This has been such a big summer – expansive in many ways. I continue to stand up now and stay up on the board nearly every time. After 16 months of practicing, something in my brain has changed and I finally get it! We’ve had several beautiful mornings at Blackies recently. Local summer has begun. Water is warm. We can see Catalina again. I have stopped wearing my booties for some reason – no longer needing the illusion of protection they provide – and am just tickled by the sight of my bare toes in the water with my leash around my ankle. I am so much more confident in the waves now. The big waves don’t scare me anymore; I have confidence both that I'm not going to put myself in surf too big for me and that I can handle what I do decide to surf in. That’s part of the expansive growth of this summer: we have tried so many new places! San O Trails, Old Mans, Dogpatch, up to Ray Bay, and several times at Doheny. We’ve gone different places, surfed in different conditions, and I learned that I can handle it. Even getting clobbered – it’s not fun, but I can handle it. And I’m surrounded by such joy – we’ve had so many members of the Sisterhood out surfing together recently, more have been added, the Sisterhood grows, and there is a joyful noise that reaches up and down the line up. Glorious. Just glorious.
Lately, I've been focusing on choosing waves. "Do yourself a favor: take mixed signals as a no," is a meme with dating advice, but it's also useful for wave selection. Now that I can stand up with some consistency, catching a damn wave to ride has emerged as the new hardest thing. I'm learning to see green waves clearly. Green means go! I'm learning to be patient, to wait and see. To NOT take the first sort of acceptable wave in a set, then get clobbered on my way back out. The most frustrating thing is to catch (or not quite catch) a mediocre wave, ride it in (sort of, ish) and then see three absolutely perfect beauties roll in as you are heading back out. I have established a rule: When I'm unsure of a wave, then I don't go -- don't invest the energy to paddle for an uncatchable wave. Wait for clarity. I'm still working on seeing clearly and knowing what that good wave looks like.
Seeing clearly is another strategy Buddhism and meditation teaches me. I meditate to become aware of the delusions that cloud my mind, including those ideas and beliefs that make me think that dubious people, situations, and things are worth putting in the effort for. Paddling for a wave that's not right for me takes a LOT of effort and then it doesn't give back. The ocean and I surf together when I find the right wave. When I don't, it passes me by, no matter how much I try to catch it. This is an important lesson to learn for me: only continue giving to what gives back to you.
It has taken me a long time to get good at seeing that energy exchange; understanding that no matter how amazing you are, not everyone is a good fit and not everyone gives back. I have tended to recreate my parents’ relationship dynamic in my own relationships. Dad was an alcoholic and not very present in our home life. My mom was codependent. So my two default settings in relationships are caretaking and abandoning. Early on, I would find people who needed fixing, overinvest in them, didn’t see the lack of reciprocation, definitely didn’t see how condescending wanting to fix someone was, and then ended up feeling invisible, resentful, or hurt. A+ caretaking pattern. Later on in life, I would see the lack of reciprocation or the slightest sign of a red flag, and I would bail. Still not seeing the overinvestment, still not stating my needs, but somehow thinking I was doing better by not staying with people who didn’t reciprocate. So I advanced to caretaking with a dose of abandoning. Nice. The type of giving from caretaking comes from a place of lack and insecurity, so often turns resentful as a result of overwhelm. The energetic direction goes one way. I've been a caretaker chasing after abandoners my whole life.
So, I've been trying to figure out lately why the Sisterhood has worked out so well. There is a fundamental generosity that comes from abundance in this group. We are mutually supportive. It's a conversation we have in the water every once in a while: Why do you think we are so committed to one another? Why is this working? The Sisterhood is definitely a green wave of joy. How'd this happen? I have found myself really wanting to analyze the conditions that exist in the Sisterhood that allowed this to happen in an effort to see more clearly.
The first thing that allows clearer sight is gaining some perspective. I can't stress this enough (and I know I'm getting repetitive on this point): getting out of the place of suffering has allowed me to see my suffering more clearly. Feeling safe allows me to see how unsafe things have been. Mindful Self-compassion work says we only know things by contrast: "Love reveals everything unlike itself." I had to go to a place of safety and find some healthy love first. Only then can I actually understand, feel clearly, what is unloving. I had to attain some level of awareness apart from my own suffering. Previously, I was too far in it, too unsafe, to really see.
When I started surfing, the furthest thing from my mind was choosing a wave. My goodness, I couldn’t even sit on the board with balance! I was too scared, too inexperienced, to really be able to see what a good wave might look like. All I saw were waves! All I was concerned about was staying afloat and not getting clobbered. Over time, I have grown into confidence. I'm not going to put myself in danger by putting myself into surf too big for me. I have that boundary. I keep myself safe. Now that I’m more confident in the water, I am safe enough to make a choice.
The second thing that allows clearer sight is having that model. I am now paying attention specifically for what a good wave looks like. My surf instructors point out what good waves are and when to start paddling for them. I found myself wanting BTG to do the same for me with people. I want a checklist of things trustworthy people do, lists of green and red flags, a rubric by which to judge new people. I actually spent a lot of time analyzing what makes the Sisterhood work. What did I see initially and over time that keeps me hanging out with these women?
The first thing that struck me about the surf girls was that they were real. Very genuine. Open. Able to share vulnerability and talk about real things right away. There's no pretense, very little ego. No one is trying to be someone they're not. I can trust that I'm seeing who they really are.
The second thing that has really worked on me is the consistency, respect, and unwavering support over time. The Sisterhood is out there every week together. We are out there on the water, side by side, dealing with different conditions, cheering each other on, providing a safety net, and growing together. Those of us with insecure attachment crave consistency. Over time, we continue to show up.
We also have shared values. We value fitness and growth, facing our fears, laughter, good coffee, and carbs. There is a generosity of spirit among us. We cheer for each other, help each other out, share information and strategies, and listen really well when someone is having a hard time with something. We don't necessarily share political viewpoints, but there is an underlying respect for each other that transcends political views. I think there is a lot of mutual admiration. We have an equal, unconditional, positive regard for one another. None of us are spring chickens any more, yet we are all out there doing this really hard thing. We get hurt, we get tossed, we get scared, and we show up again for more the next week. We are brave. Brave together. The Sisterhood is this clear green wave of joyful goodness and unconditional love that illuminates the debatable, sometimes sketchy, waves of past relationships.
As a recovering caretaker, I want to know that I’m making better choices, and this analysis of realness, consistency, support, and shared values is useful. There’s an interplay for me between caretaking and safety. A couple of foundational realities that BTG has helped me understand is that one, we all need to feel safe, and two, we all need connection, but connection is more important. When given the choice between no connection and unsafe connection, I chose unsafe connection. In the past, I attempted to connect with unsafe people, because those were the only people I saw in my surroundings. My defenses arose to keep me safe while in connection with these unsafe people. Now, the Sisterhood is full of safe people. And I want to know how I found them. The stakes of this question are quite high for me, given the previous harm I've walked into.
One of my go-to defenses is self-blame. I have been blaming myself for the crappy things that have happened to me, yet not really giving myself credit for the good things that have happened to me. So, first, working with self-blame is wanting to get clear about my agency and the role I actually play in creating my life, making these choices. Hilarious moment with BTG in session the other day as I confessed that I don't believe him when he tells me that my current life, this lovely group, is my co-creation. I tell him that I think it's just dumb luck that found me these women. I don't know that I did anything differently. He said, "We can't always know why things have changed or how things have changed in the way we behave in the world. There is proof that things have improved for you, yet you keep asking for proof. THE PROOF IS THAT THINGS HAVE IMPROVED." LOL. He asked, "What are you looking for other than this happiness?"
I'm looking for why. How. I'm looking to understand how I am to blame for this. If I am to blame for this, if I have some agency, then I can control it, replicate it. While gaining safety and having this lovely group provide a model helps me gain emotional clarity on choosing people, there are other motivations for this conversation. I want the checklist, but what I really want to know is: have I changed? Am I better? Can I really handle the conditions?
Why now? Why am I asking these questions now? Things have been beautiful and I just freaked out. What happened? Well, my dog died the other week. The girls really showed up for me. I felt very supported and loved in that particular grief. I reached out to them to share the news, something I wouldn't ordinarily do. I am reluctant to depend on people, yet I depended on these people. I realize I now have something important to me that I don't want to lose. The waves got bigger, stakes got higher. These are new conditions.
I finally start to open up, allow support, and then I freak out, want to control the aperture. Constrict. Open a little, take a peek out from behind the curtain, then shut it again. My little inner child is shouting, "HANG ON A MINUTE." She wants some deeper understanding of how this worked before she's going to step further out into the world.
When I was a kid and had no agency, I fell into self-blame as a coping strategy. If it is my fault when things are shitty, then when I change, things can change. Now that things are good, I want to be able to blame myself again. It's still about control, about avoiding that abject vulnerability that says, "Yes, we have no idea who is going to float past us in this life. We cannot control anything. You just have to get out there." Waves are going to keep coming and I just have to figure out which ones to catch, even in choppy seas. Catching waves is really hard, according to Surf Sensei. There's no way to plan your ride in advance. The only thing for it is time in the water. Get out there and try it out. See for yourself. Dang, Sensei. In the water, that’s fun. In the sea of humanity, that’s scary.
One thing I've noticed is that this summer, after only a year in the water, I'm not intimidated by the waves anymore. We paddled right out of Blackies and into Lower Jetties the other day like it was nothing. Last summer, I thought that's where the "big kids" surfed. The Jetties were for the grown up surfers, the big pool. I can handle it now. I know I can handle myself in the waves. Still a chance to get hurt, no question. But it doesn't make me afraid. I'm not afraid because of two things: one, I have developed the skills; two, I have accepted the vulnerability of being on the ocean on a new level. (I remember being held under the water by those five-foot waves at San O.) Analyzing the Sisterhood for green flags is developing healthy relationship skills and understanding trust. But those skills will not help me avoid the vulnerability of relationships. I'm still not fully accepting the vulnerability that comes with people. Just like BTG said, I can't always know why or how things have changed, but I can trust things have changed by seeing the actual changes. I can just stand up now. My brain has changed. The people and situations I used to find compelling are no longer even visible. I am reassured by this. Briefly.
David Whyte spoke in What to Remember When Waking, "There's no love affair, true love affair, which will not break your heart. There's no marriage which will not eventually break your heart in one way or another whether you stay together or not. There's no good work in the world that will not break your heart. There's no way of parenting a child without them breaking your heart.... There's no way of coming to know yourself in that internal marriage without going through that existential, desperate sense of disappointment about who you've discovered you are at the end of it. There's no way forward without a real sense of vulnerable heartbreak. And yet it's astonishing when you look at our energies and our time, how much time and energy we do spend trying arrange things so we won't have our heart broken. So that you'll remain immune from trespassing into the necessary territory that every human being has had to go through since the beginning of time."
Well, fuck that, David, my little voice says. Apparently, you don’t know how much I’ve been hurt, she says.
I’m getting over this fear. Three things are helping me get over it. First, acknowledge the harm. Second, stop raging, stop the war. Third, remember better, find meaning.
In her book Start Where You Are, Pema Chodron writes, “... part of honesty, clear seeing, and straightforwardness is being able to acknowledge that harm has been done. The first noble truth—the very first teaching of the Buddha—is that there is suffering. Suffering does exist as part of the human experience. People harm each other—we harm others and others harm us. To know that is clear seeing.”
Instead of blaming -- other people or me -- for harm, I can get a clear idea of my role in it, if any. Pema writes, “This is tricky business. What’s the difference between seeing that harm has been done and blaming? Perhaps it is that rather than point the finger of blame, we raise questions: 'How can I communicate? How can I help the harm that has been done unravel itself? How can I help others find their own wisdom, kindness, and sense of humor?' That’s a much greater challenge than blaming and hating and acting out.” So again, transforming self-blame into agency is adaptive.
I continue to read the Potts book about forgiveness. I really appreciate how Potts allows me to still be angry while forgiving. And seeing my anger clearly can actually be useful for my future safety. Anger means boundaries were broken, injustice committed. Understanding and remembering the anger can prevent future boundary violations, prevent future injustice from occurring. My anger teaches me my values. Good clean anger helps me see when well-calibrated through equanimity and awareness. I'm not sitting and raging about stuff, but noticing and asking questions when I feel anger arise.
I can stop my internal war. Potts quotes another theologian who defines forgiveness as “the cessation of againstness.” Potts’ definition of forgiveness is “simply a promise not to act with retaliatory violence when painful emotions and vengeful desires inevitably and repeatedly arise.” Restoring a sense of trust after harm has been done is important, but that happens through loving awareness and compassion, not punishment. I need to restore trust in others by restoring trust in myself. Self-blame is a child of perfection. If things are supposed to be perfect and and I'm supposed to be invisible, but then things aren't or I'm not, then someone has to be to blame. I can turn that around, too, along with all of the other defenses. I can understand that suffering and harm are not necessarily the fault of anyone; they just are. Potts writes, "...there is no single transgression, just a deep wound in all of humanity.... It is a loss that also has a history, and it can be understood only within that history."
Maybe I'm learning that there aren't actually good and bad people, safe and harmful people, good and bad waves, but just waves. We're all just working our shit out. The Pema book I've been quoting details the practice of Lojong. Lojong is a series of slogans that are designed to loosen us up. Get us to not hold our beliefs so tightly. One slogan I've been working with lately is "Be a Child of Illusion." Pema writes, “Being a child of illusion also has to do with beginning to encourage yourself not to be a walking battleground. We have such strong feelings of good and evil, right and wrong. We also feel that parts of ourselves are bad or evil and parts of ourselves are good and wholesome. All these pairs of opposites—happy and sad, victory and defeat, loss and gain—are at war with each other. The truth is that good and bad coexist; sour and sweet coexist. They aren’t really opposed to each other. We could start to open our eyes and our hearts to that deep way of perceiving, like moving into a whole new dimension of experience: becoming a child of illusion.”
I have been allowing the anticipation of more harm to control my life, who I let in, my level of openness. I have been punishing myself by closing down and hiding out. Instead, I can invite a new way of seeing. Suffering and harm is a normal part of life, not an indication that I've done something wrong. Living is suffering. I hope I can realize -- really embody -- the idea that I can survive relationships as well as I survived those waves at San O. Surfing and the Sisterhood has done an enormous lot for my confidence. There is an expansiveness that comes with unconditional love that seems to be able to contain anything. Even me. I need to see that I can trust myself, and trust that we're all just doing the best we can. I need to see that now my life is full of loving people -- maybe it always was. Loving people are coming into view even if I don't know entirely why. My brain has changed. I’m learning to handle the conditions. My defenses are being transformed, my understanding of how the world works is getting transformed. No one is to blame. We're all just working our shit out. And maybe now I'm strong enough, surfer strong enough, to handle all the waves that come at me in this sea of humanity.
Finally, I am working on remembering better. This blog is an exercise in repeated writing in order to find meaning and purpose in my experiences inspired by the Pennebaker Paradigm. This blog is helping me work my shit out. Potts writes, “I can perhaps envision a possible future in which I learn to grieve this loss and then try to live meaningfully in the wake of that loss.” Re-membering is a putting back together. Potts again, "A felt brokenness is put into words and made meaningful."
Trauma separated me from my true self and I’m trying to remember who I am. Trauma separated me from others, too, and I am working out how to come back into community. Perhaps the only person who has been unsafe to hang out with is me. And now I can see that I have grown into a trustworthy person. Potts writes, "To remember the past is to regard it as past." My inner child has been running the show lately and my present self needs to let her know we're in a new place and time.
This process comes with grief in every possible way. Potts writes, "The gift of new love is real but does not compensate for the loss." I realize the clarity of the green wave, how beautiful it is, and wonder why it hasn’t come for me before? I feel the glorious joy of these moments at Blackies and the grief comes in waves, wondering why I've waited 50 years to open up. I begin to believe that joy is merely grief in waiting.
In the Pixar movie Inside Out, I always wondered why the character Joy has blue hair. Every other character has a single main color along with some neutrals: Anger is red, Fear is purple, Disgust is green, and Sadness is blue. Only Joy is not entirely yellow. Joy has blue flowers in her dress and her hair is blue. Joy does not exist without Sadness. It's in her DNA. Joy has blue hair.
Living is grieving, suffering, enduring harm. There is no way to completely avoid it, no rubric I can use to help me. Normal, everyday harm happens while searching for love and suffering occurs after we love. People will die, relationships end. Suffering is normal on this earth. Constant ebb and flow like the tides. The waves teach me many things, including impermanence. Waves rise up then crash, none is long lived. Maybe a better choice will lead to a longer ride, but none will last forever. Joy has blue hair. Waves can pick me up and throw me down; I am always vulnerable. I need to learn, as Potts writes, "...how to inhabit my despair." Potts ends his book with this, “...when we attend with loving courage to all we have lost and cannot regain, we might manage to build a peace we can barely imagine upon the ruins we reveal.” When I learn how to really sit with all of my emotions, then I can freely expand to handle all kinds of waves. The entire selection, the whole array.
One of my favorite authors, Jessica Dore, wrote in her recent blog, "...'the hoarding of soul within interiority has served a defensive function, protecting us from the tragedies and travesties in our midst,' and if we are to relinquish that protection, 'we will find ourselves feeling small, amidst many bits and pieces that do not seem to cohere,' and... 'to accept a sense of being overwhelmed and inadequate to the situation is necessary.'" Acceptance. Life is overwhelming. We are inadequate to the task alone. We are all in these waves together. We need community. I need community. Expand.
Dore continues, "... if grief involved losing whole relational worlds, I was curious about the ways mourning can be a creative and dynamic practice that involves the making of new ones.... I began to imagine my self committed to a life of vibrant mourning, as a traveling horse person with a pack of wild dogs, some leading the way, some trotting alongside, and some trailing behind. My saddle bags would be full of strange—perhaps even outlawed—grief medicines. Tarot cards, broken shells, poems scrawled on napkins, dried bits of pine. I’d have lots of odd tales for every occasion of course, but mostly my gift would be listening." Like Arendt quoted in an earlier essay, I can begin again. Begin anew. Begin anew with the full acceptance that living and loving in community comes with risk. Most waves are not green. We must deal with the whole selection. We still have a great time anyway. When given the choice between no connection and unsafe connection, I choose connection in this inherently unsafe world.
Look for the green waves: clear signals of trust, shared values, the feeling of safety and loving kindness. These are good signs to look for in close friends. But there is a whole world of people out there, and I want to engage with everyone, if reluctantly, tentatively at this point, still clutching my checklists. It's all about how I care for myself when I'm uncertain. Looking out to sea, sometimes I can't tell what's coming. How do I care for myself when looking for green waves? Instead of a rubric, The Zen Peacemakers have the Three Tenets: not knowing, bearing witness, then taking action. I let go of my preconceived notions, acknowledging I don't know what's coming. I watch the water, observe what actually happens with care. Then take the appropriate, compassionate action based on what I see. I am developing the patience, equanimity, and discernment to handle myself in this ocean no matter the conditions.
But the more important lesson about wave selection for me is that I have been selfishly focused, looking for what's good for my ride, my experience, protective, small. Mary Oliver wrote in her poem Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
I can open up more. Whyte: "It can be a tremendously good thing to tell yourself, to remind yourself, a blessed thing, a merciful thing, to remind yourself that heartbreak is actually a normal phenomenon of any dedicated, sincere human path." I can widen that aperture. Extend compassion without caretaking. We are all in this together. We have all suffered, are suffering. In her novel Paradise, Toni Morrison writes: “You do not deserve love regardless of the suffering you have endured. You do not deserve love because somebody did you wrong. You do not deserve love just because you want it. You can only earn—by practice and careful contemplations—the right to express it and you have to learn how to accept it."
In scanning the horizon looking for that one right wave, I have looked past the abundance and generosity that keeps me surfing, that includes me in a loving community, that keeps sending me waves to ride. In the give and take of the ocean we surf together. Expressing and accepting love, we do it together. I don't really exist apart from community, though I have tried. While I began this essay thinking that wave selection was about constricting myself to only the good ones and developing a theory as to which ones are good ones, I realize now that it is about seeing the whole selection, the vast generosity of the ocean. Waves keep coming. There are plenty. Real love is like that. Understand that the ocean and the Sisterhood give and give and give. And I can too.
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