Cotton dresses

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being yourself, change, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, mother, parents

Outfitting your daughters in cotton dresses that must be ironed after washing, to go fishing, is by today’s standards a bit crazy. Fabrics now are magically suited for outdoor living. But my mother had five kids, baskets of dirty laundry and a farm lifestyle that included such tasks.

This picture reminds me of all that my mother did to support our family. I’d claim that she did this tirelessly, but really, she was exhausted. She cooked three meals a day for seven people and managed the household in our big Victorian place for decades, with only minimal help from the rest of us. Yes, I set the table regularly, and swept the three sets of steps in the house every Saturday, but otherwise I was off the hook.  For a farmgirl, I did not have many chores.

It’s easy to forget what our mothers did to get us to where we are today, but this photo reminds always me.

Lucky stars

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being yourself, higher power, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, nature

What great good luck do I have that I may go to the state park, late, and lay down in the bed of the truck to watch the Perseids meteor shower? We had pillows and warm breezes and barely any light in our eyes, and so the stars came into focus as we settled ourselves in.

Every August, when our grown daughter inspires us to step into the dark late at night, it reminds me of walking out to the end of the lane in Arden on a starry evening and happening upon a meteor shower. Back then we were just kids killing time in a lonely place, steeped in nature, free to wander. The end of the lane promised a show as my older sister, who knew the constellations, pointed with authority upwards into our own personal sky. Sometimes while debating which particular stars she wanted me to see, we’d be charmed by a spark that painted a fleeting arc across the scene.  Before you knew it we spotted another and then several more. It made it clear that the world is large and we are just specks. Shooting stars, any stars, are just part of the landscape. Yet, at the same time they are so special that I imagined them bestowing us with sparkling good luck.

And they did. Since I left Arden, a place that I loved, my life has only improved, no doubt aided by the power bestowed on me by the energy inherent in that happenstance dust.

Unlike in Arden though, this week our trip to the state park is deliberate and we are impatient as we wait and hope for the next shooting star, aware now that meteor showers are predictable. We were not disappointed when all three of us saw a fireball cross the sky in a long screaming streak that seemed to never end. 

Some kind of good luck is on the way, I think to myself.

BOOK TRAILER: You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, friendship, goals, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, video book trailer, writing

After months of working on a book trailer for my memoir, You’ll Get Over It, Jane Ellen, my team of three high school students and I, finished the project. We previewed it in May at a discussion group of my readers that a fellow writer’s club member had already organized.

Those in attendance gave overall positive reviews to our visuals but pointed out issues with tone, pace and messaging. It was a “back-to-the-drawing-board” moment which had me loading more furniture into the truck and heading back into the woods with fresh ideas a few days later. What we have ended up with is vastly different from our earlier version yet strikingly similar as well.

You might wonder, like I did, why a discussion group would gather for an unpublished manuscript and book trailer viewing. The lively, heartfelt #MeToo debate that unfolded would not have been on my radar ahead of time since my story is primarily about isolation and loneliness, but I get it and I loved it. Many thanks to all who were there and all who have helped make this manuscript and this trailer satisfying representations of a story I have been eager to tell.

Sisters

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being yourself, change, dreams coming true, express feelings, forgiveness, friends, friendship, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, play, relationship, security, trust

 

To all my acquired sisters (and brothers) out there: I love you and appreciate all that you bring to my life!

But my background is unusual, and a little fraught, and so the idea of having carried a sister with me from that difficult past into today, to help interpret what was and what is now, would be terribly sweet.

A scene like this picture above always makes me take pause. It is two sisters. Before the pandemic, I used to see them often and just like this, eagerly engaging in whatever it is they have to share, obviously friends. They report, lest I be confused, that as sisters things are not categorically smooth all the time.

I do love romanticizing the idea of two women who have know each other their whole lives. Partners in life who have seen it all. A trusted friend who knows what others do not and can engage in the lifted eyebrow communication reserved for so few in our lives.

My own sisters and I took different paths, primarily characterized by flight. One ran away physically, and the other, although she did move a thousand miles from home, fled by engaging with everyone through that effective distancer, anger. I haven’t gone as far away on the map, but my world is profoundly different than the one I shared once with them.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to have a sister. But it’s kind of too late now. One is gone at the hands of breast cancer and the other has herself hidden far away. There was so much threat in our lives we learned not to trust anyone, even each other. Real communication, like sharing our feelings about anything as it seems these two sisters above have been doing for a lifetime, that’s off the table.

Too bad, too. I was always up for it.

Join me at the Langhorne Writers Group

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being yourself, change, control, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, friendship, goals, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, mentors, passion, psychotherapy, trust, words, writing

Next week I’ll be talking to a writers group in Bucks County about the lengthy path I have taken as a writer. Meet me at the Sheraton on Oxford Valley Road in Langhorne, PA at 6:30pm to join in the conversation about This Writer’s Journey.

I knew I had a story to tell when I realized I’d reached adulthood unwilling to trust anyone. Back then I knew to take things seriously. Not to say out loud anything that mattered to me. Not to expect anyone’s help. To be leery of people who wanted to help. To leave my body if I needed to. That is all different now and it has been eighteen years since starting my project.

I’ll be using Austin Kleon’s book, Show Your Work “a best-selling guide to getting your work discovered,” to help me describe my own path. I’ll be using his points to make my points. He says that work, or in our case, writing, “is about process not product and that by being open and freely sharing your process you can gain a following that you can then use for fellowship, feedback or patronage.”

My own process has been slow for good reason, and I’ll talk about the hurdles we all face in trying to move forward in the seemingly solitary pursuit of “being an author.”

 

Throwing plates at the wall

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being yourself, express feelings, father, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, parents

Whatever was on my father’s mind was rarely a secret. Unless it was a secret, of course. Both my parents were masters at keeping secrets. Common everyday concerns, like how they felt about me, for instance, was worthy of a trip along with them to their graves. Oh, they tried to come up with plausible feelings, but I don’t think they knew how they felt about much.

Their feelings popped out unexpectedly at times.

They didn’t fight. At least not in front of the kids. Oh, they did bickering pretty well, and complaining, and Dad was especially good at deriding, degrading and humiliating. But I was shocked to learn, that during my childhood, Dad would get so mad he threw plates at the wall. That’s what Mom said, and I believed her because it definitely sounded like Dad. But I never saw anything like that. That was a secret.

It was no secret that was how it was supposed to be. You are supposed to never share your feelings, if you even know what they are.

That’s what I learned at home.

Storytelling 101

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being yourself, express feelings, goals, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, passion, sewing, writing

A jeans pocket I embroidered circa 1974

I was watching Abstract: The Art of Design, a Netflix program, when Ruth Carter, the designer for those fantastic Black Panther costumes explained that it was not a love of fashion that led her there. My ears perked up when I heard her say that her heroes were authors, poets and playwrights, like Langston Hughes and James Baldwin. She considered them designers. And they inspired her. She says people think she sews, but that’s not it at all. Her work is an art form. A means of storytelling.

What?

Her Black Panther costumes apparently incorporate the history of African tribes. She selected a color palette to support the words and scenes of the script, and fabrics that mimicked the specifics of the landscape and of African traditions.

When I heard all this I felt like jumping off the couch. Because I used to sew. A lot. And I never once thought of my many hours at Mom’s Singer machine as a means of storytelling. I was supplying myself with clothes. Otherwise, my choices for what to wear included anything from my two older sister’s hand-me-downs. By the time I left home during the college years, I was splicing patterns together, custom fitting every project, and embellishing my work with embroidery, contrasting thread and button tricks.

But storytelling was not on my mind.

My work back then was literal. I sewed the straightest top-stitching around. By eye. And I measured three times before I cut once. My work was impeccable, skilled, practiced and I considered going on with it somehow. But the only idea I had was to become a tailor. I did not see the possibility of becoming even more creative in my sewing or to tell the stories I wanted to tell through this art form. So hearing Ruth Carter tell me that I could have, that she does, confirmed what I’ve learned about art in general since then.

It’s about expressing yourself and you can do it any way you want to.

So, I ended up writing a story to express my story. Being literal once again.

But the good thing about art is that the story is still the story however you tell it.

I go to the farm for the smells

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being yourself, friends, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, parents

CSA Two Gander Farm

My CSA was great this summer because it was like shopping in a grocery market. I was able to select what I wanted skipping the dark leafy greens in favor of beets every time!

Besides the great food, though, I use a CSA for another reason. A secret reason that no one can see as I select my squash and tomatoes, and as I tramp around the beds in the field picking flowers and cherry tomatoes or beans and fresh herbs.

I’m breathing while I am there.

I am breathing in fresh air and smells of the farm, of soil and rain and varmints. Being there, my feet sinking into the ground, makes me remember my childhood. My father was a dairy farmer, and I am not kidding, the smell of cow manure is not a bad smell to me. My CSA has no cows, but since Dad also raised vegetables, every summer my mother and I sat snapping buckets of green beans then blanching them before freezing. Stepping out to the farm once a week has its purpose for me today.

My childhood lacked important elements, but one thing it had for sure, was an abundance of contact with the earth. Sometimes you’d find fall leaves on the steps going up to the attic as if they’d wandered in and hitched a ride through the house. Or you’d hear creatures in the walls and a possum on the porch. The dirt tracked in the house from my dad’s boots and the stem he used to pick his teeth meant he’d spent the day in the fields checking on his men. And for me, the babble of the creek nearby was as hallowed as the voice of a trusted friend.

Although Two Gander Farm is my outdoor grocery store, I go there not just for the rich produce. There’s a sense of belonging I don’t feel anywhere else. The smell of leaf and seed and dirt in the cracks of the barn’s floorboards swirls around me and welcomes me in. The ladders, the post beams, the creaking of the roof as windy air whips through, or just the puddles that gather where they will as it happens, all love me just because I show up.

Being on the farm makes me remember that the earth is my friend and otherwise I don’t visit it enough.

Some books get more love than others

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being yourself, control, fear, goals, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, security, teacher, words

Look at the place of honor my childhood etiquette book has on my shelf at home, right on top of old Charlie Brown comics and even Charlotte’s Web. I’ve always loved this book, set in rhyme, because it spelled out the expectations of adults. It seemed I was always getting everything wrong as a kid and this book held hope that if I only studied the rules I could lift myself into the world of those who knew how to behave. And even though it reinforced the gender stereotypes of the day it was still a book embued with hope.

There is plenty of advice in there about not bothering one’s parents and being nice to pets, lots of ideas that helped me learn to be civilized even when the world around me seemed less so. But this page seems especially sweet. I have shelves full of dear old books that have served me well over the years speaking to me with unqualified respect every time I open them.

I love books. But some are more special than others.

This guy taught me how to laugh

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, relationship, writing

Jane Paffenbarger Butler – author – with the man she captured in her giant blanket

Somehow at the age of nineteen, I spotted a guy who would stay with me for the next 40 years and counting. To be fair, he spotted me and I ran the other way, and it was only because several acquaintances pointed out his obvious interest and implored me to take him seriously, that I finally noticed him as a potential partner for life. He’s been nothing but steadfast, nothing but kind, and nothing but improved with age. Thank you friends who did that.

He knew not how to plumb a bathroom when I met him. He was not a loving parent or sole breadwinner. But since then he has become all these things and more. And in addition he’s propped me up through thick and thin, he’s counseled me on what I have not known and he has encouraged me and been my advocate when I didn’t know I needed it.

His winning attributes in the beginning were that he was funny and he was kind. He made me laugh and then taught me how to do it, and now, all these years later we are still laughing together.

Believe me, I had no idea what I was doing back then, but my gut reaction to this man has served me well through the years. He hasn’t changed much really. The kind, shy, funny, smart, encouraging guy I met at nineteen is still there, it’s just that all of that has morphed and matured and come along in an even better form right up to today.

This month, in Psychology Today online I tell the story of my young husband who takes me to his Aunt Maureen’s at Christmas where I discover that everyone refers to his Uncle Dave as Meathead, thus beginning my education in humor. Take a look at “Introduction to Meathead Therapy” on the Healthy Connections blog post by Maryann Karinch.