The Kotzker Rebbi

May 3, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

According to legend, and history, Menachem Mendel
Morgenstern of Kotzk, Poland was an eccentric and influential rabbi, teaching
and forming one of the early branches of Hasidism, creating a more austere sect
of Judaism.

According to legend, and history, The Kotzker Rebbi, as he
was known, locked himself in his room for the last 20 years of his life. He
never left it. He received his food through a hole in the wall, and apparently
opened the door of his home once a year, revealing himself and his new
teachings/learnings to his disciples.

According to genetics, I am his great great great
granddaughter. His grandson is my grandfather’s father… I think. I have a family
tree at home somewhere. Either he’s my grandfather’s grandfather, or my grandfather’s
great grandfather. I haven’t done the math.

Point being, and why it occurs to me today, I have no idea –
but the point being that I have some whacked out crazy, and powerful, Jews in
my lineage, living in my blood and DNA.

I’ve always found this fascinating. Firstly, it sort of
points to the understandability that mental illness runs in my family(!), and
secondly, it just sort of makes sense that Judaism continues to be this thread
in my life. I can’t sever it, ignore it, dismiss it – it is me.

When I began teaching at the Sunday School last year in
Berkeley, I said that I felt it was both my duty and my privilege to do so.
There is a line from some text that if any of us knows even one word of Hebrew he is
bound to teach it to someone else.

Again, I don’t really know why this occurs to me today. I
suppose as I begin to think about the direction my life is taking, or may take,
or I want it to take, I begin to think about this thread. Part of my
consideration in where I will move next, if I move, and eventually I
will (whenever “eventually” is), is if there are Jews there. For example, I’ve
been enamored of Asheville, North Carolina, ever since I heard of it through a
friend of mine who lives there. Young, hip, mountainous, liberal, artsy,
cultured … with one Jewish temple, of Conservative affiliation – aka, more
religious than I am, or want to be.

I don’t want to be more religious, I simply want to have
more connection to the community. More connection to those who share a history,
random Yiddish words, and a very eye-rolly understanding of the complexities of
a Jewish family.

So, Asheville may not be it. I have this crude crayon
drawing I made after a group meditation about 6 or more months ago. It’s a
couple, a man and a woman, holding hands, walking up a street to a
t-intersection. At the head of this intersection is a house – with a
wrap-around porch, huge trees, and a stream in the back, nested by a forest
behind it. To the right of this couple on the main street is a building with a
symbol for recovery on its façade. To the left of them, is a building with a
Jewish star above the door.

This is my vision. This, I believe, is how I become the
woman I want to be. Buoyed by my communities of faith, I’m able to stand in
partnership with another human being, and take part in what the world has to
offer.

I am grateful to have the quirky lineage that I have. It
makes sense to me, and makes me smile. (On my other side, my dad’s side, I’m
descended from Bohemians, literally.) Somehow I feel that I’m preparing to take
up a mantle that belongs to me, which includes all of these histories and as
well as all of the modern and current advantages I’ve inherited as a 20^th
century woman with good health and education. And I’ll be curious when I find
that crayon drawing in 20 or 30 years to see how close I’ve come.

acceptance · adulthood · change · courage · discovery · forgiveness · gratitude · grief · honesty · intimacy · kindness · love · meditation · progress · recovery · sex · sexuality · sobwebs · spirituality

Somewhere New.

May 1, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For several months now, I’ve been working on a particular
area of healing. For those of you who have read the “Savage Love,” then “Savage Beauty” blogs, you know that I’ve been working on healing my relationship with
my sexuality, and my past behavior and experience in this area.

This is likely going to be a little heavy – for which I’m
not thrilled, but I’m honest – so if that’s not what you want today, I’m sure Cyanide
& Happiness will provide some levity
today.

On my way back from the sweat lodge this Sunday, I was riding
with my friend who was running the lodge. I told her that earlier this year,
and late last year, each time I’d “go in” via meditation or shamanic journey
work to ask what I need to do next to move forward, I was presented with the information
that I needed to work on this stuff – sexual trauma and other murky stuff. I have been. Working
with my therapist on EMDR for a little bit (though I’m not seeing her
currently, due to finances), and in these other more alternative ways.

And most of all, through my thesis.

Basically what my thesis trails is a path through my sexual
history. That story parallels my mental breakdown, and my parents’ divorce, but really,
what is being excavated and brought into the light is all of that. The
“highlights” or representative incidents.

Over ages 16 through 24 (a little earlier than 16, but
that’s when it really took off with a very chicken-or-egg tag team with my drinking), is a napalm blanket of sorrow, shame, and
dissociation. When riding in the car with my friend on Sunday, I said to her
that I hadn’t “been in” to ask for a while if I’m “done” with this particular
set of work or not, and wondered if maybe I was, but/and as I found out a little this morning, there are still
some corners left to sweep.

I am grateful that I had the courage to put all of what I
needed to onto paper in my thesis. But, I’m also aware that it goes much deeper
and further than the stark, strobe-like glimpses that I give you, the reader.
And this morning, in meditation, I began to psychicly clear out some of the
cobwebs. (I just accidentally wrote “sobwebs,” which I suppose is pretty accurate
for this morning.)

In fact, I did something pretty literal to sweeping out – in my mind’s
eye, I walked through and into all those situations I remember, and
unfortunately or not, I remember quite a lot quite vividly apparently — more
than I thought I did. I walked through these times and places, into these
couplings and actions, and burned sage there. I carried this sage through all
the circumstances I could remember, and asked them to be cleared of any energy
which is no longer needed.

There are the few where there was kindness,
and the kindness will remain, but there are the many that were out of a sense of obligation, or resignation, or force; or just wanting to feel better; or just wanting to feel anything other than what
I felt. There are those that are truly tragic, and require some extra doses of
compassion and witness, instead of repression.

I don’t know what may or not come of this work this morning.
It was sort of “unbidden;” I didn’t have the intention as I closed my eyes for
meditation this morning to do any of that – but I guess the Powers That Be had
that intention for me, anyway.

One thing I asked for aloud in the prayer circle in Sunday’s
sweat lodge during the final prayer round – the one where we get to pray for
ourselves, out loud so others know what we need – I prayed for healing around
physical intimacy. And that’s where the majority of my tears came on Sunday. My
relationship with my body, my femininity, sexuality, sex, intimacy, being
present in my body when being intimate – all of this needs healing. I’d still
rather hide within my body – offer you it, but not what’s inside it; assume
it’s really all you want from me anyway, so I might as well just give you only
that out of spite – even if you in fact want more. But, hiding within myself doesn’t work
anymore. Beating myself out of my body – or having someone do it for me – doesn’t work anymore. Not being present
is painful now. And not voicing my physical needs to a partner is another way of hiding.

I don’t really know what to do about it yet. I know that I
don’t do what I used to. But I feel like I’ve swung to the opposite side of the
spectrum – from the vixen to Betty Crocker, as I’ve put it. But I know opening
these doors, clearing these wounds, being willing to treat my flesh with care,
and being willing to meet all of you with all of me are mile-markers of
progress.

I’d like to be done with this work. I’d like to declare
myself fit for duty. Maybe it’ll always be an ongoing process, maybe it’ll come
to a place of plateau. I don’t know. But apparently I’m ready to clear the
sobwebs, and arrive at somewhere new.

acceptance · adulthood · change · friendship · honesty · progress · self-care · self-support

R-E-S-P–…oh you know the rest

April 28, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Things I have the power to change:

my hair color

my perspective.

That’s the list for now. Sure, it could be really long, but
that’s what occurs to me at the moment. I haven’t, in fact, changed my hair
color in a few years – after the blonde debacle, and subsequent re-browning –
and, it sort of feels that i haven’t changed my perspective all that much
lately either.

I met up with a friend in SF yesterday, as I went about my
day flyering the city (note the gazillion workshop flyers on the lampposts of Hayes
Valley), and basically, she told me that although she could see that this was
important to me to talk about – where I am in my life, basically, … or rather,
my opinion of where I am in my life –
that she just couldn’t process with me anymore. That she herself, as I well
know, is in a similar position, going through similar changes in her life, and
I guess she’s just fed up with the whole “Let’s figure it out” routine. And so,
she told me, gently, that I’m still in the problem, and not the solution, and
that until I start to do things or see things differently, of course it’s going
to be painful for me.

I was both disappointed, and heartened – our friendship is
that strong, that we can let one another know when we’re being crazy,
basically, and that the other just can’t bear witness to crazy right now.

I have a few marching orders, work I’m doing with a woman
one-on-one, that I can proceed to progress on, and that’s where the change will
come. But, for now, my friend is right – as Jung said (loose paraphrase): we cannot solve the problem at the
level of the problem.

So, if all I have at the moment is my ground level view,
it’s better for now to stop reporting back from the (perceived) bleak front lines, and do
the work I have in front of me which will help me to get a foothold up and out.

Perhaps this all sounds sort of vague, but it’s all I got.

I was reflecting this morning on respect – that something
that I can change is how I respect myself or don’t. Who am I to disparage
myself for not being x y or z? How would I react if a friend came to me and
“should” all over me? (You should know, it should be different, you should have
figured it out already, you should be better…)

I’m realizing that all the time that I spend in lamenting
this situation is time I’m spending beating myself up, and treating myself
unkindly – and without respect. What would it be like to respect myself – to
look at myself from an outsider’s view? To congratulate myself on my
accomplishments, take real stock and account of things that I have done and
talents that I have. What would it be like to take a more well-rounded view of
myself? Would I ever disparage myself as
in the above paragraph? Discounting all that I am? No. Because here are a few
reality checks – a) I’m human – guess what, I come with assets and liabilities. b) I’m hosting a workshop that I’ve
dreamed up, crafted, advertised and implemented all by myself today. (with due
thanks to all my helpers!) and, c) I am poised to graduate from graduate school. I didn’t
make it to my college graduation. I got
high as fuck after my high school one. This time, I’m showing up – period. I’m showing up
entirely differently.

I’ve changed. I have
become someone worthy of respect – most emphatically of my own respect. If I
can begin to take ownership of feelings like that – or rather facts like that – then I can begin to move from the
problem into the solution. I do not need to know anything about what “will
happen.” What I do need to be very careful I count along side of the things I
have “to work on,” are the things that are worthy, lovable, respectable about
myself.

Because in the end, I’m the person with the power to change
my perspective. Because I will inform others’ interactions with me, Fate’s
interactions with me, by leading by my own example of realistic, balanced, and earned respect.

action · adulthood · finances · progress · self-care · surrender

Chaos Theory

March 20, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Chaos, perceived order, chaos, perceived order.

I won’t say “order,” because I’m not sure that’s exactly what
it is, but it sometimes looks like
order, in that things seem to make sense, and life is calm or happy, or the
check comes in time, or the person you were just thinking of appears, or the
trains all arrive just as you step down to the platform.

Order? Maybe.

My ferret brain is currently perceiving chaos. And
terrified, gnawing on its own limbs in visceral worry, that there will never be
order, even of the perceived kind.

I know that this is
part of the pattern of life – I’ve watched others go through it, I myself have
gone through it – but each time the chaos occurs, it’s like order never
existed; faith, calm, ease, joy, never existed, and never will again. We’re at
the end of days, and time’s up, and meter’s run out, and you’re screwed.

Do you ever get that?

Fear brain is in hyper-drive, and so the small action steps
I’m supposed to be taking are all the more important. My fear brain is stuck in
the gear of “you have no income, no prospects, no job, no career, no ambition
to a career, you’re lost and will never be found, and get used to asking for
handouts…again.”

Silly brain. I feel it. I get it. I am thrown by it, and
sometimes owned by it. Like today.

But, there are a few chinks in this armor of fear, and one
was an exercise in the Money Drunk, Money Sober book: “What would it feel like to let go of desperation? Explore.”

Hmm. Let go of desperation? Well, as I wrote in my Morning
Pages today, it’d feel like freedom, calm, availability, faith. It’d feel like
being open to what’s around me, the perceived order where coincidences do
happen, and help is available, and guidance is sure and strong.

To let go of desperation, would mean letting go of
smallness, isolation triggered by fear and financial insecurity (or fear of
financial insecurity). You know, “No, I can’t join you at that awesome event, I
don’t have any money.”

I was sent an email from a friend who I’m in irregular touch
with, so, it was rather unexpected. It’s for a job that my closed-off brain
says is too low paying, sounds too overworking, and is in a non-profit, which
usually means (or has meant in my experience) that half the time, if not more,
is spent on trying to beg funds from people.

I do that enough in my real life, eh?

That said, one of the other suggestions I read last night in
that book was: Step 1: Get. A. Job. And,
hello, applying to something is not the same as taking anything. And it would
be good for me to get off my high horse/pity-pot and just start to apply to
shit.

Cuz…here’s the fear brain ferret’s mantra: You don’t have
rent for May.

Here’s the recovery brain’s mantra: Next right action.

I have rent and all expenses for April, covered. I have
shelter, clothing, food (though in my typical pattern, I’ve scrimped on getting
to the grocery store this month, and thus have spent much more in eating out than
planned). I have this internet connection, hot water, shampoo, coffee, art
supplies, happy yellow rain boots.

Plus, I have all the resources of friends and fellowship
that I could want, if I avail myself of them.

There’s a line from another book which states something like
the following: Given the choice between going on to the bitter end, blotting
out the reality of our situation, and accepting help, we often balk at the
choice. Stall, hem and haw, measure our options.

Options: go to hell in a handbasket – OR – take an action
step. Hmmm…..

It is as much perceived
chaos as it is perceived order. There isn’t chaos here in my life at the moment
– there’s a tantrum. And a choice. I can give myself the gift of clear
direction, and let go of desperation by taking action. Or, I can continue to
pin abundant affirmations to my walls and discount unexpected emails.

My best ideas continue to send me to the edge – may I now
please accept a different solution?

adulthood · family · honesty · love · self-care

Passing.

January 13, 2012 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I found out yesterday that my grandmother died in the middle
of the night before. My dad texted me after I’d gotten out of work to call him,
and I knew, or expected that to be the information he’d give me. It was. And
he’s alright. He’s, well, he’s not an emotional guy, but in the last few months
of his mother’s sharp decline, he’s been pretty roller-coaster about it – which
has been a little ungrounding for me – to see stone cry is a little … weird.

It’s been coming. She’s been in decline for a while, and has
spent the last month or so in a nursing home/hospital. Which has been like a
blessing. As some of you may recall from previous blogs, she and her husband
and other son are sort of (no, not sort of, badly) hoarders, who live in chaos and
desperate filth. So, it was a blessing that she got to spend her last month
having her basic needs of food and cleanliness taken care of. She was losing
her marbles, and sort of didn’t know where she was, but, I was glad for it.

Two things are sticking in my craw about yesterday, though.
I called a few people after I talked to my dad – got several voicemails, and
one lovely friend. And after wandering around the commercial street near where
I live, sort of meandering aimlessly, I called my brother. To find out how he
was, and just to tell him I was thinking about him. He feels similarly, that it
was a blessing, and I told him that I wonder what will happen to the other two
(her husband and son), and Ben said angrily, “I don’t really care.”

When she went into the hospital/nursing home, it was around
the corner from where they lived in Queens. And yet, the reports I heard were
that the other two were not visiting her at all. The reality is that they have been
shut-ins for a long time (getting groceries delivered to the house), and I imagine that having the linch-pin of their family
trio dying in the hospital was more than these fragile, broken people could
handle. I have a shit-load of compassion for them. They are sad, doing the best
they can people. And the best they could do was not to go to visit her.

This pissed my brother off, who seemed completely happy
enough to write them both off. There will not be a service, my dad said, and he
and his fiancé are having a shiva (sort of like a wake, without the body) at
his fiance’s house on Sunday, and he’s invited his and her various social
communities. But, for Ed and Randell, my grandfather and uncle, there’s
nothing. A cremation, I heard.

The reality is that Ed (my dad’s step-father) and Ran (my
dad’s half brother) have been in my life since I was born. We spent Christmases
there; Ran set up all the small little lighted up villages; Ed wrote all the
cards for the presents as riddles, giving clues to what was inside, sometimes a
series of gifts with strange rhyming clues to get to the final “answer”
present. For all their descent into disturbia, they loved my brother and I. And
my dad, and my mom.

And that’s the other craw-sticker. After talking with my
brother last night, I bought a few needed groceries, and came home. I’d spent a
long time in the used bookstore before I called him, looking at titles from
authors like Thich Nat Hahn, and Chodron, and Cameron, looking for comfort, I
suppose. But I didn’t buy anything. In fact, I didn’t buy my way out of my
feelings, climb into the movie theater, go to blockbuster, the ice cream shop,
or over eat. I felt sad. That feels like a normal reaction. The “both/and”:
relief for her release from suffering (one hopes), and sadness for losing the
last blood related grandparent.

In any case, I bought some apples, eggs, and oatmeal, and
came home. I made some of my new favorite tea, and sat down, and cried a bit.

Then I called my mom. She and I haven’t spoken on the phone
for over 6 months, for reasons which again made themselves evident last night,
but for which I had better tools to handle them. I left her a voicemail, as it
was close to 11pm on the east coast. My dad had asked that I tell her, and I
agreed before saying that actually she and I weren’t in the best of touch at
the moment, and he said okay, he’d ask Ben.

My parents do not speak since their divorce over 10 years ago.
At all. It’s not like they’ve erased, ignored their portion of life together;
no, rather they each feel indignant and rageful and affronted toward the other.
It’s awful. And I have had to spend a lot of time working up the boundaries to
say, “That’s not my business,” when they each separately want to talk about the
other.

My mom called me back last night. And we spoke for a little
bit, and I told her about Ben’s reaction. I mean, she is my mom. It was finally
who I wanted to talk to. Not to tell her, as Ben could have and would have done
it (as inappropriate, perhaps, as that may have been), but because sometimes we
just want our mom. My mom is not the mom I want, but she is the mom I have. And I am coming to grips with trying
to not change her. (And, I won’t enumerate her assets here, but she is also one
of the brightest, funniest women I know, and has shown me a great deal of love
in my life to the best of her ability to do so.)

That said. When she began to say that if it weren’t for me
and ben, she wouldn’t know anything that’s happening, and Dad’s stopped talking
to her, that he’s been—

I cut her off. I said that I didn’t want to talk about that.
And she paused, and said, well the point is that thank you for telling me.
(Perhaps you can gather what a less-able-to-put-up-boundaries Molly was subject
to in last year’s conversation. Narcissism is not just a river in Africa.)

So. Yeah. I’m going to call my grandfather today and offer
my condolences, as that’s really all that I can do from here, and it’s what I
want to do. It doesn’t matter how the other members of my immediate family are
reacting to this passing, or the remaining alive members of my grandmother’s
immediate family. I am able to show up with love. And so I will.

Too, I can accept that the same compassion I am able to show
them, I could extend to my immediate family – because anger, indignation,
narcissism – these are actually the best they are able to do. This, right here,
is my family’s best, and I won’t try to ask them to be or do more than that.
What I will do is allow myself to show up at my best, and leave the rest alone.

adulthood · healing · holidays · home · letting go · self-care

Hearth and Home

December 24, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Winter cleaning has begun. The clean laundry that was
occupying the “other person’s” part of the bed is now put away. And the
cleaning will continue. I’ve decided and recognized that this “free” time off
work will be an excellent time to dig out those boxes from NJ and begin to
empty them.

First, sure, there’s all the surface cleaning I need to do,
and I have a girl coming over at 1 for coffee and chat, so the surface will
need to look decent before then. But after that? Today feels like a good day to
begin, gently, with the NJ boxes.

When I began CITO, it
asked us to make space, literally, for a partner to come into our lives, and so
I emptied a drawer in my closet and a shelf in my bathroom, and I bought
silvery grey sheets, which felt gender neutral, but also pretty sexy.

My place began to feel lighter, like I was creating space,
and allowing for “Nature abhors a vacuum” to occur. Then, I sent back 6 or so
boxes from NJ. They have pictures, and old school notebooks, and old poetry,
and old journals. A girl friend of mine called me up earlier this month to say
that she was taking a page from my book when she goes home for Christmas and
wanted to know what I did with my old journals.

I said, nothing. That’s not entirely accurate. I packed them
up in NJ and shipped them here to SF, uh, Oakland, I mean. I knew that there
was enough emotional upheaval to not want to or be able to process what to do
with them when I was in NJ, and so I just packed them up and shipped them here,
and they’ve been in my closet since October.

Which is fine. And I don’t yet know what I’ll do with them.
There’s the part that wants to honor what they hold, there’s the part that
knows that the childish records of who was in a fight with who and who was
wearing what in 9^th grade are not things I feel tempted to keep, but
they are funny too, now, and so, what to do with them?

There is a lot of sadness in them too. When I was home, I
was doing some sifting and sorting and discarding, and there’s poetry from
grade 2 and 3 that is already about loneliness and isolation. So, I think there’ll be
some spiritual work or process or ritual I want to do around them. Maybe my
friend and I can do something around them together.

When I got into grad school last year, another friend of mine encouraged me
to do a ritual of thanks for the gift of this opportunity. We wrote down old ideas that no longer
served us, and burned them. Then we wrote down one idea that would carry us
forward. I still have it, in my closet. It says, “We can.” Sure, a little
reminiscent of the whole Obama campaign, but it still speaks to
the same sentiment I’m continuing to address: I don’t have to do
things on my own. I don’t have to deplete my own limited resources; there is a
world of abundance around me of people, resources, help, and love, if I avail
myself of them.

So, I’m not sure what I’ll yet do with the old journals. I
know there’s a reading series in Oakland where people submit from their jr high
era journals, and then if chosen, get to read them – pretty hilarious stuff, I
hear. One that comes to mind reported to me – I haven’t been yet – is a girl
who wrote, “Maybe if I got a pig they’d like me.” 😉 She apparently grew up in
an agricultural setting…!

It also feels like an appropriate “end of year” activity, to
clean the closets, to put my apartment back into “other person” readiness.
Nature isn’t the only thing that fills in a vacuum, and I’ve begun to encroach
on the newly emptied space I cleared, filling it back up with my crap.

There’s plenty of other stuff in the boxes to go through and
set aside, organize, or discard, and it takes me a long time to decide whether
some things are worth keeping, as you sift through old high school photos,
which do you need? What is “for posterity” in my drawings, poems, items? What
is now simply junk?

But, I will recall the belief I want to carry with me – I don’t
have to do this alone – and I can call on some guidance, clarity, and a heavy
dose of lightness(!) while I sift through the remnants of my childhood.

adulthood · courage · direction · maturity · recovery · sex

Undoing Betty Crocker

December 3, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Almost finished with week one of the end of school insanity
shuffle. Tomorrow i do my friend’s fashion show. Sunday I have my audition in
SF. and today I did my teaching demo for my Creativity and Spirituality
workshop.

It went really well – my professor almost cried as another
girl was sharing – and this all about a 20 minute collage. I felt really
grateful to be able to share that work with these women. It was good – I did a collage too –
and this one also had someone at a microphone. (In the spring when I
co-facilitated this workshop, I pasted a rockband mick jagger
cartoon yell/singing into a microphone).

But, to get heavy for a minute, that’s not really what’s on
my mind at all. If you’re not in the mood for heavy, read yesterday’s or check back tomorrow – I’m
sure I’ll regale you with something fun about the fashion soiree.

But, for now. This Calling in the One thing. An exercise of a few days ago was about
making peace with our bodies, the next was about peace with our sexuality.

I’ve used the terms before “Betty Crocker” and “Vixen” – I
vacillate between one and the other. Most of my Vixen happened when I was drinking.
It was like the side of fries. The cigarette with a drink. It was just known
that if I drank, I was going to sleep with someone – or at least make out – and
likely in public, to everyone else’s discomfort.

It was a continuation of “just fucking make me feel better.”
The more anonymous, the better, because then I never had to face the shame I
actually felt, or the reason I was running with scissors in the first place.

When I stopped drinking, it was like – well, not to be
crude, but if you put a plug in the jug, I sort of put a plug in me otherwise.
I had a friend around that time who used to be a male prostitute and he told me
that he didn’t have sex for a year after he got sober because it was just
associated with all kinds of other things. So, I became Betty Crocker again.

Here’s the heavy – add in to this damage and abuse I’m
already doing to myself the fact that like one out of six American women I’ve been raped and sexually assaulted, you can imagine the chiasma of all this creates a rather dark
misshapen understanding of what sexuality is, or what sexuality can be.

In CITO, she does say
that for people who have particular trauma to seek help around this as we move
forward, and I’ve been back with my SF therapist for about two months now,
since I started keeping track of my money and knew I needed it, and could now
afford it.

So, yesterday, I’m in her office, and loathe as I may be to
bring this up, I start talking about my feelings of ambivalence around sex – how I dissociate, or how my sexuality, locked in a box, comes striking
out in a ravenous bolt of acting out, and then quickly retreats before I can …
stop it? question why it…I…need to treat my sexuality like a, well, sin, i
suppose. Something you indulge in secretly, silently, shamefully.

We’d been talking about other things, my audition, my new
headshots, and then as soon as we begin on this, my body tenses, I stop
breathing (or breathe so shallowly, it’s like I’m not), and she says, well,
Molly, you have sexual trauma. —
My brain goes SO WHAT. So do most people walking around. So What?? They don’t all suddenly go all fight or flight.

Therefore, today, when thinking about singing this song I
haven’t rehearsed for class – to prepare to perform in one of the most
vulnerable ways there is – to sing – there’s no hiding in that. It’s just your voice, your breath, what you are able
to pull out from your soul, and sorry lady, my soul is just a little too
rattled for that today.

I asked her if I could sing next week – and lovely woman,
she said yes. (She asked if I were well, and I said, “Physically” – she
understood immediately.) I’ve been a mess all day, the dragon at the head of the cave having been poked wide awake and sensing impending approach. So, yes, I rented a zipcar to
get to class (and to get, finally, to the grocery store and get much
yummy food) – but I needed the cocoon. I needed to not feel more jostled by the
world today.

So, why tell you? Why “reveal” all this? All this hard, and
yucky, and “nobody wants to hear about this stuff” – Because that voice is the
voice of my pain and fear, and it has kept me a wounded antelope for years. Repression,
denial, they’re our natural responses, but this has outlived its usefulness. So
I’m seeking help; I’m giving voice.

I don’t want to be Betty Crocker, nun of the knitted socks
and rom-coms. I don’t want to be the Vixen, fly-by-night assassin of self-esteem.

I want to be Molly – human – with scar-tissue – but
preeminently, whole. And available for the wonderful thing sex can be.

acceptance · acting · action · adulthood · family · love · school

Quiet on the Western Front

November 21, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

This morning, I called out from meeting with Patsy, in order
to sleep more – and not trudge through the rain and several modes of public
transportation (AC transit, BART, Muni) to get there and just turn around. This
is something I’ve been doing weekly since my car was stolen a year ago, and today, with
all I’ve been thinking about rest, restorative rest, rather, I asked her if we
could talk on the phone instead. And she said no problem. Just like my boss had
said.

I still haven’t contacted my Shakespeare teacher to fess up
to not being there on Wednesday, which obviously, he knows, but I have to talk
to him about this final project too. It’s the end of semester push when everything
you’ve been procrastinating about for the last few months suddenly comes due.
So this morning, after sleeping in several more hours, and having the weirdest dream about two people in my life, weird, I got up, had breakfast, wrote my morning pages,
and started my homework. Poetry workshop homework, which consists of reading
and writing comments on my classmates’ work, work which has piled up over the
last month or so, so that I have about 4 weeks of each person’s work. It’s
cool, I like writing the comments. Like I said earlier, there are ways to
comment on someone’s work, even in a suggestive manner, that aren’t soul
crushing – so I try to write like that – but really, for the most part, people
are going to be true to themselves, no matter the feedback, although certainly
there is a little wiggle room, which I need to remember too – the whole “being
teachable” thing. It’s still icky for me to read comments about my work, but I did read the
comments I said I’ve been reluctant to read, and they were what I expected – a few,
no i have no intention of following your suggestion that is completely off key with what my purpose is here, thanks for reading; a few, hm, that is
something to think about; and mostly, lots of encouragement and support.

Then I went out into the world to see some folks for a few
hours, laugh at ourselves, get some camaraderie, and came home, made dinner, and started a new
holiday card (#4).

That’s about it. I did update my acting resume and sent it to the 4th audition I’d highlighted – I think I’m going to have to do a lot of these – I still feel like these are such awkward I have no idea what I’m doing baby steps, but I’ll call my actress friend again tomorrow to check in, and ask a few more pointed questions about these particular auditions and my resume.

I also did write that letter about renegotiating
agreements with my mom this morning before I called Patsy. And I read it to
her, and we talked about being emotionally vulnerable without feeling
threatened – without having to run away or be consumed. After our phone call,
I did one of the CITO exercises, which
was an “individuation” meditation. It was sad and powerful; the recognition
that we are each not what the other has wanted us to be, and that we can’t be; but
by letting us both go from these desires, we both get to be freer. “Separate and
whole” is the phrase that keeps repeating.

Patsy asked how I felt about the letter, and I said I felt
scared that I couldn’t keep up my end – and she prompted sagely, worried that I
couldn’t do it perfectly? yeah, that’d be it. So, I’ll do it haltingly. I don’t
know yet when we’ll talk, but I know the work I did today, and this weekend,
and for the last several years is heading me to a place where I can hold myself
in openness and safety. I heard someone say today that we can be emotionally
vulnerable, and raw, and blessed, and I’d like to enter that belief too.

So, there you are. I’m glad I slept in this morning, and I have
more to do. I think all this spiritual gutting is contributing to my fatigue,
and so I’ll let myself sleep and recharge, and that’s all she wrote.

action · adulthood · faith · joy · letting go

Compensation

November 16, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

A friend once told me that the Universe gives us
compensations. This was after I’d just spent an emotionally, mentally,
physically, and spiritually bankrupting week at my family home in NJ last month – I was
there to clean out my childhood room as my dad and his fiancé have purchased a
new construction home in Florida and plan to move there in April, so he is
clearing out the house to get it ready for sale.

He was going to yoke my brother into the task of clearing
out my room – and somehow, not really being sure if I’d cleared out all the sex
toys, drugs, or writings about such things – and in addition wanting the
experience and process of the ritual of “leaving my childhood home” – I made a
snap decision to buy a flight home in October. My dad’s not really a
sentimental kind of guy, and wasn’t really getting that it was an emotional
thing that the house I grew up in – that we shared a family life & history
in – was about to be sold.

That same friend also told me that her parents had sold her
childhood home without her packing up her things, and that if my dad wanted to
clear it out, then whatever he found was his own fault/problem, and that
although it sort of sucked that she didn’t get to do it herself, it happened,
and it was what it was. But, luckily, I knew I had the money, and there was a
cheap deal on a flight, and off I went… to a whirlwind of entirely fucked up.

In describing the state of the house to friends once I
returned to SF, two people asked word for word “Was anyone living there??” And
my answer was yes – yes, two adult men, my dad and my brother, were there,
living in a home that had dead flies on all the window sills, dead bugs caught
in the scum of the oven hood, beyond the forever unmowed, uninviting lawn. You
remember when I said we never had people over growing up? Yeah, my house was
not the entertainment house. It has gotten significantly worse since my mom
moved out ten years ago after my parents’ divorce, and to be fair, my dad has
been splitting his time between his own home (he kept the house – my mom is a
city dweller by very nature) and his fiance’s home, and keeping up the
maintenance of a barely used home is a trial. Plus, my brother had been away at
graduate school until last year, so … The house reflects the loneliness and neglect.

I did a lot of work before I went home on untying my
identification with the house – if it only had more attention, love,
consideration of its assets, it could be beautiful, exciting, a success. I was
livid that the 200-year-old oak tree in the front lawn was now rotting, and
will have to come down before the house is sold – its roots had died; I felt
personally affronted by this.

So, I went home – to pack, but also to make peace with all of that. With the deep depression, the anger, the
resentment, the despair that house witnessed. To make peace with the shattered
door frame to my bedroom as it was once attempted to be kicked down. And also,
to thank it. To honor what was, what it sheltered, what it witnessed, and then
to let it go.

I did sort of well – no, I did as absolutely as massively
well as I possibly could in the situation. When on a streaming tears emergency
phone call to an SF friend, she asked me what more I could be doing at that
moment (We’d just come back from visiting my dad’s parents in Queens – and
their home is, without any exaggeration, a fertile candidate for an episode of
“Hoarders”, … and some very strong meds). I thought about what more I could be
doing at that moment, and the answer was nothing; I was doing absolutely everything
I knew to do in moments of distress – Once we’d gotten home from Queens, I went
out for a long walk, I called my spiritual teacher lady (who said we all have a
Grey Gardens branch of the family tree)
😉 and I made plans to go to dinner with a girl friend who knew my situation.
So, I told my friend on the phone, I was literally doing all that I could be
doing – and I knew then, that that had to be enough. I was fucking
uncomfortable – I was sad, anguished at the
state of my family’s homes, of their comfort with or ambivalence toward or
simply paralyzing despair in the face of such obvious … sickness. Yes, I was
uncomfortable, but I also was doing the very best I could – that had to be
enough.

So, I went to dinner with a girl friend; I cleared out my
childhood room (there was only one book of porn and no drugs!); and I saged the
damn place – because I don’t want no bad jujus hangin’ out there in NJ while
I’m all the way back here in CA.

And I came home.

In the tiny window of my layover in Detroit, I get a phone call
from the temp agency in SF asking me if I want to work at the interior design
firm again – I could start the very next day. … Having cleared out the old, I made way for the new.

And so my wise, wonderful, now-Brooklynite friend told me
upon hearing this story: “The Universe gives us compensations.”

The reason I wrote today’s blog on this? This afternoon I
found the most perfectly ‘couldn’t be more perfect’ purple wool coat that I’ve
been actively envisioning, believing in, and hunting down for the last month –
on sale. And after the blind date disappointment, I remember her words, and
smile joyfully at my plum compensation. 😉