The Weight of Space

I am very sensitive to my environment - the way it looks, feels, smells. I've filled our home with bright, colorful art, pretty ceramic pieces, and strong, modern black furniture. I play music to reflect my moods, which change often - Otis Redding one day, Ingrid Michaelson the next. If I could keep plants alive, I'd have a house-full, for that green, oxygen-rich air they produce, but I settle for delicious smells from Anthropologie candles and homemade baked goods. My house is almost always messy because I share this space with my family - Ryan and our two kitties - but it feels like home.

The way a space looks and feels communicates volumes. Space can facilitate learning, peace, kinship, in the same way it can foster anxiety, depression, and low self-worth. An environment intentionally created with love will produce the same. An environment filled with tension will reflect as much. A space can demonstrate one's value - the wealthy are privileged to have big, airy spaces in safe neighborhoods, while the less-than-wealthy are relegated to tiny and cramped spaces with bars on the windows.

 This sentiment is communicated not-so-subtly at Penn, where I am paying tens of thousands of dollars to learn and grow....just taking a look at the Wharton School of Business in comparison to the basement classrooms in the Caster Building (where I take all of my social work courses) communicates perfectly who the money-makers are and which population is top priority.

I'm wondering what it does to one's psyche to never occupy a space that communicates a positive message. I'm thinking specifically of the kids I work with at my internship site - foster kids from the bad parts of the city, that are greeted each day by a school in a dirty building with half-painted walls and no regulation of temperature. I'm wondering if this commute to an ugly place from a ugly place takes a toll - tells the story that, even though staff here are smiling and saying a better life is possible, someone still couldn't bother to spring for printer paper or tissues or pens, or take the time to paint the walls to completion. The building feels defeated.

If it was true that everyone has the same opportunity to succeed in this country, than everyone would have that message communicated to them, in all ways, in every space they fill. Neighborhoods, schools, community centers - maintained with pride and intention. This does not necessarily take money, just mindfulness and concern for ourselves and each other. I have no other thoughts about it, other than it seems like a very possible thing to achieve on a small scale, everywhere. How can we bring our desired mindsets to life in the spaces we (and our community) occupy?

Ten Things I Hate About Me

It is probably not a shock that many people that seek degrees in the social sciences have in some way been stumped themselves developmentally and/or emotionally. In fact, I would urge anyone in this profession that can't recall some kind of major bump in the road to consider why they are really here. The very best practitioners I have met are the ones that are open and up-front about their own broken-ness and keenly aware of the messes in their own lives. I myself am a dweller-in-the-mess type, but do not always willingly embrace this fact.



I mentioned in my first post that I have a religious past, and this is a huge piece of who I am. My religious upbringing was the design of my grandparents, Pentecostal faith healers that lost a daughter in her twenties and deemed me the prodigal stand-in. Under their tutelage, I began speaking in tongues by age two. Before ten, I had stood in the middle of a highway with a sign urging people to come "get saved" in a large tent revival. At that revival, Kenneth Hagan pulled me out of the audience and prophesied over me (in tongues- translated, of course) that I was going to lead many people to Jesus, and that everyone would "shut their mouths and listen to me" (I have this recorded on cassette if you don't believe me). By thirteen, I was laying hands on people in church and they were falling over and flailing around. Every significant developmental stage was marked by some kind of Christian rite of passage gone awry. I found a list that I made when I was a child with a list of "goals"; among them, seriously, was to "blow up a Muslim temple". Another, in a later journal, was to take a bullet for an unsaved stranger so I could die a martyr and that person would find Jesus.

My grandparents fucked me up real good.

As a teenager, my method of practicing my Christian faith was brilliantly devised, although I was blissfully unaware of what I was doing. I played the therapist, from as early on as I can remember, to everyone around me. This included peers, teachers, hairdressers, my own parents, and my boyfriends. Everyone. This tactic allowed me to be popular with absolutely everybody, to feel great about myself, to feel I was being "an example", and to feel useful in the world. It also, upon reflection, gave me absolute license to completely avoid what was happening inside of me, and in my day-to-day life, because I never ever had to talk about it, and nobody ever felt the need to ask. A therapist doesn't have a private life to their clients. I pulled this off for YEARS. I have some very fond memories of being loved by people who knew absolutely zero about me.

This has a predictable ending. Eventually, the jig had to be up because my body just wouldn't allow me to keep it going. I began to get sick all the time with all the crap inside of me (literally and figuratively, sorry I know, gross) that I wasn't addressing. Since then, I've done self-work, and made alot of self-repairs, and continue to do so. However. I feel like the meanest, most awful human on the planet, alot of the time. Because part of that work has meant NO THERA-PIZING outside of the workplace. Essentially, I've given myself the freedom to say exactly what and how I feel within all of my significant relationships (and sometimes just randomly, too - this does not always work out well.) I am sometimes tactless. I know people have found me intimidating. And I am incredibly, outspokenly selfish about my wants, needs, and my time. I have so much guilt about all of this I cannot even begin to express it. But it is authentic, and I am healthier this way. So I stew in the guilt, daily, and continue to be me. Who is sometimes a bitch. A big, un-Christiany one.

I have reconciled myself to the reality that this will be a lifetime sort of thing for me. That maybe in my forties or fifties I will feel zen enough that softer, more lovely things will come out of my mouth more often, and I'll be patient with myself every time they don't. Maybe by my sixties I'll embrace my crotchety-ness along with all my positive qualities and be one of those confident older women with great humor and witty soundbites, like my Nana. Maybe not. Either way, I'm committed to remaining honest about who and what I am as much as I can, at every opportunity.

I have the great fortune of knowing many strong, outspoken, complex women, of all ages. In this I find encouragement and hope, because I sometimes see glimpses of myself in the women I admire and think that maybe I am a bunch of great things, and am liked for some of those great things. The things I am now are mostly me, not mostly martyr, and I am still surrounded in love - really and honestly this time.

The Real Deal

 

Circa 1997, a story came out in the newspapers in Ocean City, New Jersey, announcing the arrival of a guy that was walking through town in the middle of a pilgrimage. The papers quoted him claiming to be on a Jesus-Journey of sorts, trekking barefoot up the coast with no places to stay and no money, relying only on the mercy of people that offered him free food and shelter. As a young and idealist teenage SuperChristian, I was immediately starstruck. I excitedly drove up and down Stagecoach Road in Marmora, looking for Jesus Man, with a sandwich and an apple. When I finally tracked dude down and offered him my picnic in exchange for conversation, he rejected the food because he'd been followed around by people like me all day and was stuffed. I don't remember what we talked about, so I'm guessing his personal theology wasn't that earth-shaking. But I do remember seeing him on the local news, too, and him reporting that he had stayed in different homes offered to him by community members when he came through.

Mike McIntyre's book The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America explores a similar theme, with a Trusting Young Journalist exploring the country, banking on only the goodness of everyday folks to meet his needs. I read the book in my early twenties, and finished the read feeling inspired and superior and sure that yes, if a random Jesus Man or Trusting Young Journalist came through my town, I was just the kind of Kind Stranger to offer them a homemade sandwich. And an apple.

So, fast-forwarding to today and looking at this from the eyes of a thirty-something that shook Christianity (but kept a tender appreciation for the Jesus figure), it becomes apparent that, duh, um, these guys had no trouble getting help not because they were faithful and believed in people (both lovely things), but foremost because they weren't actually homeless. Because actual homeless people sometimes are dirty or mentally ill or hurt people, and most people, including me, don't invite others into their homes or hand-make sandwiches for people that are potentially dangerous or scary. And so most of the time, even by the very best of us, the people that really actually need or desire help are ignored in favor of those people or things that can make us feel good at little or no risk to ourselves.




How, as practitioners, to bridge this gap? To start, I think its important to be very honest with ourselves about the populations with whom we choose to work. It is essential, to be a good practitioner (and really just to be a good person) to stretch beyond our limits and invite in populations that are entirely "other" in order to learn and grow.

At the same time, its important to acknowledge our areas of weakness and limitation, and address these areas directly, rather than avoid them out of embarrassment or fear of appearing incapable (my very greatest fear). If we grew up privileged, we need to look at that. If we grew up in an area with very little diversity or are from a higher socioeconomic status, that's very relevant to the work we might do with with people that experienced the opposite of those things.



In doing the work on ourselves, and in taking a frank look at our limitations, fears, prejudices, etc, we can show a little respect to the people with whom we will work - the real deal people, not the Jesus Man or Trusting Young Journalist models. It is my utmost belief that this is owed and essential, at the Very Least, to those people, and to ourselves.

Committed

 

09-09-2012

Entry One

Sometimes I have to sit with my anxiety for a much longer time than I am comfortable before being able to identify the culprit behind the sensation. Since I tend to live in a general state of anxiousness, it’s not always clear when the something that is tugging at me that is specific in nature, as opposed to the general self-renewing freak out that is “Oh no, I’m alive, and also an adult person expected to be able to navigate daily life fairly independently and with a reasonable amount of competence." Which is scary, obviously.

 

 So anxiety prior to beginning a Master’s program in a field similar to that in which I already hold a Master’s degree, at the age of 32, without working simultaneously (was anyone else aware that a decent grad school currently costs circa $120,000? Cause that’s a thing that’s true.)  seemed self-explanatory in its inducement of awesome excitement, coupled with some periods of self-doubt and fear. Except that I’ve come to think that’s just not really it.
 

 For all my talk of loving my profession and also the shining little life I’ve been painstakingly cobbling together since forever, I am a person who has made a variety of choices that allow me to commit myself, fully, to almost nothing. There are the obvious things, in that I have not married or had any children or bought a home (it is becoming really obvious, though, that most folks my age have done at least one of those things, but not everybody, so…phew), but there are other things, too. I’ve had a different address on average every two years. I’ve tried out a variety of hobbies, from painting to cooking to trapeze. I have no steady religious affiliation (more on that, I’m sure, in later entries); even my haircut changes so frequently that sometimes people who knew me a few years ago no longer recognize me. If I didn’t have a nagging phobia of public transportation and international travel it’s conceivable that I might be nomadic.

 

 My work, and my impenetrable positive regard for the kids with whom I work, has been the only sentiment in my life that I can safely say I have never questioned; it never flags. Having the privilege of sitting down for an hour while a young person shares his or her life with me remains more appealing to me than a plate of chocolate chip cookies. And it always has.

Which is why, at 32, after working as a professional in the field for eight years, I am finally acquiescing, and claiming a thing. I’m committing myself, with schooling and interning and more letters after my name and $120,000 (in loans, obviously) to this thing, this work thing, and saying as assuredly as I can that this is THE thing I’ll be doing, forever, as long as I am working, and probably as long as I am alive because I’ll make like no dollars and have a shit-ton of loans. Committing. Hence the huge-time anxiety, I’m fairly certain.

                A few years back I was talking with a client about codependency, in lieu of his attempts at connecting with someone in his life that just wasn’t healthy enough to do it properly. He said that his attempts, though exhausting, were obvious and non-negotiable, because he had a place in his heart that he tended to with his work on this relationship, even though he sometimes got very little from the other person involved. He kept on going to fill up that little empty space in his heart, whether he was validated, or not.

                I know I’m alluding to being codependent on my work (and it’s very likely that I am, although I kind of suspect all social workers are), but I relate to the fact of a hole inside my heart that is filled up by the work that I do, and by nothing else.  I trust myself in this one aspect, to do this one thing, for as long as I can, because it’s something I have to do.  And that is something that makes me fearful, but I believe that is also something that makes me very lucky.