I bought my son a baby doll…and it’s rocking my own sense of identity

he picked dolly out and wouldn’t let her go

My hunt for weather-appropriate clothes (on sale) at Fred Meyer left me wandering dejectedly through the toy aisles. I thought that I might come across something fun to add to the collection (because Scrummy has chewed up a few of the play foods that I bought most recently), and Potamus got really excited in the cart and pointed at the dollies. I picked one up and asked, “do you want this?” and his response was a very definitive “YEAH,” and he hugged her tight (yes, I’m associating a female gender to the doll because she’s dressed in pink. Sue me). Fortunately Dolly was only $2.99 because some dolls are really expensive and I didn’t feel like shelling out $20 for an experimental toy (not knowing if his definitive ‘yeah’ meant ‘YEAH’ or he was just excited in the moment, like he does with snack-time). But Dolly, as we’ve named her, has been a permanent fixture in our house for 30 hours now.

I know the psychological benefits of boys playing pretend with dolls and other ‘typical girl’ toys like play food and stuffed animals. I read blogs where boys have long hair, or play with dolls, or wear skirts to Home Depot with their dads. I loved that he picked this toy on his own, and has been so lovingly attentive to her. He’s pretended to feed her, wants help wrapping her in a swaddle, and has laid her in a little box for a bed. He snuggled with her all last night, even when he came into our bed. I think it’s so sweet to see him holding her so lovingly while watching TV or eating dinner.

So, with all of this sweet happiness that I’m feeling in my gut when I look at this innocent little boy with his dolly, do I feel a little twang or twinge after today’s outing to KidsQuest? While nothing was said overtly, I did notice that people noticed…if that makes sense. Most of the moms I encountered seemed to have a wistful ‘awe, how sweet’ look on their face. And dads seemed to be thinking ‘is that a boy carrying a doll?’ though I wouldn’t say their looks were judgmental or hostile, but more…surprised? And then there was the older restuarant worker who almost fell over his own feet staring at Potamus and Dolly while getting back to his shift. He was smiling, but also seemed…perplexed?

Now, I don’t want to be over-analyzing every little experience we have in the future. Because I can’t read minds, and these people could certainly just have been admiring my adorable son, rather than thinking about the fact that he’s carrying a baby doll. After all, if I notice this, then maybe it’s because I feel uncomfortable? Why am I letting my son carry a doll? Is it some political statement? Is it my way of rebelling and giving the gender stereotype marketing a big eff-you finger? Or is it because he so sweetly asked for it and seems to love it more than he’s loved any other toy?

Potamus and Dolly eating some lunch at Panera.

Have you let your son/daughter play with ‘opposite gender’ toys? How did it make you feel? How did it make you feel in public when your child wasn’t ‘gender conforming’ for any reason?

What’s your gut trying to say? An exploration of the Solar Plexus Chakra…

Zen Pen’s writing from the body challenge this week is to explore everything related to our Gut, and I’m finding it both challenging and enlightening. I thought that last week’s Heart prompts would be challenging, but not quite like how I’m experiencing the Gut prompts to be. I have been interested in deepening my writing-by-hand practice, but this week’s gut-lesson has felt so very blog-worthy, that I thought I’d share. To begin the lesson Courtney starts off by explaining:

When our solar plexus chakra is out of balance we may experience increased anger, fear, low self-esteem, apathy, resentment, compulsiveness, as well as a variety of unpleasant physical sensations. I think we can all relate to experiencing many of these characteristics and sensations. Perhaps our bodies are trying to speak to us?

Whoa.

That hit me in the gut (pun intended) quite hard. Because, if I were to sum up a chapter of this summer it would be called “Dealing with Angry Monk-Monk.” Though I’d probably use my real name. Unless I was writing an anonymous memoir. But I digress.

It seems that ever since summer started (which also happened to coincide with being off work for a daunting 3 months with kiddo), I have wrassled with my ANGRY side. Some of this anger has been leftover bits (think popcorn kernel STILL in your teeth from the movie you saw a week ago) from childhood that have been coming up and being replayed over-and-over again. I can’t quite shake that angry label I was given as a kid/teen, even though I know that, looking back, I wasn’t actually angry. I was afraid. Afraid and misunderstood.

And that’s often how I feel these days. Misunderstood. Like the whole world is staring at me in puzzled wonderment, on good days, and complete disgusted disdain on others. While I’ve managed to find a few friends, and a partner, who at least tolerate, and even-possibly-dare-I-dream-love, my quirks, there often times when I just feel all alone in this great big world of complexities.

So, I did a little more research on this elusive solar plexus chakra, which, according to one site is:  is a personal power chakra. This chakra helps us to wield our own power. Sounds a lot like internal locus of control if you were to ask me to relate it in terms that I explain to my college students. This idea that things are manifest from within, a lot of personal choice and personal power that propels us forward.

But websites aren’t enough. I prefer hands-on reading material, so I scanned my shelf for Caroline Myss’s Anatomy of the Spirit (one of the few books I’d take to a desert island). Bypassing the first few chapters, I went straight to the Solar Plexus chakra and began reading. And everything began to resonate with me, like:

The solar plexus chakra becomes the dominate vibration in our development during puberty. It assists us further in the process of individuation, of forming a self, ego, and personality separate from our inherited identity.

Holy shit. No wonder I’ve been feeling so blast-from-the-past when experiencing my ANGRY self this summer. That’s when I was labelled angry. As a teenager. And while I don’t want to blame everything in my life on my adoptee status, the fact that I didn’t really know my “inherited identity,” and was trying to individuate to something that wasn’t encouraged (perhaps another blog entry, on the conservative Christian idea of sameness vs. being a rebellious individual). I read somewhere else a few weeks ago, too, that “helplessness leads to feelings of rage,” which all seems to come back to this very idea of my gut center trying to develop as a teenager, but feeling so very caged-coyote-trapped by the constraints put upon me by my parents-as-ambassadors-of-THE-church.

Whoa.

At the end of the chapter on the Solar Plexus Chakra, Caroline Myss asks some questions, one being:

Are you continually wishing your life were different? If so, are you doing anything to change it or have you resigned yourself to your situation?

Now, it seems that she’s trying to get at the idea that the third chakra, when in balance, will spur you toward a more ‘internal locus of control,’ which will help you do something to change a situation. But, in reflecting on some of the earlier summer angst, where I had a hard time shifting, I think that my approach needs to be less fight-against-the-current (especially since this time of my life has certainly been a well informed choice), and more drift with the current, letting the days be how they are because they simply exist this way. Because when I think about that acceptance, that comes from a gut place that says, “yes, this is right. you chose this. rest easy,” the anger melts away.

What’s your relationship with ANGER? Are you constantly wishing your life was different?

(p.s., if you’re interested in joining Zen Pen, a 6 week writing course, Courtney is starting one again on Sept. 30th! I highly recommend it!).

Please Be

I resonated so hard with this beautiful description of a kiddo’s first day of school.

momaste

Internally chanting pleas as we walk hand in hand

into the big, brick building-

please be happy, please be calm, please be kind.

Am I pleading to myself or to you,

entering the crowded multi-purpose room

which has grown heated and steamy with bodies?

…

In your Yoda shirt and sneakers tied in double-knots

you look ready and confident for anything,

yet something about your self-assuredness makes me waver.

The sting of tears rushes to my eyes and the back of my nose,

but I sniff them back and command  my hand to

stop stroking your head like a pet.

…

From my body you have sprung, but you are not mine.

Have I given you enough, nourished your heart and mind

with everything you need to be launched from the nest of me?

Please be strong, please be tenacious, please be attentive.

Please be accepting of my kisses on…

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Biological Motherhood: I get to be different

it’s hard being his world

I have been in the midst of several conversations lately, with friends, about our own mothers, and all the ways they failed us as children, and are failing us currently. Like my own mom who failed to recognize any symptoms of anxiety in me as a child and failed to connect with me as an adult when she finally learned that I had anxiety. And while my mind understands that I will fail Potamus in so many ways (my heart has yet to catch up to that reality, and oh how it will break when it does), I have been reflecting on the fact that, at the end of the day I get to be a different mother than (both of) my own.

There have been conscious differences, like extended breastfeeding my 20 month old vs. being formula fed or Montessori bed-sharing. But in these conversations, about making all of the conscious choices to be different, my perfectionistic (as in, I’m going to do EVERYTHING differently) brain was rocked a little while driving down the road, because, AUTOMATICALLY there will be differences with me as a mother than my own.

Because I carried and birthed my baby. And he is a firstborn son. I was a firstborn daughter. And I was given away to strangers at 3 days old. I was given to a mother who didn’t carry and birth me from her own body, so these differences have set us on a very different course from the beginning.

In what ways are do you hope you’re not like your own parents? In what ways do you hope you are like them?

How Fallopian Tubes are like Holocaust Cattle Cars

Trying to conceive is a strange experience. The more I learn about my body, the more I realize that junior high and high school health/biology class are severely lacking in the information department. Or maybe I was too busy doodling the name of my dreamy crush on my pee chee. Or both.

But seriously, it was only this week that I learned how…um…dumb (for lack of a better description) the whole getting pregnant thing really is. I mean, you have unprotected baby making sex, hopefully at the right time for the stars to align, and when you’re finished you go and get a drink of water, or take a shower or eat a sandwich. And meanwhile, if you’re the lady, there are are these microscopic swimming things just…oh you know….hanging out inside you. I mean, that’s like something from a B level Science Fiction movie…from the late 80’s.

So there they are, microscopic swimming things, who we’ve all thought of as swimming as fast as their little metaphorical hearts can go to get to the PRIZE of that glorious golden snitch bursting from the ovary. But in fact, it’s a lot less Olympics or Hunger games, and seems more like a really slow, drunken frat party. Because, according to one website’s description, the sperm (which can hang out for a few days inside, waiting…um…creepy…) just ‘bump into’ the egg and thus fertilize it.

Wait. You mean to tell me that my son was born because some sperm just randomly bumped into the egg? It wasn’t even like “oh hey baby, you’re so fine, come over here and let me fertilize you.” It was more like the egg stumbling on the way to the bathroom and being forced to marry the first dumb jock frat boy who bumps into her. Talk about fate. And kind of a dumb design if you ask me. Couldn’t they (being God, or Supreme Being, or hell, evolution) come up with a better idea than THAT?

Then again, it does seem to be working, as our Earth is teeming with human bodies.

But, all of this enlightenment about how the sperm that actually fertilizes an egg, got me thinking about the rest of the experience. Like, how sucky would it be to be trapped in the fallopian tubes for up to 3 days. It seems dark, and crowded if you ask me. And you’re surrounded by a bunch of millions of other like-minded microbes, who really just want to survive and meet that egg, but are most likely going to end up on the wrong side of Fate’s hand. And I’m not one to throw out Holocaust metaphors, but that dark, cramped fallopian tube, with millions of sperm that will eventually die, seems like those cattle cars the Nazi’s used in WWII. And I wonder, do the sperm know the chances that they will end up alive at the end of the whole ordeal? Are they blindly optimistic to the chance that they will somehow live on? So every time we have sex millions of sperm die…in my body….gross. It’s basically the Nazi regime all up in my lady parts.

Have you ever been surprised to learn something that you were supposed to have been taught in high school?

What Runs in Biological Families? An Adoptee Explores…

As a child I was obsessed with Mt. Rainier. OBSESSED. As in, I wanted to live there permanently. Whenever we would camp I would eagerly go to the visitor center, join the junior ranger program, and read books about wildflowers and animal tracks. By the time I was in highschool I had 42 of 84 wildflowers of the North Cascades memorized by sight. I mean, I said I was obsessed.

Because I loved being outdoors so much, I decided (at the tender age of 9) that I wanted to be a park or forest ranger. And I knew that my dream was to be a park ranger in the Ohanaepcosh campground of Mt. Rainier. Or worse, down the road at the La Wis Wis campground (which was always our backup campground). It wasn’t until 11th grade that I gave up that dream, after meeting a gal at an environmental camp that casually mentioned the regulation changes for park rangers, that they had to attend police academy and carry a firearm. That sealed it for me, being a park ranger was out…I would NOT carry a gun for work. Not because I was opposed to guns in the backcountry (Grizzlies and mountain lions aren’t to be messed with people!), but because I didn’t want to be a law enforcement officer in a national park. I didn’t want to have to shoot someone. Nope. No thanks.

So I’m having dinner with my bio dad, and we were chatting about the crazy wildfires happening here in Washington…and he said, “Well, you know, my sister stopped being a forest ranger when she had to deploy her fire shelter on the fire line.”

And then I remembered that my bio aunt had been a forest ranger. Whoa. Uncanny, right? And where did she work? La Wis Wis campground. OF ALL PLACES, she worked right down the road, as a forest ranger, from where I wanted to work from 9-17. Whoa. And we got to talking, but he finally said, “But then the laws changed, and she stopped doing it because she didn’t want to carry a gun.”

He happened to say that at the EXACT same time that I said the reason that tipped me over the edge was when I didn’t want to carry a gun.

Whoa.

Whoa.

Right?

When researching your family history, any crazy “whoa, that’s just like me?” stories? Share away…

Adoption Themes in Young Adult Literature

As an adult I can look back on my childhood and think, “wow, yeah, I was dealing with adoption related trauma,” as evidenced by the hours and hours spent playing two different games with my siblings: Lost Kids (a game where we were some version of shipwrecked and lose our parents and have to fend for ourselves in the wild on an island) and Orphans (usually orphans that had escaped an orphanage and were running from kidnappers). The literature I read, too, was full of adoptee themes…from Anne of Green Gables to The Boxcar Children and Nancy Drew. All were dealing with some sort of adoption or loss-of-mother/father-theme.

But no book was as horrifying and made me question everything I had ever known, as the book The Face on the Milk Carton. The girl in the book knows she’s adopted by her grandparents. They are raising her as their own, but then one day she sees her face staring back on a Missing picture on a school milk carton. Turns out her ‘mom’ had kidnapped her and given to her ‘grandparents’ to raise. The girl in the story was about 3-4 when the kidnapping happened. Of course this memory has been sparked by the Veronica Brown case, as so many media outlets are stating that Dusten Brown (Veronica’s father) had ‘kidnapped’ her (which is media spin, since everyone has known Dusten has had custody of her for the last 19 months). I remember reading this book and thinking, “oh my gosh, what if my parents have been lying to me? What if they really kidnapped me? What if I wasn’t supposed to be adopted?”

Of course that wasn’t true, as I found out later, but the restless feelings inside me were hard to deal with…and not something that I could even give voice to at my tender age. I remember, years later, having a talk about that book with my a-cousin and she said, “oh yeah, that was the scariest book, I was worried that I would get kidnapped!” And the look of shock on her face was priceless, when I said, “well, I was always afraid that I had ALREADY BEEN kidnapped, since I’m adopted.”

What books were you obsessed with as a kid? Any looking back and thinking, “hmm, I must have been dealing with some things?”

An Introverts Dilemma

I’ve known forever that I’m an “introvert,” but I do love learning about this aspect of myself, and having conversations with others in my life. Because often I feel torn, as in, I feel like I make my life harder for myself in a lot of ways tempered with the thought that “this is who I am, I can’t change it.” And this recent bout of musings was brought on by the Huffington Post article 23 Signs You’re Secretly an Introvert. Now, we all know it’s not really a secret with me, but I wanted to address a few of them…

You find small talk incredibly cumbersome.

It wasn’t until I took an “anger management” communications course after college that I learned about the function of small talk. Before that it felt trivial and stupid and shallow. Once I learned that every culture has it’s own version of small talk, and that it’s an actually valid thing, I have grown to…well, not quite appreciate it, or even really understand it, but at least I participate in it…at least for a few minutes.

You have low blood pressure.

Yes. Yes I do. How did you know? But, I’m curious…what does that really have to do with anything?

You have a constantly running inner monologue

I am married to an extrovert (though it’s interesting, because I actually do more ‘social’ things), and we got into this great discussion last night about this running inner monologue. Because…yeah…he doesn’t have it. Sure he thinks about things, but then Boof said, “when I’m done thinking about something, like what I need to do tomorrow, I just stop.” Um, excuse me? You just….stop? The discussion went down a long winded rabbit trail about inner silence (he labels it boring, I label it as peaceful/fucking scary), about how our brains work so differently. I admitted to him that my new trick to fall asleep is saying random words in my head until I fall asleep, it goes something like this: truck, kangaroo, pumpkin, pink, love, scary, force, night, dove, poop, lice, crow, fog, door. His response? “That sounds stressful.”

Yeah. I guess so. But it’s how my brain works.

Which then left me wondering if introverts are more prone to anxiety, because it seems there is a fine line between my inner monologue and my inner monologue being influenced by a whirling dervish. Because that inner monologue is often my worst enemy. But then again, I rarely get bored.

And this conversation also makes me think about previous conversations with Boof about our brain, on the subject of dreams, he takes the perspective of the person, as if watching a movie. I see out of the character in the movie’s eyes, but I’m also the omniscient narrator a lot, too. Also, when reading, he doesn’t see pictures, he hears the words being read and it’s distracting because the words are a half second behind his eyes, so it’s like being in stereo. Makes me think about how we are all wired differently…

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Reading the article were you surprised by any of the categories? When dreaming do you see yourself, see out of your own eyes (as if watching a movie, or participating in the action) or are you from the perspective of the narrator? Do you dream in black/white or color? When reading do you see pictures, hear the words or something else?

Sleep Deprived Thoughts

You know when your kids is super restless and it takes 2 hours to get him to sleep, but keeping him asleep means having his sharp talons toenails digging into the soft flesh of your stomach, rendering you with only 4 hours of sleep, so you cancel your morning yoga class to enjoy a good 3.5 hours of napping bliss while kiddo is in daycare before you head off to get 6 fillings in your mouth, but when you go to take this luxurious nap you lay there for an hour and cannot sleep? At all?

Yeah, it’s not a good feeling. I mean, at least I’m getting to sit here catching up on some lovely recorded TV shows and stuffing my face with MegaStuf oreos, but that doesn’t feel as good as yoga would have. Or a nap. I desperately need a nap. But I will settle for the second best- Mt. Dew at the RoundTable pizza buffet. This is how I survive. One hour to another hour to another hour.

I’ve been reflecting on all of the lovely advice from IRL and bloggy friends on my post: Be Nice. I feel that it took me so long to learn how to give voice to my feelings, having been labelled shy as a kid, and totally fear of rejection and being judged that I wouldn’t talk about what I was thinking or believed in. So when I learned how to use my voice, I unleashed. A damn has broken and I’m not afraid to speak up. But now I get to learn how to…not speak up, in the moment, especially when it might make things worse. I want to explore this more, about the power in choosing when to speak, now that I know I CAN speak, ya know?

So it’s really about this internal experience/perception/reality vs. an outer experience/perception/reality. Like how everything on Sunday went ‘just fine’ with my siter and family, but I still felt internally awkward because of the conflict. Like when I’m in yoga class and the instructor says “straight back” and I feel like my back is straight, but then I look in the mirror and realize that…um…I’m really swaybacked. Like a broken old nag whose given far too many rides to fatass cowboys. Yeah, the difference between how I feel internally (straight back) and the reality (swayback) is striking.

Be Nice

I’m trying out a new mantra, it goes like this: Be Nice.

I got an opportunity to practice this mantra over the weekend, when spending time with my family in Eastern Washington. I had started to dread the trip, getting about half way and thinking, “ugh, I hate making this trip,” which is true. Mostly my anxiety is before an event, and I’m okay when I get there, but there’s just something about going to the shithole I went to highschool in that brings up a lot of angst. Not to mention, knowing it was going to be a 24 hour trip and I’d probably end up spending time with my sister, who I’ve been in conflict with for awhile now.

When she walked in the door 45 minutes late, as we were packing up to go, and I had to realize that we were going to end up leaving later than anticipated, instead of making some flip comment about being on time, I bit my tongue and gritted my teeth into a smile. When my dad made some sarcastic comment about his career being ‘work’ and not a ‘job’ I just changed the subject. It did feel forced at times, and somewhat awkward, but overall it had a pretty pleasant vibe to the visit. I left feeling like nothing had been resolved, but nothing had been made worse.

So why is this Be Nice mantra so hard for me? Because it feels fake. It feels superficial, like we’re not addressing the deeper issues of conflict and just ‘pretending everything is okay.’ That’s not how I like to roll. Maybe it’s because of my own anxiety, but I prefer to voice when I’m frustrated, saying “I’m annoyed with this conversation,” or, “I’m upset that you’re late again,” rather than just sitting there feeling upset. I don’t like superficiality and the Ms. Suzy Sunshine role. But can I share my anxiety in a setting or time that works better, and in the meantime just let it go? I don’t know, I managed to do it this weekend, but I’m not sure how long I could just hang out ‘being nice,’ without also, ‘being honest.’ And I haven’t figured out how those two can go together well.

Thoughts? Have you ever told yourself to ‘be nice’? What was the result? How do you balance that with wanting to be emotionally honest with people?