breakups · dreams · relationships

Broken Promises.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Many moons ago, J and I broke up (for the first time).  It was Spring, and he’d purchased us each unrestricted season passes to a ski mountain up in Tahoe.  These are pricey commodities bought because of his love of skiing each Winter and the anticipated notion that the following Winter, we’d both ski the mountain together.

And then, we broke up.

So, what does a person do, I later asked a girlfriend, with the promises you made while you were together?

What do you do with the ski passes, the travel plans, the house you envisioned,… and the children you named?

This question has been resurrected this last week since J and I decided to break up again—though I am more the firm one on it, and our living together rubs daily salt in the wounds.

What do you do with the promises you made when you were together?

I ask this aloud as J and I sit opposite one another over the breakfast table last weekend, both a little soggy in our tears, warm mugs and handkerchiefs in hand.

I answer that maybe I consider each of the plans like small, child travelers — now, I wrap them back up in warm clothing, zip their puffy coats, straighten their mittens, and send them back out into the world.  Your place is not here, I’m afraid.  And walk them to the door, and watch each promise waddle back out into the snowy village to look for someone else to take them in.

Or, I suggest, perhaps each promise is simply like a thought gift I get to hug close and thank for visiting me—for offering me its joy or serenity or delight or warmth—and then I get to release it, like a caged bird into the sun.  Thank you for visiting me, for showing me more of the world.

J replies dryly, “That does not help.”

And that’s okay, I suppose.  It doesn’t have to help him, but it may help me.  It may help me to treat all of the plans and promises we made with love and gratitude, rather than with mourning and bereftness.

None of us know which bundled traveler will stay—and none of us know which traveler is cresting the ridge of our yard, just now waiting for us to open the door.

 

goals · pride · self-love

“And reward achievements.”

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.15.18

This is the latter part of a sentence that begins, “We set goals for ourselves…”

Like most, I’ve never been great at acknowledging, let alone rewarding, achievement.  My mother has the famous story about bringing home her “99” test score to her father and him replying, “Where’s the other point?”  And while I’ve never been that exacting with myself over tests, I’ve certainly been exacting over other efforts of mine.

Theater, singing, writing, artwork.  (Strangely, though, not musical instruments… perhaps to the dismay of my bandmates!);)

And, of course, I’ve been exacting with myself over my time and my goals.  I have not at all been able to stick to the 30-minutes-of-reading-per-day limit that I set for myself about a month ago.  In fact, I have swung the pendulum crazy far in the other direction reading the Game of Thrones series, as the set was gifted to me by a colleague for my classroom, but deemed too violent for middle schoolers!

That all said…

As part of the structure of my weekly Goals Group call on Sundays, we’re each required to share about our achievements from the past week.  And while I can’t yet point to a balanced relationship with couch+sunlight+novel, I can boast about many other achievements.

I come to reflect on this today as our Goals Group will be coming to a close this Sunday, at nearly the exact 6-month mark.  Together, myself and two other ladies have spoken about our vision and goals for our lives in all areas, fears and illusions that impede our efforts, and tiny little markers of movement that we set out for ourselves that week to report upon the next.

In this way, I have been able to write a weekly list of accomplishments in my pocket calendar (yes, paper), and I gotta tell ya, I love it!  I love writing in the notebook, “Accomplishments,” and following that luscious word with a dozen actions I’ve taken.

Many have been related to this blog redux, some with flying an airplane, writing my Allegory, or using my time well at work by taking breaks.  Ice skating, vitamin-taking, meditating…

I get to write a list each week of things I feel proud of!  So if, honestly, nothing at all came from the larger goals I’ve been setting before myself, if I didn’t scrape the surface of a single dream, the mere habit of writing, sharing, and honoring all that I’ve done in one week will have been success enough.  (Dayenu!)

But… my dirty little secret is… I do have to keep reminding myself of that each and every week.

 

boundaries · self-care · service

“You can’t save anyone.”

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.14.18

When ordinarily I’ve heard this phrase, I’ve bristled.  Is it something in me, something wrong with me that I can’t?  If I try harder or fix myself more, will I then be able to?  What if I really really love them?

However, last week, a friend said this declarative sentence to me, and I replied laughingly, “What a relief!”  Phew!  Jeez, that really takes me off the hook now, doesn’t it?

I can’t save anyone.  I don’t have to keep trying, adjusting, modifying, cajoling, coercing, monitoring, mothering.  I can lay it the f* down … and continue working on what I’m really here to work on: Me.

There’s not nearly as much work as there used to be, but certainly a lifetime’s worth.  Which is good, because you stop growing, you start dying!  But overall, I feel healthier now than at many other points in my life.

I feel more able to accept that other people have their own row to hoe, and no amount of my overseeing can change or improve or lessen their work.  I once told my (as of this past week ex-) boyfriend:( that I felt like a sword-fighter against his darkness, and that I needed him to take the sword.  To fight his own battle against his own internal foes.

The rub is, truly, that he never asked me to fight that battle for him, but I leapt in suit of armor and all and said, “Alright beast, let’s go!”  And then I said, “Omigod I’m tired,” and then I said, “This is not a battle I can win. Here, you take it.”

Fighting others’ darkness is a long-earned habit of mine, the daughter of an untreated manic-depressive.  When the yawning darkness of depression descends upon the woman who is to care for you, as a child with few tools, all you can do is set aside your own needs to try to fight her darkness so she can possibly help defend you, too.  And lo, codependence is born:  if you’re okay, I’m okay.

Yet though this is a long-worn caul of mine, that does not mean it fits, makes sense, is healthy, or … is sane!  And it is up to me to stop jumping in to every person’s fight.

Indeed, “coincidentally,” as all this boundary-strengthening/awareness has been taking place in the last few weeks, I’ve had 4 people reach out to me to help them with some self-help work they’re doing (yes, I see the irony there).  At some times, I would have leapt in (Sure man, let’s slay that darkness! How much of me do you need?), but these past few weeks, I’ve taken account of who I know these folks to be and what kind of energy I truly have for assisting them.

And my answer has been, No.  “Thank you for asking, but I’m full up on service right now.”  “I’m grateful you thought of me, but I’m only available to be friends on the path right now.”  “I’m very glad I got to serve for a while, but I need to leave your committee.”

There are voices within that chide it’s selfish or miserly to say No.  But, I imagine that one day, when my boundaries are more firm—when I don’t run for my longsword every time someone says, “Hello”—that I’ll be more able and available for service to people … but for today, for now, saying no to them is saying yes to me.

And that, friends, is progress.

(And yes, home sick with the flu this week—hence no blog—I’ve been reading Game of Thrones and all about longswords.) 😉

 

change · kindness · love

Almond milk of human kindness

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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“Allow yourself to give yourself a comforting thought,” said Deepak Chopra in the Oprah meditation today.

I’m re-listening to the Manifesting True Success 21-day meditation, since it was so dense and rich (pun intended).  Day 5 is about the “Successful Mind,” and how we can beat ourselves up and punish ourselves so badly for our own perceived failures.

To echo yesterday’s blog, what growth is there in that?  What newness of thought?  What inspiration comes from the same well-worn habits of mind?

If I begin to note the thoughts I have throughout the day about myself and about others, how kind are they?  I want in myself and in my partner the quality of kindness; I’ve written it repeatedly on the list of things I want to attract, in a romance or a friend.  But when I pause, I note that there’s a litany of thoughts that are less than supportive, kind, and loving.  They’re not scathing and awful (all the time), but they are limiting and diminishing.  These thoughts do steal my oomph.

So, if I allow myself the gift of a comforting thought, I will get the benefit of holding that thought along with the unknown, unintended benefits of oomph as well.

What joy is there to be had when the thoughts begin to turn?

*Short blog post today. Relationship come-to-jesus conversations dominate the morning time; not bad, just … hard. Xo,m.

growth · self-flagellation · self-love

Back! Back, I say!

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.8.18

During my weekly Goals Group call this past Sunday, we arrived at the portion of the call when we report on our accomplishments from the past week, including how we did on our “Weekly Action Items” that we stated from the previous Sunday.

This Sunday, I looked at the 5 items listed and reported:

1) go to a gallery or museum — well, no, I didn’t do that.

2) research vlog best practices — well, sort of; I looked at one lady’s “how to”

3) post a vlog — YES! I did it!!

4) grade all my students’ essays while at work — nope. I did maybe 3.

5) 10-minutes a day on my weekly goals writing — nope.  I wrote for a half-hour-ish right before this call.

After I reported out, one of my goals buddies asked, “Can I give you some feedback?” Yes, please, I replied breathlessly. “With my daily action buddy, when I don’t do something I’ve said I’d do, I just move it onto the next day’s list.  I don’t have to judge or excuse or feel badly about it.  I just move it forward, and eventually it gets done.”

Hmmm.  So I don’t have to beat myself into submission in order to achieve the results I want to achieve?  While not a novel thought, it feels novel every time someone suggests it!

There is a dictum I’ve heard: Growth can come as much from Joy as from Pain.

And wouldn’t we all rather grow from joy?! Or at least, need a little less pain to move us forward?

I don’t want to keep putting “grade papers” or “write in advance of the call” or “raise heartrate 20 minutes” every single week.  I don’t.  But I’m also at a place in which I cannot do it much differently.  And I certainly won’t do it better or differently if it’s wrought from repeated self-flagellation — at least, not sustainably or abundantly or lovingly.

It’s an alien prospect sometimes to love ourselves into the future, yet alien though it may be, it is the only true path forward.

growth · love · TEACHING

The Elevensies Club

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I love the misfits.  The oddball, unusual students who have the wry or wacky sense of humor, who know they somehow don’t fit into the “normal” mold of middle schooler.

But, too, I love the jock who writes privately in his school journal about feeling like his only pride comes from the scoreboard.  Or the soccer god who crafts a sinuous narrative with achingly emotional depth.

I am sweeping these hidden gems into my fold, and I am high on their burgeoning view of themselves.

There are currently two students, one in 8th grade, one in 6th, who fit this jock/closeted writer profile.  The older one has the reputation for being the out-of-bounds kid, the one always in trouble, the one we’re just hoping to get through.  He’s not stupid, but some of his decisions and actions paint him as a caustic child/teenager who heeds none of our words.

So, when I discovered in his (public to me) journal that he related to one of our book characters whose “Life Raft” was cartooning because he felt his only life raft was basketball, I began to see another side of, and some light for, this child.

I began to take more notice of what he was writing.  And so, he’s begun to share it more — with me, though not with his peers.  He is the secret softie, and I am glad to keep his secret from his classmates.

But when yesterday the students were sharing out a narrative from their journal prompt, and he volunteered, we listened, and I responded, “I know you’re working on your craft right now, and this really shows your skill at world-building,” I saw his quiet, hidden pride shine.  I witnessed his, Shh don’t tell them, but oh jeez, thank you for seeing me.  Then his eyes darted back down to his twiddling pencil, his posture slumping into detachment (feigned or otherwise) once again.

That I get to foster and fan the flames of this child’s ownership of his voice is price beyond rubies.  I’m not blowing hot air, puffing up his pride with false words of praise; truly, he shows the seeds of talent and I am continuously surprised by the depth of his thoughts — as I’d painted him the lost cause, too.

So now we both get to see this something special that he’s developing.  We both get to see that he is more than his scoreboard.

Surely, he dons his role as a clown, a rebel, a juvenile delinquent as well-worn shoes, but offering him this other pair, this one pair of shoes that says, You have worth inside you…

He may never decide to own that he’s emotionally and creatively intelligent.  He may move on through his high school and adult years as solely the jock, the tough guy.  I can’t know.

But I do know that he’ll have the option to remember that his English teacher once praised his writing and held open a door he’d not known existed.

love · relationships · uncertainty

Yea, though I walk…

Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

3.5.18

My fingertips are raw and red, nails jagged and bleeding, shorn off by my rabid scrabbling.  Come, sit with me here, he gestured, the vista of the savannah behind him.

There are two chairs in the center of this vast landscape, this depression in the wide, long plain above.  I walked here earlier with my guide and overlooked the gulf.

This is all yours, my guide had told me months ago.  It felt to me as if it were Love; there was no sign or true indication, but the sense that this whole of land below us was mine, was love.

And it was an elephant graveyard.

As she and I stood above, her a sentry, me wary, the sun came out and did something miraculous: it vacuumed all the bones into its depths.  The litter on the floor of the canyon rumbled and shook as each piece of deadness was lifted off into the air, into absolution, into white heat.  Gone.

When I look again at the earthen floor, it is clean of its detritus, the hulking masses of death and memory and intractable sorrow/horror.

We walk down in, my sentry and I.

And here, this morning, sits my beloved, my boyfriend, the one who just right now sleeps a bit restively in our bed in the other room.  In the savannah, he rests on a chair, wooden, light-colored, tall backed, and now, he gestures for me to sit in the next.

I recoil.  I panic.  I have a hardness in my heart that is now a cage of ravens flinging themselves at the bars.  I follow their panic and begin to scrape at the sides of the cliff to get up and out of the ravine.  Come, sit with me here, and my skin trembles with fear and my mind is a primal sphere of neural terror.

…

My boyfriend and I are looking at moving to a bigger (and more expensive) place closer to my work and housing a garage for his motorcycle.  It’s perfect in all the ways we need it to be, and I refuse to commit to it, to him, with this panic still a chaos in my heart.

He is generous and sensitive and more understanding than any of us have a right to be about my process toward commitment.

Because here is the rub:

In my meditation this morning, with the scrabbling, squalling lady that is me, I invite some other imagined man into that savannah, seat another man — an idealized, “fuck yeah,” perfect but imperfect man — into that other chair.

And I react the same.

J. has been incredibly patient with me as I attempt to parse out what of my fear and doubt and terror is about our relationship in particular and what would be, for me, the same fear and doubt and terror in any relationship.

But, patience runs thin for us both.  My “process” is no quicker because of the impatience, but the demand for an answer is ripe on my mind nearly all the time.

If a “Fuck Yeah” imagined person, a man who has some kind of qualities that I feel are absent in my current love, will arouse in me the same panic as the man who now sits in front of me, then it’s not the man that needs to change.  Clearly, it’s me.

And though both J and I have known this, and both realize that my work is to parse out the wheat from the chaff, the hurt from the truth, the terror from the path forward, this work is wearing us both a great deal thin.

 

 

fear · pride · self-support

Whose Idea was this Anyway?

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

3.2.18

Yesterday, we had our Purim carnival at school, each classroom decorated and hosting a games booth hand-made by students.  Children could wander from room to room, trying out the brainteasers, fortune tellers, and human whack-a-mole (super cute video of a kindergartner bopping 6th graders’ exposed noggins).  Music blared in the hallways, the chatter of kids egging each other on or roasting each others’ missed foozball shots.

And I sat in the center of it all with a large mug of tea, a gorgeous view out my classroom window, and the sounds of water-drippy spa meditation music.  Assorted pillows lined the back cabinets where students whispered gently or just reclined with eyes closed, others sat at desks coloring the mandalas I’d printed out, or softly played a game of cards.

I had called, “The Quiet Room.”

At my last school, I had learned the hard way that carnival days can be really frying for my nervous system.  I fall directly between intro- and extro-vert on most personality scales, and while I love a good carnival, amusement park, or festival, I learned that 2 hours of hyper-stimulation can wear me down to the bone — and I don’t bounce back quickly.

Therefore, last year, in my second year at that school, I volunteered to help out in The Quiet Room.  This room was an established zone staffed by a long-time teacher who’d earned, through her 30+year tenure, the right to staff The Quiet Room on chaos days.  Buuut, couldn’t she use a helper, in case she wanted to take a break, go to the bathroom…?

And thus, I inserted myself into the Quiet Room and my 2nd Purim carnival day was even as a still pond.

When it came time this year to volunteer to man different booths or rooms or stands… I knew it was my chance.  They didn’t have a Quiet Room at my new school!  The staff meeting was continuing on, I didn’t have a role yet, I raised my hand.

“What about having a quiet room for students who need a break?”

“Sure, that’s a great idea.”

And then, wouldn’t you know, all the other teachers began shouting, Ha! I’ll run the quiet room!  Yeah, sounds great — can I do it?

I pounced back.  Facetious or not, no one was taking this room from me!  “It was my idea!  I get to man it!” I shouted them down.  And so it was sealed.

When yesterday morning, during the melee, the big boss strode into my classroom to see what The Quiet Room was all about and sat nearby to make whispered conversation with me, she asked, “This was your idea?”

And for an instant, I froze inside.  I felt a little embarrassed, a little shy, to own my idea, especially knowing it was a good one.  My heartrate quickened as thoughts of hedging leapt forward to reply something like, “Well, the other teachers thought it was a good idea” or “Yeah, kinda.”

Yet, I didn’t respond that way.  I didn’t diminish my accomplishment; I didn’t allow myself to shy away from the spotlight of my boss’ opinion.

I rested calmly with my enormous mug warming my hands, took half a breath, and replied, “Yes.”

growth · scarcity · truth

I’m a teacher, so…

Molly Daniels Hayes2 Comments

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I spoke this quasi-sentence on the phone Monday when talking with a potential couples’ therapist.  She and I were getting to the brass tacks portion of the conversation, settling in on the, “How much is this gonna run me” dialogue, and I offered up that half-phrase.

“I’m a teacher, so…”

What implications are in that sentence?!  I am underpaid; I don’t have any money; I cannot afford your full fee; I cannot afford even close to your full fee; I am in a profession in which I will never afford your full fee; I am poorly paid; I am undervalued.

Oh, honestly.

Whose “fault” is this? Well, surely, I could say it’s the “system’s” fault, it’s America’s fault, I could even say it’s the president’s fault.  And while each of those might have grains of truth, there is no honor in blame of others.

To be clear, a) it’s my “fault” I’m a teacher, and b) I’m manipulating the codified undervaluing of our country’s education system to seem poor and weak and un-robust so that I can get a deal on something.

I realized in recounting this later, that this is such an “underbeing” phrase! How can I stand in one breath and tout the munificence of the Universe AND ALSO pervert the archetype of the broke teacher to my benefit?

Maybe you have your own version of the above sentence?  I’ve certainly said iterations of the same: “I work in nonprofits, so…” “I’m a student, so…” “I’m in the arts, so…”

I don’t enjoy realizing that I’ve capitalized upon the pity, or generosity, of my fellows to cajole a few dollars out of them, but I do appreciate learning that my understanding of my profession as an “underearning” one lurks beneath my thoughts, as does the notion that I need to depend upon others’ pity to have what I want in life.

It will be up to me to change the thoughts, or to change my profession (which I don’t wish to happen any time soon), or to increase my income in alternate ways.  In any case, using my “pain” to foster empathy in others is a low (and borrowed) form of power, and I vow to give it up, even a day at a time.