I resume complacency
It’s a dagger to my spirit
Friendly it is not
But it feels good.
I muster strength to break it
Or I’m swept forward by simple gestures: try this…go here…do that…
And then press pause and
resume complacency.
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
There are two modern-day archetypes for a woman (at least this one) The one who loves and understands, makes concessions Then there's the one that says no to all of that I strive for the first and then feel robbed I move to the second and feel mean and cold, you know not very "lady-like" When I was taking care of my dad, insulin shots, glucose checks and constant meal prep I also had to work. I'm a therapist and a school social worker. I love my work But this was hard: managing dad and maintaining the life I had built Where all day long I hold space and no space is held for me I resented him How he'd come up the stairs, sit at the kitchen counter and smile He loves watching the women work One morning as I struggled to get myself out of bed for another round Him, at the counter, me forlorn scrambling his eggs He said, you would feel better if you helped people and smiled. There's a saying, often on mugs, pillows and inside pretty frames: A wise woman once said, "Fuck this shit" and she lived happily ever after.
~
I did say “fuck this shit,” once I found a nurse to come in every weekday morning so I could move him back to his house.
I go to his house on weekends, give the insulin, drop off the groceries and prep the food. This morning, I stayed, ate breakfast with him and had one of our old father/daughter talks I once enjoyed. Sometimes his mind is so clear he becomes the dad I’ve always known.
What I learned from this time of taking care of my dad, and as I still learn because this isn’t over, is although this has been really difficult, I see where I was causing my own suffering. I see how I kept bouncing back from one archetype to the other. As a woman, in the patriarchy, with a dad who is accustomed to the “women’s work,” I felt pressured to do my work with a smile—you know so I could be loved and approved of. But I felt burdened and pissed and abandoned my own needs. And then really pissed being judged by those who have not helped in the ways that I have. My dad didn’t have to take care of his parents, except for one summer taking care of his mom who had Alzheimers. My dad is not a therapist or a social worker. My dad is also not a woman.
So I’d swing to the other archetype and say, “fuck this shit.” It brought relief. It feels good not to give a shit for a bit.
It took my own mental health crisis about a month ago to realize I matter, and I don’t have to be a victim or a martyr to matter. I experienced the weight of caring for others. I began to understand how I was not shielding my emotional, physical, and mental boundaries and no one was going to save me from doing this to myself. Only I was. So I got help.
The days now seem to move a bit more fluidly, sometimes even joyfully. Mentally, I protect my boundaries by doing what is needed without the incessant inner dialogue about what I am missing out on in my own life. Emotionally, I protect my boundaries by creating my own support structures and physically, I protect my boundaries by giving my home and work back to myself. I notice when I am with my dad, like this morning, I do not feel burdened. I am with him. I do not know how much longer I will be able to.
Thanks for listening,
Nikki, The Soul Reporter
I went here
did this
and walked away.
It’s something after the month and a half I’ve had.
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
Back then you didn't take on the world's problems You knew they were there And set out your worry dolls down on your windowsill at night Sometimes you were visited by an elf Who squeezed your hand tight and Told you bad things. But you also played It settled you At day you explored and refined At night the worries surfaced And you knew what to do. If life is about balance for you Where is the play now? ~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
Without the pain
I would not have found the poetry.
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
My dad got into my bones I didn't know he was there until he started to fade away The other night at Red Lobster he talked about bunnies eating lettuce— the kind on his plate He didn't just talk, he mimicked their bunny eating ways I thought: what is he talking about.... and what does this have to do with anything.... You see, for me, the conversation has changed as my dad's brain gets chipped away by diabetes or alzheimer's— we don't know. He says it’s spiritual, he's going "higher" so maybe it's that But gone is the comfort of bringing him anything and him always knowing the right thing to say or when not to Now I speak and he munches on his salad like a bunny and laughs Later we sit on his driveway at dusk There are the bunnies! They munch on his grass and driveway crack microgreens I see what he means There are two chairs on his lawn— two choices on where to sit and watch the bunnies munch As we watch together the crows caw and he says the crows crow, the squirrels squirrel and, yes dad, the bunnies bunny This is his lesson now He was once an athlete, top of his football and baseball game Then handball It's hard to see the cuts and bruises on his body from losing balance Once a strong, intimidating man—and still so damn stubborn— he now laughs, smiles and attunes to my emotions, even the angry ones about what is happening to him Lou, my dad's name, is Lou-ing, becoming more real As he fades and goes higher the strength and wisdom of him is in my bones.
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
A poem.
Tell me how much you love him
Tell me how much you want to leave him
Tell me how he hurts you
Tell me how he loves you
Tell me why you’re afraid to stay
Tell me why you’re afraid to leave
Tell me why you fear you’ve been replaced
Tell me what you still want with him
Tell me how hard this has been
Tell me how this love affair began
Tell me how he holds you back
Tell me how he lets you drown
Tell me how you hold yourself back
Tell me how you let yourself drown
Tell me how you suffer
Tell me everything until there’s nothing left to tell
Tell me everything so we both understand and can move on.
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
What do you do when the world, at least as you knew it, is ending? How do you grieve that?
For me, a white cisgender woman, it started to end globally on November 9, 2016. I went on a bike ride the day after election night to my usual spot— an “island” on the Mississippi River. Before this day, I’d go there to reflect on my personal trials or to escape them. However, there was a new kind of angst— not only the weight of my personal life on my shoulders, but the collective life. It is not that I did not care before, this just felt different.
I wish I could find the words to express where I find myself now, 6 1/2 years later. I’d like a story or fable that would help me frame it, or to write my own if I could focus long enough and stay motivated. What I do know, what I am beginning to feel is there has been, and is, a lot of loss personally and collectively, a collective reckoning and grief process.
Our primitive brain likes to make it one thing because then that one thing can be fixed, managed or contemplated easily. But we are not in primitive times. These are complex times. We are complex and to think in this way is difficult, but necessary. These days, the loss isn’t just A, B or C, it is the whole damn alphabet and then some.
Just in my own life, I am started to comprehend the losses and how each one intermingles and connects to the others, and as they do their capability of fully sinking me is real.
The sinking has been happening. As I reflect I see I’ve sunk many times. As a teenager I wondered how could one person, still so young, cry so much. As a 50-year-old it is starting to make sense as I am sinking like that again and again.
Yesterday I could not find one think to pull me out. Then my husband asked if I wanted ice cream. In the ice cream line I found myself smiling, then I asked him if he tried the frozen peanut butter cups. Later a stranger approached us, happy and friendly as can be, and asked how we made our “love it” treat. Before this, I watched a small child look up at her older brother, saying “again” over and over to pick her up as she squealed. Once we got our dark chocolate with extra peanut butter ice cream, we sat on a bench outside and I saw the sliver of moon. I didn’t really eat my ice cream because the point was not the ice cream.
On the way home, Neil Diamond’s Hello Again came on shuffle. I cried again, a deep, hurting cry as if I was in physical pain. I said to myself: it’s my mom. She was and always will be my first experience here on Earth as me, Nikki DiVirgilio. Nothing will ever change this. And she, my first experience, has dementia and I miss her. There is a hole in me. There are several now, but she is at the center of them all.
It is weird for me to state this and experience it to be true. My relationship with her has always felt like a loss, but what it is now feels like that sliver moon, it is all that is left and what I had with her was more than I realized. She was a best friend, someone I called to vent to, someone I hung out with. Someone who created a million and one beautiful experiences and distractions for me, for us— vacations, cabin getaways, shopping, lunches, going to the “new” place and buying the “new” thing. Over time all of this became hollow for me, but now, sinking into nothingness, they were the things that kept me afloat. These were the days. That was my mom.
When I woke up the next morning, after several days of sinking, I didn’t care much about anything (balance, right?). I wondered what was the point, especially after reading a Twitter thread stating a very real possibility for the 2024 election. It’s not good. It’s bleak, and it seems the world, including my own, is over in the way I knew it. I don’t really know 1) how to navigate these times or 2) how to grieve or if I even can fully. But the sweater I bought was on my front step. I opened it, tried in on to make sure I loved it, and instead of folding it, tags on, saving it for a special occasion, I took it off, cut the tags, put it back on and decided today is the special occasion.*** 🌙🍦
Be well during this time,
~Nikki, The Soul Reporter
***snippets from a memoir I’m writing…well, several actually.
Sometimes I’m amazed at new insights about myself, especially at my age.
One I just discovered was so deeply rooted, I thought it was just my personality.
This pattern’s motive is for one single use—the holy grail of psychological mechanisms: self-protection.
Here it is: if I am quiet and shut down around someone or in an environment—it is because for one reason or another- I do not feel safe.
I am not shut down and quiet because I am:
a) an introvert
b) weird
c) anti-social.
I am shut down and quiet because actually…….
I LOVE MYSELF. I CARE ABOUT MYSELF.
What I needed in order to see this pattern: to—finally—be with people who, and in environments that, create a sense of safety and worthiness.
When I was a little girl, I was just quiet. I kept to myself. The more quiet and to myself, the more isolated and therefore, weird I thought I was. But, recently when I noticed myself being shut down and quiet around certain people, I also noticed the story I was telling about myself: you’re weird and everyone thinks you’re weird. And then the berating: what is wrong with you? Why can’t you just talk to people? Do you think you are better than they are…? (Well, I mean yes, sometimes I do).
But— a stream of high-level consciousness broke through. I connected this adult moment in real time with my child self. I saw my child self do exactly what grown up self is doing and realized: I AM NOT WEIRD. I may not even be an introvert. My little kid self who shut down to stay safe did so because she loved her self.
A-fucking-ha!
“It is in the homes and in childhood that the wreckage of human life begins.”
~Katherine Tingley
Self-Reflective Practice
This week, and quite honestly from now on, consider your personality traits, that you think you are just stuck with or maybe even like, could be deeply ingrained self-protective mechanisms. For many of us, in our childhoods, conditions were harsh. These harsh conditions showed up in our childhood homes, in the schools we attended and in the world we lived in. Harsh doesn’t have to mean abuse. It can just mean unkind or not hospitable to the souls and spirits that we are.
To protect ourselves from harshness our wisdom created mechanisms to keep us safe and protected. Mine was to shut down. What was/is yours?
Once you discover it, pay attention to it. Where does it show up? Consider why. Do you have to hang on to it to keep you safe or can you start to let it go? Could it be that you are more than what you think your personality is? Now that you are a grown up, is it possible to be safe even when around unsafe people?
Finding our self-protective patterns can be a tedious task. And some are buried more deeply than others. I am 47, and just discovered my deeply ingrained pattern. But you know, now that I have, I feel lighter. I feel freer. I feel more myself. And, I know I have worked to build or perhaps, uncover, the foundation within myself— a foundation I stand safely on— even in the harshest conditions.
As usual, reach out if needed. I am here to hold space for your stories, your challenges, your process.
To learn more about me and my services, click here. To reach me for questions or to share, click here or email me at thesoulreporter@gmail.com
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~The Soul Reporter
At middle-age, which is where I am, I have been at the edge of the unknown a few times. I have taken myself there deliberately, and I have been mysteriously taken there without warning. I am at the edge of the unknown again. I am going through the shift of no longer being a woman who can conceive. I am going through the shift of no longer being a mother whose duties are nearly every minute of my existence. I am going through the shift of who I am as a wife, and realizing I want to be a partner, not a role. I am going through the shift of being full-time mom, to full-time student, to do-I-want-to-be-a-full-time-employee when really all I want to do is go-deeper-into-my-authentic-nature-and-immerse-in-whatever-is-my-soul’s-intent.
The possibilities of this time of life seem endless. The freedom of this new space sometimes takes my breath away. It’s a time of great unknown and seemingly instability where I don’t know how or where my next steps will unfold. It is also a time I know and trust myself more than ever before— and that is proving to be everything.
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