The Truest Route Home
Beautiful One,
This month’s heART❤️SCHOOL word is Home. My mind has been spinning with ideas about this very-present theme in my life and my artwork. It feels big and unwieldy, but I’ve learned not to fear messiness. Let’s jump in and see where this goes.
I mentioned in the most recent Accidental Muralist Podcast episode (titled “Home” — no mystery there) that my first homes as a child were shared with not only parents and two older sisters, but also a revolving door of foster siblings. And we moved quite often, living in five different homes by the time I left for college. Plus my mom’s artistic forte has always been home decorating.
Those experiences likely influenced my relationship with Home, and might be the reason why houses appear in my artwork a lot. I’ve even used them to represent myself in self-portraits. About a dozen times.
Despite my visceral connection to dwellings, that’s not what I want to talk about today. It wasn’t even the focus of the podcast. (Click here to listen, if you missed it.)
So why did I choose the word HOME for this module of heART❤️SCHOOL?
It’s the Opposite of Alienation
Four walls and a roof are important, and we want that space to feel welcoming and supportive. Even more critical, though, is our connection to our Selves, our intuition, our inner knowing. That’s the territory of home that I want to focus on. I’d venture to say that they’re linked: Having an understanding of — and respect for — what you need for your own well-being leads naturally to creating those kinds of places. But it’s easier said than done.
Developing an internal sense of “home base” has been central to my own healing process, even though it’s mostly happened by accident (as transformative things tend to do). Before I offer suggestions for locating and connecting with our inner home, let’s zoom out and see why it’s so hard to do.
Our Ungroundedness is Neither Accidental, Nor Our Fault
In this era of political polarization, climate chaos, science worshippers and science deniers, religious fundamentalists and “we’re all doomed” nihilists, it’s pretty clear that we’ve lost our center. Not just our political center, but our center-center. Our Self-knowledge, our groundedness in who we are. This feels true of the U.S. as a country right now, as well as many of the people inhabiting it. When we don’t trust our Selves, things get wobbly at best and wildly destructive at worst.
We live in difficult times, yes. And I love the idea that all of us alive today chose to be here, at this particular time, and we each have a critical role to play in the healing that must take place. We signed up for this because we have something to offer.
Reflect on that for just a moment. 🤔💫
🌬💥✨🔥🌟🌪🌟🔥✨💥💨
If you’re not immediately buying into the concept that you are an important piece of the puzzle of How To Heal The World, it’s understandable. Modern industrialized culture has trained us into some f*cked up belief systems that are anti-healing, and, well, anti-you. Here’s a sampling of what you’ve been ingesting your whole life:
Men are better than women. Furthermore, femaleness is innately wrong. (Remember Eve? 🍎)
“Progress” is a linear function; civilization is becoming more and more “advanced.” 📈
Intellect is superior to emotions. 🧠>🫀The former must rule over and suppress the latter.
The lighter your skin color, the greater your value. 👦>🧒🏽>👩🏿
The body is shameful. The female body is particularly unclean. But also a prized commodity. 💋But also vile. 🤮
Heaven is “up there”; hell is “down there”; being alive is a game that determines where you’ll go when you die. 👼🏽👺
Don’t talk about death; it’s depressing. Just live in mortal fear of it. ☠️
“Mankind” was created to dominate all other living beings and the Earth, ‘cause we’re the smart ones! 💪🏽💥🌎
Before menopause I probably would have felt bad about saying all of that out loud, but I’m more interested in telling the truth now. And I’m learning to trust my instincts.
(It’s been a long road.)
Simple But Not Easy
I had to admit, as I was getting divorced at age 40, that I had a truth problem. I was addicted to niceness and not-wanting-to-offend. It was the only strategy I knew for staying safe, even though I was not conscious that I was doing it, or why. I just thought I was being a “good wife.” You know: thoughtful, generous, forgiving, understanding, flexible, easy-going …
I’m not alone in this Niceness Trap. For the last few thousand years in monotheistic, patriarchal societies, women’s only power has been our likability. I took mine seriously.
My many small fibs and untruths added up to big trouble. In all my efforts to keep the peace with my husband (“I’m fine.” “Sure, let’s do it your way.” “It doesn’t matter to me.”), I came nearly untethered from what did matter and what was not fine with me. Those words I said aloud to him were nothing compared to what was happening under the surface, which was a complete self-betrayal.
Shame Can’t Survive in Sunlight
Facing the truth of my lying-disguised-as-niceness habit was so ground-shaking that I wrote my first tiny book about it. It’s a zine that I doodled on quarter-sheets of paper, had my daughter Elena edit, and printed 30 copies of, called The Recovering Good Girl’s Guide to Lying (and how to stop). Here’s the cover, left, and how I experienced and explained away my feelings, right. I needed to come clean! (We have 3 copies left.)
It’s So Much Harder Than We Pretend It Is
I’ve written here before (or started to) about how we think of ourselves as honest people while, simultaneously, we’re teaching our children exactly with which words and in what situations they should lie. We call this “good manners” and sometimes “gaming the system”, among other things. It’s complicated and I don’t actually want to talk about the lies we tell others, or the ones swirling around in our culture.
Let’s talk about you. And about me. What can we do?
The first step to creating an internal home — a psychic space where you value and respect your Self — is naming what is true. As Dr. Christiane Northrup writes in her incredible book, Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom:
“[H]ealing cannot begin until we allow ourselves to feel how bad things are (or were in the past). Doing this frees emotional and physical energy that has been stuffed, stuck, denied, or ignored for many years. When we can allow ourselves to feel exactly how we feel without judgment, we begin to free our energy. Only then can we move toward what we want.”
Did you notice how she said “without judgment”? Yeah… about that.
The Non-Judgement Lab
Let’s create an imaginary zone called the Non-Judgement Lab. It’s a place to play around, test out some new responses as we deepen our knowledge of our Selves. It’s very counter-culture. 🥳 I think you’ll like it. Here are some experiments we can try:
Remove comparisons. What if we took away our society’s perception of “normal” (which is usually identical to its ideal)? For example, what if we saw our anxiety not as a problem to be fixed, but instead as a reasonable response to a disturbing world, and an important message about how we might care for ourselves in this moment? Rather than assessing, in each hour of the day, whether we are “doing well” or “not doing very well” (compared to how we imagine others might be doing) maybe we could allow ourselves to just be doing as we’re doing. We just are. It’s not good or bad, it just is.
Let your body take charge. My yoga life is completely different now, thanks to the pandemic. Without mirrors and other students to compare myself with, I get to focus only on what feels good in my body. (Still, I’m so grateful for awesome teachers and cool classmates in the Before Times.) Every day my body wants something a little different. The less I think about what I should do, the more fun and playful those sessions become. Plus, I dance and wiggle a lot more around the house and throughout the day, now, too. My body has lots of ways it likes to move, both on and off the mat. Welcoming ✅. Supportive ✅. We are at home together.
Unhook from counting. When I’m on the yoga mat in the morning, I have a vague awareness of what time it is, but I’m no longer interested in counting minutes. I stretch and roll and twist and balance until I feel finished doing that. Shavasana lasts as long as it lasts. I meditate until I’m done meditating. Each day is allowed to be different, because I am different each day. A shorter session is not “worse than” a longer session. There are no “targets” or “goals,” either in minutes or in reps. This allows me to tune into what my body wants from me, not vice-versa. (Lately, that is lots of headstands! 🙃 My body is full of surprises.)
Build a relationship with a tree, a boulder, an animal, or the moon. If you have a pet, you’re way ahead on this one. For those of us without furry housemates, why not adopt a favorite leafy or mineral creature to visit and talk to? We’re travel mates on this Earth journey, after all. I’ve got two Douglas firs next door that I hug and kiss and greet and thank every morning. (Don’t judge! This is a Non-Judgement Lab!) And a magnificent silver maple tree a few blocks away that I like to go put my hands on every week or so. Plus, I’m pretty tight with the birds that come to my feeder and the squirrels that race across my studio roof. 🤞🏽And I’m working on getting back in touch with the moon cycle, like I was as a Peace Corps Volunteer in a Muslim region of Kenya where Ramadan was celebrated. BTW Happy Lunar New Year, y’all! Chuc mung nam moi! 🧧🐅
Doodle. You knew I’d get to this eventually. When I said earlier that I “nearly came untethered” from what mattered to me, it was art that held the thread. Don’t let our capitalist culture convince you that you don’t have time for art. It’s the thing that will save you. I adore doodling because it’s so damn accessible that there’s no excuse for not doing it. But you do you: Sing or dance or play the guitar as if your life depended on it, because I actually think it does. If you want to truly feel the life force, that is — the pulse of creation that is on-going in this Universe. I know I do. It connects me to both my inner soul-home and my greater planetary home.
Three Words That Begin With “H”
In heART❤️SCHOOL we’ve so far spelled, as an acronym:
Agency
Ritual
Transitions
Spaciousness
Creativity
Home… and let’s add another “h” word to that: Honesty. And a third: Healing.
When you can admit where you are right now, truly, that is the first step on the path to — well, anywhere you want to go that requires integrity, that can feel like home. I’m not interested in going anyplace that doesn’t. I’ve sold myself out once, and vow to not do that again.
Trying to be something you’re not — or forgetting who you are, or attempting to measure up to someone else’s ideals — requires too much energy to sustain. We need your energy for the world’s healing, remember? We’re all in this together. We chose to be here because we have something to offer each other.
Your truth will create a home base in you, a place from which you can rest and be nurtured and grow.
Thank you for your honest contribution to the healing of our collective home 🌍.
With love,
Pam
P.S. The Doodling Lunatics had our first gathering on Tuesday, the new moon. 🌚(Tonight I saw my favorite moon-shape, the slim waxing crescent that faintly illuminates the entire sphere. 🥰) You’re invited to join us next time: Friday, March 4th at 5:30 pm Pacific time. Read more about it here.