just because she looked orderly on the outside
doesn’t mean she didn’t know angst and chaos.
just because her eyes didn’t well up
doesn’t mean she didn’t cry.
Category: Blog (Page 63 of 101)
News of The 70273 Project with a side of Jeanne’s Barefoot Heart
Now listen, let’s cut right to the chase: difficult people are one thing, stupid people are one thing, but abusive, controlling, manipulative people are quite another, and you need only stay in relationship with them long enough to be able to get out safely.
Period.
You deserve better.
Period.
You’ve heard the old saying “You made your bed and now you have to lay in it?”
Forget it. Forget you ever heard it. Erase it. Obliterate it.
Think you have to be miserable and in danger because you are obligated to live with the consequences of your choices?
Bunk.
Sometimes you can get so settled in a relationship, so comfortable with its predictable dynamics that you can’t see it clearly. You get lost in the familiarity, losing sight of the harm that’s being perpetrated on you and your partner. (But I don’t care about your partner right now, I care about YOU.)
Let’s be real clear about this:
Healthy love doesn’t manipulate, control, isolate, or harm another. Healthy love doesn’t issue ultimatums or demand you buy them things in return for their affection. Healthy love can’t be bought or sold. Healthy love doesn’t isolate you from friends sand family. Healthy love doesn’t pummel you incessantly with junky words designed to keep you down and them up. Healthy love doesn’t want you to be a slave or a doormat or a punching bag.
People, listen to me.
Healthy love wants you to shine. Healthy love brings out the best in you and the best in them. Healthy love makes you walk differently, with the grace of someone who is cherished and supported and loved through and through.
If your partner professes to be jealous of your friends, envious of the attention you give your family, if your partner demands that you forsake your friends and family spending time only with their friends and family, do not confuse this for love. This is not jealousy and this is not ardent love, my friends, this is controlling, isolating behavior, a tool in the abuser’s arsenal. Bullies are sniveling cowards, really. Knowing that other people just might see them more clearly than you, well, they want none of that.
Recognize it for the controlling, manipulative, isolating behavior it is.
If your partner tells you lies about your family and lies about your friends, see this for what it is: deceit. an erosion of trust. And really, if you don’t have trust as the foundation of a relationship, what kind of relationship do you have? Said another way, without trust, do you really have a relationship?
Trust is everything.
If your partner gets what they want by plying you with affection or pitching hissy fits and allowing you to makeup with them by buying them what they want, taking them where they want to go, doing for them what they wanted you to do in the first place, see this for what it is: immaturity and manipulation.
You are not a game piece they move to win the game.
If you earn money and your partner demands that you turn it over to them then refuses to share it with you – say it with me: this is controlling behavior and is not to be tolerated. I don’t care how you feel about capitalism, you need to have your own money.
Period.
If, after pitching a hissy fit, your partner says anything akin to “If you hadn’t done or said so-and-so, I wouldn’t have had to get mad, hit you, pitch such a fit (insert your behavior of choice),” see this for what it is: shifting the blame and trying to make you responsible for their unacceptable behavior. Unacceptable.
If your partner does any or all of these things, see it for what it is: thuggish, bullying behavior – abuse. Abuse doesn’t just mean physical contact, people. Abuse can leave bruises that are never visible to the naked eye. Bruises that can be healed, though it might take a few eons or so.
If your partner scares you,
If your partner tries in any way to make and keep you small,
If your partner blames you for their bad behavior
LEAVE.
Exit the relationship.
This is not a healthy relationship, and this is not healthy love.
You never did anything to deserve this. Ever. You may not be able to see it right now under all the years of words and deeds to the contrary, but you ARE worthy and you ARE lovable and you DESERVE to be with someone who cherishes you.
If you’re in an abusive relationship, you can’t be stupid about your leaving. You have to be safe and consider the safety of yourself and your family, but that doesn’t lock you into staying in an unhealthy relationship for the rest of your life. Shake your body like a dog fresh out of the bathtub. Do it again. And one more time. Scream YES as loud as you can (even if it has to be on the inside). Now square your shoulders, exhale, and start planning. I know it’s not as easy as me writing these words. Of course it isn’t. Your exit might be quick and easy or it might be a long, arduous journey. Either way, you will get tired – changing the way you see yourself is invigorating, trying, challenging, exhausting, and liberating. It takes practice to see yourself in a new way, it takes patience to let your bones convince yourself that you are worthy. But it’s doable. And we are here cheering you on. We want you to succeed. We want you to see yourself the way we see you. The world needs you to live into your own bigness, and you cannot do that while under the thumb and under the control of a monster.
well fiddle-dee-dee.
i’ve gone and created
a brand new blog
just for cloth.
it’s how i do my best thinking,
you know.
through my hands.
sometimes death comes
at the hand of
natural causes,
sometimes death comes
at the hand of
freak accidents,
and
sometimes death comes
at the hand of
man and woman’s inhumanity
to man and woman.
it’s hard
there’s no doubt about that,
but if you can pause,
take a deep breath,
and look death
right square in the eye,
if you can hold yourself steady
and gaze at it long and hard
from a place of curiosity
and wonder,
if you can stay
instead of running away
at the first possible moment,
sometimes,
every now and then,
you see spots of beauty.
be a good girl.
think about others first.
don’t be selfish
or stuck up
or conceited.
play nice.
share.
wait your turn.
it’s your turn now.
go for it.
who cares what other people think?
if it pleases you, that’s enough.
i’m so confused. i’m so damn confused.
write the book you want to read.
comes a time when you have to consider your readers.
so which is it?
if i do something just because i enjoy it, that’s okay, right? well, what if i want somebody else to like it, too?
what if i want somebody else to value my work, my creativity, my contribution?
back in the days when i was trekking around speaking professionally, some high falutin’ fella made money hand over fist by saying something like you can accomplish anything – anything at all – as long as you don’t mind who gets the credit. to which i always thought: bullshit. i mean maybe that’s true on paper, but if i do the work, make the effort, create something that didn’t exist before, by golly i want credit for it.
then somebody throws “ego” into the mix and scolds me for having one.
they remind me that i’m supposed to look the other way, turn the other cheek and all that but hey, let me tell you something: according to my cousin who is Somebody Who Should Know, to turn the other cheek was actually a call to civil disobedience back in the day. it wasn’t rising above and refusing to wallow with pigs knowing that you’d both get dirty, it wasn’t letting yourself be a doormat or a booster seat for somebody else, it was a means of entrapment.
maybe it’s supposed to be enough that i value my own contributions, but maybe that doesn’t always play out in real life. maybe that’s why i’m so angry lately when i get to stewing about aging and leaving a legacy and not having one to leave on account of i’m supposed to be downright giddy with happiness that somebody else took the credit for something i did or said pffffft to something i created or overlooked me cause let’s face it, unless it says something real cute, how many people actually look at the doormat anyway?
sigh.
whoever said aging isn’t for sissies
sure knew what she was talking about.
last week
i noticed that my arms now
look more like my mother’s
than my daughter’s.
and that set me to thinking a lot about aging.
wondering where my life has gone
how it’s been spent.
i find myself spending a lot of time
pondering (and fretting a wee bit, truth be known)
about getting older.
about leaving my mark.
about life leaving its marks on me.
today i walked along the beach
noticing the beautiful variety of ways
the passage of time
leaves its mark on nature.
and honestly, i can’t help but wish
that mother nature was as kind to my skin
as she is to the sand.
today is my daddy’s birthday,
and he’s not here to celebrate.
because he died way, way, way too early,
my daddy did, and
i spend part of every single day missing him,
wishing i could tuck my hand in his big, rough hand with the pudgy fingers.
wishing i could feel him scoop me up in his arms,
biting his bottom lip as though he needed to do that
to keep from hugging me with the full force of his love
and breaking my ribs.
what i wouldn’t give
to hear him call me doll or hon,
to see his shoulders reach up
to touch his ears
as he cackled in laughter.
i’d love to hear him tell me
his stories just one more time,
to take him to breakfast
or anywhere, for that matter.
i still have the note,
you know,
a handwritten thank you note
(not something Daddy was known for)
thanking me for taking him
to a new restaurant just down the road
for breakfast biscuits.
“This has been the best day of my life,”
he wrote.
the best day of his life.
and all i did was take him out for a biscuit.
something i wish i’d done much more often.
~~ ::: ~~
today’s altar: reminisce
Dear Mother,
Though we are drastically different, we remain connected in ways I am only beginning to get my heart around . . .
You love to entertain, and you amaze me with your ability to whisk a few things from here and there and over yonder then group them in the center of the table – atop that tablecloth you embroidered when you were younger or the tablecloth you got on that trip to southern California or maybe the tablecloth that once belonged to your mother – to create a fetching table that invites folks to come, eat, stay a while.
You love to cook, and in all the meals I’ve eaten at your table, I only remember one inedible dish – a meal that’s come to be known as The Night The Gravy Went Horribly Awry. After a full day of work followed by grocery shopping followed by cooking and setting the table, you were too tired to notice us pushing the gravy around on our plates. You were too tired to notice all the leftover gravy as we cleared the table, scraping all leftovers into a communal leftover vessel that was put down on the floor to treat the cat. You were too tired to notice how the cat sniffed the gravy, then turned around and began to try to cover it up by raking bits of debris from the floor.
(Whatever happened to that cat, anyway?)
Though we each have our favorite foods we never tire of having you prepare for us, you delight in collecting cookbooks, stretching their spines as you put colorful gem clips on pages of recipes you want to try out. They line an entire bookcase in your home, all these cookbooks picked up as souvenirs from trips or accepted as gifts given, and you can (and do) tell the story of each one . . . sometimes offering it before we even think to ask.
The original social butterfly, you never letting a birthday go by unnoticed. How you have the time to keep up and stay in touch with so many friends is beyond me. But you do, and it’s not an obligation – you enjoy every minute.
Through the years, you’ve saved your money and purchased some fine furniture pieces – some I sure wish you still had so I could put my name on them. Whether it’s furniture or lamps or rugs or accessories or wall color or even switchplate covers, you create rooms that invite comfortable gatherings sprinkled with food (of course) and conversation and laughter.
You never met a plant who didn’t thrive in your care. The birds can’t wait for spring to come to your backyard, plants race to break through the soil and vie for your loving attention, your flowers provide color that dazzles and pleases even the most contrary and grumpy eye. You are one of those rare gardeners who doesn’t have to pay attention to the growing zones. Even the most neglected or out-of-place plants want to do you proud.
You taught me how to tell time . . . not with a watch or numbers written in a circle, but with clothes. Always one to keep up with the latest fashions, you have a knack for buying clothes and accessories that never go out of style. You dressed me in clothes that gave me confidence and that can’t-touch-me feeling, and though I can’t tell you what year anything happened, I can sure tell you what I was wearing at the time (and probably where we bought it).
Beauty.
That’s what you taught me: beauty. You taught me the importance of beauty, of surrounding myself with it, of acquiring and enjoying it without apology. You taught me to have beauty in mind at all times, to always keep an eye out for beauty, to appreciate it when I see it, and to create it every chance I get. And the best part? you didn’t teach me by having me read a book or by telling me things and following up with a test. You taught me by living it – living it every day in every way. And that, more than anything else I can think of, is what I thank you for today.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I love you more than that set of encyclopedias you petitioned Santa to bring me that one year.
J-one
a.k.a. Jeanne,
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integrity
This work by Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.TheBarefootHeart.com.
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