Fixing to Do No Harm

As an adult child of an alcoholic (ACoA), I often find myself fixing situations, helping people, and also continuing relationships even when I know no good will come of it. Sometimes my attempts backfire, and I come away hurt and discouraged.  Other times I make a clean break and then suffer the guilt for it. It’s happened on more occasions than I wish to remember, and it happened again last week. My saving grace was that I acted with good intent, with a sense of doing no harm, even as I witnessed events unravel around me.

Many ACoAs go into the field of counseling and others become writers. My first master’s degree was to be a counseling degree, but I switched programs just before the last step: a full time internship. I was awarded a degree in Professional Education Studies with a concentration in multiculturalism, but I still completed all those counseling courses. Then I pursued and completed a master’s degree in writing.

I found a presentation on alcoholism I delivered for a marriage and family counseling class. Here’s the slide about the characteristics of an ACoA:

•Guess what normal behavior is

•Have difficulty completing things

•Lie when it is just as easy to tell the truth

•Are self-critical

•Have trouble having fun/are overly serious

•Are overly responsible or irresponsible

•Have difficulty with intimate relationships

•Over-react to changes they have no control over

•Seek approval/affirmation

•Are extremely loyal

•Are impulsive

I display many of the above characteristics. I’ve spent a lifetime wondering what normal is and dissecting how far off the grid I am. Sometimes I feel planets away.

I’ve lied to make people feel better or to make the story have a happy ending. After all, why do harm or make matters worse with the truth? And even though I am estranged from family, I’ve been known to keep people in my life that I never should have let enter in the first place, but I accept them because I often feel unacceptable. I don’t want others to feel that.

I’m also a hyper-responsible person, enough so that in many ways I raised myself as a child by creating limits and structure, at times adult-like, other times in childish ways. Collecting things and organizing them was one way I imposed structure in my chaotic childhood. That ability served me well in my career.

I learned some things in my counseling courses, perhaps not what the professors were hoping I’d learn, but what spoke to me about mental health and how we measure normal. For example, I fear abandonment, being left behind, being lost and never found, and the people I love not bothering to look for me. The fear haunted me as a child and galloped alongside me into adulthood. Some people might think, “You ought to get that fixed,” as if it is a broken bone or a cut. Doctors suggest the same thing. Feeling down? Feeling anxious? Take an anti-depressant.

But I disagree with that. The anxiety I feel about being abandoned is part of who I am. I am the sum of my heredity, ethnicity, culture, environment, education, temperament, and personality. My coping skills developed just as my resilience developed in specific ways in reaction to what was going on around me. I both survived and prevailed. What should I change? What should I fix? And why would I fix it? It’s who I am; it’s how I navigate my way through the world. It has not prevented me from doing anything I set out to do.

And I’ve found out something else really important, and it is that there is no normal. Normal is simply a point on a continuum that measures human behaviors. It is simply the average or middle of the range that stretches to extremes on either end. Each one of us falls on that line somewhere, and though there may be some individuals out there who fall exactly at the mid-point, who are exactly the average of all the possible human behavior combinations, I don’t think there are many, and, in all likelihood, it doesn’t seem like a great place to end up. If we all resided at point normal, life would be a very boring stretch indeed.

So the very things that sometimes backfire on me are the very things that assist me in succeeding in life, in finding love, in bearing and raising children, in creating a career, and in being creative. And my search for where I fall on the grid of humanity barely matters because my position on the grid will not shed any light on who I am. The process of changing behaviors and moving along the grid can sometimes help a person cope better with life and its complexities. Sometimes a person is paralyzed by certain behavioral aspects and really does need assistance and change. But, for most of us, those who are navigating through life and don’t feel paralysis or who don’t exercise undue impulsivity, changing certain attributes about oneself is not as rewarding as one might imagine, and change can actually backfire.

I think it is much more productive to be aware of who one is, and to acknowledge, accept, and work within that framework through life, knowing that it isn’t going to be perfect because no one is perfect, no one sits at the absolute center of humanity.

That’s why I have spoken in past posts about swimming in the muck of my emotions and relishing the process. It’s my way of knowing and experiencing all that I am. Understanding who I am, in all my imperfection, allows me to be open to other people and who they are and to not pass judgment about where on the grid they may fall and if that means they are good or bad people. We are so much more complex than that. In wondering about the difference between good people and bad people, I come up with one word: intent. Is the intent to hurt or exploit or shame another or gain at another’s expense or is the intent to live one’s life while doing no harm to others?

Creativity is like that, too, complex and layered like the minds in which it is born and nurtured and developed.  I had the pleasure of seeing Cara’s 2013 Faculty Concert at High Point University. Three works-in-progress were performed and then the three choreographers discussed their pieces and creative processes and took questions from one another and from audience members and also asked the audience questions.

One of the questions to the audience was did the audience need to “get the piece” in order to enjoy it. I didn’t raise my hand to answer the question, because I hate being “mom participating because she wants to show how much she supports her daughter.” Cara and I talked about it the next day, and I’ll answer the question in this post as well.

Each audience member will be affected in some way by a live performance but it doesn’t matter if the individual gets it or not. The choreographer’s intention matters only to the choreographer during the creative process of making a dance. How the audience interprets the movement during the performance is separate from that intention, and even though some may in fact interpret the intention and concepts of the choreographer, most times each individual is affected uniquely through the lenses and perceptions that individual brings to the performance.

I watch dance much like I read or listen to music: for pleasure and for the visceral, emotional, and intellectual experience. Sometimes learning the intention of a piece of dance or an essay or poem causes me to close off other possibilities and therefore diminishes my experience.

Writers, composers, and choreographers have a need to share their creative output, but it is asking too much when one expects acquiescence or consensus on the part of the audience. In many ways creative work is more complex and multidimensional than even the creator can realize.

Like performance, one can’t always know another’s intentions because we see those intentions through our own lenses and perceptions. This letter appeared on the reader’s page of my local paper yesterday.

Several probable reasons

I would like to offer several probable reasons why some Christian churches have severed their connection with the Boy Scouts and why many other Christian churches should also do so.

First, practicing homosexuality is condemned not only in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament (see Romans 1:18-27; 1 Corinthians 6:9-10; and Jude 7).

Second, the Bible doesn’t mention whether or not Jesus Christ ever encountered a practicing homosexual, so we don’t know for certain how he would have dealt with such a situation. However, since other passages in the New Testament condemn homosexual practices, there is no valid reason to believe Jesus would have condoned such practices. I believe that if Jesus had encountered a homosexual who had been engaging in such practices, he would have shown that person love, but told them to “sin no more,” as he told the adulterous woman in John 8:11.

Third, I believe it is highly probable that some – perhaps, many – Scouts who are practicing homosexuality will attempt to get other Scouts to do likewise.

Fourth, if there were such an incident in a church-sponsored Scout troop, there would be considerable negative publicity, which could seriously hinder the future ministry of that church and, perhaps, others.

Nevertheless, I think homosexuals would be welcome to attend even churches that have severed their connection with the Scouts, provided that the homosexuals are truly seeking to worship God and don’t flaunt their lifestyle or attempt to get other attendees to engage in homosexual practices.

~HARVEY ARMOUR

What is the intent of the writer? How does one practice homosexuality and convince others to engage in the practice? What does he mean by that? How does qualified acceptance work in our society, and is it fair and just?

My perception of this writer’s intent reminded me of Jim Crow, the intention of which was based in fear, hatred, power, privilege, violence, and control.  Do no harm played no part in that chapter of our history.

I gasped when I read this letter. The writer questions the intention of others, and I question his intention in doing so. Is he a good man or a bad man? Is his intention to do no harm? Do I get it? Does it matter if I perceive his intention as different from what he believes his intention to be?

What was George Zimmerman’s intention the night he had a fight with his wife, pursued Trayvon Martin through his neighborhood, and then shot and killed him? Through whose eyes do we view his intention? His? Trayvon’s? Is he a good man or a bad man? As we learn more about George Zimmerman, including the latest domestic violence 911 call, do we understand his intentions? What motivated him? Did do no harm play any part in his intentions and actions?

My intentions may be for the right reasons and in the quest to do no harm, but I’ve learned there are some things I can’t fix and some things I have no business trying to fix. I accept my need to try. That’s who I am.

Zen and the Art of Dance

There is nothing so public yet so intimate as a dance concert where feet squeak and thump on Marley floors, sweat glistens under stage lights, and breath audibly expels. I’m afraid it will go the way of conversation. As conversation moved to text messages on a cell phone, live performance is fast becoming a You Tube submission viewed on a handheld screen, the dancers the size of insects.

This weekend I was fortunate to be an audience participant at my daughter Cara’s faculty dance concert at High Point University, featuring, among others, her twin sister Mackenzie. I’ve been watching Cara and Mackenzie put on shows almost from the time they learned to speak, though they didn’t start dancing until they were thirteen. They have always moved cooperatively, harmoniously, and in synchronization the way twins do: in utero, as babies sharing a crib during their first few months, as children creating shows and reenacting movie scenes for our pleasure, and, now, as adults, who perform on stage and in film.

Both have used dance as a launching point to engage in other performance arts. Cara writes and performs songs and stories and makes film; Mackenzie performs aerial dance, ala Cirque du Soleil. This weekend’s concert had all of that: original songs sung a cappella by a wonderful ensemble of women, contemporary dance, film, and aerial performance.

I like to sit up in the balcony. I think dance is best viewed from above so the whole structure of the dance can be seen or one can zoom in easily on an individual dancer.  I’ve learned to train my eye to do both almost simultaneously.  It enhances the whole experience.

Ronald and I sat in the last row of the first level balcony on Friday night and the first row of the same balcony on Saturday night. The reason we sat four rows lower on Saturday was that I noticed we were just slightly too high on Friday night, and Mackenzie, when she reached the top of the fabric on which she performs her aerial work, was partially obscured by the proscenium curtain.

In the opening work Raven choreographed by Belinda McGuire, Cara and Mackenzie wove, ran and dove amongst a web of light. Lighting is integral to live performance in that it focuses the eye, sets the tone of the work, and facilitates the movement. This photo belies the beauty of the lighting but captures the beauty of movement.

The next piece was a short film by Cara titled On Learning.

It is a memoir in movement and voice as Cara talks about one of her mentors who taught her dance and inspired her to be a dance teacher.  It was not my first time seeing the film, but I tear up each time, because it reinforces the tenet that it takes a village to raise a child. We did not do it alone, and I am ever appreciative of all the people who assisted us. Trish Casey, the teacher featured in the film, was in the audience Saturday evening. After the show she could only voice how humble the experience left her.

Mackenzie performed her aerial piece next. She was a bird in flight, gracefully moving up and down the fabric until the end of her piece when she wound herself in the fabric almost to the rigging twenty feet above the stage floor, then dropped about fifteen feet in a spin that caused me to gasp aloud each performance.  Here she is, wrapped in silk.

Linda Donnell performed Compartment choreographed by Cara. Linda is my age, and I was mesmerized watching her lithe ballet-trained body adapt to Cara’s physical and unstructured movement. Vintage commercials from the 1950s were played on a screen behind her, an ideal time captured in the ideal world of advertisement, in contrast to the reality of how we live in a world of stress and constant motion.

I love the clear sound of a cappella voices, too, and after a brief intermission, Eve at the River opened with an a cappella solo titled Our Quilt, written by Cara and sung by Toni Manuel in her resonant, beautiful voice. The song, stark and soulful, is about the work of women. Her voice reached down to my soul, like the chill of dipping toes in cold stream water that both surprises and refreshes. Later in the piece, singers Toni, Suzy McCalley, Linda Donnell, and Cara each told a story then blended together unique voices in song, and I felt lifted as their voices rose and suffused the theater while surrounding the dancers, Breanne Horne and Mackenzie, in the fount borne of women’s work, love, sorrow, and joy.

Cara shares her art by having a conversation with the audience at the end of each concert, inviting them to ask questions or share thoughts about what they’ve witnessed. It is her way of extending the intimacy of live performance and making art accessible. On Saturday night, Ronald raised his hand. His was not a question but a comment about the way the performance had moved him.

Art has a way of transporting one from everyday worries and concerns. Certainly I spent last week glued to the television, watching the Democratic Convention that was held just down the road from where I live. I cheered; I cried; I fretted; I applauded; I felt hopeful. But in reality, politics don’t often make their way directly into our homes nor impact our lives on a day-to-day basis. No matter what goes on in Washington, no matter who is elected, as appalling, or even heroic, as it all seems at times, life goes on in spite of it.  (That’s no excuse not to vote, though! That’ll be another post topic on another day!)

So I was happily transported on Friday and Saturday evenings into a whimsical world with light and voice and music and movement, interrupted by occasional darkness as the stage was set for the next piece and dancers changed costumes.

I know Cara and Mackenzie’s interest in the arts was inspired by their childhood. I exposed them to story in print, on film, and in live theater, and Ronald exposed them to visual arts and music. Then we made the choice to support them as they pursued dance, a choice we were able to make as middle class parents, though it was still a financial challenge. 

Any foray into the arts is fraught with hard work, missteps, isolation during the creative process, lack of funding, lack of opportunity, and competition for audiences. As I’ve experienced in my writing career, it isn’t easy on the ego either, and I admit my skin is thinner than theirs and, yet, they still feel the hurt of rejection and critique.

Often I share their emotional, and sometimes physical, pain as they take their journeys both together and separately.  Sometimes I still want to stick my nose in and give my opinion, and I do and often I regret it later and only hope I caused least harm in the process. Sometimes they want to know what I think or just want to talk about their frustrations or the creative process or new ideas, and I am there for that, too, just as Ronald is. (For more on the topics of parenting and creativity see my posts Parenting Creativity and Parenting Creativity Part 2.)

I think that’s the best roles we can play as parents and as artists, too: listening to their creative ideas and processes, and being part of the audience. Even as adults, they look to see where we are, and they know that if there is a balcony, that’s where they’ll find us.

I was transported and transformed by the beauty of live art, and I hope I transported you for a few minutes as you read this blog, viewed the film On Learning, and looked at the lovely photos taken by Kenneth Jackson during the dress rehearsal. 

Finding Forgiveness

I had so much to think about this week. The family of James Anderson, the black autoworker who was beaten and then run over and killed by a group of whites looking to perpetrate a hate crime, asked that the man who ran James over not receive the death penalty.  Anderson’s eighty-five-year-old mother was behind the unanimous family decision.

Due to a similar crime, white supremacist Lawrence Brewer, was put to death this past week for the fatal dragging of James Byrd in Jasper, TX, in 1998. Byrd’s sister was quoted as saying about Brewer, “If I saw him face to face, I’d tell him I forgive him for what he did. Otherwise I’d be like him.  I have already forgiven him.”

I finished reading The Help this week. More detailed than the movie, as most books are, I completed it with the same sadness I felt when saw the movie. What was different, though, is that I understood that despite the social lines drawn and solidified by law, some bonds between maid and family were equally strong, and loving, and respectful. I would wonder if it were just the fact that I was reading fiction, but I have a white friend I’ve become close with since moving South. She speaks of the black woman who raised her, Timmy, with love and appreciation. Timmy ate at the dinner table with the family and was considered part of the family. She used the single bathroom in the house along with everyone else living there. My husband Ronald told my friend, as she talked about Timmy, that Timmy “was one of the lucky ones, treated well and loved.”

Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help says, “Regarding the lines between black and white women. I am afraid I have told too much… I am afraid I have told too little. Not just that life was so much worse for many black women working in the homes in Mississippi, but also that there was so much more love between white families and black domestics than I had the ink or time to portray.”

People are not black and white; they are many shades.  More importantly, the diversity of emotions between hate and love is nearly as infinite as the power of forgiveness.

Finally, this week was special because Cara and Mackenzie are performing (the second concert takes place in less than two hours) in Cara’s first faculty concert. I’m trying to write an essay about motherhood, and I am struggling to find the words to describe the love I feel for these two beautiful women. It is infinite.

(Excerpt from Chapter 8, Watch Our Show, Shades of Tolerance: A Biracial Love Story)

Cara and Mackenzie, four years of age, each took one of our hands and led Ronald and me to the sofa.

“Sit down and watch our show,” Cara said. They had been in their room all morning, heads together, giggling.

They sat on the floor before us with their twin African-American Raggedy Ann dolls, made by Maxine, and choreographed them in a synchronized dance routine. The dolls flopped, flipped and turned in unison. They played air guitars and beat invisible drums. Ronald and I watched, sitting close on the couch, my leg resting across Ronald’s lap. We held hands and laughed, looking at each other in delight over our beautiful, witty girls. Cara and Mackenzie navigated through life's many permutations in polyrhythmic harmony.

One day I would write a poem about them as I remembered them on that day, sitting on their bedroom floor, heads touching, giggling and planning. They used it in their first dance film Folding Over Twice. They were young adults, fresh out of the dance conservatory, starting their own duet dance company: Cara directing, choreographing, Mackenzie cleaning the movement and making it aesthetically pleasing.

We would sit through many performances over the years: piano recitals, dance recitals, dance performances at the conservatory, and then their own productions and dance films.  We went to New York City to watch Mackenzie fly on fabric that was suspended from the ceiling, secured with giant carabiners. She spun in graceful circles. Then she scaled the fabric twenty feet up, twisting and turning it around her body, the long fabric tails flipping through the air.  Near the top she released her hold and spiraled downward, the fabric unwinding as if she were a spool and it the thread. Just as it looked as if she might not stop, she did, the fabric flexing bungee-like, her back arched, her legs and arms hanging backward toward the floor, looking like a spider in a web.

Ronald was featured on percussion in their second dance film Two Downtown. Cara and Mackenzie remembered listening to Ronald play drums in the basement, right under their bedroom, sometimes for hours. Cara would later tell me she found it comforting, knowing Ronald was there, feeling the vibration of the bass drum, feeling safe.  Mackenzie would tell me all the music in our house made her want to live a musical life.

Ronald and I had more ideas about what not to do in childrearing than what to do, but we managed to enjoy parenthood. I brought two strengths to my parenting technique: total, unconditional adoration and my imagination. Ronald brought stability, music, and creativity. We both retained our strong childhood curiosity.