A Broken Vase, a Compassion Challenge, a Batcave…and Grace

the broken vase

It was day eight without Brian here. I was tired at the end of a long, HOT day. I had just gotten the kiddos out of the bathtub and was getting Little C. ready for bed. All of a sudden I hear a gasp then something fall and something break. I look over to see that Big A. had flipped his towel over his head and knocked down a shelf in our room sending everything on it crashing to the ground. One of our treasured wedding gifts, a beautiful turquoise vase from Peru, was completely broken.

In an instant all of my “giving over of self”, all the effort over the last five years, all the times I had been jumped on and pulled on by my kiddos, all the sacrificing of me and my body, clothes (to strawberry stains!), time, social life, space – you name it – flooded my heart. And I was mad. In an instant I started to say, “A.!!! Oh no! That’s one of our favorite things! You weren’t paying attention!” I ran over to the broken vase and bent over to see tiny fragments of pottery embedded in the carpet.

A. began saying over and over again, “Oh mommy, I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I can fix it!” And then in the next second, I stopped.

“It’s a vase, Lisa. It’s a vase,” I said to myself. I stopped picking up the broken pieces and turned around to face A. with my arms stretched out to him, “Oh sweet Love. I’m sorry.” We sat there on the floor and C. came tottering up, pacifier in mouth, and sat quietly on my other leg. I remembered two things: 1. the Sesame Street story that A. and I had read together about Bert breaking Mr. Hooper’s teapot (I’ll get to this in a minute) and 2. my self-initiated Compassion Challenge and I was (only!) on day 2.

Background – the Compassion Challenge. A few days prior, I realized I needed to be more intentional about being compassionate. I wanted to be aware of opportunities to show compassion and I wanted to start “closer in,” as the poet David Whyte says. I wanted to start closer to home – with myself, my husband, my children, and my extended family. I felt like I had gone down that slippery slope we all can go down – being “not so nice” to the people we love the most. And I wanted to be more intentional about shifting this.

So in the moment holding A. and C., I thought about my “Challenge” and decided “No. I will end my anger right now. I will not allow it to burn down the whole forest, like Buddha said. I will not make A.’s heart hurt and him feel bad. I choose A. over the vase.”

This may sound like “duh! Of course you choose your child’s wellbeing over a vase!” But in that exact moment, I was hot, tired, and alone. I had had enough. And anger was coursing through my veins. And I loved that vase – for many reasons. It represented many dear things to me – working with the poor in Latin America, and, it may sound crazy, it represented my sanity staying in tact while having two kiddos, while giving up so much of myself, and having one space in my whole house – our room – that is in order and is mine only. And it all came crashing down. So in the moment, all of that was broken.

And I let it go.

In an instant, I held my A. while I saw the broken pieces laying in the carpet. I felt A.’s skinny body wrapped around me, I heard C. sucking away on her paci. I smelled their freshly bathed little naked bodies. I felt us all just breathe together.

“A.,” I began, “Do you remember the story about Bert and the broken teapot?”

A: “Yes.”

Me: “Do you remember what Mr. Hooper said to Bert when he told Mr. Hooper that he had broken his favorite teapot?”

A: “That he’d fix it?”

Me: “He said, ‘My friend Bert is more important to me than a teapot.’ A., my little A. is more important to me than a vase.” …….and all it represented. And I meant it.

So we made up. I was feeling all good about myself that I had showed compassion (you know what’s coming, right?????!!!!), remembering that Sesame Street story, and not scarring A. for life over a broken vase. I nursed C. while A. laid on his pillow next to us and then we went to A.’s room to tuck him in.

As we lay there in the darkness doing our normal bedtime routine of singing a song and saying our prayers, in the quietness I hear A.’s soft little whisper,

“Mom (pause)…you are more important to me than my batcave.”

In an instant, my heart dropped, did a flip, felt humbled, small, and embarrassed, burst into tears, and was full with immense love that comes only from grace. Anyone who knows our son knows how “in” to superheroes he is. His batcave stays on his dresser in his room in the “I’ll share everything else but this” zone. So here I was pretty happy with myself for showing compassion, “getting over a vase,” and not losing it…when here was my little four year old…telling me that I mattered more to him that his most prized possession. Here was my A. surprising, expanding, deepening, humbling, and gracing my heart. And I laid there next to A., my tears wetting my face and his pillow, as I felt A.’s breath against my chest and he peacefully drifted off to sleep. And I thought, “Truly, my life is full of grace. Humbling grace. Thank you, God.”

Don’t figure it out

our meditation space...wait, what's that on the pillow?!

I found myself bothered by something the other day. I was frustrated with Brian and my son, though they weren’t “the problem.” When I had some alone time I immediately went into “figure it out” mode. You may be familiar with this mode – the one where you dissect and try with all your brain power to figure out what in the heck is going on, where the reaction came from, and the infamous “WHY” question – “why do I get so bothered by this?” The mode where you SEARCH for information and answers, thinking that will solve the problem.

Then I caught myself. What I tell clients at least a bagillion times came to me: “Information informs, it doesn’t heal.”

In Buddhist meditation and psychotherapy, and in many healing traditions, we don’t believe that ultimate healing comes for analyzing it, figuring it out, finding THE answer, THE cause. It may lead to some great information, enabling us to “wrap our heads around it” but it only goes so far.

Information informs. It doesn’t heal – the heart, emotions, nervous system, or relationships.

I have had many experiences where I know fully well what caused me to get angry, frustrated, or annoyed, and yet I still get hijacked by my emotions. I still go riiiiight into my familiar habitual way of reacting.

Why? Because I’m stuck.

Just like a gerbil on its wheel going around and around again getting nowhere. I haven’t healed from some event that is now lodge in the very cells of me. My body, thoughts, emotions and nervous system are frozen, still holding the experience.

Do you know this feeling?!

Instead of “figuring out THAT cause” or asking “WHY, WHY, WHY???” what can we do?

What brings a resolution to the emotional charge when presented with a stimulus that triggers the heck out of you?

Well, I can only speak from my own depth of heart and my experiences with accompanying others.

We can pause and breathe. With two little kiddos on me, in the middle of making breakfast and getting everyone ready for the day, I can’t go running up to my actual meditation cushion. Can you relate?

But we can go to the “meditation cushion in our hearts.”

We can put our hand on our hearts, breathe and hold whatever is rising up within us with compassion and spaciousness.

We can actually invite in the anger or frustration (and the emotions, thoughts, and memories that lie beneath that surface emotion) rather than pushing it away, analyzing it or judging it.

We can be gentle, give it breath, and bring it out into the light.

We can say, “Ahhh, there are you, dear one, I see you while we notice the sensations in our body that arise within us.

We can watch the emotions, thoughts, memories, and old beliefs, rise and intensify, and then fall…all. On. Their. Own. Watching and inviting instead of getting swept up in or hijacked by the emotion.

We can be curious with gentleness and not send out a search party into our hearts with the glaring lights of “Why do I DO this?! What IS this?!” Then watch it all shift and be released. Maybe we cry, sweat, or tingle. But we can know now that is the nervous system releasing, thawing out.

I used to say, “Oh but this is soooo haaaard!” But really, it’s so simple. We have the “tools” with us wherever we go – our breathe and our heart. Just pause and breathe. Feel it.

I’m done saying it’s so hard.

yep. cherrios!

I am seeing how in my own personal journey and in my work with clients that more and more often, healing comes from doing less and less. No complex treatment plans or coping strategies. No talking about it over and over again and reading a bagillion self-help books. No dissecting, digging into the past, or analyzing it.

I am finding that the times we do very little, great shifts occur.  On their own.  We find ourselves lighter, calmer, and more at peace.

Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety

If you are a mom and have a child, you know the feeling that author Judith Warner is talking about in her book, ‘Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.’ The feeling that you are always doing something wrong. The guilty feeling and the anxiety, resentment and regret that, as Warner says, “is poisoning motherhood…sapping energy that we should have for ourselves and our children…and drowning out thoughts that might lead us, collectively, to formulate solutions.”

Somewhere along the line we started to micromanage our kiddos’ lives. We started to obsess over the minute details of their sleep schedules, eating habits, birthday parties, clothes, educational endeavors, extracurricular activities, playmates – name your particular obsession. And when we felt angry, frustrated, full of rage, or full of tears, we began to think (and eventually believe) that there was something wrong with US.

I can remember (barely!) the first few months after having our first child. I had been calling one of my dear friends who didn’t have kiddos and would pour out my heart to her. I was lonely, alone most of the day, exhaaaausted beyond any sleep deprivation I had ever known, and still healing from a c-section. One day she said, “Lisa, I think you are depressed.” I’m a psychotherapist (albeit a bit alternative) and I’m not opposed to medication for addressing certain symptoms (while getting to the root cause of the suffering). But what I knew in that moment remains true today, “What is ‘wrong’ with me cannot be fixed with a pill.”

What’s “wrong” with any of us has little to do with some personal failing. What’s wrong are the expectations we have of ourselves. We want to be Zen moms, able to remain like a Buddhist (celibate!) monk in the middle of temper tantrums while making lunch and juggling calls from work and doing the laundry. What’s wrong is the lack of institutional and political framework in this country supporting motherhood. When’s the last time you worked in an office where new parents were given adequate maternity leave (to really heal from delivery, get out of that fog of sleep deprivation, and figure out how to be resourced as a new parent), brought their infant to work, and breastfed in the boardroom? And how much do we really value the job of stay-at-home moms?

I hear the guilt in moms. I hear the anger-now-turned-to-rage in moms. I hear it in my own head. And obviously I’m not the only one. Warner interviewed group of women after group of women. And we’re all saying just about the same thing: enough. Something bigger than just ourselves has to change.

Now anyone who knows me knows that I don’t stay stuck for too long. I am a solution girl. I am always hopeful and working for change. Over the last four years I have committed myself to changing my little corner of this “mamahood world” – if not just in how I regard and support other moms on the playground or in the preschool pick-up line. I’ve done my share of personal exploration, shifting, letting go, and accepting. And still, STILL, I can relate to the feeling that Warner so eloquently documents, explores, and traces the possible roots of in her book. THAT is messed up. She actually calls it “a mess.”

I’m not just about surviving this mess. I’m about turning it on its head. Making huge shifts – if just in my little corner of the world…or at least in our kitchen. But it can’t just be an “all me” endeavor. It has to be a united front. We have to “be in cahoots” with others, as I so often say. There are moms in this community and in this world who are “in” on making something lovely emerge from this mess just by being who they are, sharing their strengths AND vulnerabilities, reaching out to another mom, encouraging other parents to let go of the guilt and the obsession and join them in a yoga class or a walk, and to name the problem: it’s not YOU, it’s this culture. And then like the Lotus flower that rises through the muddy, murky water of the pond to float full bloom on the surface, riding the ripples, we begin to be those tenacious, beautiful Lotuses – for ourselves and each other. And that is how we create change – in our hearts, homes, playgroups, work, and institutions.