"Integration made visible is kindness and compassion," says Mindsight, well-being, UCLA Psychiatrist- Dr. Dan Siegle.
May the New Year be filled with healthy integration for us all!
Taking a life review and recap perspective in this post, I write about what " visible- even manifest kindness and compassion," means for me, now:
Releasing a long deserved, Ahhhhhh... I pause to articulate, mine is- after decades of building and building real integration of my own conscious intellectual life; what I know within without plaguing self-doubt; of building comprehensive benefit from the hard work to reach better whole-self acceptance; a consciously lived spiritual life, joyfully if more privately- coupled to a gifted creative life; is a life far more integrated with my on-going dreams for a successfully realized material life; a balance whole life eventually integrated with a truly supportive love life at loooong last- as I still believe this to be soooo much nicer!
Yesterday, the next moment of mature insight was freely and beautifully stated by my daughter in a phone call we shared together, very located in the present. For me, it was a parting of the waves experience, a deep drink from the well- experience. She is in her mid-twenties now, and I am so grateful for the qualities of development coming to the fore by her choices, as she lives her own independently successful life.
I worked full-tilt during those full-time, single parenting years- all 23 of them. Covering the waterfront of developmental well-being, to raise my child as benefitting from all the supports I valued and tirelessly continued putting together, in myriad ways. I worked full-tilt during those full-time, single parenting years: defining-as-I-lived into the intense, non-stop therapy work: a working scaffold-on-the-run of personal well-being, for the first time in my own life.
Necessarily independent of all family ties, and all past social ties to that point, in the land of the free and the brave- I continue even today, figuring out how to make my career and living as an artist of international cultural upbringing- influences. Free from inherited, and through hard work- avoidable, non-preferential chaos.
I wear a medal of honor I gave myself one Mother's Day years ago, to mark these everyday truths of my life.
From the moment of conception, my child and I continue to have a deep, growing, special bond. It does contrast very well, the reality of having been raised with two younger sibs, by intense mental illness, not ever diagnosed until I was in my thirties, with a daughter of my own daughter and in Kindergarten.
By then, I personally had a basket-full of years of the therapy work belonging to this person-in-denial to do, under my own belt.
If I can even begin to touch with words, any accurate written description- what integration might look like, after doing the best one can from the getgo to navigate the growing up 24/7 terrifying hell about my only living, high-functioning, terrifyingly (high IQ-low self-esteem), nevertheless extremely intelligent- parent.
I cannot emphasize this reality of navigating the mind field of a parent in denial and avoidance, while projecting and attaching- because they are among many things, a mentally ill, high-functioning and terrifying intellect. If you've no exposure to denied egregious mental illness in your parent, there is not enough emphasis that can be made.
The residue hardest to shed is, I have ALWAYS felt very guarded about many things, centrally about revealing, or knowing the equally complex truth of revealing any of these personal, historical details- in order to be seen, heard and/or valued individually.
A gift I continue my own on-going maturity growth/integration of compassion and kindness, to give myself, first.
Yet dear reader, even though what I share are very intimately scaled insights- imposed isolation from the social world outside must be equally, compassionately abated. We all suffer greatly in America, from shame, and a narrowness of normalcy conditioning.
And even as there is now a reasonable, clinical diagnosis- this multi-decade, geographically distanced individual, still lives in denial of their truth- and always will. Shame costs us everything.
On this uphill, growth-into-conscious-life journey, I have only very recently in the past two years, more fully integrated a very hard acceptance of this truth about social shame's costs and my parent's fears reflecting a lifetime of wrong-thinking choices, though I never give up on the soul trapped inside the storm.
It means, continuously integrating the evolutionary reality of a biological relation in this life who is unpredictable at every moment, while continuously untangling less, and working more integrative-ly, with all the internal challenges tied to this being. The one you've always needed to be loved by to grow up well, no matter the distance- but have had to intuitively choose from a very, very young age, to (initially secretly) decide to literally escape, in order to save your own life. Someone whose job it was to care for and protect you, whom you've always only loved, yet who, (I've) had to work very hard, again initially with help, to learn- has never been safe enough to let that far in to your psychic/emotional life.
Reflective of the years of work to untangle, clarify, heal more and the gains made and earned integrating kindness and compassion- to now navigating in order to mutually establish more healthy, non-familial integration (i.e., meaningful, substantive friendships)- can be awkward, hard work trusting others. So I begin again, chopping wood and carrying water.
See? (*This is truly a simply profound inquiry.) For anyone close enough to believe they see me, art really does save lives.
In the past two years of post-Bacc studies, to finally integrate meaningful academic accomplishments into a valuable whole, in support of my being able to work confidently from this self-realized platform to be reasonably competitive in the marketplace: I have good footing now in a finely integrative opportunity, called,
the ARt project.
An integration of passions regarding access and courage, I've managed to build from an original vision of my own in collaboration with many talented others at the local university.
As the project enters the scary (to me) phase of budget writing, grant proposal development, personal worth analysis, proposal pitching, presenting and marketing- as I prepare to leave this wombish period of my self-made life, I take another step in shedding large burdens met- of separation, in my easing carefully into the flowing river of life.
May I continue swimming well as an individual soul of The Divine, as a blessedly conscious, caring parent, and as working/selling artist, who is also becoming a start-up founder- with greater mastery found in the grace of compassion and kindness.
*Below, the image is of a painting I created- with quite the true story of living integrity flowing through how it came into being.
