Mother-Daughter Book Bite

LETTING GO OF OUR WILLS …to get our way

                   

This works—if we let go of our scripts.  Here’s a translation of a common script:

 

Daughter:  I have to fight with all my might, right now, and resist my mother’s control! 

Mother:  And I have to teach this girl a life lesson, right now! 

Sometimes in that script we don’t even see each other; we just see our own agenda—that feeling of now can grip us, rather than a feeling of holding the moment in calm hands.  Our girls, of course, can’t let us win!  That would be a blow to their burgeoning will.  So they dig in. And it’s not pretty. And due to the sheer ugliness of it, I have to teach that girl that lesson, right now!—right?  Well, no. Finally I’ve learned to see that I actually don’t even want to win, in the traditional sense, with my daughter.  I don’t want to try to teach her a lesson right when our dynamics are most heated.

Finally, I’ve become willing to take that old script and whip it into the wind--which sucks, sometimes, because holding the old script can be comforting. But we are both now willing to write a new one, to write a new one that feels mutually empowering and fun. Because Lily doesn’t want to do it, if it’s not going to be fun.)

I have gradually given up the power that had taken ten years to accrue.  I practiced letting go of needing to be right, needing to have the last word.  I invented ways of smoothly releasing my power in a way that felt comfortable to both of us. I let go of thinking I needed to teach her a critical life lesson during the hectic five minutes before leaving for school.  I was motivated by my observation that…it’s working! Somehow, magically, after our mutual willingness to let go in that moment, magically, we would have a moment later that evening during which she or I could say, can we talk about it?  How can we do it differently next time? 

It’s kind of a miracle.

I have an emotional, talkative, and occasionally offensive teenager. We are allowed to be mad at each other, but we’re not allowed to blame each other or intend to hurt each other. We do heat up at times. Recently I was so inflamed that I seized her hand, accidentally scraping it—and I had fresh flesh under my fingernails as evidence! It was a horrifying moment in which the Universe was truly putting me under arrest--oh, shit, what if I’m a child abuser?--and after we had inspected the depth of the clawprint and I had expressed my apology, I said, “The only thing that’ll make me feel better about this is if I  kiss that knuckle every time you ask me, for the rest of your life.”

She loved this. And I knew she’d treat my vow with reverence and respect.

A bizarre new script, but we were both thrilled with it and now it’s even funny, when I voluntarily kiss that still slightly scarred knuckle, before she can even request—or protest. Blame is all my family has ever known, so disowning that old script has been liberating.

But letting go meant disengaging my will—right when Lily was starting to grow hers. It was almost counterintuitive. But that’s because the old script says when the other team gets stronger, you fight even harder. (Look where where that’s led the world.)

We have practiced—and practiced—during times of conflict, letting go.  It turns out that it is much more difficult for me than for her, because I have been practicing, for 40-something years, the art of holding on! Of digging in!  Look—there are fingernail marks to prove it! Deep ones! I like to get my way!  I have a habit of holding on to an argument—especially because I’m RIGHT!  Lily has inherited her share of RIGHT-ness as well, but she is more willing, in the heat and drama and attachment and escalation and resistance, to be the one to say, “Mom, let’s not do this.”  And she never feels like she’s giving up power, or giving in. She does it because it’s fun for her to do it a different way.

We know that the only way anyone actually wins is if we both let go, if we both let go of that ancient and undesirable feeling of digging in, of getting my way. 

Power over her, or the urge to shape her behavior, is less and less enticing to me. It used to feel great, and now it barely rates. In Lily’s striving for independence and autonomy, we both experience the thrill of surrender, of surrendering to the desire for Peace and connection, which is a more fulfilling reward than winning a battle of wills.

Now we are in a new stage:  recognizing that moment of potential conflict escalation, because we know—from experience--it is summoning us to surrender to the beauty of the moment, to the joy.  We don’t dig our heels in, we are not gearing up to win—we know we are both going to win.  Before it even begins. In an ironic twist, that moment of potential conflict brings a quick surrender to delight—the delight of surrender.  And it can happen with a glance in a crowded supermarket, or with a high five in our own kitchen.

On a larger scale, if there can’t be that kind of surrender to Peace in a mother-daughter relationship, how can there be Peace on Earth?  What would the world be like, in the future, if today’s kids learned to enjoy the peaceful art of surrender--if they learned that true power lies in mutual empowerment?

DC Texting

Lily is on vacation with my mother and her husband.  They create a very different world around them than what Lily is used to.  She is used to "Life is Good," and she is immersed in...the opposite.  In between nights full of snoring.  Periodically she touches base with me via text.


Although texting is currently my preferred mode of communication, I held back all day, to give her some space; on day two, Lily sent me only three reports about my mom, including "Your mom doesn't like you."  And: "She's very racist." (Personally I think she's only a little bit racist, but she's probably the most racist person Lily knows.)


Finally, "She won't let me get earplugs, because she's afraid they might get stuck in my ears."


To the first two texts, I replied: "I realize."


After the third, evidence that my mom was actively searching for something to fear, knowing also that she won't let Lily out of her sight due to potential kidnappers, feeling like it was time to step in and offer some advice, my thumbs reacted:


"So you just have to take charge.  Just say, 'Bobbie, I've lived in the city all my life.  I can find my way from the C Terminal to baggage claim before my mom can even figure out how to meet me at the gate. My friends are having SEX! So please back off because I'm all grown up.  And if you want to live in a world where bad things happen, you can.  But in my world everything is great, because I believe everything is great.  And that's why I'm so happy.'"


My mom has always said I'm too blunt. Maybe Lily thinks so too.


She texted back:


"Haha no, it's ok."

Miss Minny Talks Trash

Last night, watching an animated video that Lily had made online, I laughed till I cried.  The website provides the characters—she created the dialogue, which was peppered with vulgarity and twice described sex acts.  Shouldn’t a kid should be grounded for such an obscene accomplishment? 

Not only is she not grounded, she gets homeschooling credit—from me. Because she made this video during homeschooling hours.

And the beauty of her nasty animation creation is, for me, that she transformed one of her innocent childhood characters—her alter ego, who would emerge from the shower in the evenings instead of Lily, the star of an imaginary kids' tv show that took place in our bathroom every night until Lily was about 12.  

In the video, Miss Minny has grown up to look suspiciously like Lady Gaga, and is being interviewed on David Letterman.  In this interview, our fearless hero of expression veers so far over the edge of propriety that if it were real, they’d have cut to a commercial and yanked her off.  And that might be funny or not funny for you.  For me, knowing that this profanity-spouting character is the grown up version of my innocent 8-year-old daughter is hysterical. I rarely laugh till I cry, but I did, all three times I watched Miss Minny surprise David Letterman with way too much information.

So why shouldn’t I be grounding her?  She just made an R-rated animation. Aren’t I worried? Isn’t she on her way to much worse? Shouldn't I be shaping her behavior? Isn’t she moving hazardously toward breaking a law or two?

Actually, I think she’s on her way away from it, on her way away from needing to be protected by laws that don’t actually protect us, but create a repressed society because no one learns an internal level of discernment of their own—and I trust Lily’s level of discernment.  Our level of communication needs to be really high, in order for me to trust that. And it is pretty high—or she wouldn’t have been able to show me the video. If I make rules that impose an external control over her, rather than letting her find her own internal discernment for right or wrong, there will always be a repressed desire to push the rules--I know her.  (Though worse, for me, would be if she never even felt a desire to push the rules, if she succumbed to a feeling of "what’s the use, why even try?")

These days, external control in general is being re-set.  We as a species are evolving from externally programmed and externally punished beings, to internally, heart-driven beings.  Not everyone sees this yet.  I see evidence all around me.  We no longer need the old paradigm of power coming from outside us.  Human HEART is bursting through.  But it is not an easy shift!  Certainly not on the governmental level, but even less so on the parenting level.  It would be so much easier just to power through it like my parents, just really shut her down as much as possible so that she won’t embarrass, offend, or insult me…all of which are possibilities on a moment to moment basis.  She is constantly checking to see where we stand with each other, pushing my edges.  Sometimes--disarmed, or tired or hungry or otherwise not fully present--I will cave.  I will forget all about being conscious and just bring out the big guns. I can be offensive and insulting too; I have loads of experience.  So, it’s happened, the verbal threats.

The sad thing is, it doesn’t even work on this kid.  I tried it today—well, it’s not that I tried it, it’s what instantly came out of my mouth after she had made an insulting gesture.  And I bet she's worried that everyone reading this thinks she gave her mother the finger--and how fortuitous, because isn’t social pressure ever so helpful in shaping behavior? Sometimes. 

(“Lily, do you want to be known as the only seventh grader who’s never had a sleepover?” I asked her in seventh grade.  

“That’s your issue, mom, not mine,” she said, with zero charge or judgment.) 

Today, after the insulting gesture, she ran upstairs, pursued by my voice telling her not to bother coming back down because I wasn’t going to talk to her, nor was I going to take her to her friend’s house later, where she was deeply invested in going. 

As I paused to take a breath and consider whether I was could keep my hasty, angry promise, she came back downstairs.  

She had barely made it up the stairs! What a huge sign of disrespect! I was ready to hold firm to the punishment, just because she had come back downstairs so soon--before I even had time to get my act together!

“Mom? I talked to my angels, and they told me to come back down here.” 

At this point she broke into hysterics and I didn’t know if she was lying, mocking me, or just couldn’t believe her own ears, but the giggles rattled me and I fought back by walking away; if I had stayed, I might have giggled too, and ruined the whole thing, lost every ounce of power I still had.  

But she emerged from her fit and said, "No really, even though I’m laughing, I did go up there and ask my angels what to do and they said to come back downstairs, but they didn't say what to do after that."

And then I caved, totally, disarmed by her lack of artifice, and just went with the flow. 

“Is there any part of this that you would like us to talk about?”  And there was.  And we did.  I was satisfied that she understood what can happen inside her and how it contributes to disharmony between us.  And she, too, felt heard. 

I honor my daughter for coming back down the stairs.  I honor her for stopping and asking for internal guidance before she even got to the top of the stairs.  I honor her for not prolonging the fight, for not holding a grudge, for being willing to let go and pursue a more peaceful path—which she does regularly, with far more ease and grace than I've ever had.  

So how can I not honor her for her creation of a parody, a cartoonishly enhanced, hilariously edgy video of how obnoxious--and staggeringly inappropriate--my darling daughter can be?