Sharing Our Struggles So As Not to Invoke Envy

A Sunday Short-Post

Good morning beloved reader,

I’ve been playing with this above idea/investigating this topic in reference to writing memoir.

I was brought up with the idea that it’s not wise to wallow in pain, as you’ll just create more suffering for yourself. And I still agree with this. However, perhaps it’s also wise to remember the difference between wallowing and — at the other end of the spectrum — “spiritual bypassing,” which is defined as:

a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks. The term was introduced in the mid 1980s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist.

Essentially it’s skipping over the pain and trying to go straight to love and healing. Which doesn’t work.

And what’s so crazy in our culture is that it’s those very difficult conversations that we have with our loved ones, that are such a huge part of what love is: getting it ‘right’ between us. Keeping it clean and healthy sometimes requires getting down into the gritty, messy, reality of what’s going on.

For example, Jamie and I had a fight the other night, which, in retrospect, feels ridiculous — but it didn’t at the time.

I was sitting in front of the Jotul wood burning stove, because I was freezing. He had invested time bringing the wood down from the barn where it’s stacked, and cleaning the glass on the front of the stove so we could see the flames. But because I was so cold, and the fire didn’t seem to be catching, I opened the side door to get the air to make the flame bigger, and this is one of Jamie’s pet peeves — especially as he had built the fire. (Backstory: he believes by opening the side door the glass gets blackened more quickly, but this is not my experience with the Jotul.) So he yelled at me. At first I was stunned, how can this man yell at me for trying to get warm? After I got past feeling stunned, I yelled back — this is the unconscious pattern from my family of origin: bypass the hurt and go straight to anger. Then by me yelling back, Jamie was hurt.

What a see-saw a relationship can be. Even a 30+year partnership. Or perhaps especially in a long-term partnership, as the longer you’ve been together, the more opportunity for fine-tuning. We waited 24 hours to talk about it, as it was so ‘heated’ (no pun intended) and even then, we struggled to find out what the ‘vertical dimension’ was — meaning that a fight is usually “not about the coffee” even though that’s what you may be fighting about on the “horizontal level.” I have a sense that the “vertical level,” or the root issue to this tussle between us, was about a sense of control, which we both wanted.

I recently heard the term, “trauma porn” and I’m not interested in writing or reading that. What I am interested in is the intention behind sharing a painful experience.

Perhaps I needed clarity around my own intention: by writing into a painful experience, I get to share insights and/or the evolution of consciousness I experienced, and this may then be of benefit to the reader.

By writing memoir, I also transform my struggles into art. And I believe art brightens the connections between us. As a side note, this idea is explored in a video-recorded conversation between the respected Jewish Buddhist psychiatrist, Dr. Mark Epstein, and the renowned psychic medium Laura Lynn Jackson, in the Rubin Museum of Art, in New York City in 2018 (you may read the excerpt of the conversation if you scroll down to the bottom of this post.)

Perhaps also, this exploration of writing into painful experiences is my own subconscious mind setting the groundwork for the next few chapters that are the last chapters in Part Two of the book I’m serializing here: The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road: A Memoir.

Enjoying this memory as we move into winter here at TreeTops.