Authenticity & Being

“Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity – I mean the true simplicity of a rightly and nobly ordered mind and character, not that other simplicity which is only a euphemism for folly.”  ― Plato

Authenticity. Being.  Being true to "who you are."  These are ideas I've struggled with.  Like - what does that even mean, "to be authentic," "to be yourself?"  Which self?  In which context?  

Who I am in my head, as I'm writing this, is the same and yet different from the person who sits in a conference room full of people picking apart a weird use case trying to squeeze it into a very structured format (or... maybe not so much actually, lol!), is very different from the person at lunch making awkward small talk.

I often feel way more comfortable in a situation if I have a specific role.  If I go to an event and know that I have some specific role to play other than milling around socializing.  It comes along with social anxiety, I suppose.  Without a specific role, I would rather observe from a quiet-ish vantage point.  I want to have been there, but also I want to not be overwhelmed by All The Things Going On. 

Sometimes I think about how easy it can be to get trapped in a role - where one is valued for the role they play rather than the person they are.  I feel like I trap myself in this often.  I play the role and it's the role that is what is appreciated and not necessarily me as a person separate from that role, and once I step outside that role, once I'm outside that context, I'm always rather afraid that people won't like me. As if being liked is everything it's cracked up to be (I suspect not).

And I'm getting to an age where... I don't want to care if people actually like me or not... at least not as a reason for trapping myself in boxes.  And just like I'm not everyone's cup of tea, not everyone is my cup of tea either - it doesn't need to be so.  

I was listening to Brené Brown talk about Why Your Critics Aren't The Ones Who Count, & she said something (well, 20 minutes worth of things)... she said, I guess, two things that have stuck with me this week.   The first thing was, "If you aren't in the arena getting your ass kicked with me, I'm not interested in your feedback."  Which resonates.  As much as having a box is a comfortable place for me, the truth is, my boxes don't fit me very well anymore.  There are parts of me that have been breaking past the confines and realizing that I cannot be all roles required of me, nor do I want to be.  I... will never be a conventional business woman.  I have neither the attitude, the hair, nor the patience for it.  I tried, I really did.  And I felt lost for years.  I encountered terrible burnout.  I was... sufficiently competent.  Ok. Some would say I was very competent and others would wholeheartedly disagree. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Whatcha gonna do.  Haters gonna hate.  And management has a big. huge. target painted on their backs.  As do women.  And women managers. And again - if we're talking about authentic being... neither the attitude, the hair, nor the patience for it.  And I took a lot of contradictory, impossible to reconcile, feedback from people whose butts were not in the arena with me.  And also from those who were.  I'm still picking that time apart.  Separating the meat from the bones and stirring those bones around in the pot.

The second thing she said is that if you don't care at all, you cease to be vulnerable... the whole quote:

When you are thinking about the arena or preparing to go into the arena, there is fear, self-doubt, comparison, anxiety, and shame. When people know this, they armor up and when they armor up from the vulnerability, they are cutting themselves off from the birthplace of love, joy, belonging, trust, empathy, creation, and innovation.

Shortly after I read this, a friend quoted something else to me that resonated at a similar pitch - something about 'truth and cruelty sometimes being wound too closely.' When you (and by you, I mean I) close your (my) self off and try to be come invulnerable, sometimes what happens is that the truth becomes a weapon.  Rather than using the truth to build trust and belonging, love, joy, empathy... truth becomes a steel cold boundary that cuts in both directions, isolating and cutting any who dare to cross too near. And I sometimes use this cold truth as my protection - "But it's true."  Though it is neither kind, nor compassionate, and really it is only serving the purpose of separation.

All of which is a long way of getting to - what does it mean to be authentic to yourself - not lazy, not mindlessly "because I want to", but to the seed, the core, of the person that exists beyond the boxes, and the roles, and the mere 'purposes served'?  And in that, may I use truth, cut free from unnecessary cruelty, as a knife to cut myself free from the boxes and roles so that I can choose when I step into a role, if I step into a role, so that I am acting knowing I am in alignment with that "authentic" me - open to "love, joy, belonging, trust, empathy, creation, and innovation," and yes, even some (maybe calculated) vulnerability, and the courage to show up and step into the arena of authenticity time and time again.   

To that end - from a beloved story:

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.”

― Margery Williams Bianco, The Velveteen Rabbit

With love, (compassionate and accountable) truth, and curiosity,
--Susan

It's THAT Time of Year

“May the light illuminate your hearts and shine in your life every day of the year. May everlasting peace be yours and upon our Earth.” 
― Eileen Anglin

The holidays are upon us.  This year, for the first year in a long time, I will be working through the holidays with the exception of the officially mandated days off.  I may, however, depending on how many people go into the office that last week of the year, just work from home that week.  That remains to be seen... 

For various reasons, when possible, it is my principle to take that time off.  Not only because of all the happenings in the last week, but also because it's a good time to take some space, to make some space, and look back, look forward and re-orient myself in space.  To close out what needs closing, to start the process of opening and refreshing what needs opened and refreshed.  The last few years I've done a long list of questions about what I've done and what has changed from this time last year and it's always interesting to do these years in review.  It's just the beginning of the month, and the end of the year feels so close and so far - as it always does.

I love this time of year - I think it's that despite the darkness, everyone puts up tiny little beacons of hope in all this seasonal grim.  The trees along the streets get lit, houses get fancy lights (some houses get fancy lights like WHOA!).  Every where I turn, there's these little glimmerings of hope that the light will return, but in the meantime we have these tiny lights and they sparkle and bring a bit of joy.

This is also the season of the crackling earthy wood on the fire.  We don't indulge in this joy very often, not having wood easily available and being loath to pay grocery store prices for two bundles that barely last us an evening, so when we do, it's a special occasion.  Granted, we also don't because our downstairs fireplace, where we would probably have most of them, doesn't draft properly (lol, or AT ALL), so it's never been used. Except that one time when we found out that it doesn't draft properly... *cough*  

And my candles - these I burn almost year round, though not necessarily *every* night.  Just most nights.  But there's something particularly calming and soothing about a candle, whether it's dancing and flickering or just chillin' doing it's thing. 

And so in this season of tiny lights in the darkness, rest, reflect, and ready yourselves - the new year and the new world await, and they will be exactly what we make of them.

With love, and curiosity, and tiny little beacons of hope, 
--Susan

Thanksgiving

“What are you most thankful for?” she asked. My reply came easily. “Being too blessed to have any hope of answering that question.”  --Richelle E. Goodrich

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you and yours!  The past couple years I've done a gratitude reflection for each day in November. I didn't do that this year, but I remain grateful for all of the wonderful people in my life, and countless other things.  

And I totally thought about what I was going to write about & it's all lost in a cozy tryptophan haze. We had a fire in the fireplace, way too much food, good company, and it was all good.  More to be thankful about. 

I've been on a knitting tear lately.  Fingerless gloves, a hat, another hat... it is just the thing that apparently wants to happen right now.  I feel a little guilty because it seems like there's something else I should probably be doing, but there's always more to do and if you don't make time in your life to do the things that make you happy, then... well, that's not much of a life, so... I guess I'm knitting a bunch right now and other things will come back around too. I think I'm simmering a bunch of stuff in the back of my mind and the hands busy lets me mull on the things that are simmering...

So, super short one today because full, tryptophan haze, and a peaceful contented gratefulness for all of you who listen to me ramble each week.  Thank you, I'm grateful. ❤️

Love, curiosity, and always enough,
--Susan

Trees, They Grow High & Leaves They Do Grow Green

Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life. -- Hermann Hesse

Yeah.  I've been thinking about trees.  Don't get carried away - I'm not the Lorax, but I've been thinking about them a bunch.

We're getting our first big windstorms of the season, so the road up to our house is covered in fir needles and maple leaves and branches of various sizes.  You almost can't see the actual road under all of it.  Eventually the road sweeper truck will come by and clean it all up, but until then it's very... rustic... 

So besides watching the trees wave back and forth in the storms, and thinking about the fact that I really do need to get to sweeping at least the walkway? 

I've been thinking about this article, and specifically, this quote:

The forest comprehends. Com prehendere: “together” “catch hold of.” The forest grasps and knits many strands of understanding: biochemical, genetic, physiological, and cultural.

I love when people take words apart and decipher them to bring deep meanings to surface, like has been done here.  Together, catch hold of.  I wish we as a species together caught hold of so much more... It absolutely requires the full participation of the broad spectrum of diversity, though.  The article goes on to point out that,

In Tennessee, conversion of oak-hickory forests to pine plantations about halves the number of bird species living in the forest, surely an indication that plantations come with an ecological cost in this region. But measures of forest biodiversity are like counts of neurons in a brain: They sketch a general pattern, telling us little about how losses of species or brain cells affect the intelligence of the whole.

HALVES.  Tree plantations *half* the number of bird species in the forest.  What else is it wiping out with it?  Such a deep cost.  I'm still very much in the process of digesting this article.  

Then there was The Wisdom of Trees: Walt Whitman on What Our Silent Friends Teach Us About Being Rather Than Seemingfrom Maria Popova'sBrain Pickings. In a world that's obsessed with appearing a particular way, a tree doesn't 'appear' to be anything other than exactly what it is.  It's a tree.  Just... don't make my quote it all, just go read it. It's an short read, but full of all kinds of good things to chew on.

And - forest as metaphor in folk and fairy tales.  The forest is often the container for at least a part of the story - Red Riding Hood goes through the woods, Hansel and Gretel get abandoned in the woods (multiple times even!), King Arthur and his knights always seem to be traipsing through the forests, Baba Yaga lives in the forest, Robin Hood, and so on.  The embodiment of some risk, some adventure, the unknown, opportunities and challenges and transformation.  

And as I was thinking about that, serendipitously Andrew Simms starting off with this quote inWe need new fairy stories and folk tales to guide us out of today’s dark woods,

With natural forces running amok and wolves prowling in the shady woods of our workplaces, reality seems stranger than a folk tale or fairy story. Our daily lives seem to have become as dark and disturbing as anything dreamed up by the brothers Grimm, or written down by Charles Perrault, the great 17th-century chronicler of folk and fairytales.

Sort of a segue into the folk and fairy tales we need, the stories and warnings that we need to be creating for ourselves and future generations.  

Trees, trees, trees, and forests, the woods, a copse, weald, a grove... If I keep talking about trees, pretty soon the Lorax is going to show up and start telling me even more about them, and then I'm going to start rambling about how mushrooms and trees have a symbiotic relationship and from there who knows where we go?

Off into the woods, I suppose, on a grand adventure!

With sylvan love and curiosity,
--Susan

As I Was Out Walkin'

All mushrooms are edible; but some only once. - Croatian proverb

The weather is turning and I am trying to keep finding my motivation to go out in the chill and blustery... Motivation is... somewhat reduced.  But I do try to take the opportunity to take smaller more frequent excursions, whether it's intentionally scheduling a mtg in a different building, or just walking with someone ostensibly to discuss some matter at hand... that could probably wait, but walk... :D

It was on one of these such excursions that I extended, that I found fabulous mushrooms this week!  It looks like one of the ones in the top right corner had some little critter decide to try it... and then decide to leave the rest. The one on the left looks like broccoli left in the fridge waaaaaay too long!

The ones in the bottom right were just adorable.  I liked the orange that evolves into the more pale color. And they're just such a nice *mushroom-y* shape.  I want to hug them!  

For some reason, I'm not entirely sure why, thinking about mushrooms has also led me to think about Baba Yaga and her house with chicken feet.  I mean - to be fair, there have been several posts on my facebook feed that have talked about Baba Yaga and her house with chicken feet, but still.  They all sort of go together.  Much like Baba Yaga who can be both a hero and a villain, sometimes even in the same story, as capricious as she wants to be, mushrooms can be both good and bad as well.  There are some mushrooms that are darn tasty, but they have to be cooked or are extremely poisonous, but the toxins they release while cooking are akin to huffing jet fuel, so you also don't really want to cook them in a space without *great* ventilation!  Like -- how did people figure out these tasted good?  Other mushrooms are super tasty, but will irreparably destroy your liver the next day/s.  Some mushrooms are kind and unassuming, like the common button mushroom and crimini.  And the crimini's more mature presentation, the portobello -- it's the same mushroom, but much bigger and literally more matured.  Some mushrooms you can eat and then you can't any more and no one's sure when it shifts. And other mushrooms are just really best left where they are because they taste awful.  I suppose since they are a kingdom in and of themselves, that's only fair that they'd have a tremendous variability.  And we're still discovering all the things they do, and can do.  There are some trees that won't live without their symbiotic mushroom.  Many mushrooms basically spread information throughout the area they live in to the trees and other plants surrounding them. 

So much we still don't even know about mushrooms.  And apparently, we're still putting together pieces about Baba Yaga as well!

IN OTHER NEWS - the first version of the Odyssey has been translated by a woman, Emily Wilson.  I am so looking forward to reading this new translation.  It looks amazing! 

With love, all the rain brings (mushrooms), and curiosity,

—Susan

On the Wings of Medusa

You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing. --Helene Cixous

Yeah.  No one ever thinks about the fact that Medusa had wings.  Everyone is so caught up in the snakes in her hair, that they don't even notice that she can fly too!  

I've been thinking a lot about Medusa.  This was one of my favorite Halloween costumes ever.  The moment at which she realizes the serpents on her head.  I was going to do the curls again this year, and couldn't find the rags that I use when I (really rarely) do rag curls. So I did just the serpents.  

Medusa is endlessly fascinating to me.  Everyone treats her as if she's been cursed but:

• She has the ability to set and defend her boundaries.  Like - you just don't mess with her - if she says stop or I'll turn you to stone, and you don't stop, well... she'll turn you to stone.  Boom. 

• She can fly - the ability to rise above it all and move on.  Who can deny there are times when they wish they had the capability to just sprout wings and go?  (Come on, even in rush hour traffic?)

• She always has company.  Little friends that whisssper ssecretsss in her earssss.  Rumor has it that sometimes she gets tired of always having to feed them baby mice, though.

• The look that turns men to stone is lightening and when she roars, it's thunder.  Literally.  If you were worried about thunder and lightening storms before? Well... raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copperhead serpents and freshly shed pythons... 

These things seem way more like gifts to me than they do curses.  

All the myths claim she was ugly, but look at all the paintings and drawings of her (ok, except that one that looks suspiciously Kali-like) -- all the rest of them she's really... actually... quite beautiful.  But then, how often have we walked down the street and been catcalled, and then because when we ignored or otherwise rejected the come-on, was part of the response 'ugly'?  It's not her ugliness, it's their projection of resentment against her self-determinism.  

Medusa's head hung over women's shelters in Greece.  The women all knew - she was a protector and defender of women and her "punishment" was actually her gift.They all also knew that the serpents on Medusa's head had long signified women's wisdom and ways of knowing and being in the world.  In the lands where Medusa was said to live, serpents were said to represent luck and joy.  

I'm being a terrible librarian and not citing my sources.  Things I hate when other people do, I'm going to do right now because of so many reasons. I'm sorry and not sorry.  You don't come here for peer reviewed content anyway, right? 

With love, wings, serpents, and curiosity,
--Susan

Happy (Slightly Early!) Halloween!

I feel the nights stretching away
thousands long behind the days
till they reach the darkness where
all of me is ancestor. 
― Annie Finch

This is THE LONG AWAITED season in our house.  We barely managed to hold out until September this year... as is often the case... before putting up our decorations.  This is the season of mushrooms and monsters and all the things that roam and rove in the night - cats and bats and flickering pumpkins that think everything is hilarious...

So in the Halloween mindset am I right now that as I was driving past the grocery store the other evening, on my way home from work, I saw the sign that said, "Extra lean gourds..." Which seemed reasonably weird because, I mean, yes, pumpkins arre low fat and it is decorative gourd season, but wasn't this taking the whole diet thing a little far? And it wasn't until I was practically past it that my brain said..., "Hey, so... I was just thinking, I think we didn't read that right... I think it said extra lean GROUND beef... not actually anything about gourds..."  Heh.  And so that's about how my week's been going!

It's that time of year when the sun dips close enough to the horizon that it's vitamin D supplementation time.  It's the time of year when the leaves that are changing are all lit up like campfires, or crunchy on the ground as I walk.  The sun is setting noticeably earlier now, sun down by just before 6pm. It seems like just a couple weeks ago, it was going down at 7... which I suppose it was.  

It's raining more often, but maybe not as often as I'd wish still.  Perhaps that is yet to come. I miss the sound of rain upon the roof when it's not raining. I need to spend more time looking for mushrooms. I saw a few this week, but in the well-manicured spaces around work, they may not get that much of a chance to come up.  

I hope everyone has a spookily safe Halloween with all the treats your hearts desire.

With love and curiosity,
--Susan

Gotchu Boo!

The house smelled musty and damp, and a little sweet, as if it were haunted by the ghosts of long-dead cookies. - Neil Gaiman

While 'tis the season, it seems like we should talk ghost stories.

People tell me things. A lot.  A majority of the time, actually, they're asking me things because they're mistaking me for someone who knows or is willing to help them.  Which... ok. Sometimes, but not always.

But a respectable amount of times they tell me things and then look embarrassed and say, "I don't know why I told you that..." e.g., "I've always wanted a dolphin tattoo and my family would totally disown me if I did that because Reasons." Um, I'm sorry to hear that, nice grocery clerk lady, you're really nice and you should get a tattoo if you want one, without having to deal with familial repercussions like that... Some stories, I can't tell because people have asked me not to tell them because they're their stories and fair enough. 

The rest of them? WELL.  

When I was in college, I had a friend who made us run about a mile and a half through the woods because she was really insistent something was following us.  Which, suppose it's possible, we were in the woods south east of Olympia and there can occasionally be predators out there, but... generally running is the wrong response (because predator thinks 'yay! prey!')... she was *super* freaked out.  We got to the car fine.  In the car, she started telling me that aliens had kidnapped her former mother-in-law.  Great detail about weird disappearing in the woods and whatnot.  Her former mother-in-law had reappeared, and just wouldn't ever talk about what happened.  Who knows?  

Another friend told me about seeing floating lights in the woods.  I've been told about being tucked in as they were falling asleep by prior residents of houses.  Apparitions of domestic violence incidents.  And more.  I generally get one to two of this type a story each year.  

And here's the thing about these stories - these are not stories where people are pulling my leg.  I know when they're doing that.  Something happened, they don't know what it was, and our minds being human minds, map the experience to something that seems to fit the bill.  Humans really want things to *make sense*.  And things that we experience don't always make sense.  Sometimes there's things we really don't have a framework for what we experienced that helps us with our sense making.  

And most of the time people preface this with, I haven't told anyone else this because they'd never believe me.  And I'm (almost) always curious enough to find this irresistible to follow up with, "... oh yeah?"  I should really start making notes on the things people tell me a little closer to when they tell me, while the memory is fresh in my head.

Do I know what happened?  Nope!  Do I believe that they know what happened?  Not necessarily.  Do people need someone they can share these stories with who won't judge them?  Yep.  Am I always the right person?  No, probably not, but sometimes they know they can tell me and it's out before either of us catch it... but I still find their stories fascinating, most of the time (when I'm not, I can shut down the discussion pretty quickly). 

Love, Boos, and Curiosity,
--Susan