Motherhood, Womanhood, Frigg, and Mommy Issues

Apparently, my mother has been on my mind a lot lately. Or perhaps motherhood, and expectations.

Last week I was listening to a talk on the Norse Goddess, Frigg. She is a Goddess I've never felt connected to, and if I'm honest, someone I've had a bit of an aversion to. I'm more drawn toward warriors and healers...and at some level I've known that part of my lack of interest in Frigg has been my...complicated relationship with my own mother, and my aversion to femininity/womanhood in part due to their association with my mother.

My mother is the kind of person who was perfectly capable of taking care of herself (and did quite well on her own during the brief periods she was manless), but she always felt like she needed a man in her life in order to be safe/fulfilled/complete/taken care of. And unfortunately she only had eyes for men who engaged in dysfunctions that allowed her to continue nurturing her own dysfunctions. Unfortunately, her men (and taking care of her men) was often prioritized over the needs and safety of her children.

If you've been around for the last few episodes you know that my mother's mental health wasn't the greatest. Her needs for validation, attention, and being taken care of trumped the needs of her children, and often her expectation was that her needs were met by her children. By 8 years old I was fully in an adult role of taking care of my mother during her in-bed-with-bad-nerves episodes, and trying to keep her from having psychotic breaks when she got too overwhelmed with anxiety, even though there was another adult in the house (my alcoholic father). Then there were her "suicide attempts" that were her way of saying, "I need attention, I need you to take care of me, and need you to acknowledge my pain", which again were directed more at her children who were forced into the role of caretaker for their mother. And I fully acknowledge that she was a product of dysfunction, and trauma, and she certainly didn't grow up during a time where therapy was readily available, or seen as an important part of trauma recovery. With that being said, my mother was given opportunities later in life for therapy, change, a better way of being in this life; and her choice was to carry on with her established patterns, and to hold on even tighter to her wounds and dysfunctions.

All that to say that with my mother being my primary role-model for what it was to be a woman, I really haven't ever wanted anything to do with woman-hood or anything associated with it; specifically because of her I associate those things with weakness. A quick caveat: I have memories from early enough to know that even without the influence of my mother I am a gender queer. At 3-4 upon realizing the babies come out of mother's bodies, I was horrified and sure as shit didn't want any part of that, nor did I have any desire to BE a mommy regardless of where they came from. I didn't play house or babies, I played Superman or soldier. So I have the winning combination of not identifying with "appropriate" gender roles, not feeling particular congruency with my gender/body, AND having a less than awesome role model for anything related to  my assigned sex.

Now, back to Frigg. Toward the last half of the talk I started to get really sleepy, like I could barely keep my eyes open, so as soon as it was over I crashed (which is unusual for me during the day). And I was in this weird, semi-lucid dreaming state, and my brain was just slogging through this battle-field of negative shit, so as soon as I "woke-up" I started writing as that seems to be the best way for me to get clarity when my mind is jumbled, and I know there is something that is trying to resolve itself.

I hashed through a lot of material, but the relevant bits for this story are that I recognized and acknowledged that there are Mother and Domestic aspects/parts within me, which I have been ignoring/denying due to all the above. It can be seen in the nurturing I do of others, which I've just associated with my Healer aspects. It is however; pretty obvious when I look at the relationship I had with my step daughter. Keeping in mind I never had any desire to nurture a little human, but when I had a little human in my life I loved her as my own. I did indeed nurture her, and most importantly, and in most contrast with my mother; little human was my priority. Even though I didn't want to be a mother (unlike my own mother), I made sacrifices, I did my damnedest to be present as my best self, and I put her safety over my own needs/wants. Please note that I wasn't a perfect parent, and I certainly fucked up plenty, but I tried to make that child's life better. And subconsciously that is what pisses me off so much about my own mother: having been in the mother role, in spite of my own trauma, and dysfunctions; in spite of my role model having been an incompetent mother I never made that child take care of me, I paid attention to her, I let her know that she was important, I got excited about her accomplishments, and I encouraged her to have a voice.

And I rejected Frigg because all I could see was my own incompetent mother who ignored the danger her children were in, and the wife who chose men who were a danger to her children. In sorting through this rats nest I realized that mother-hood and woman-hood/roles aren't innately bad, nor di they have anything to do with weakness; I just had a mother who was kind of bad at life, especially motherhood. In clearly/objectively seeing where my biases stemmed from, I could see Frigg for the badass, take-no-shit Goddess that she is, and see how she could potentially be a great ally to me. And I could see that consciously embracing some Domestic/Mother Goddess roles (which, if I'm honest I totally do already I just don't admit to it) is a totally okay thing, and in fact by embracing/acknowledging these aspects of myself as they exist is path to being my Best Self. Additionally I striven to be more than just a product of my mother (and various trauma), to instead be the best version of myself that I can be. It's not enough to set the bar at being "better than (insert shitty example)"; why not strive for greatness?

Buttermilk and Gunfighter Ballads

I had my iPod on shuffle today as I was out running errands and one of the treasures that came on was a song from Marty Robbins' Gunfighter Ballads album (You might not know the album, but you probably know the big hit from it; El Paso). This was an 8-track from my childhood that was played over and over again in my home. It's also the 8-track I would pop in for my mom to listen to after I had brought her some buttermilk and dumped her barf-bucket when she was having one of her "nerves" spells (sometimes bouts of major depression, sometimes bouts of crippling anxiety). 

During her spells she wouldn't be able to escape her bed except to use the bathroom. Sometimes it would be a couple of days, sometimes several of her dissociated misery, and my feeble attempts to make it better. And I knew it was my job to take care of her. It seems funny to me now that Gunfighter Ballads would be the music I picked for her to cheer her up, as it is a bit melancholy with most of the characters getting shot by a "Big Iron" or trampled in a stampeded. But it was an album that I knew she loved, and I wanted for her to feel better.

I also find it...funny that I still love this album in spite of the fact that it is so deeply associated with my mother's darkness, and those horrible days of worry, especially when I had to leave her alone while I went to school with dad already gone for the day (not that he would be much help in his drunken stupors anyway). I guess Marty Robbins transcends all things.

May the Dolores be with You.

"It's just or lot in life to suffer." Now, if you're thinking that is the line from everyone's favorite effeminate, golden droid you're close. Actually C-3PO's  line of hysterics after he and A2 crash landed went, "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life."  The first one came from my mother after I followed the advice of a friend and tried reflecting her negativity back to her in an attempt to snap her out of it (I rolled a Nat 1 on that saving throw).

My mother has the incredible super power to see the negative in everything, and the power to turn rainbows into her personal suffering. And I get it; she had a really crappy childhood...unfortunately when she has been presented with opportunities to try something a little different, a little less sufferey, she turns her nose up, and exclaims "Yucky!" just the same way she does with vegetables (even the peas and carrots that come in fried rice).

I wish I could say that I am immune, or that I had therapied that shit out of myself, but that would be a firm negatory. I'm aware, I put in the effort, and some times I'm fairly successful, and sometimes I fall face first into the cow shit. The good news is that I see it for what it is in both my mother and myself, so I haven't got any unrealistic expectations for my mother, and I have lots of self-improvement goals for myself.

Suffering is not our lot in life. Negativity is not our lot is life. We can make those choices to jump in the trough with both feet and wallow in that stuff, but that's not what I want for me, or the people I love. Negativity is a bit of a default setting for me, but I know where the dial is, and although it gets a little rusty, and sticky I can adjust that knob. And I've got a hammer, and some pliers to work with when it gets tricky...not to mention some folks who are willing to help me when I kneed another set of eyes for hands.

You're so lucky...

As part of my Parts Work I've been curious about which part is the alcoholic. No answer popped into my head, so why not blog about it? WTF else am I going to to during lock-down besides eat too much and perseverate about shit that makes me feel anxious, and miserable?

So, let's go back to the beginning. Like most kids I grew up with, when I was a pre-schooler my dad was giving me sips of his beer (and I've been told by others hard liquor, which I don't remember personally) whenever mom wasn't looking. I remember I loved sucking the foam off of his freshly cracked Budweiser cans, I remember my mom commenting that I was "staggering just like her dad", but I don't remember feeling drunk til much. I liked the experience of sharing a beer, I liked the taste, but I wasn't seeking to get drunk.

Right around 7 or 8 is when I associated drinking with feeling better; get drunk=solve your problems. I have a clear memory of the late winter day, in which in a state of desperation and despair I searched the ranch for dad's stash. I had remembered days before seeing a schnapps bottle in a snow drift beside the quoncet, but it was gone when I went in search of it. I knew he often kept cans of beer hidden in piles of grain, or under boxes inside of the quoncet, but again my search yielded no treasure, and no relief.

It was yet another kick in my ass; any other day I would stumble across dad's booze stashes, but when I so desperately needed it, I couldn't find a single drop. And alcohol was the only coping skill I was familiar with, and fortunately suicide hadn't yet occurred to me because I think that day might have ended quite differently. Needless to say, I survived the day, but there would be many more like it.

As I got older I had more access to alcohol, and I continued to apply it liberally to try to cope with my internal and external landscapes. And of course it never made anything better, and in fact it being a depressant and all, made my depression and suicidality worse. Eventually I got sober, and learned different ways to cope (See "25 Years" for more details on sobriety).

So, who was this child who so desperately needed alcohol to cope? I know she was struggling with hopelessness, I know that she felt completely alone. I know she had no support from her immediate family, I know she was dealing with a shit-ton of unpleasantries and could only think of one solution.

But who is she? Is she the kid who believes her value is in being the care-taker of the  dysfunctional adults in her life and knows there is no room for her needs? Is it the kid who has stuffed all of the horrors into a Pandora's box (steamer trunk), trying desperately to hold the lid shut to protect everyone from what is inside, and utterly exhausted from carrying this trunk alone? Or is she/he their own Part, a Part that said, "hey, there's too much shit too juggle, we just need to get wasted so we can all put our loads down for a while?

I'm not sure what the answer is right at the moment, so I'll change the subject. The title of this blog is something I hear almost every time I go to a 12-step meeting and someone asks me how old I was when I got sober. And I always want to punch them in the nuts (regardless of whether they physically have them or not, cuz it takes balls to make assumptions about someone's life, right?) because they assume I didn't "hit a bottom" because of my age, or didn't drink for that long. In point of fact I abused alcohol as long as anyone well into their 30's who started drinking at legal age did, and trust me, I hit some bottoms. And, anyone who manages long-term sobriety is lucky as hell, but more importantly, they put a shit-ton of work into it. Here's what makes me lucky: I didn't kill myself before I found recovery, I had someone guide me into therapy which led me to AA, I had a few people early on who supported me and supported my recovery, I was afraid to die, I was so afraid of going to jail that I didn't drink and drive (and wind up killing myself or someone else), long-term I've made better choices about the people I surround myself with and they are a bunch of awesome mutha fuckers.

I miss my brother

I miss my brother.

Well, I miss the idea of my brother. What I mean by that is that I had a picture of who my brother was based on a child's view (I being that child), and after we had a falling out I had to re-evaluate who he really was, and not my fantasy of who he was.

It all came to a head a few years back when he posted a meme on social media, some crap along the lines of "America, where you're free unless your male, white, Christian, heterosexual, or southern." It still makes me sick to my stomach thinking my own flesh-and-blood posted (and believes) such bullshit. That was the day I decided I couldn't let it slide any more. I confronted him with kid-gloves because I knew what a delicate ego he has; I came at it from the angle of my own experience as a queer and a woman, I reminded him of the person I knew him to be when we were kids (the Protector, MY Protector), and how sad it was for me to see his blindness.

His response to my disappointment/admonishment was clear and concise: He immediately unfriended and blocked both me and my wife, and his fiance' did the same to me. That's been 3 or 4 years ago now, and we have had no contact. This weekend would have been our other brother's daughter's wedding...I had planned to go, and wondered if he showed up if we would have had an altercation, or just ignored one another. Covid-19 has taken care of that at least until next year when she plans to have a public renewal of her vows with her new husband.

When my brother made his choice to turn his back on me rather than confront his own biases, and maybe just maybe become a better person I had to take a serious look at him, and our relationship, and my own bias. And I had to grieve the loss of my brother, and grieve the loss of my fantasy of who my brother was. I had to admit that I tolerated the behavior of a grown man who tries to make himself feel powerful through bluster, and anger, and toxic masculinity because I wanted to see the
red-haired boy who had been my hero.

When I was a youngster he was My Big Brother. He was my protector. He was my idol. When my sister was crazy-from-the-drugs and my parents weren't home it was my brother who kept me safe, and kept me distracted from the terror. When the older boys at school were beating me up it was him, not my parents who was mad and said he'd do something about it. He shot guns, and rode a motorcycle, and went off to the army and got a tattoo; and I wanted to be just like him.

For most of my life I have viewed him from that lens. I glossed over the violence, lack of empathy, the homophobia, misogyny, and the racism because "deep down he has a good heart." I'm ashamed that for so long I lied to myself, I let him slide, I made excuses for the person he really was. It's a bitter pill to swallow.

I miss the red-haired boy who taught me how to shoot, who took me down the the beaver dam to ride the 3-wheeler through the mud, he'd kill the son-of-a-bitch who hurt me. But that person doesn't exist, or if he does, he is so buried in toxicity that he's nothing more than a drop of water in a bucket of dye.

I've been exploring my own personality parts, and there is a protector-part of me that models itself after my brother. Like him, it's full of bluster, and rage, but doesn't accomplish a whole lot. Fortunately it sin't the part that I have let run the show.  In confronting him, I had hoped that maybe that red-haired boy would wake up and take the wheel, but no such luck.

I miss that red-haired boy who shot off fire crackers in tuna cans with me, and taught me how to change a carburetor. I miss the red-haired boy who tried to give me a buffer from some of the chaos of our home. I miss the red-haired boy who I thought would grow up to be a hero.

I miss the fantasy brother. But I don't miss the bigot who shamelessly spews racism, or the bully who brags about beating people up in the bar because they look like a "pussy", nor do I miss the man who sees nothing wrong with spouting off about "faggots" to his queer sister. And I don't miss feeling like I have to make excuses for the person that is my brother.

I miss the red-haired boy, but I don't miss my brother.