Spirit. I had to re-remember the more feminine ways of knowing that I had long ago judged as weak and tried to shove to the side.

Sometimes the very things I fight are the most valuable. When will I ever learn?

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Old dog. New tricks.

Some days fifty-eight feels like being an “old dog,” but I do want to learn new tricks. For one, I want to release my inner taskmaster who demands that I finish my tasks even though my back aches and I can barely see straight.

No matter that I just published a book that includes my resignation letter from such relentless old voices. It may be in print, but it is slower to be lived in the flesh.

No matter that I have spent seven years learning how to listen to my intuitive guidance, trusting the divine mystery to open doors before I arrive.

Some days old habits grab hold of my ankles and hold me to the grindstone.

As a young woman, I thought I’d get past this by the time I was middle-aged. But here I am, once again.

Welcome.

I’m trying to open my heart to my inner taskmaster. She has something to say. I’d like to begin to hear her as only one of my inner voices, rather than the loudest one.

My overdeveloped sense of responsibility has held me to my family and culture’s values of efficiency, planning and organization above all. In many areas of my life, this training has served me well. But not when it comes to walking through the potholes surrounding race, class, gender, and my connection to Spirit and the Earth.

I guess the new trick I’m learning is how to be patient with myself and see the vicissitudes of the life, inside my head and around me, with a sense of humor.

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Winter Solstice, 1986

Sue last photoTwenty-six years ago, around midnight of December 21/22, Mary Sue Tipps Mathys died. The woman who gave me the gift of life and mothered me so well, died at 60 years of age. This chapter from Big Topics at Midnight tells about that holy night. 

Mom was a godsend. Despite her warning that she wasn’t going to be one of those “over-involved” grandmothers—since she had a full life of her own—my parents’ home became an oasis from the chaos of married student housing. Each month the four of us traveled ninety miles south for a visit. Mom carried infant Laura around the house so Howard and I could sit down to eat a meal. In the afternoons, Mom and four-year old Paul went on “Grand Adventures” around town. They walked up and down Fisherman’s Wharf, looking at the harbor seals and bags of sea shells for sale and went on regular visits to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, stopping at the otter tank for the afternoon feeding.

After Thanksgiving, Mom and Paul decorated the first Christmas tree Laura had ever seen. Mom’s gruff exterior melted as she enjoyed the antics of her young grandchildren.

That all came to a screeching halt around midnight of the winter solstice. The shrill phone woke me from a sound sleep.

“Nancy, Mom’s gone,” Dad said.

“Gone?” I asked.  “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

Almost a month before Laura’s first birthday, and three days before Christmas, my mother was dead. She was putting the last stitches on holiday decorations when her heart stopped beating.

This woman who, thirty-two years earlier, had held me for nine months nestled under her heart, slipped out of her body on the darkest night of 1986. Paul insisted on going to the funeral home to see her body. Standing at the edge of her coffin, he asked that I lift the lower half of the lid so he could make sure that she would leave this earth with the feet that had led the two of them on so many wonderful adventures.

I held my full moon baby close to my broken heart as I ached for the loss of my own bright mamma during that dark season of grief.

Mom's drawing from the Christmas Card she mailed the week before she died.
Mom’s drawing from the Christmas Card she mailed the week before she died.
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Midnight is No Time to Secede

Twenty-five thousand Texans have signed a petition to peacefully secede from the United States of America. I understand. I’ve spent much of my life trying inwardly to secede from places and groups (including Texas) that I didn’t agree with.

In the middle of writing Big Topics at Midnight I realized how much energy I’d spent trying to distance myself from parts of me or my world that embarrassed me—my wealth, white skin, cultural Christianity, patriarchy and even Texas. I wrote about this struggle in Big Topics at Midnight:

“When I finally noticed that we had more money than many, I was embarrassed by my family’s upper-middle class and, later, upper class status. For a time, I wanted to give my family money away, not wanting to be wealthy in a world where so many had so little. Simultaneously, I wanted to keep all of the options that money gave me.

Likewise, I had recently realized how white my world had always been. As I heard story after story of experiences and perspectives of people with darker shades of skin, I wanted to rip off my white skin and the white-colored glasses that had kept me unaware of signs of racism during childhood and into my adult years.

The glow from the streetlight gave the room an eerie light as I considered other parts of myself that had faced the knife. It wasn’t easy for me to admit being a Christian, either. Jesus didn’t embarrass me, but far too many Christians did. Too often the radical heart of the faith was usurped by traditional US cultural values.

As a strong girl turned woman, I thought I’d avoided sexism. In the dark of night I realized that I’d been largely unaware of the ways I’d absorbed patriarchal beliefs throughout my life. I’d grown to respect my use of reason and logic—the skills honored in my family—and ignored my subtler intuition, gut and heart. I’d slipped unaware into the patriarchal way of valuing only one part of me. In addition, I was disgusted that it took over thirty years for me to discover how slowly liberation had come to my home state—married Texan women didn’t even have full legal rights until the late 1960s.

I felt full of holes, like a hunk of Swiss cheese. So much of who I was brought me shame. Projecting that onto Texas and onto the United States of America at the height of her world power, I tried to increase the distance between myself and the culturally affirmed values I no longer accepted.”1

A few Texans want to secede from the union just as I wanted to secede from Texas. When I finally woke up, I realized that this separation was in direct conflict with my heart, faith and values of living in harmony within our global neighborhood. The only way I could live a just life in our diverse world was to first accept the diversity that is me. Not blindly. Not trying to pretend that nothing is amiss in our world. But consciously, with open eyes.

We don’t have the luxury to cut and bail whenever we don’t agree. Our hurting world is teetering too close to midnight for that. We will all thrive together or crash together on this one planet we share. I am a Texan. Texans are Americans. Our world depends on us learning how to get freed from the “distress [and separation] of our oppression and to listen to each other in a present and conscious manner.”2

The time to run away with our toys and hide out with others like us has come to an end. And really, the world is a fascinating playground if we can do the work to “build effective relationships and sustain true alliances.”3

 

  1. Big Topics at Midnight, pages 238-239
  2. Be Present Empowerment Model, realms 1 and 2
  3. Be Present Empowerment Model, realm 3
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Books for My Pilgrimage

Reading is my favorite doorway into new thoughts, experiences and perspectives.  After I’d complied my list of favorite books for inclusion in both Big Topics at Midnight and my website—a bit overwhelming to say the least … Are these my favoritest favorites? Am I forgetting a cherished book? …—I stepped back and looked over the list with new eyes.

I saw lots of diversity on the reading list, but was aware that most of the authors had white skin.  I challenged myself to expand the edges of my reading.  Last week as I was gathering up books from every room in the house to return them to the shelves or library, I realized I’d stepped up to the plate.  And I loved every book.

I’ve been drawn to novels, and here are the best from my summer’s reading:

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow.  As her website says, “Inspired by a true story of a mother’s twisted love, The Girl Who Fell from the Sky reveals an unfathomable past and explores issues of identity at a time when many people are asking ‘Must race confine us and define us?’”  Great story about love and tragedy and healing, all held in a biracial family.

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.  This narrative leads through the fire of a civilization in chaos, but “what begins as a flight for survival soon leads to something much more: a startling vision of human destiny… and the birth of a new faith.”  I love books that head straight into tough, big topics and find transformation on the otherside.

Women of the Silk by Gail Tsukiyama.  I actually have reread one of her novels (Dreaming Water) and read this one.  Tsukiyama is a beautiful storyteller, with her books set in China (this one), Japan and/or the US.

And for a different sort of diversity, I picked up Second Son: Transitioning Toward My Destiny, Love, and Life a memoir by Ryan Sallans.  A new friend of mine is a female to male transgendered person.  His experience is far outside of mine and I wanted to know more.  So I picked up this book, learned lots and plan to seek out a few more.

Nothing like listening to someone else’s story—in fiction or memoir—to learn more about others and myself.

How about you?  What edges do you want to push out a bit through your own reading?

Enjoy.

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Sometimes lists. Sometimes listening.

I am a list queen.

Right now, I have three lists going at once—things I need to do next week, my general list and a book  order list.

Tonight at 11:30 p.m., I left behind a gently snoring Howard to get up and write down a detail about the book’s coming out party next week (on my general list) and the name of a friend who wanted me to send her mother a copy of my book (book order list).  Then I noticed that my general list was too messy—too many things crossed out—so I rewrote the list.

It’s almost midnight, and here I am still up.  Again.

I recall my reputation with grocery lists.  Nine times out of ten, I either leave my list at home or on top of the onions in the produce aisle within ten minutes of beginning my shopping.  Eight times out of those nine, I get home from the store with almost everything that was on the lost list. Knowing that about myself, however, doesn’t calm my urgent fears that THIS TIME I will forget something.

With my book just out in the world and the huge unknowns of marketing looming large in my mind, I want to cling to lists—mine and the ones that fill self-publishing books. The trouble is that my best work doesn’t flow when I’m trying to check things off.  I may feel efficient, yet something is missing.

Odd thing is, I know that my creative juices flow best when the prompting comes from deep inside me, bubbling up from my belly.  I wake with a few sentences luring me to sit down and write.  An urge arises to call someone.  An idea comes for a gathering of friends to mark a special moment in our lives.  Thoughts arrive gently, seemingly out of nowhere, each holding a bit of sparkle.

These nudges seem untimely, scattered or illogical when I try to understand them with my mind.  But time and time again, they lead to places beyond anything imagined or possible through my lists.  I get an image of the big picture of marketing the book—reaching out to meet people who are already waking up to the big topics rather than me out trying to sell the book—and suddenly the numerous details don’t seem as important.

While writing Big Topics at Midnight, I began to learn the language of my body.  Now when I pay attention to my belly or back, it gives me information about unnoticed feelings or the need to stop for a few moments and stretch. I’ve learned to hear these subtle forms of guidance even though my head often shouts that all of this intuition stuff is just a burp from my imagination.

I was born with a mind that easily learned the “right” form of intelligence—think things through, be logical and rational, and be able to defend my thinking with solid facts.  Only later did I discover the wisdom of my belly, intuition and Spirit.

It wasn’t easy to incorporate this more feminine way, of knowing, and the power of the “one right way” has a stronghold on me.  Things on my lists seem so urgent, so clear.  Intuition, on the other hand, comes sometimes in a haze and always with its own timing.  I’m not fond of waiting.

It is 12:15 a.m.  I’m up with the cool night breezes and occasional cars driving by trying to remember what I know: My most important spiritual practice is learning how to stand in the middle of the paradoxes of life.  Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem very efficient.

Actually, it’s a pain sometimes.

Lately I’ve stumbled under the weight of getting to all of the tasks on my book lists.

Still, I want to do both—following my inner guidance and my carefully crafted agenda.

So I fall down.  Then I stand back up again and return to my practice of taking the best from both approaches.  Sometimes lists.  Sometimes listening.  Sometimes pushing forward to get things done.  Sometimes sitting outside under the tree and slowing down enough to hear that still small voice inside.

Sometimes I’m a listening queen.