Tag Archives: patriarchy

Archetypes

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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

No Matter How You Slice it— Patriarchy & a Poem

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I was asked by my husband to watch a video with Mike Tyson interviewing Sadhguru. It offered many helpful nuggets to help me through the challenging time I’m in. And something else stuck out, I’d be surprised if any man would notice. This is the first piece (don’t worry, it will come together).

The second piece is how I’ve been impacted by what has been going on with my dad. He was hospitalized early September. He then has spent 3 weeks in a transitional care unit. Tomorrow he goes home, with advisement of 24-hour care. I could go into this loop, but I won’t because here is the main point— the fear and the deep-rooted patterning that has surfaced because of this.

In a nutshell: the patterning is around saving dad. I also felt I had to save mom. This has led to me thinking I have to save everyone. It has caused significant stress, and now causing harm to my body and mind. And why do I try to “save” everyone? Because I felt, for one reason or another, my primary caregivers needed saving. Underneath that, I love them and care for them. Underneath that, or maybe on top of that is, if they are okay, I am okay. But they aren’t okay so I need to save them so I am okay. Hope that makes sense. And now I have to leave this loop so I don’t get you, the reader, lost.

So this morning, reflecting on the video, In my journal and began to open the window to my fear. Mike’s first question to Sadhguru was: why am I afraid? I wrote: The fear— my life will be taken over or completely taken for the needs of my father. I don’t want this. This is a whole can of worms I am not opening here.

As I continued to write in my journal, in the back of my mind was a part of the talk that I don’t think Sadhguru even intended to share.

But first back to my dad. As he thinks about going home, how ready he is and how he tells me it will be okay and he can take care of himself, I breakdown to him and tell him how terrible I’ve been feeling. How stressed and how afraid I am of losing the life that I have to take care of him.

He said: well the women here (at the facility) have been helping me.

I said, dad, yes, but they aren’t following you home. It will be me, one woman, who has a life she likes and wants to continue in.

And he says, well what else do you have to do, you have the time to do that.

And I said, dad, no I don’t. You don’t know all that I’ve had to do in the background of your life.

I’ve been paying his bills, talking with doctors, nurses, lawyers, care coordinators. Worrying about where he will live. Taking care of his plants, checking his mail. This one woman.

My dad is a very spiritual man. Meaning he has meditated for 30+ years. He has studied with the theosophical society. He reads a lot, he writes and he and I did Sadhguru’s Inner Engineering program. My dad, with his other faculties declining, has entered into an expanded consciousness that is either right on point or delusional. I can’t quite discern. And while I keep his earthy life of bills and health and daily living afloat, he can continue to float amongst the clouds in the spiritual realm. Meanwhile, I’d like my own state of bliss. I’d like to write my own books. Maybe I could be a woman up on a stage giving my spiritual perspective.

And here is where Sadhguru comes back in. He chose to share with the audience that his father, within in the next few hours, will be dead. He said not be there with him does not mean he does not care and he sent his “girl” (maybe his daughter or granddaughter) to be with his dad (did any man catch that). Sadhguru was with the Americans and Mike Tyson. His girl was with the dying dad.

There are so many layers to the space I am in, but this one keeps hitting. This one where it is the goddam women trying to save us all and I just can’t stop thinking about it. I just can’t stop thinking about how yes, the underlying and very real psychological layers of conditioning and the trauma of childhood neglect does indeed contribute to this fear of my life being taken over AND also, the very real threat of a woman’s life being taken over by man and his needs and his privileged requirements and expectations. Where his life stays afloat while the women work their asses off in the background of their existence.

And here is my sad little poem to reflect on this time I am in: 

The poetry has stopped. 
Sometimes I think this is the biggest loss. 

I'm surrounded by those who need
But never ask 
I just do
Too much 
And yet nothing at all.

***full disclosure- I realize some victim narrative here, that may be dramatic or even false when unpacked to its bare bones. However, I am not at the bare bones. I am still in the meat and it occurs as salty and sour. My writings are moments I share as I process my experience. They aren’t meant to be fixed or static. I continue to evolve, grow, expand.

I also recognize there likely was no ill intent in Sadhguru’s words. This is only how it occurred to me based on where I am in my own unfolding. And lastly, I recognize to care for an elderly parent is different than caring for them in other ways. Two things can be true at the same time: I don’t want to give up my life and I want to help my dad during this time in his life. I also know that I have taken on this “burden” of trying to save others as a way to stabilize my purpose in this life and it is no longer stabilizing me. It is debilitating me. There are other possibilities right now and I am open and willing to discover what they are so a more authentic, stabilizing and sustainable future can be created.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me,

~Nikki, The Soul Reporter

The Moon Turned to Snowflakes

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The moon turned to snowflakes

The night a woman’s rights were taken. ~ a dream I had

That was the dream the night before RvW was overturned. The sun, to my left, and the moon, to my right shared the same panel of sky. I stood in a boat, on the ocean, near the shore. I was mesmerized by the moon, for the sun was just a faint, dull circle shrouded in gray haze. The moon, also shrouded but not in haze, but within a shiny half black and silver cavern. I could not take my eyes off it. And then the moon crystallized, transforming into giant, majestic snowflakes. A mist began to overtake land and sea, and the tide turned; chaos ensued and I had to get to shore. But the point was the snowflakes.

~

At the request of a therapist, I’m again, picking up the book, Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. I reread the introduction. In it she lists symptoms of a woman who has lost her Wild. I have the majority of them, but this one captured me: “…or intertia because that is the safest place for one who has lost her instincts.” I opened my journal and wrote: I have lost my fucking instincts! Last time I truly had those was in my early 20’s. I was with a child, but without a man, and not tainted, domesticated or yet fully reactive to my childhood trauma.

Not only have I lost my instincts, I’ve lost my creativity. It reminds me of season 4 of Stranger Things. Eleven has lost her “superpowers” (of course given and rediscovered to her by “man.”) Like a miner I am digging, seeking in the dark where I lost my superpowers. Was it one event or the slices and cuts of many….? I am also asking, is it too late? In Stranger Things, they keep seeking, digging and fighting and face the darkest spaces and entities just to understand, restore balance and help the people.

The reading of “Wolves” is naming the longing, the awakening of my Wild and also the resistance and push back to what oppresses it. I’m seeing how deeply I have blamed myself for the inertia that caused the weight gain, the depression, the silence, the relationships I am still in and the books I’ve still not written. I’ve been domesticated, altered and suppressed by the patriarchal culture— maybe not specifically and overtly, but generally, collectively and covertly. Inertia, then, was and often still is my safe place.

But I am awakening, beginning little by little to open my eyes, seeing the oppressor for what it is and seeing the impact it has had on me, on everything and everyone. Yesterday on my walk, I took the “short cut”, over a wooded bridge across a marshy area. I stopped and noticed the red-winged blackbirds in the reeds, the cattails bowing like patrons at a queen’s parade and the water, murky with green algae film. On the surface it looks stagnant and toxic— inert. But, who or what but Life itself knows what is present below, what organisms are a vital part to all of Life.

I have become swamped. Heavy, murky, seemingly lost my way and can barely move. Within my own inertia a self has been formed, a self safe and hidden in the murky waters, afraid to move too far from the swamp. Stay too long, naturally toxins, disease and self-defeating behaviors flourish. But open my eyes and really see where I am and start to smell the stink of unmoving water and start wiggling my fingers and toes, and becoming mesmerized, not by something more in some other place beyond myself as I did in my youth, but mesmerized by what I know is already present, and becoming the snowflake inside the moon. 🌙

~Nikki, The Soul Reporter