Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Vulnerability

November 16, 2018

My Mother’s Depression

My mother’s depression
Is not my depression

It doesn’t belong to me
Nor did I invite it in to stay
Yet it lives in me now and again
A link to this woman who bore me

Deftly intertwined it moves
As though it were mine
A weight I bear unbidden
My lot in this half-life

What would it be like
To let it go as an alien?
To visit without falling into the pit?
To understand it from her point of view?

I’ve been turning things like this over in my mind and heart for the last week. The insight isn’t mine. It’s a gift from a friend who has walked with me for several decades.

‘My’ depression isn’t mine. Yes, it’s real and present. Yet it was and still is my mother’s deep depression, fed by my father’s behavior toward her and toward me.  The sad price of being a gifted white woman in post-depression (ironic) and post-World War II life in the USA.

Held back, kept in check, insanely busy with housework and babies, submissive preacher’s wife, versatile church musician without a pay check, resourceful volunteer ever ready to help others in return for nothing, cheery and even-tempered, industrious and persistent, she held it all together in her bent and broken body.

Uncomplaining, weary, in pain 24/7 and depressed. Sometimes crying herself to sleep. Other times waking with horrifying cramps.

My heart goes out to her today in ways it couldn’t years ago.

Yet I can’t accept her depression as my depression. It isn’t mine. This one insight invites me to stay connected to her reality without making it my reality. I can only breathe my air, not hers.

These days it seems ever more acceptable to trash women of all colors and make them into problems they are not. In response, I want to do justice to the woman my mother was while showing mercy to her as the woman she could not be or become.

She was not the problem then, just as I am not the problem now.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 16 November 2018
Book cover photo found at bookdepository.com

11 Comments
November 15, 2018

More than enough

I’m out of gas
Stalled
Unable to move ahead
With certainty

The warm air
From my small space heater
Reassures me humming
Staring silently
With its one orange eye
You can do this

Last night
Which was early this morning
I sang myself back to sleep
A-B-C not do-re-mi
As first lines of old hymns
Popped into my head
Somewhere at F or G
My weary body slept

In my waking dream
I was listening to a choir
Sing a beautiful song
I didn’t remember writing
But they did
Perhaps this is enough
Even more than enough

This morning
Marie sits on my kitchen table
Smiling as I write morning pages
Without knowing
Where this is going
This stream of unconscious
Consciousness
Begging for a life on paper

And it is enough
More than enough for today
This gray steely freezing cold day
That promises nothing
But the first fringes of winter
Creeping into autumn uninvited
An early guest at a table
Still set for normal

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 15 November 2018
Photo found at tripadvisor.com

13 Comments
November 13, 2018

Moldy, moldy, moldy | Dear Friends

Dear Friends,

My body is moldy, my house is moldy, my mind is moldy and I’m not giving up!

I now have data from the first of three mold tests, with two tests to go. One of the two makes me laugh out loud every time I think about it. It’s a hair test for ‘heavy’ metals.

If you see me from time to time, you know how short my very fine (not heavy) hair is. Especially in the back. I like it that way.

So now this lab wants a measured (by weight) amount of hair from 5 to 6 places on my head, preferably from the back of my head. Each ‘strand’ should be 1 inch long! They’ll be lucky if I can find that much from the top of my head.

The worst moment will be after the deed is done and nothing can be glued back onto my head! As my trusted partner of more than 53 years, D will have the honor of clipping those precious hairs from my head. I don’t want to end up looking like a molting sheep.

The third test has to wait until I have the proper computer screen. It seems my old faithful isn’t young enough to calibrate within the limits of the vision test.

Then there was a visit with my cardiologist yesterday. Always stressful, no matter what’s going on with my heart. Especially with the added reality of almost constant work on Alzheimer-related testing. Though I don’t have it, my genes mean the risk factor rises with every year of my life. Mold is a big Alzheimer’s issue, best dealt with early and often.

I’m sleeping well most nights. Last night was an exception. I was surprised how weepy I was early this morning. I lay there thinking about my life and how difficult yet astonishingly wonderful it has been. And how many gifted, dedicated people I’ve had the privilege of working with. And how much I don’t want to leave this life just yet.

Despite all the health stuff, I turned a big corner last week. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone about myself or my worth. I already knew that in my mind. Last week my heart finally began getting and loving the message. I’ve already passed on bits and pieces here and there. It’s done, even as I keep growing like a persistent bit of mold–the good kind, of course!

Today I’m taking it easy. Practicing justice and mercy on behalf of my weary body and soul. Eager to keep moving ahead, yet no faster than my feet will take me on this damp, rainy day. The photo at the top is there just because I like it.

Happy Tuesday, and thanks for stopping by.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 13 November 2018
Photo taken by DAFraser, Hoyt Arboretum, Portland, Oregon, October 2012

12 Comments
November 7, 2018

At loose ends with myself

At loose ends with myself
Wandering up and down
The stairs of my distraction
Overturning this and that
Within my overactive mind
A clock ticks relentlessly
Counting down the corridors
Of tasks undone and words
Never recorded yet dissipating
Into a gray atmosphere silent
And secretive not yet menacing
Though the thought occurs
to me that I am being unraveled
strand by limp strand falling
to the floor of unknown reality

Unraveled. A word rich with possibilities. Terrifying and welcome all at the same time. Loss of control. Change of direction. Once-blind eyes coming out of misty half-truth and patched-together personas. Fragility unbound and hanging out there. Human. Vulnerable. Out of control in the best possible way.

All this and more went through my mind today. It isn’t just about getting older. It’s about getting real. Becoming a real rabbit, a real human being, a real baby. Not just a make-believe look-alike.

Here’s to more loose ends of the fruitful kind. Those that lead to something greater than you or I could ever become on our own.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 7 November 2018
Image of unraveling butterfly found at movestrongkbs.com

10 Comments
November 3, 2018

white affirmative action

Think of it when you go to sleep at night
Think of it when you walk or drive to the polls
Think of it when you go to church on Sunday
Think of it when you walk freely to the store
Think of it early and often and examine yourself
White gentile woman man or child that you are

By whose decree was this white affirmation
Heaped upon me and those who like me
Had no choice in the color or pedigree of our skin
Yet are heralded welcomed and protected
As the keepers and the color of purity
Angels in the making if not god almighty

Baby steps.
We need baby steps.
We need leaders who don’t look like us
Who don’t mind if our grammar isn’t perfect
Leaders who know the lay of the land
Because they’ve been there and ache
To show and tell the look of life on the other side
The toll exacted by border walls projected willy-nilly
To enhance the purity of so-called whiteness
That never existed in the first place

Humans exist in the first place
And hopefully in the last place
But only if we tend to these tiny shoots
Struggling to breathe and find sustenance
In a stingy, greedy, heads in the sand
Make-believe-we’re-OK land of no return
For this we are called
Out of ourselves and into a great
Mixed company dying to live
Before it’s too late

Thoughts on the eve of our mid-term elections. Can we find our way through this wilderness? It won’t happen overnight or without skilled leaders. Leaders who know about life because they’re already living it from the inside out. Against all odds and upstream.

Here’s how I see it. As a ‘white’ (actually German-Swiss-French) woman who is a citizen of the USA, I benefit every day from affirmative action. I’m on the lookout for skilled women, men and children who already model ways to live in a society at war with itself, without giving up hope and without being naive.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 November 2018

4 Comments
October 29, 2018

Falling raindrops

Falling raindrops
Losses unnumbered
Tears of anguish
Sink beneath ground
Mourning our dead
Prone to collapse
If not eruption

It’s Monday morning, one week from midterm elections here in the USA. I belong to the President John F. Kennedy assassination generation. November 22, 1963, two days after my 20th birthday. A harsh introduction to political realities in these somewhat united states.

And now we’ve just experienced the latest in a string of brutal, overt attacks against people who are our neighbors, whether far or near. This time it was a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Ironically, the hometown of Mr. Rogers.

November 22, 1963 was my wake-up call. Not about religion, but about politics. My vote seemed tiny back then. Yet as a white woman living in a nation that routinely disenfranchises and disregards women of all colors in overt and covert ways, my vote counted then and it still counts.

Walking to my voting station counts. Encouraging others to vote counts. Helping others get to the polls counts. Showing hospitality to strangers counts, whether it’s voting day or not.

This doesn’t make up for lives taken by gunfire, abuse, neglect, unleashed hatred and outright murder. Still, their lives are with us when we choose to remember them. As I see it, I’m not just voting on my behalf; I’m voting on their behalf. From the beginning of this nation until now.

So here we are one week from midterm elections. What’s your plan?

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 29 October 2018
Photo found at hipwallpaper.com

2 Comments
October 28, 2018

Shame on you – a poem and confession

Shame on you
Is not shame on me

I renounce your efforts
To fill my heart with
Your lust and shame
Bequeathed to you
By your father-preacher
When you were a sobbing
Child terrified lest you wake
Up one day in that fiery hell
You too once preached to
Children who believed the lie
That they entered this world
Sinners from the beginning
Now terrified of missing
That mercy for which you
Wept loudly and often
In the confines of your own
Terrified heart and soul

Wave your arms in the air
Send out your calls for sinners
To sob their way forward
Down the aisle filled
With shame and self-hatred
Believing a story that never
Belonged to them no matter
How many times they
Rushed down the aisle
Of your own deep shame

Somewhere along the way I lost the shame I carried from childhood. Shame that bound me as an adult, not just as a child.

Here’s how I see it now. Yes, there is right and there is wrong. No, God doesn’t create junk. Nor did God make sure I came with a bit of built-in sin for which I’m supposed to feel deep shame.

The shame came later. From others who introduced me to their shame long before I knew what was happening.

As a child, preachers and evangelists routinely reminded me that my heart was filled with sin from the day I was born. I watched other children repeatedly rushing down the aisle terrified lest they be thrown into a lake of fire when they died. I managed to raise my hand once, which felt like more than enough. After all, I got it at home, too.

At some point I had to take ownership of the woman I’d become. Still, scaring me and punishing me into repeated agonies of confession never helped me take ownership of myself. It simply kept me in a constant state of fear, shame and hyper-vigilance.

Ironically, these are the very things my Creator invites me to let go. Not because I’m a goody two-shoes, but because I’m loved just the way I am.

For that, I’m deeply grateful on this day of Sabbath rest.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 October 2018

8 Comments
October 21, 2018

A rambling tribute to my feet

A rambling tribute to my feet
and farewell to stubborn internal
voices calling out to entice me
into showing up at all costs –
the sign of honored membership in a
mythical club of the elderly who
never seem to weary or grow faint

Though yesterday’s good girl has
long since faded into the sunset
I’m torn by desire to ‘be there!’ with
a smile on my face and tormented
feet in my shoes faithfully trying
to catch me up or stop me cold
in my tracks before it’s over and done
lost in a confusion of days and years
of showing up now gone forever

Or how about this? I think I’m finally learning to listen to my feet. Not just my heart, gut or kidneys. I emphatically don’t like having to do this. For years I haven’t given more than a passing thought to my feet.

Showing up (on my feet) is something I’ve done habitually most of my life. My feet made sure I was on time and prepared. On time and energized. On time and ready to work hard. On time and ready to push that boulder or climb that trail to the top of the hill.

If there’s an up-side to this, it’s relief that my feet aren’t scolding me. They’re begging me to pay attention to them. Suggesting I might stop and rest after that glorious walk through the meadow, or that trip to the grocery store. Or I might even give them special treatment the way I give Smudge the cat special treatment every day.

Here’s my bottom line: ‘I don’t want to run my feet into the ground before it’s time for me to join them.’

If that sounds morbid, so be it. It’s my informal mantra for this coming week. What’s yours?

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 20 October 2018
Photo taken by DAFraser, February 2018 in the Longwood Gardens Conservatory

15 Comments
October 18, 2018

My Dear Meadow,

How kind of you to welcome me
Yesterday when I arrived unannounced
And uninvited

You looked weather-worn and weary,
Sometimes disheveled and barely able
To stand upright

Leaning one tired limb against another
You seemed to be managing, though clearly not
For long

The air above and around you seemed deserted
Without its usual commotion of butterflies and birds
And beetles

Still,
When I saw you bravely doing your meadow thing
Against all odds, tears came to my eyes

Weathered
And leaning in on yourself you made my heart
Happy to be alive and visiting your aging presence

Tiny blossoms
Winked at me from the sidelines and reached out
To remind me that little things matter

Patches
Of muddy footprints pressed into half-dry mud puddles
Happily told me I wasn’t the first to visit you recently

Clouds
Of fluffy meadow seeds sped by on unruly gusts of wind
Distributing next year’s bumper crop of wild spring beauty

Bird houses
Empty for the season stood sturdy and brave prepared
To weather the coming freeze beneath ice and snow

Just in case
You’re not open the next time I stop by, I wish you
A long winter nap and restoration to your youthful vigor

Which is exactly what I hope for all of us.

With admiration,
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 18 October 2018
Photos take by DAFraser, 17 October 2018, at Longwood Gardens Meadow

5 Comments