Thoughts from 2007 for 2008

This is a belated post, conceived of back in November, but my life has been a little topsy-turvy - I spent 6 weeks nannying for friends of mine and spending time with an infant was just what I needed to bring my life back into perspective. At least I like to think so...

November 2007: I'm going to continue talking about the Bird Women (Goddesses) because it just won't let go of my thoughts - a pretty powerful feeling, really. At the beginning of November, I participated in Siren Nation, a women's festival in Portland, OR. The festival lasted three days and included musical performances, seminars and an art & craft marketplace. My bird woman art and collages had their debut at the marketplace. And even though I arrived an hour early because I was clueless that it was daylight savings, I had a great time, met some wonderful women and sold 3 collages in addition to some bookmarks - I also gave away 10 handmade bird woman coloring books. My bird women can be found at Infinity Arts Gallery.

Also, here is an interesting little tidbit. My 7 year old son is very into books on tape/cd right now. It's borderline obsessive, really, but anyway... Recently, he listened to a book called Sacajawea and she is referred to on the cover as Bird Woman. Somewhere in the recesses of my mind I know I've heard this before, but I don't remember why she was called this. So, now I guess I have more research to do!

I also wanted to write about, Sacred Pleasure, by Riane Eisler. I've been reading it on and off for months, trying to absorb as much of it as I can. Sacred Pleasure is really a continuation of Dr. Eisler's, The Chalice and The Blade. It is an in-depth analysis of historical gender relations in intimate relationships and sexuality. It is, in fact, a major part of what Gylany Now is all about. But, it isn't just about the oppression and suppression of women and the damage that has been done to women. Dr. Eisler also addresses the harm inflicted on males who are forced to uphold this imbalanced, violent dominator system. This imposed dominator system has left our intimate relationships, to say the least, fractured.

In western cultures, it seems, that there is a real push to regain the intimacy and partnership that was intended by nature to be the foundation of male-female bonding. But, I think the reality is that we have so many patterns to unlearn and so much reconstructing to do that even though we can see the problems clearly, it isn't really clear how to deal with them.

I have given much thought to this and one thing I come back to is the importance of the simple skill of identifying and communicating one's own feelings. Obviously, it helps also to live in a "free" society and since the U.S. is the only society I have first-hand knowledge of, you can assume that's the context I'm working from. Of course, if you live in a society in which women have restricted personal freedom, then learning to identify and communicate feelings isn't the first step towards creating a more egalitarian society or towards improving intimate relationships.

But, to return to my point, I have noticed that my young son and myself in particular refer to and react to a whole range of emotions - uncomfortable, unhappy ones - as anger.

It seems that our range for identifying emotions is extremely narrow. And, most often when I identify my strong negative emotions as anger, I'm not even certain why I'm angry. This leads me to the belief that I am misidentifying some negative emotions - most likely feelings of fear and worry - as anger.

There is a long history of buried emotions in both women and men. Particularly, I think women tend to bury their negative emotions, while men tend to bury their positive feelings. As a child, I remember asking my mother what was wrong when she appeared sad, angry or upset. The common answer I got was, "nothing". So, not to place blame, but just for purposes of identifying my own shortcomings, this dialogue is my foundation for identifying and sharing my feelings: "What's wrong?" "Nothing."

Specifically, I am likely to bury my negative emotions for a while and then one day - PMS is a common trigger - they explode all over the place. I think there is a term for this, but I can't think of what it is right now.

One common pattern of communicating from the men in my family is teasing. For lack of a more positive way of relating, the men by and large use teasing as their only means of connecting with or relating to family members. Again, this is a way of attempting to show positive feelings by communicating negatively. It doesn't get much more twisted than this.

These are my observations so far toward the goal of deciphering the code of unhealthy relationship patterns. For, as Dr. Eisler correctly points out, until we restore our ways of interacting in our intimate relationships, there isn't much of a chance of learning nonviolent conflict resolution on a planetary scale.

The Gylany In My Life

(Dream Narrated By Three by Justin Potts)

It's Tuesday and I thought all weekend that I'd like to write a blog about the ways in which my life is gylanic - that is, oriented toward partnership. My immediate family consists of my husband, my son and our two pets. This makes things fairly simple for me :-). Of course, the gylany that I'm speaking of is the gylany that exists between my husband and I and how we share our responsibilities. I have told my mother-in-law many times that my husband is the only man on earth I would have married and thanked her for birthing him. I do it in a joking way, but I am really very serious.

In our house, many of the household duties usually considered to be women's work: cooking, cleaning and childcare are as evenly distributed as makes sense to us. We have created a lifestyle where we live, work and homeschool from our home. As such, we share the responsibility of cooking meals; we clean the house together once a week and we split each day in half to homeschool our son. This way, he gets to be with and learn from both of us and it breaks up his day. Also, we both have the opportunity of connecting with him and sharing his learning experiences. Obviously, this isn't for everyone, but it works with how our lives are structured and I think it is a benefit for him and for us!

Where housework is concerned, before we implemented the "everyone cleans" agreement, I often felt resentful that my husband had to mow the lawn maybe once or twice per month, change the oil every 3 months and do other odd or emergency "fixing" type jobs, but I had to clean the house and do the laundry every single week without fail. When we agreed to start cleaning the house together, it was as if an enormous weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Yes, I probably still do more cooking and childcare than he does, but he just replaced the starter in our minivan and spent most of his Saturday doing it! This is something I would never dream of doing and I'm so appreciative that he is willing and able to figure such things out. Also, I don't have to carry a hammer around with me everywhere I go in case I need to tap the starter to get the van to start!

As for cooking, it is an immense relief to me not to be responsible for every single meal, every single day of the week. I do like to prepare food, it is a good and holy thing, but the idea of it always falling to me is, like housework, resentment in the making! So, the way it works in our house is that whoever is the homeschool parent in the morning makes lunch and whoever is the homeschool parent in the afternoon makes dinner. This way, no one person has to be resonsible for two meals in a row on any given day. Now, of course, there are exceptions to this rule and we work them out gracefully, because we know that we are sharing the burden together. So, if I have to make two meals in a row, I know that it isn't a life sentence, just what's happening today!

I'd love to know how other people are going Gylanic!

In Peace,

Mary Preiser Potts