The power in a name

I feel like a river. For years silt has been settling into place on the riverbed, archiving the history of the river, leaving the water more and more clear. But now the silt has been trampled, stirred up, the water clouded again. It will settle again, probably quicker than before. There's enough clarity in the water flowing downstream to ensure that.  But the silt will never settle in quite the same way again.

I'm stirred up by many things. One is that I've just completed 4 days of training in Circle of Security, an attachment-based parenting program. I can't yet capture or articulate everything that it has woken and shifted in me.

One of the pieces of information that stood out was a study on brain imaging. Some researchers put people in an MRI machine and administered a mild electrical shock. The MRI scan showed activity in the amygdala, the 'primitive' part of the brain that deals with fear.

Another group of people were put through the same procedure. But first they were told that when they felt the shock, they should say the word 'afraid' or otherwise express what they felt.

The scans of the second group showed that naming their fear lowered activity in the amygdala. The pre-frontal cortex, the 'thinking' part of the brain was also activated.

So naming your feelings reduces their effect on you, literally. It reminds me of the long-standing notion in mythology that knowing the true name of a thing or of your enemy gives you power over it, or at least removes its power over you. Just look at the tale of Rumpelstiltskin.

This is probably why the 'talking therapies' have such traction in Western cultures. It's one of the beliefs that led me to doing work with people. Helping them name their histories, their hauntings.

I wonder if we've always known the things that science is discovering about humans. We're just finding new ways to talk about them. Does it help to give new names to the things we already know, or are we still searching for their true names?

Chrysalis

Change is coming. It has begun. I can feel something cracking open in my chest. I rationalise that this will be good for me. I will emerge from this like a butterfly from a chrysalis. But now... right now it hurts. I want to curl up in a dark, quiet place and cradle my hurting parts.

In the night, I dreamed of impossible choices

I dreamed that I was getting married to a man I'd never met.  It was arranged by 'Aunt and Uncle', two archetypal characters in the Mauritian clan which is my father's side of the family (there are no such characters in the waking world, to my knowledge).

I was okay with it, with walking down the aisle to commit myself to a stranger, but everyone around me was shocked.  Not so much about the marriage, but that I, of all people, would agree to such a thing for myself.  This surprised me a little, for those that were the most vocally shocked were those that know me least (cousins, aunts, others with unspecified relationships).  The closer members of my family were present but smudged, slightly faded into the background.

The man I was to marry was unremarkable: neither good looking nor unattractive; dark-skinned, perhaps Indian, perhaps part Mauritian; a little overweight (as am I), a bit rounded in the middle; he had a pleasant smile; seemed kind but not excessively so.  To the audience, he expressed his satisfaction with the match: he knew it was a good one because he desired me (i.e. I was attractive to him).  My waking, roaringly-feminist self would be outraged by such a proclamation (as if that were my most important characteristic... of all the things to say at a wedding, to the woman he was to marry... hiss! glare!) My dream self smiled benignly.

The ceremony passed by without incident: the dream meandered into snippets of my new life with my husband.  I felt pleasantly placid; accepting; unperturbed; calm with a faint overlay of disbelief (as I dreamed I still had some awareness that this was completely out of character with my waking self).

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

My own musings on the dream yielded little by way of meaning.  It wasn't connected to any movies I'd watched, or books read, or conversations.  I mentioned it casually to my mother, dismissed it as just a strange dream.  I still didn't understand it.  As the week went on it sank into my place of forgetting, crowded out by daily life.

Tonight my best friend told me of a dream where she rode on a lion's back.  The lion killed one of her pet rabbits, but she saved the other one.  I consulted my books, searched the internet.  I remembered my own dream suddenly, sought out its meaning while doing the same for hers.

• Am I feeling forced to do something I do not want, reluctantly moving to a new stage of life?  My dream self didn't feel forced.  Perhaps the peculiar calm was born of relief: being relieved of the burden of making such a monumental decision as choosing a life partner.  There's so much to get wrong...
• An unknown man in a woman's dream is a part of her personality which is not recognised.  My  dream self was making an unrecognisable decision to marry a stranger.  That sort of change, the scale of it, is a little terrifying.  What would it take to bring about such a thing in me?  Or is it merely the union of the masculine and feminine aspects of personality?
• Members of the extended family typify the many discernible parts of ourselves. So the discernable parts of me, the known parts, the elements I have nurtured up until now, are shocked by the decisions of my true self?  Do I know myself far less well than I have thought?  
• "To dream of a wedding or marriage can often give an indication as tohow the dreamer feels about relationships".  Then this: weddings reflect how you feel about commitment to other people.  To dream of an arranged marriage means "your approach to commitment needs to be questioned".  Ahh, the sting, the squirm of being forced into honesty with oneself.  I am afraid, vastly, of commitment to a relationship with a man, even if my reasons for it are large and valid and historically accurate.

My contrary dream remains contrary.  I can't settle on one explanation, or even form a constellation of them all.  But some have the flavour of truth, of the beginning of a deep insight I may have not reached in my usual ways.  I can feel the foundations shifting, the knell of change.  Who will I be when the dust settles?

Bleed

To be a survivor–first you must bleed. You bleed all that was inside of you: the pain, the memories, the fear, the wounds fusing together, the ties to what was in, all its forms. You bleed not once but several times. And when you are empty, you either fade into a shadow or find the strength, and courage to live. When you stand up again, you are for a time, hollow–empty, like a bottle of beer lying on the street, cracked and reeking of its bitter contents. Then you fill yourself up with the new, your recreate yourself–you reform. You don’t have the same heart or mind. The way you see the world is forever changed. 


Lynn Mari via The Last Straw

turning medusa

before, I was hopeful
full of nerves and poetry
your laugh made me wish
I was funnier than I am
your words drew me in
fueling yearning, spinning tales

up close you were smaller
yet you spoke of large dreams
and the man you might become
confused, I opened myself wide
and you took out your pleasure
leaving only consequences
leaving me with old tears
and a swelling rage

when fathers and husbands
rape and curse and injure
when brothers abandon
their faith and their sisters
who am I to offer all
my fire and my weakness?

when love is danger
and trust is ruin
what can I turn to
but to stone?

rain/firsts/returning

I love the rain. The way the breeze smells as the clouds arrive; the way it sounds falling on a roof and gurgling in the gutters; the way the air looks so clean afterwards.

I can't believe it's been 2 months since my last post. We have to move house against our will, one of the many perils of being a tenant in this country. We've been looking for weeks on end, and haven't found a new home yet. It has taken over everything, put all my plans on hold, filled me with vague, hovering anxieties.

But a new year is upon us, and I think this one will be filled with firsts for me. There may be nothing new under the sun, but there are always firsts. First kisses and the first time you notice the colour of someone's eyes. First times for seeing yourself differently, for waking up to the beauty in the world.

May your 2011 be full of lovely firsts.

Uncrowning

Last year I lost ten kilos, grew my hair and started dating. This year I've sworn off dating, gained ten kilos and cut my hair. Several times.

If hair is a woman's crowning glory, what does it mean when it's gone? Is she less a woman, not feminine, making a statement, seeking change? Is she suddenly edgier, more interesting, sexier, less soft?

Hair and grief have a long history together. I only have to look around to find it. This week I learned that my aunt's new partner shaved off his facial hair after 30 years... and a divorce. I have made an art of cutting mine off. If l look back at my many haircuts, I can find a heartbreak - small or large - to match most.

The body of a tree records everything that happens to it, lays down history in the rings of its trunk. Seasons of growth, debilitating droughts, lush summers. A wound in the trunk of a tree will leave evidence, even if it's only a ripple in one year's archive.

Our hair does the same, showing the history of our bodies, our health or unwellness. Wouldn't it include our emotions, our memories too? It might explain why so many turn to scissors after ending relationships, a death, giving up a way of life. Declaring ourselves fit for a fresh start and unburdened by the past. Revealing that we have a past worth cutting off.

all that sparkles

I have always thought it was possible to love your work. Maybe not all of your job, or every minute of it. But to be a person whose eyes light up when they talk about what they do.

I have been a person who becomes earnest and intense when they talk about what they do. I have even been passionate about it. I have talked at length about how important it is to get things right, railed against the things that rile me up and shared the ragged hope that has kept me going.

Feeling a pang when hearing about someone whose "eyes lit up" when talking about her work, the same work that I do, dealing with the inner stuff of people. I commented to my colleagues that I had never felt that way about doing what I do. They shrugged and said something like "you're just not that kind of person".

Knowing that I had to get out, that keeping going would eat me up, burn me out, kick the stuffing out of me and more. But what would I do instead?

I found the answer. It was pretty obvious, in hindsight. It's been dangling from my ears and twined around my fingers and trailed throughout my history. So I'm learning how to do what I love.

These are just the beginning. And now I sparkle too.

you have stolen my reflection

I do not recognise my body
this collection of buried
bones and bared limbs
that has carried me to here

my hands bent to hips
meet unfamiliar form
disconcerting firmness
where fingertips sank
into yielding roundness

what scars must be
waiting to appear?
this silent shedding
of flesh cannot be
without its marks

the strange desires
of men await me
stripped of old identities
I am visible to their lust
but what of mine?
I am only myself
in a shrinking skin

will you love me for
who I was in who I am
or only this newly
uncovered body
giving lie to the
beauty of my youth?