When I hit a rough
patch, I usually have two choices: to call on the Warrior, the get up and go
survivor who keeps on keeping on, or to call on the Caretaker archetype, the soft,
soothing one who wants to fall back into bed with a cozy blanket and have a
nap.
I am a stubborn mix of
both, Warrior and Caretaker.
It must stem from the way I was raised - I was brought up an army captain Dad, who was an engineer, a planner and builder, a competitive guy who loved sports and worked hard.
He brought us out into the woods
to chop down our own Christmas tree and if we complained our feet were cold he
would encourage us to stamp our feet and clap our hands. He got us out the door
(almost on time) every Sunday, to mass at 11:00 am in spite of my mom’s dawdling or purposeful
resistance to getting ready on time. He was a leader, a manager, a pusher and a
striver. He got things done and he taught us to do the same – shine your shoes,
iron your clothes, stand up straight, eat everything on your plate and don’t
whine!
My dad would push me to compete in races even when I just knew my wee little legs wouldn’t go as fast on skates as the other kids. “I can’t” was my motto. Yet I loved winning at cards, and I was often left “in charge” of my younger siblings. He was my hero in spite of everything.
My mom was an
alcoholic in recovery for most of my life, and as a young mother she was quickly
overwhelmed by having eight kids in ten years, one after the other. She was a beautiful,
bohemian spirit at heart who would have made a great writer or journalist but instead
worked as a secretary and got married at age 21 (1953). She was brought up Catholic,
so no birth control was allowed. She cried easily, used the fly swatter to keep
us in line, but had a kind, generous heart, loved telling stories and at the
bottom was a good caretaker, making us ginger ale and orange juice fizzy drinks
when we had measles, mumps, scarlet fever, or chicken pox….imagine four little girls
all sick at the same time, nestled in our bunkbeds with the blinds drawn, and
her running up and down the narrow stairs in that 3-bedroom house in the
country where the pipes froze often in winter. We lived there until I was
twelve.
All that to say, I grew
up a feminist in my teens, believing she was the weak one, seemingly pushed around
by her stronger, bully husband. She was a homemaker, not a role model for me, not a ‘success’ in the outer world – yet, she is still here,
a survivor at 89, and he died at 83….she, who can barely digest anything and
weighs 90 lbs, has all kinds of health issues from depression to IBS and a heart
valve, still smokes, and still survives.
Who am I to call her weak?
She was the one who
sang to us, Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and smile, smile,
smile. If we were feeling sorry for ourselves, or whimpering, she’d sing, “Nobody
loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going to the garden to eat worms.” We didn’t
cry much in front of her. She grew up in the depression and lived through WWII
so she learned a thing or two about Keeping On.
So I am definitely on
the fence about how to treat myself in a rough patch - not sure how I feel about this self-compassion thing everybody touts in the yoga and
Buddhist community. I am a big proponent of self-care, self-love, and kindness, theoretically. But is it self pity? If I'm truthful with myself, I have a harsh inner critic, nourished and watered from
childhood by the belief in Strength, Courage, Soldiering On with the battle. I hate whiners. Those who fail, are doomed. Those who give up,
die. It’s like I am living with WWII forever in my head. The photos and articles
on the 75th anniversary of Auschwitz drum it in to us – to survive,
you have to resist, you have to believe, you have to fight. Never surrender.
Warrior Courage with Cougar Protector
I’m lying in yoga class when
this insight comes to me. I want to stay in assisted child-pose for another
twenty minutes. I want restorative yoga, not strength building, ab-crunching
plank pose. Yet, I also want that muscle strength so that when I do downward dog
or sun salutation, I can lift myself with ease.
Where is the middle ground,
where I can be strong and soft at the same time? Without fear of collapsing
like my mother into a depressive, hoarding mess, (she survives, but she lives
in a very disorganized house), or becoming too strident and harsh, in army
captain mode, pushing myself beyond my limits all the time, feeling overwhelmed
and fatigued.
Caretaker Archetype
So that is my question
this morning and I don’t have the answer. I do not want to fall into self-pity,
but I also recognize the signs of frozen emotion and know that not allowing myself
to cry is not the answer either.
As I lay there, tearing
up in corpse pose, (the best recompense of a tough yoga class) the feeling of
Presence overcame me. A feeling of a soft, loving power greater than me, a light inside, a
feeling I cannot describe. In that moment, everything was ok. All was well. I wanted to stay there longer and soak it up.
Maybe that is the
middle ground I seek.
When the struggle
quiets down, when the noise in the head calms, when the body lies still. But now, class is over, it’s up and at em, ready to carry that Peace into my day, like a Peace Warrior
fighting with calm, reminding myself to simply be Present, Curious, Aware,
self-compassionate, and kind to others as well. Let the tears fall, too.
For we are all
fighting a hard battle, inside – and we must be kind not only to others, but to ourselves.
