My Own Private Fan Club.

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety,” he wrote.

Granted we later slept together. But I digress.

I had the good fortune to spend time last night with several women I admire. I shared with them what’s going on with my father and my having to make the decision to attend his wedding in lieu of performing in the play in which I’m cast.

One of them reflected: “I’m sorry your dad is not able to see you.”

And when I listen to this more deeply and clearly, it is a bell of truth.

The fantasy and illusion I’ve abided by for years has been that if I am a good daughter, a good girl, a devoted and doting woman, then I will be seen. The delusion is that my people-pleasing will make him see me. But. This is false.

I have tried many times, this path of behaving. And I’ve tried its opposite, being a wanton, crazed, rebellious teen and young adult, in order to be seen.

But what struck me this morning was this image: You know when someone has a lazy eye, and you’re not really sure where to look, so sometimes you just look at their forehead? Or if you’re trying to avoid someone’s eye for another reason, you focus somewhere else that sort of looks like you’re looking at them, but you’re not?

That’s how I feel with my dad. That he never actually looks directly at me, which is why I’ve tried to make the trappings around me so much larger or different or “approvable” or “disapprovable.” If you can’t see me, maybe you’ll see the life I’ve built that meets with your military/engineer’s strict sense of correct.

If I have the job you can brag about, … but that’s not me. I am not my job.

If I have the relationship with you you can brag about, … but that’s not me. We don’t know each other.

If I have the life you can brag about, … but I’ve tried that. You threw my own failings in my face.

I have tried to make the external parts of me approvable enough for you. But even those periphery trappings (and they are “trappings”) have not been enough to hone your focus onto the all of me. Me in my entirety.

I didn’t know that was what I’ve been seeking until my friend told me he saw me. I didn’t know that was what I’ve been missing, and making a pretzel out of my life and myself in order to make happen.

If I want to please my father so he sees me, what do I think will happen if he sees me, “in my entirety?” ... I don’t think I can answer that. Except to say he’d love me, in a way that I could feel.

Because here’s the thing: If he’s looking around me, and not at me, he’ll never love me in a way that I feel. He may “love” or approve of the things around me, the life I meticulously and back-bendingly try to arrange around myself. But that’s still not me.

This is a system, a relationship in which I am not seen. The one thing I want to glean from it is the one thing I cannot have.

In reading Brene Brown so voraciously right now, I can know this: He’s not able to be vulnerable enough to do that.

To see me, is to expose himself, is to open himself to being vulnerable, and for him, that is not an option. His whole life has been built on a foundation, a faulty one (well, in my own estimation), that precludes true connection, because he is unable to look at and love himself. I know how this formed, and I can only presume the pain that’s caused, because he’s never shown it. (Except in these indirect ways.)

Brene writes that men deal with vulnerability in one of two ways: Rage or shut-down. (She also writes about those who find ways out of that dichotomy, but those are the go-to’s without the tools to do anything differently. And surely, those aren’t the only means to deal, but it’s her research, not mine!)

I know that when I told my dad that I might not be able to come to his wedding because I’ll be in a play that weekend, when he put on his “I insist” voice, that was his way of hiding his vulnerability, his disappointment and hurt. I know that this was rage to mask actual feelings. I know that this rage was to protect and prevent of moment of true connection, in which something different might have been said like, “I’d really love for you to be here. It would mean a lot to me.”

That directness is too vulnerable.

To look me in the eye and say that is too vulnerable.

To see us both as humans doing a dance of having a relationship, instead of as a master and a servant, a “father” and a “daughter,” is too vulnerable.

If I can’t squash it or approve of it, I can’t deal with it.

I “get” this. I get and have compassion for and understand this dilemma for him. Also, this is a dilemma that I’ve prescribed for him; true or not, it’s only my interpretation.

But, like I said before, it’s my choice how I want to engage in this “relationship.” Because for as long as I can remember, I’ve been waving my arms in an effort to start one. An effort in vain. And my arms are tired.

Brene writes that shame is countered by self-love, and that shame resilience is a practice, not a diploma.

“I’m a fan of you, Molly Daniels, in your entirety.”

I’m going to have to say this phrase to myself, repeatedly. To truth-test the thoughts of “not good enough” – especially "not good enough daughter" – as this future unfolds.

I’m going to have to truth-test my fantasies around this relationship versus the reality, and I’m going to have to accept, even for a minute at a time, that this relationship is the way it is, and that my father is the way he is.

I’ve heard many times that “acceptance is not the same as approval.” No, this isn’t ideal. But turning my life into a pretzel to garner a connection I will never (or not today) have, is the worse fate.

Perfection is the enemy of the done.

Well, if I haven’t told you yet, I’ll tell you now: I’m reading Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly. She’s a researcher on the topics of shame and vulnerability, and how the first can keep you from embracing the second, and thereby keep you from “daring greatly.”

Particularly, I’m (*air quotes*) “enjoying” the part when she’s quoting from some of her interviewees. This mantra, cribbed from Voltaire, is my favorite so far: "Perfectionism is the enemy of the done."

There is always one more thing to do. There is always one more spot to scrub, one more hair to fix, one more jiggly arm skin to poke, one more class to take, one more edit to make.

In the pursuit of perfection, nothing is ever finished, and satisfaction and contentment are perpetually elusive.

My aunt sent me an email a few weeks ago in response to one of my blogs. She reflected that she always admires my writing, but this one in particular should be submitted. To the New York Times.

She’s a life-long professor of English, a stellar mind and woman. And she would be someone to know what she’s talking about.

So, I’ve sat with this idea since she sent me the prod. I looked up the submission guidelines, and promptly forgot them.

Until I read that quote about perfection and the done. So, this morning, I printed out the blog, and edited it. Then went back online to see the guidelines: 1500 words. Mine is currently 700. I need to double my article!

BUT. It’s out. It’s printed on actual paper. I can carry it around with me to read and make notes of what parts I’ll focus in on to expand the essay.

When I decided to finally join a band last year, it was precisely this perfection that cracked. I was no better or worse than I’d been for years. I had no more or less experience than I’d had before. What cracked was my commitment to perfection. "When I practice, then I can play. When I’m better then I can reach out to them. When I get lessons. When I …"

A few years ago, I put together an art project whose purpose was entirely to eschew perfection. I used paint on paper…without sketching it out first. There were no “mistakes,” even though the lines aren’t perfect. There was no starting over, even though I wished I could. My entire purpose was to put something down on paper, and to be done with it. I’d had the idea of this art piece for quite some time, and I was finally willing to do it imperfectly. And it hangs up on my wall, with lines I still fantasize about perfecting, my idol to "done."

The same will have to be true for my essay/article. It’s taken these few weeks to look back at it, because I have those gremlin thoughts that say, “The NEW YORK TIMES?! Are you out of your MIND?! Who do you think you are??” That say, What’s the use, it’ll never be used. That say, If you don’t do it perfectly, you’ll always be a secretary.

Yesterday morning, after my phone encounter with my dad the day before, I reached for a coffee mug. I dug behind the enormous ones I usually use, to find a modest sized one with something printed on it.

I HEART ME. (Could be “I heart Maine,” but that works, too!)

In the sprawl of brain chompings and perfectionism. In the shadow of habits that draw me back into being small or angry or disconnected. In the face of a choice to let myself be seen, as imperfect but good enough as I am, I reaffirm something preciously true: I Heart Me. 

Wilderness Survival

So, here's a funny.

Remember when I posted that blog about finding equanimity in my relationships? About not being thrown by others emotions (or even my own)? Yeah, that one I posted on Friday... three days ago?

Well, guess what I've been given the opportunity to practice these last three days?

Bingo!

To be respectful, I will simply say that I saw many chances to retaliate and behave how I used to -- particularly, by being curt, punishing, and seethingly silent. If I behave that way, you, of course, will apologize for your behavior, and change in the way that I want you to, right?

Unfortunately, or fortunately, I really noticed how I wanted to react, my first reaction. How my disappointment wanted to come out as being mean. Instead, I tried to my best to "let it go." I had that silly Frozen song in my head a lot this weekend!

How others are choosing to behave is none of my business. As it affects me, it is my business. But it's up to me to choose how I want that to be expressed.

Let's just say that I was pissed, so much so that I was on the phone while driving, and got pulled over by a cop before I even left San Francisco.

Luckily I was let off with a warning (and I know how much those tickets cost!), but it gave me the opportunity to pause and look at why I was behaving in the way I was -- in a way that wasn't good for me.

The whole weekend ended up, for me, being an exercise in letting other people have their emotions and their actions, and not being drawn into that drama. It's camping. It's supposed to be light, fun, and not particularly insightful, except maybe the insight and rest and joy that comes from being in the silence of the forest. Which, is never actually that silent, once you get quiet enough. That's one of the things I love about it. To hear the rustle of the trees, the little animals, the little noises. How this tree sounds as it sways in the wind as opposed to that tree.

Luckily, I was able to ask for some of that time for myself, so that I could get my stillness in.

I am no saint, and I am no angel, and I have no business judging others, or assuming that they should be any way other than they are. But I do get to ask for what I need, and I do get to behave in a way that is in alignment with how I want to be. Despite that my brain gremlins are momentarily eviscerating you.

Upon arrival home to Oakland, I get a phone call. It's my dad.

Really?

I let it go to voicemail. I'm emptying out the cooler in my bathtub. It rings again.

Now I think it's an emergency. Nope: After a decade of being engaged to the same woman, he's finally getting married.

The last weekend of the play I'm playing the lead in.

I was *informed* I should see if they can get the understudy to do that weekend. I wasn't asked what play it was. I wasn't told congratulations. I was told, in the voice of force only my father knows how to invoke, that I should be there.

I told him I'd ask about the understudy.

I called my brother, who'd left me a voicemail about this earlier that day. If the invitations were going out the next week, it was clear that this plan was in place quite some time ago, no? Could be that I could have been informed a little earlier, no?

I was virulently reminded of when I was sick with cancer, and my father told me that he could only call me after dark, when I was exhausted from my days of chemo, that "This is how it works." This is what he told me about not being able to call me earlier. "This is how it works."

After I got off the phone with him yesterday, I remembered that. This occasion, this insistence that I be there, despite whatever (SUCCESS) is going on in my life, is part of his pattern of demand, and selfishness.

And, an inability to say something like: You know, Molly, it would mean a lot to me if you could be there.

I told my brother when we were discussing the viability of my coming out, plane tickets, and where to stay, things that my dad has obviously not thought of. ... that I would talk to my network. That I would look at my numbers. Maybe ask him to pay for half the plane ticket out, since I'm not in a position to go back east again right now.

But then, I do know how awful it is to ask for money from him.

So, I will talk to my network. I will repeat "Let it go" in my head, and I will remember the thing I usually forget when I feel made small by him: I am awesome.

My being in a play IS a big deal. My getting a lead role IS a big deal. I'm doing a brave and new thing. I am taking chances to be greater in my life. And the exercise in equanimity is to allow and remember and embrace and be bolstered by these facts.

It is not a surprise that the weekend I claim that I've moving "beyond" being thrown by others, I'm given several (immediate!) chances to practice what I preached.

A mentor once told me that our "character defects" (or, outmoded coping mechanisms) aren't relieved from us. They aren't removed. Instead, we're given opportunities to either pick them up again, or to act a different way.

I haven't known what that other way is, until I'm given the chance to try something else. If I only reach for what I know, I do the same thing. It's not that I feel relieved of being thrown by others' emotions. I just feel more able to deal with what that brings up for me, and how I choose to engage with that.

What will happen with my friend? Change.

What will happen with my father? I can only hope: Change.

Independence

I was driving down to San Jose for the Queen concert the other night by myself. I was meeting my friends who were coming from the city, and we decided it was more time efficient if I drove from the East Bay myself.

I drove in traffic, behind, in front of, and next to other people driving by themselves. No carpool lane for us. And I reflected on how in this age of disconnection, where people seem to be lamenting the loss of connection, community, and interdependence, we certainly do like to be alone a lot.

Or, perhaps “like” is a strong word. We’re enabled in being alone a lot.

I live in a studio apartment alone with my cat. I drive alone to work because public transportation to my job is not feasible. I can spend entire days not connecting with another human being. Without hugging another human being.

And then, like yesterday, I run into one of these human beings at the farmer’s market, that I went to alone, and get a surprise hug and get to share a moment of catch-up and a smile. A farmer’s market where I finally know the bread vendor by name and he knows mine, so we can say hello properly after a year of my buying the same whole wheat. Where I ran into one of the families from my work and spoke with her and her son, who was running circles around a tree again and again, asking me between breaths what I was doing there.

I was invited to go to dinner and the movies last night with two girlfriends. I could have said, No, I have to pack for my camping trip, which is so totally true, and imminent right now. And I literally asked myself which was more important: going to the grocery store before it closed to get organic meat, or spending time with a woman who’s moving to Nashville in two weeks.

I chose the friends. And I’ll be going to the store once it opens before we hit the road.

Which is another one of these connection moves I made recently. An awareness that I had recently: I miss hanging out with groups of folks. I am great one-on-one with people. I can talk and gab and get deep. But there’s something for me about being with a few people that ignites a different side of my personality. I come alive in a different way. A) it’s usually less intense and deep conversation when it’s more than one person. But not always. I just like groups of folks. I’m excellent at big and small talk, and I like people. –Well, some of them, anyway!

So, I’m at the part in my healing work where I’m to make amends in relationships that need mending. And this is one of them: recognizing that I have a deficiency in my social life that affects my joy. And then doing something about it.

Because of this awareness, I organized this camping trip. Because of this desire to be with folks, I am joining some of them to see The Goonies for $5 movie night at the Paramount next week, and I asked if we wanted to have dinner beforehand, and I made that reservation for us.

Because, independence is appropriate, as far as it goes. Not needing people to do for me that which I can do for myself is independence. Not needing someone to constantly bail me out financially is independence. Not depending on a substance to make me feel normal or different or a version of “better” that is unattainable, is independence.

But when it comes to human relationships, I like to strive (these days, at least) for interdependence. Not co-dependence, which is not the opposite of independence, by the way. But equanimity – a word I only learned a few years ago, but has been a soft murmur in the back of my head since then. To me, equanimity means not being emotionally tossed around by others, and not tossing them around either. It means having boundaries for myself and allowing others to have theirs. It means creating, actively trying to build relationships with people on a basis of trust, mutuality, empathy and shared values.

This is not always easy. In fact, it can get right messy, and it has, for me in many of them, as we crawl our way out of strict independence or co-dependence into interdependence. Relationships have suffered; some have been lost, and others have been strengthened exponentially.

It takes work to give up independence, or, as I’m using it, isolation.

For right now, I can claim independence from my need to isolate. Because I am learning how to show up honestly, with boundaries and without iron walls or punishing.

If I can do that, then there’s no reason not to be in community.

Happy Freedom from Bondage Day, Kids!! – Whatever that looks like to you. 

Yeah, But…*

Here’s something nobody knows about me: When I access something very truth-y in my morning journaling, my handwriting becomes miniscule.

Written like those boardwalk booths that used to write your name on a grain of rice, I find myself getting really tiny with my words – and that’s when I know I’ve struck something important. Shh, don't say it too loud or it might whisk off the page.

Let’s back up a little though.

Yesterday, I got to see my therapist (the Rosen Method therapist I’m still seeing. Despite my doubts before every time I go, I always leave laughing that I doubted). We hadn’t seen one another for about a month due to schedules, so I had a lot to catch her up on.

Last time we spoke, I told her I felt like I didn’t have any options available to me in dating land. Like Goldilocks, I’d experienced the too hot, the too cold, but have yet to find the “just right.” I mentioned this yesterday because I was talking about my job search. I told her that as I was driving over last night, I realized that it’s not that I don’t have any options available to me in job land – it’s that I refuse to commit to one path.

She challenged me on this a little, and asked if it was “refused” or something else. And, surely, it is fear and paralyzation.

Because here is the secret, sacred truth: I do know what I want to do.

I told her that I see my job options like a scene from Sliding Doors. If you haven’t seen the movie, the premise is based on Gwenyth Paltrow in one version of her life catching a subway train before the doors shut; in another version, she misses that train. At that point in the movie, we follow both these lives and their divergent challenges and successes (and haircuts). 

I told her I see three options of my job life for myself:

One: Be a Jewish professional, or a community professional, a leader, an organizer, a bringer-together-er.

Two: Do something counsel-y and social work-y, working directly one-on-one with the populations I want to serve, particularly youth.

And three.

And this is where I began to cry.

Be an artist.

I laughed through the tears, and said, “Well if tears are any indication of truth, then the third one’s the charm.”

The third one is also the hardest. Requires the most work, the most vulnerability, the most action, the most fortitude, and… the most uncertainty.

I told her I’m not willing to be a starving artist. But perhaps there’s another way.

As a note, by “artist,” I mean in all disciplines, starting with performance, starting with that Yoshi’s singer I mentioned yesterday. Starting with that dream.

I think I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve been told I don’t let myself dream. It came up a few times yesterday when I had to correct my “Yeah, But”s to “Yes, AND”s.

Every time I even begin to think about following this path, I get buried under a mountain of “Yeah, But”s. I don’t think I need to list them for you, since I’m sure you have your own bevy that attack your own dreams.

So, we/I were careful to reframe them. I told her at the end of the session that I feel like my whole life has been an exercise in “Yeah, But.” And she told me that that is changing; that I am changing it.

And it was in my morning pages today that I recorded something I thought of after I came home yesterday that actually knocked the wind out of me. What I wrote in the miniscule, micro-truth script:

When we are in alignment with our highest good, the Universe will rearrange itself to help us.

I don’t have to know how to do this. Because I don’t. What struck me so suddenly and viscerally were the words I’ve heard repeated for years: When we take one step toward (G-d / Fate / the Universe / our Highest Good), it takes a thousand toward us.

I will be carried. I will be helped. I won’t have to do this alone, because, “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”

I was floored by this revelation. I was floored that I actually heard and felt and believed it. It was a moment of belief.

I take care of the What and G-d takes care of the How. I’ve heard this for years.

What I have needed to do is admit and commit to the What.

I have “Yeah, But”s coming up as I write this. About money, and too late, and this is for other people and other lives, and what are you thinking of me right now as you read this and are you doubting me and rolling your eyes, and how, and how and how.

Yes, I have doubts and fears. AND. I only have to hold onto the “What.” I only have to hold on to my dream. That’s my only job right now – to not go back to sleep, to not abandon my dream, again. To not continue to break promises to myself. To not drown myself in those fears and doubts. Because I am trying to live my truth. And all this wisdom says that’s all I need to do.

(You know, along with reaching out, asking for help, seeking people in these professions, gathering intel, honing my vision, practicing and learning the fuck out of it AND remembering that the pain of avoiding all this is SO MUCH GREATER than the pain of trying to do it.)

Molly, you want to be a singer in a band? You want to perform onstage in dive bars? And at Yoshi’s? And be a lounge singer? You want to feel proud and full and felt and heard?

All you have to do is say, “Yes.”

*(Thanks, Joel Landmine, for the title grab. See: Yeah, Well...)

Dream Girls

If we can pass others on the street and think to ourselves, “There, but for the grace of G-d, go I,” isn’t it possible that others can pass us and say the same thing?

I spent last evening at a Queen concert. It was balls-out amazing: the talent, the showmanship, the technique and the bravery to stand out there, bounce around a stage and invigorate a crowd of thousands.

I had a moment while watching Adam Lambert, who was filling Freddie Mercury’s shoes pretty darn well, when I realized that only the slightest differences existed between the two of us.

Go with me here. A plane takes off for New York, but the compass is one degree off. You end up at the Nyack mall instead of JFK. One degree. Completely different destination.

If there is just the “grace of god” between me and the person I see huddled under the freeway gathering up their belongings as the cop car pulls two wheels up on the sidewalk to shuffle them along to another temporary spot, isn’t there just the “grace of god” between me and Adam Lambert? Or that woman I saw perform at Yoshi’s a few years ago: She wasn’t perfect. Her pitch wasn’t always on, but she was a performer. She had the crowd completely, she enjoyed herself, she was proud, vivacious, and seen. And she wasn’t perfect.

I don’t even remember who she was, except she was the singer of a bluesy/jazzy band, and she was fierce. She was a large woman with a large smile. And as I watched her, I thought to myself that I wanted to do what she did; get up there and perform, without needing to be perfect – because if that were the case, I don’t think any of us would ever do anything, including Adam Lambert.

Over the last year, I have adjusted my compass to be bringing me closer to that point on the map. I am not so far away in the Canada hinterland, but perhaps flying somewhere over Buffalo by now. (Can you tell I grew up back east?)

Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way that it isn’t talent that creates success; it’s tenacity. It’s being a dog’s fierce jaw chomped around a toy rope, refusing to let go.

The guitar player, Brian May, dazzled the crowd with a 10-minute long epic, cacophonous solo. It was like a safari inside of music itself: strange, elegant, mystic, and ancient. I said to my friend, That’s what happens when you spend 40 years doing only one thing.

That’s what happens when you decide that you love one thing, that you’re good (enough) at one thing, that you want others to know you do this thing: You become great.

Here’s to finding—or claiming, rather—my thing. 

Well, Shoot.

There has been all this heartache in me about wanting my father to change. To be loving, available, vulnerable and open. I have wanted this to happen for as long as I can remember, and I’ve held out a resentment toward him for his inability to do this for that long, too.

I have tried many ways around and through this resentment: loving kindness, acceptance, letters to god, letters to him I didn’t send, letters to him I did. Individuation meditations, praying daily for his peace and happiness, envisioning him as a child... But nothing has moved this boulder of a need.

And I finally realized what the need really is. It is not that I need my father to change. At this point, it’s that I need him not to. Because if he did, then I would have to look at being loving, available, vulnerable and open to him. And this causes trouble, because this is not safe.

So, keeping my resentment toward him has been a circuitous way to protect myself from my being vulnerable to him.

It’s all well and good to want someone to change – but when faced with the actuality of their transformation, how do we deal with that?

I wish I could tell you that I have overblown the situation, and he’s kinder than he appears, and being vulnerable to him could maybe, possibly, just-give-it-one-more-try, be a good idea.

But it’s not. Unfortunately, I have enough evidence to support this. Not ancient, you yelled I was a liar during a game of Clue when I was 5. Like, recent, appallingly turning my vulnerability against me evidence.

So, here’s the thing. I can forgive all of that. I can be willing to forgive it all, anyway. But do I want to change my behavior? Not really.

I’ve spent all this time trying to find my way around the rock of resentment to get toward connection, but when I look instead at what the rock is doing for me, not to me, I get to see that maybe it’s been doing the right thing all along. And this realization is hard for a person like me.

I have fear that keeping myself separate from him will cause bile in my soul and in my body, and corrode other relationships. I have fear that by not being vulnerable to him, I’m going to call down some cosmic retribution and be serially alone. I have fear that I’m not “spiritual” enough, or evolved enough or recovered enough, or else I’d be able to have him in my life as a loving and caring adult, both ways 'round.

I have shame that I can’t allow this relationship to flourish. That I refuse to be the asshole who riles on the ground before him and begs him to love me. I have been doing that for as long as I can remember, too.

But the thing I always thought I wanted was for him to do that too. To acknowledge his faults, to claim ownership of his behavior, and to beg my forgiveness.

What I see now, is that if he actually did, I don’t want to give it – that forgiveness is a door to love. And with him, love is a door to hurt.

The boulder has been there doing this job all along.

Until I learn a “healthier” way of screening those doors, they’ll just have to remain shut.