🌕 In My Experience… Boundaries of Love
it’s a full moon in capricorn 🌕
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Listen to me read this essay:
Hi friends,
Thank you for taking time to read my little meandering missives. I truly appreciate you being here.
I’m starting this newsletter from my sofa with a view both of the smoke filled Manhattan skyline and of the dozen plants I just misted in my living room: I pray for the harmony of fire, air, earth, water — the elements, near and far. I hope you’re finding your unique & resonant connection to nature’s presence wherever you are.
Yes, the haze is back in NYC, the so-called checks & balances are failing us/US, Paris is burning… but, as always, dykes lead the way and the kids are all right. My shitty cancer data continues. 🎭 My magnificent existence too. Hotel Selassie (my apartment lol) hosts visits from those I adore. Gatherings ensue. Music too. I am cooking (and assembling salads) with amazing local, seasonal produce from The Coop and Brooklyn Supported Agriculture. Beach days, new tattoos, upstate hikes, and more await. I am in love with my life.
Not that I don’t also have low points around these health stats. I do. And maybe for the first time in my life, I am truly supported to fully allow all the associated feelings. Supported first and primarily by me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been heavily conditioned to dismiss my pain, discourage my tears, and manage my emotions for the comfort of others. I (unconsciously) chose to hold onto that conditioning (for far too long) — I vow never to do that to myself again. Supported also recognizes the relational field that helps me keep that vow. I am held within an incredible web of unconditional love which helps me to trust life and to embrace joy. In any moment, I am free to choose what to focus on, what to emphasize, what to believe…
Image ID: Tweet from @alizakelly on background of daisies and colorful stripes with the following text: him: “i don’t believe in astrology.” me: “i don’t believe in the supreme court.”
I am focusing on joy. I am emphasizing freedom. I believe in love.
Thanks again for being here with me. This month’s In My Experience… is below.
With love,
Sebene
How do you deal with an adult bully in your family?
Dear Boundaries of Love,
Thank you for this very direct question. I wish I knew more about your inquiry. Also: oof.
The word bully is used in describing a variety of situations. The standard definition of bullying used by psychologists refers to persistent verbal and physical abuse within a power imbalance — the classic example being schoolyard extortion of a smaller or younger kid. Yet, some people use bullying to describe any pushy behavior. I’ve been called an intellectual bully by a family member for what I acknowledged in You Belong as my know-it-all attitude (which can lead me to press a point regardless of how it impacts others). I don’t consider myself a bully. Yet, if being bullied means experiencing someone else asserting themselves in a way that I find uncomfortable, I will admit that there have been times when I have felt bullied by people, including by family members — but I do not consider this abuse.
As I’ve said before, nothing I say here is intended as medical or therapeutic advice, nor can it replace work with a specialist. Before I respond, I am going to assume one thing: that you are not talking about physical or emotional abuse. If you are experiencing abuse, please seek professional help.
In My Experience… it has been liberating to understand that people around me are usually doing the best they can (even when their best is pretty fucking terrible), but that does not mean I have to engage with them (even if we are related) — when I claim an adult responsibility for participating in dynamics that are unhealthy or harmful, then I am able to erect and maintain boundaries that are rooted in love.
As a teen in the mid eighties, I told my mom through tears how much it hurt me that she never said “I love you.” Her response was surprise and confusion. From then on, she said it regularly; but, as an older Ethiopian immigrant, it had never before occurred to her to verbalize out-loud what she felt was expressed obviously through loving care for her children: tending to our very survival day to day, working a job she disliked so we could have what we needed, and (maybe most importantly to her) cooking fresh traditional foods from scratch every week. Even though I did not lack for basics and was indeed well fed, does not mean I felt nourished.
I grew up around adults who, to put it mildly, did not communicate feelings clearly or consistently. Sometimes I remember my childhood as more healthy than it was. But, actually, it was pretty bananas. I can’t go into all of that here. There’s so much. At the core, as I recall it, there was little physical or verbal affection, hardly any examples of high emotional IQ, and not much social guidance relevant to this cultural context. My mistakes were corrected mostly through erratic and angry outbursts – primarily verbal though sometimes physical (mild spanking when I was very young). One vacation, I was stuffed up and/or sneezing the entire week, but I did not have a cold. Rather than expressing concern about what might actually be happening with me, many times on the trip both my parents lashed out at me in public (albeit, in Amharic) to stop sniffling. I recall the shame I felt but also the fear because I did not know how to make stop what had made them mad. Much later, I realized that moment was the beginning of a decades-long issue with allergies and sinusitis. I also now recognize that they were extremely stressed about multiple problems in their own lives, including fears about what was happening back in Ethiopia and Eritrea, several crises with family members in the U.S., serious financial challenges, and the misery of their own relationship (not to mention the complex trauma that both of them unknowingly carried).
I am not saying my parents were bullies. I know they never intended to harm me in any way. They really were doing the best they could. Generally, their best was fine. Often, it was not good. Sometimes it was extraordinarily bad. I don’t believe they could have done any better. They would have had to have been altogether different people, with totally different pasts. Also, I want to be honest with you that their behavior negatively impacted me.
It’s hard for me to write anything disparaging about anyone in my inner orbit. Though the popularity of memoir writing makes it seem that we’ve all been thouroughly liberated to speak openly about family or friendship issues, I don’t observe a lot of people (especially not immigrants!) speaking truthfully about the problematic dynamics that occur in relationships. In most immigrant cultures, the pressure to honor and respect elders is especially strong. For me, this has perpetuated fidelity and inhibited authenticity. A few weeks ago, my friend Maud was advising me on starting a memoir 😬 and writing about my father or anyone who is still alive (as she does in her phenomenal book Ancestor Trouble). She said something that’s been resonating for me since: You don’t have to write about your father. And you absolutely have every right to write about your father.
Of course, all memoirists grapple with the Rashomon-ish fact that you are not writing “the” truth, but “your” truth. Almost twenty years ago, I took a writing class where I recorded a description of another long ago vacation with my parents. I told the story of a stranger we encountered in Cairo who invited us to his home for lunch. I shared the piece with my dad. Besides those basic facts (Cairo, a stranger, a lunch invite), he disagreed with the other details as I remembered them. Because my father has an almost photographic memory (including for minutiae of history and for works of literature), I assumed he was right. When I mentioned this to my writing teacher, I was struck by his insistence that my version was just as valid as my dad’s and that no one’s remembrances are “right.” This lesson was helpful years later when I insisted my father had “misremembered” numerous conversations he and I had ten years earlier. It makes me wonder if his memory favors historical dates and cold data over anything that involves feelings and emotions. I am probably the opposite.
I believe we are all essentially memoirists, whether or not we record our truths somewhere outside of us. Memoir, like life, honors our own honest and authentic stories. There are times and circumstances when others’ stories drown out mine, when I find that I cannot hear (or believe) my own story. Not without distance.
I started psychotherapy when I was 26. Within the first few weeks, my therapist suggested I limit contact with my mom for three months. This was not technically difficult because she had recently moved back to Addis Ababa and would not have regular phone access for months. And this made it less emotionally difficult. Otherwise I would have felt the guilt and obligation to stay in regular contact with her which would have meant not staying in contact with my dad. Instead, I had space and time to go visit my father and process with him various childhood issues. Yes, various issues he would later distort — even so, it was a synchronous gift from the universe that my mother’s phone limits matched up with my therapist–recommended boundary. Except, I did not call it a “boundary” then. I would today. And also add this viral quote from therapist and somatics teacher Prentis Hemphill:
“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.”
While my mom was still alive, she had some extremely loud stories. She was sad and bitter about things from her past and talked about them repeatedly. She expressed her anger in harsh and uncompromising ways that made me very uncomfortable. Her interpretations of situations differed from how I understood them. In hers, she was always the victim. Also, she refused to end the relationships that caused her the most distress (and about which she complained incessantly). My mother was also gorgeous, incredibly generous, wildly creative, super funny, effortlessly stylish, and had a profound love for her three kids and two grandsons.
All those years ago, if her phone access had been normal, I don’t think I would have been able to not call my mom for three months. Even if I was convinced that a boundary would be best for me. Maybe now I would? I don’t know. I’d like to think I’ve learned how to love someone from a distance that feels loving & free for both of us.
When I was little, I developed unhealthy patterns to manage my realtionships with adults. Those patterns (like people pleasing) helped me create at least a little harmony and stability amidst the chaos. But patterns are strategies, not solutions. And can be hard to break. Of course, as a child, I had very little choice in my patterns or relationships. Now, breaking patterns often means erecting or maintaining boundaries I need or want even when others don’t need or want them.
A few months before my mom died, she said this to me: “Sebene, I think I made many, many mistakes.”
Me too, mommy. Me too.
May we all nurture boundaries of love for our well-being.
Some change comes to us unbidden. Some change we long to call in. Can you view every unexpected change as holy? Can you invite each wanted change with reverence?
Join this 3-week exploration for connecting to ALL change as sacred.
Join me for Soulful Cycles: Creating Intention, Ritual, & Ceremony for Life-Changes. Wednesdays, July 26 & August 2 & 9, 6–8pm ET. On Zoom (and recorded for those who register). Learn more and register here.
Registration closes very soon for BreathWork: Discover Healing and Expanded States of Awareness Through Conscious Breath, an immersive, four-month online course designed by the brilliant Jennye Patterson. I will be leading a session on grief in August. Learn more and join us.
how heartfelt and hearthurt…sigh
Thank you. Just. Thank you.