The Longest Night

Sitting snuggled into a warm blanket amidst the twinkle of lights and the glow of candles, she faces the deepest dark.

Impatient for the return of longer afternoons and lengthening twilight, she wishes away these moments.  

But skipping the long cold days of winter for spring would mean no dormant time, no hibernation, nothing to pull the sap up into the branches.  

Spring growth requires this time of deep dark.  

And like the light, returning incrementally, almost imperceptibly until the days suddenly outlast her expectations, so comes the gathering of strength, bit by bit.  

Until suddenly, unexpectedly she bursts into bloom.

Making Memories

Moving toward Solstice, walking through Advent awaiting the return of the light, finally finding a few moments to sit in the drawing dark in silence and reflect - my mind turns to memories.  I wonder why I remember the things I remember from my childhood.  Most of the memories flit through the corners of my mind like fireflies, bright but hard to catch and hold on to.  Some specific moments stand out, etched forever because of the intensity of emotion surrounding them, but most meld and blend into a kaleidoscope of brightly lit bits and pieces of time, forming ever changing pictures of the landscape of my growing up years.  Last night, I sat with extended family I had not seen in quite some time and the memories came flooding back.  Memories of other holidays spent with family and other memories too.  Bits and pieces of family form the overwhelming majority of the shards that color these kaleidoscope pictures from those years far in the past.  But the more recent past holds less of those bits.  We've moved away and moved apart from that close-knit extended family I knew as a kid.

And I wonder what memories my children will see when they stand at mid-life and look backwards.  They will not have the same memories formed through years of repetition of extended family gatherings.  Our patterns and plans change and shift from year to year.  Growing up, I knew where we were going to be on Christmas Eve morning, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day morning, Christmas Day lunch, and Christmas Day Evening without fail.  My childrens' experience varies from year to year.  And regardless of the choices we make, they do not have the regular, repetitive contact with extended family that formed the foundation of my own experience.

We hold loosely to a few of our own traditions, but we key on loosely.  We flex and bend to accomodate schedules and distance and blended families.  We include close friends that take the place of some of that extended family and less intimate friends who find themselves adrift away from their own family connections.  We include reaching out to help a family or two with less means than we have.  We incorporate some rituals from our religious tradition that point us toward the light.  And sometimes, we just sit still and rejoice in a few hours with no demands of schedule and try to remember to just breathe. Most of the time my children seem content with this life we have crafted.  But every once in a while, they bemoan the lack of extended family.  And I wonder, should I work harder?  Should we sacrifice events and activities we enjoy and make ourselves more available?  Should we work long hours of travel into the short breaks we have?  And even if we did, would anyone else?

I cannot recreate for them the world I lived in, with six of eight great grandparents, all four grandparents, six first cousins within five years in age, a host of great-aunts and uncles, and second cousins too numerous to count within walking distance or at least within an easy drive.  My husband's family is more spread out in age, with less kids in close proximity.  My family is scattered in distance.  The great-grandparents that served as the centerpoint for much of the family time are much older or have passed on before my children knew them.  In a project I did for school, I counted over 60 family members that lived in close proximity to me when I was growing up.  In a town of about 1300, that family made up a significant percentage of my world.  That percentage for my children is barely measurable, both because of the lack of close family and the much more vast scope of the world they live in.  And it's not as if these gatherings go on without us and we choose not to participate.  The changing dynamics have changed the gatherings.  So although I sometimes feel compelled to recreate that world, I know I cannot.

But still, I wonder, what will they remember?  What will be the things that stand out and sparkle for them or that warm their hearts when they look back?  Which things will they remember with sadness and poignancy?  I cannot pretend to know.  I spend a great deal of time and energy with events and activities to keep them engaged.  But maybe what they will most remember is the four of us snuggled up on the couch sharing popcorn in the empty spaces between events, sleeping late and lounging in pajamas the Monday after school lets out, the vacations to places far and new instead of the repeated gathering of family, the time spent with friends.  And while I know for sure their memories will be much different than the things I remember, I hope we are making memories that will glow in their own kaleidoscopes some day in the not so very distant future.

Disconnected

A training seminar I attended this week focused on information from the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts, written by two neuroscientists using data from the internet to study the topic of human desire.  Some of the information didn't surprise me.  Some of it made broad generalizations, especially about gender, that created instant internal protest because the data doesn't ring true with my own experience for myself and with other women I know.  Some of the information fascinated me, including the sheer number of people who use electronic media to fuel and satisfy desire and the ways they choose to interact virtually, such as the growing trend of chain writing of erotic stories.  

But one fact that hit me between the eyes turned out to be a gendered distinction about how connected we are in general to our bodies.  The speaker pulled out of the book several studies that indicate that men generally connect sexual arousal with positive desire but that women can be physiologically aroused and psychologically either unaware of their arousal or frightened or repulsed or feeling any number of other emotions instead of desire.  I don't know if this is truly a gendered characteristic or not.  It's certainly conceivable that men, or some men, can be physically aroused and not experience psychological desire.  And I'm relatively certain that many women are quite tuned into their bodies and experience congruence between their physical and psychological states.  

However, the information presented launched me into pondering the implications of this data far beyond the realm of desire.  I am disconnected from my body, in general.  And I know I am not the only woman (or person) who experiences this disconnect.  My Jungian bent toward psychological types, popularized by the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, suggests that anyone who relies significantly on intuition as a way to interact with the world will struggle to develop a connection with the physical body and the sensory input from the world at large.  When the connection with the physical does happen, it carries with it a mysterious and sacred sort of quality, at least in the best moments.  Unfortunately the flip-side (there is always a flip side) means that often there can be a tremendous amount of unease and shame around the physical, sensory driven states of being.

I am discovering lately just how deeply disconnected I am from my body.  I had some professional photographs done earlier this year, and during the shoot, the photographer reminded me over and over to relax and drop my shoulders.  Every time he did, I was stunned.  I wear my shoulders around my ears without even registering the tension I carry in my neck and back.  I skip meals on a far too frequent  basis, not recognizing the subtle signals of hunger and thirst my body sends me, instead waiting until my body screams at me before I notice.  And when I do eat, it's often quickly and on the run, without ever even tasting my food, anxious to get on with the next item on my to do list.  I often ignore stress and pain and fatigue until I'm at a point where I find myself snapping at my kids or my husband without even really knowing why.  I hold my breath.  A lot.  And I'm not even aware that I'm not breathing until I bring a mindful focus to my breath and realize how irregular it has been.  And, as the information from the book indicates, I am often disconnected from what brings me physical pleasure in intimate sexual encounters.  I know, from the many conversations I have with others on a regular basis, I am not the only one.

It's hard for me to bring attention and focus to my body.  The tape in my head says that spending time focused on the physical is unimportant or a waste of time.  I know I need to take time to move, to breathe, to stop and smell the roses, to get my hands dirty in the garden or the kitchen, to laugh from my belly, to dance, to sing, to touch.  But there are always so many other things that need to be done.  I am uneasy with my own body.  I am shamed by the need to take time to just breathe.  Sensory experience gets denigrated and ignored in the mental and emotional gymnastics of my daily routine.

But when I can let go into a sensory, physical, body-based experience it can be sublime.  I spent four hours recently with someone who practices various forms of energy and body work.  It was an amazing evening.  Through some simple breathing, movement and touch she brought me to an awareness of my physical being that I've rarely experienced.  I feel the most connected to God through my senses - being in nature, listening to and creating music that stirs my soul, moving my body, creating with my hands, connecting with another through touch.  So why then do I resist and ignore this physical experience on such a regular basis?

I think some of the answer to that question lies within me.  But I think some of the answer is bigger than just me.  I think the culture and society and religious community I have been formed by play a part.  Women's bodies endure tremendous scrutiny and denigration.  Women's sexuality is feared and blamed and exploited.  Women's needs are subsumed by their roles of wife, mother, teacher, friend, caretaker, worker, slave to a thousand other demands.  So we learn to exist in our minds and our intuition instead of occupying our bodies.  We ignore sensory cues and pay the price in those bodies through illness, stress, disease, fatigue.  And MY culture has it easy compared to what women around the world endure daily.  My mind wants an answer.  I want to know why.  And I want someone to tell me how to change it.  

Julie Daley over at unabashedly female suggests that it's not about finding the answer to those questions, but simply about loving this body I inhabit.  And then my question becomes - how?