Read this blogger! My sentiments, too, and I’m so glad to now know about #1000Speak for Compassion.
“… the ability to easily expose ourselves to multiple points of view – if not to change our minds, to at least understand the views of others. And that understanding allows for empathy. And the more we empathize, the less we hate.”
As many of you know, this past week marked the 3rd anniversary of 1000 Voices Speak for Compassion (#1000Speak). Although I’ve already written, and shared, an anniversary post, I wanted to see if I could manage one that was closer to this month’s theme. The question posed was essentially (I think): How we can use the social media we live with, which is often used as a mechanism for harm, to possibly help people, or prevent tragedies? Particularly given that concerns about the Parkland shooter were expressed to the appropriate agencies, but were not acted upon?
Those that know me, and/or regularly read this blog, know that I am concerned about the instant information, sound bite driven, world that we inhabit. There are significant drawbacks – the light-spreed movement of information allows for wide dissemination of misinformation, which in turn feeds conspiracy theories; the sense of anonymity has made bullying, and…
Stand alone. On your own two feet. See what you can do without any others to stop you, to help you, to harm you, to interfere, to suggest other ways. What does your heart say? What is your heart saying to you?
Stand alone. You already do stand alone. But alone with a living God burning brightly inside your very heart chakra, comforting you, guiding you, suggesting ideas that will catapult you to the Highest Version of Yourself that you can imagine. We just don’t often take the time to listen to that part of ourselves. Yes, I believe the Holy Spirit is a part of each of us, so intertwined with every fiber of our being that we can never not be holy. If we listen.
Stand alone. I used to stand alone and mope inside about being alone. Why doesn’t anyone really understand me? I need them to understand me! I cried tears and sobbed guttural wails as I wrestled with the challenges of growing up, maturing, moving from an insecure teenager to an insecure adult, an insecure wife, mother, neighbor, church member, volunteer, over-achiever. Until it all came crashing down on me in the form of what would morph from one day of a swollen throat, fever, body aches worse than the flu, fatigue that slammed me flat to the surface of my water bed and wouldn’t let me go, into the woman I am now. Twenty-five years I’ve lived inside my body alone, alone in houses full of people who cannot understand this bizarre chronic illness. But now I stand alone – secure in Who I Am.
Boundaries burst every time. What the hell, you might say? I thought I’d learned that lesson and then you realize you’ve done it again — compromised your integrity, your soul, giving in to the pressures to be liked.
Boundaries burst when you’re a people pleaser. When you let yourself be guilted into making a different choice. “Sure, I’ll come to that.” “Sure, you can borrow my ________ ” fill-in-the-blank. “Sure!”
Boundaries burst when inside your head your voice is telling you one thing, reacting with a zillion thoughts, none of which come out of your mouth. “No problem!”
My husband calls it “Southern Belle Bullshit” — when (women) say one thing and mean another. He holds up his two outstretched hands: one motioning “come hither,” the other rigid, palm out, staunchly saying “No! Stop!” This always gets a laugh from an audience, but now when he does this, I notice at least half the time he has a point, has caught me sending mixed messages. Old habits die hard.
Boundaries burst when we throw off the shackles of our past. When we suddenly see, “Aha! Now I get it!” It might only seem like a tiny shift in perspective, but it’s an important one, a huge one, really.
Sometimes people have the tendency to overcorrect themselves — the gargantuan pendulum swing necessary for them to practice a new way. Off-putting, it can seem to others. Suddenly a shock. But no one is going to hand you permission to change on a silver platter when it means they no longer can rely on your co-dependence! Get real! But the brusque change can bristle others’ feathers, I’m just saying.
Boundaries burst for others, too. Let’s say you’ve had brick-tight boundaries, letting no one in. No one. Always protective of yourself. Emotions locked up so tight inside your chest, nary a tear has escaped your eyes in decades. Feelings bottled up, emotional expressions kept in check, invincible, strong. Well, maybe the occasional outburst, which no one saw coming or understood, because mostly you’ve never let anyone close enough to know the real feelings going on inside of you. But in the process, you have no intimate relationships. Not many anyway. Not really intimate. You’ve protected your heart with boundaries so clear it hurts. Boundaries bursting then are like a tight, full balloon ready to be tied off, but instead, something causes you to let it go, releasing it into the air in front of you. It sputters around the room in relaxed delight and you exhale and laugh and smile! You’ve let your drawbridge down, and others, timidly at first, start to cross the divisive moat you’ve built around yourself for years and years. Ah, yes. Love rushes in when boundaries burst. (time)
My writer friend, Peggy Tabor Millin, had an unexpected “Oprah inquiry” about a sentence in one of her books — you rock, Peggy! I guess we writers really do not know which thought, sentence, passage may speak so to one person who decides to share it. Like a stone thrown into a still pond, your one line or metaphor, or character just might start a whole rippling effect — your words stirring a heart, who shares it with another, who shares it with another, who shares it with …
Great piece here about separating the writing from the subject matter. The reason I love writing memoir, actually, is the process of rising above the events, situations, even feelings, and employing the craft of writing to try to effectively “universalize” the message and touch the lives of others in a positive way. I keep my personal journals personal – my therapy! Thanks for this, Allison K. Williams!
Right before Christmas I spontaneously answered an appeal from an organization I’ve been a part of since 1991. They’ve changed their name in an effort to reposition the invisible malady we share. The idea was to spread the work about ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) by asking ten people to donate twelve dollars each to raise money for much needed research. I made an embarrassing selfie Vimeo video, showing myself in the state I’ve hidden from the world, my town, my friends for twenty-five years. I hate asking people for money, so I tried to downplay the donation aspect while encouraging my friends to “share” the message to help raise awareness of Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia. I took in a deep breath, said a prayer, and clicked the “post” button on Facebook well after midnight, before I lost my nerve.
I have over a thousand “friends” on Facebook, some I’ve never met in person. Many of themfrequently “like” the inspirational quotes I post, photos of my precious granddaughter, humorous jokes, pretty pictures of the beach. The resulting response of silence to my linked video in my Facebook world was palpable, deafening really. What on earth had I done? Had I just “lost” a bunch of “friends?”
Slowly, a few responses trickled in, applauding my courage. One night I received a private message from a long lost friend, thanking me for my candor, explaining how my video had affected her family. Her son had been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome a couple of years prior, but things had been getting very tense in her household, as her husband just didn’t understand and he had been getting more and more frustrated with their son. She had showed my video to her son, who said my description was “spot on.” She had showed it to her husband and “something clicked” and he finally “got it.” The role of caretaker to those of us with ME/CFS is a lonely and weary one, too. I sighed, finding comfort that I had helped someone. The personal embarrassment was worth it, if I had only helped that one family.
I called my best friend in Tennessee and asked her opinion.
“It was pretty depressing,” she admitted with her familiar chuckle.
“I know, right? But that’s how I really am about 75% of the time.”
“Really? I would’ve guessed about 25%.”
“No, I just don’t answer the phone or talk about it every time I’m so down, even with you. You know me better than anyone and you really thought I felt this way only 25% of the time? Should I delete it?”
“No, but maybe you could do a follow-up video explaining more? And just shoot from the hip, no script, just telling it like you just told me.”
I took her advice and recorded a more upbeat video. I put on make-up and filmed it outside on my deck, sunshine and chirping birds in the background. I got a few more “likes.” I raised a little money. But another friend, one who had lived with similar health challenges for decades as well, told me she liked the first video better — that she felt like I had negated all the wonderful honesty I’d expressed in the first one when I posted the second one.
So I did a third one, this time using YouTube. It was right before Christmas. I held my iPhone out and recorded another selfie with Christmas music in the background. This one was a mix of the two. I got a few more “likes,” more heartfelt donations, and several private messages thanking me for validating similar feelings, for expressing the day to day realities of living with CFS and Fibromyalgia in a way that reached family members who had not been very understanding until seeing my video.
After Christmas, my husband found a “scooter” on sale at a medical supply place and, after 25 years of hiding my pain, painting on a smile for the world, living a mostly housebound life, I took my first spin. I was a nine-year old with a new bicycle! You could not wipe the smile from my face! I felt only joy and exuberance as I felt the wind in my hair as I zipped down the street!
“I hope this doesn’t make you feel … disabled, handicapped.”
“Well, of course it does! But I’m so over it! I’m 55 and I am so over it!”
The first few times I drove my “Go Go,” I stayed on the same two streets I’d walked for years whenever I could get out of the house. But two weeks ago I branched out and took a “walk” (“a scoot”?) beyond the side street on which I’ve lived for fifteen years, but have only seen, I realized, from a car window. As I motored past Wake Forest Elementary, a nostalgic tear slipped out behind my Ray Bans. I recalled the many times I had joined first Caroline, then Hallie, for lunch in that noisy cafeteria. Light and noise and smells had assaulted my sensitive body and I’d smiled my way through the thirty minute experience before I drove home and crashed in the bed, resting up before time to pick them up in the carpool line at 3:20. The sounds of those little elementary school children, their energy, their boisterous joy, the innocent, promising twinkle in their eyes — I am so glad I got to experience them! I am so grateful that I braved the times I sucked it up and went to my daughers’ schools even when I didn’t feel up to it. I almost always paid a dear price later, but no one can take those memories away from me.
Continuing, we turned the corner and then another corner, the Seminary campus on our right. Roosevelt, my little terrier mix, trotted right along with me, both of us learning how to navigate the moving vehicle and the leash, adjusting our speed from “hare” back down to “tortoise” when he galloped and fell behind; stopping abruptly when he found a bush he was determined to sniff, to lift his leg and make his mark while I untangled and readjusted the leash situation. Ideally, I needed him on my left, freeing my right hand to press the lever forward when we were ready to go; to release when we needed to stop suddenly.
“I don’t think this is an all-terrain vehicle, Roosevelt,” I said when we hit a rough parts of the sidewalk, ran over anything larger than a sweet gum ball, navigated turns. Cars sped past us as we made our way down Durham Road, the major 35 mph thoroughfare through our small town. I kept my head down for a few houses, but at some point I got the courage to look up, to smile and nod my head to people whose faces turned to look at me through car windows, rolled up in the chilly winter air.
Near the end of our mile-long scoot, I got my new scooter stuck on uneven pavement and had to exert great effort to help it get over the hump. Then we met with a rather large branch that had fallen on the sidewalk. Ignorantly, I tried to go over it instead of getting off and moving the debris. The plastic basket popped off and I stopped us abruptly. We’d almost rolled over it. We’d almost tipped over. I got off, figured out how to reattach the basket, and moved the branch. We finally made it back to our street without seeing anyone I knew.
I took out my iPhone and recorded a little of our scoot-walk, capturing Roosevelt’s cute little run beside me. When I posted that on Facebook, I got over 70 “likes” and quite a few comments.
One friend asked to see a picture of the actual scooter. I retrieved the only one I had, the one taken by my husband the first day he had surprised me with the after Christmas gift. I was wearing no make up, no bra, my wild hair unruly around my ear warmer headband. It was not a flattering picture at all. But something inside me said, “What the hell? I’m 55. I already posted that depressing video. Who gives a rip?” So I commented back on that post and attached the awful photo, once again getting over myself and letting real life — my real life — show.
I had an insight this morning: Mom “reaching out” from her 79-year old vantage point, longing to share, impart, connect with the subsequent generations of her family. We roll our eyes, take in some things, but hurriedly, slightly irritated at the incessantness of it all. Some stories some of us have heard a hundred times and we glance at our cell phones or a book from the coffee table as we pass the time at her townhouse. But today I stretch out on the couch, mouth closed, eyes shut, listening as she yearns to impart the old stories to her grown grandchildren. Do they remember? Have they already heard? Are they simply on overload after having looked, obligingly, at the many scrapbooks she got out earlier? It doesn’t matter to Nana, who insists on telling it so the grandson-in-law will also know, the son-in-law, before it’s too late. Before she forgets. Before she is relegated to perfunctory visits without substance. Before she fades into … oblivion, or is no more.
Tears come to me now, sitting right behind my eyelids as I pen these thoughts. One day I will miss this vibrant, opinionated, spunky, wise woman. I have been so blessed to be her daughter. I am so blessed to watch her age with vim and vigor. To hear that she walked the waterfront, did her yoga, went to art class, history class, book club, choir, the Democratic community meeting in her small town. She runs circles around me, and has for a while now.
We take her out for a birthday dinner celebration at an upscale restaurant on the water and she orders a filet mignon, as do I. My husband orders a nice bottle of Pinot Grigio and she chuckles, remarking how she happy she is to be content with her little single serving bottles of Sutter Home, one per night. But she quickly balances that with appreciation for this “good wine.” She is a master at social graces.
She smiles and marvels at the growth of her first great-grandchild, being spoon-fed pureed organic butternut squash in the high chair. The eight month old picks up puffs, pincer style, finding her mouth and squealing with delight. Mom grins and squinches up her nose. “Isn’t she just precious? I can’t get over … “
Happy 79th birthday, Mom. I love you completely. I treasure your stories, your depth, your life. I treasure our connection, your undying support of me and mine, the loving intentions behind your actions, the enthusiastic, lively woman you are and have always been. I’ve walked in your shadow, and I’ve soared while you’ve lifted me up. There is no bond quite like that of a mother and her daughter. Because I’ve been so well-loved, I am able to feel a depth of love for my own that has often made me weep with poignancy, allowed me to coach them through their trials with available attention, to bite my tongue and let them grow on their own when that is called for. Because you have loved so well, you will never really end, Mom. You will live on in the lives of your progeny, even if we forget some of your stories, even if we don’t get to hear them all, even if we don’t get the chance to understand the whole complexity of the life that made you you.
Today we celebrate the loving matriarch of our family as she enters her eightieth year of life. I bow in honor. I smile, tears lurking right behind my eyes as I imagine what it must feel like to be turning 79, what it will feel like when I am unable to punch in your phone number and have a nice long chat. If you have fears, claustrophobic gasps from time to time, please know I kind of understand. Know you are not alone. You can share these feelings with me, or let them pass without remark if acknowledging them is too unsettling. Just know I know. As best I can at 54.
Happy, happy birthday, Mom. You are so very loved.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was my introduction to the concept of rape. I was mortified. Especially that it could happen to a girl younger than me. And to one who hadn’t even started her period. I was young enough when I read that book not to have started my own, but I knew that milestone was imminent. I was a bit afraid of being a girl then, vulnerable to what I perceived as a violation only possible for females to experience.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was my introduction to the idea that mothers didn’t always take good care of their children. I was mystified. There were wicked stepmothers in fairy tales. There were orphans who never knew their mothers. There were mothers who died in childbirth or when their children were young. But I was naive at that age, presuming all living mothers loved their kids and, therefore, took good care of them. I was mighty glad then that God made grandmothers and that Maya and Bailey had such a wise, kind, respectable one of those to look after them. I worried about them when they were with their mother. I hated that boyfriend that raped Maya, whose death rendered her mute for a while. But I was glad when he was dead. And I was glad she had Bailey. I was glad I had a brother, too. Who knew when we might need each other?
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was my introduction to memoir, the genre I’ve always prefered to write. I’d read biographies. I’d read fiction. But I’d never read a true story that captivated me more, that wove the truth with suspense, that read like fiction. I devoured it. And when I’d finished, I clutched it to my chest and cried, not really even understanding the depth of the emotion I was feeling. I was simply moved to tears. The next day I turned back to page one and started rereading this important book. Any other book would have seemed … petty, inferior, would not have held my attention. I needed to reread this one. The writing was compelling. It affected the way I looked at the world, society, the times in which I was living, and my own white, female life. Maybe Maya Angelou’s classic is why I’ve always preferred writing memoir, having experienced at such an impressionable age, the power her personal narrative had on me, let alone a whole generation.
When I was a college student at UNC-Chapel Hill, I think I might have heard her speak. I know I heard Cicely Tyson, and I think perhaps Maya Angelou spoke there also, both having appeared recently in the TV mini-series, “Roots.” The program had taken the nation by storm, my own white but liberal household included. It was 1977 and I sat in our den on our shag carpet, leaning up against the olive-green corduroy sofa petting my dog, Buttons, while my mother and brother and I sat glued to each episode. Mom had been active in the Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina in the ’60’s and early ’70’s and I would graduate from the famous Little Rock Central High School the following year. I was drawn to the study of the social disparities of the day like a moth to the light. At Chapel Hill, I had access to many fascinating and thought-provoking lecturers, speakers, and professors. Maya Angelou’s childhood in Stamps, Arkansas intrigued me, and her books, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and We Are All Gathered Here, had made indelible impressions on me. If she came to speak in Chapel Hill between 1978 and 1982, I know I was in the audience.
Of course I’ve heard her since in countless interviews on national television, at President Clinton’s inauguration, even on Sesame Street when my kids were young. And, today, on the day of her death, I have been drawn to Facebook posts and internet memorials, unable to work on my own memoir-in-progress that takes place here in North Carolina, the state which has been blessed to claim the amazing Dr. Angelou since 1982. Thanks to Maya, we know why the caged bird sings. Now, even as we mourn, we bless her as we throw open the doors of this earthly cage and release her into the glorious realm of heaven. Rest in peace, Maya Angelou, rest in peace.
My beautiful friend, Dani, whom I met at an Elizabeth Berg writing workshop last August, has created a lovely writing nook for herself. One of these days perhaps I’ll get my own decluttered enough to post a photo, too! In the meantime, I’m enjoying writing personal things for myself and working on finishing my manuscript – hence the infrequent blogging. If you’re a writer and don’t have your spot, this post will inspire you to create one!
Inspirations from Wake and Sea 