Sisters

Tags

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

Tags

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.”

 

If you notice that you are unloading all of your issues on your fellow humans on a day-to-day basis, maybe you should talk to someone

Tags

being yourself, change, control, express feelings, fear, goals, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, psychotherapy, relationship, security, teacher, trust, writing

 

I love the title of the book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb. It’s a phrase we hear often, but the subtext is a serious one that is easy to ignore. So by making it the title she highlights the notion that no, really, maybe you should talk to someone.

Lori Gottlieb shows us in her informed examination of the psychotherapeutic process, that making contact is the primary goal when a patient shows up on the therapist’s couch. She gives us a sense of what a therapist might experience as they go about their work day attempting to assist those who come to them seeking help. Meanwhile, as she tells us about her various patients and what they talk about in her office, she herself is struggling with her own crisis. This comes in the form of jilted love that derails the life she had been planning, and for which she also seeks the help of a therapist.

It’s a bit of genius to open up the role that is traditionally held secret, that of the therapist but also that of the patient, to demystify the process and therefore welcome us all into what some may see as the scary world of psychotherapy. By positioning herself as both therapist and patient she shows us that it is not that easy to get the job done. That it is not just a matter of showing up and paying the money and claiming you were there, no matter which role you take. Both must engage. Both must make contact.

I know this firsthand for having wandered into a psychotherapist’s office when I was 27 and then staying for about another twenty years. A good therapist can open up their office as a symbol of what it means to be real. I went in believing that psychotherapy was a place to “learn more about oneself” whatever that means, rather than to work on any problems. I actually believed I had no problems, except at some level I must have realized the benefits because I went willingly and openly. A capable therapist, as Lori shows herself to be, has the power to help people make huge changes in their lives if they are able to welcome the opportunity. You must give yourself over to their leadings, trust in their training, their intuition, and their humanity, to guide you where you need to go. And a talented therapist can do it.

Lori Gottlieb is not afraid to show us how this works as she offers both the details and the outlines to the processes undergone by her patients and herself. Each of us at our own pace and in the therapy office, must let down the very useful defenses that keep us from unloading all our issues onto our fellow humans in our day-to-day lives, and Lori shows us that in this engaging book.

 

 

 

Believing in yourself is half the battle

Tags

being yourself, change, control, dreams coming true, express feelings, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, natural talent, play, teacher, trust

I’ve heard that creative people are creative in multiple ways and so we should not be surprised to find that Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan also paint pictures. But when you are struggling to be the artist you imagine yourself to be, like me, writing a memoir and telling a story I very much want to share, finding that I have hidden talents is confirmational.

In cleaning out an old trunk in the spare bedroom I came upon this drawing I made when I was sixteen. I’d forgotten that I once believed myself capable of such creations because honestly, right now, I can barely play Pictionary. But possibly if I renewed that notion that I can draw and I put my mind to it, I might win a few rounds.

This sketch is the result of the one drawing class I had in high school, with Robin Burkhardt, who insisted it was about taking the time and seeing clearly. And voila, she was kind of correct! This Bonwit Teller department store ad is a direct mimic of one I saw in the newspaper at the time. The coloring-outside-the-lines I allow occasionally suggests a little artsyness!

Believing in yourself is half the battle.

 

Toothache headache gone

Tags

being yourself, dental implant, fear, Jane Butler, trust

This is a video of me telling my story at the West Chester Story Slam Grand Slam in November 2014. The theme of the evening was ‘thin line’ and all us, myself included, beat that idea to a pulp. My story is about losing my last baby tooth last year at Thanksgiving dinner.

Elementary school identity opportunity

Tags

being yourself, Jane Butler, listening, trust

When my daughter was in fourth grade I encouraged her to be in the variety show at her elementary school. Her brothers had had a great run of it, testing the idea of standing up in front of their peers and entertaining them in whatever way they could find. They were stand-up comedians, or musicians, usually.

My daughter wanted to be at the piano playing a song called Jazzy Cat, and she wanted to wear cardboard cat ears stapled to a headband, and a cat tail that hung down from her waist and across the piano bench. She also had whiskers painted on her face. This was all her idea. Nobody else wore a little costume if they played a piano piece. In fact, the kids who played piano pieces typically play classical music and wore more serious clothes as if they aspired to be concert pianists.

The point is that this is what she wanted to do and just because no one else was doing it didn’t seem to figure in for her. She had a vision of who she might be, and trying it out at the variety show was a safe enough place. Since then she has not turned into a jazz dancer, a serious pianist (although our duets are pretty fun on a Friday night), or a theatre kid. None of it was literal. It was all for the fun of the moment and I am sure informed her about herself in some way I cannot appreciate.

Now we are on the college search. I feel the same desire to let her figure it out again, defining for herself who she is and where she fits in. In both cases I am right there talking it all through with her, doing what it takes to help support her as she explores her own identity. But what I am not doing, and very deliberately, is tell her who I think she is or what I think she should do. If she asks, I have opinions, but I try hard not to impose them on her.

It turns out that if I’d had it my way at the variety show she would have done something entirely different that I won’t even mention here, and I can see now it would not have been half as cool as a jazzy cat.

A six-year old’s first impression

Tags

being yourself, express feelings, Jane Butler, piano lessons, relationship, teacher, trust

The mother of one of my piano students came to me last week and asked if we might start her six-year old boy on lessons on a trial basis. We’d do a fifteen-minute lesson and see how he took to it. After all, he’d been asking for lessons and copying his sister for weeks now.

So, after his sister’s lesson I sat down with him at the piano and we started. All we do at the first lesson is touch every key and name it, spell some words on the keys like DAD and CAB, and then I usually do some silly quizzes about which hand is which and which finger is which. It gives us a chance to get to know one another and to introduce the piano, and it is easy.

In just fifteen minutes, I can decide whether the student is ready and able to take lessons. For instance, this little boy stayed focused and engaged with the process the whole time. He didn’t get frustrated, and he did know which hand was which. It’s hard to teach kids piano if they are unsure which is the left hand or if they keep looking back at their mom to see if they are getting the right answers. But he was willing to trust in the process and allowed a fifteen-minute relationship with me all for the sake of learning piano. They say first impressions are real so I am counting on it, and I feel this guy is ready.

The crazy thing about this experience is what he did next because it is a reminder that kids are just as capable as adults of sizing up the situation. His first impression is valid, too. After we were finished and I told him he’d done a good job, he ran right over to his mother. I got a perfect look at his back as he spoke to her.  In a clear and loud voice, as if I couldn’t hear him he told her, “I want piano lessons.”

Kids are great. They know how they feel. And there is such a short line between how they feel and what they say without a lot of smoke and distraction in-between, that if the adults in their lives are good stewards of that we can trust them to be honest with us for a long time.

Stomping in puddles makes a fine mess

Tags

academic team, being yourself, intuition, Jane Butler, trust

Let me start off by saying that if your two-year old wants to chase butterflies or stomp in puddles, let them. Here’s why.

My sixteen-year old daughter came home from school yesterday and said, oh by the way, I tried out for the academic team. The older kids usually answer those Jeopardy-like trivia questions more accurately so she didn’t make it last year yet went back and tried it again yesterday. This time she got a score on the screening test double that of the two boys she went with, easily making it to the next level, and she did it wearing a dress she told me. Not that that really has anything to do with anything, but really, she was clearly delighted with herself. I am a girl and I can do hard things, she might have been thinking.

At dinner she told my husband, just like she’d told me, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be on the academic team, she just took the test to see. Well, I am here to tell you that this is the very line I feed myself to get me to do things my brain might otherwise tell me not to do. My intuition that I want to do something is so strong that I go and do it and then my brain suggests rational reasons why that might be okay, later. Ahead of time I am not so sure the brain would give the okay. Not that there is anything wrong with wanting to be on the academic team, or just wanting to take the qualifying test, but I think my daughter needed to not think about it too hard. Otherwise she might question her motives, or the practicality of being in another club, or if she could even do it, or that she might be a nerdy person for considering it. She skipped all that and just did it.

It is a fantastic mechanism to be honored. This process of doing stuff just because. I had not heard her say one thing about wanting to be on such a team beforehand, yet she is attracted to it for some reason. None of the reasons for or against being on the team matter. Something about it is attractive. That’s enough for me to say, honor your intuition. Trust yourself.

Teach your children to indulge healthy ideas like this one, just to see, without too much thinking it over and figuring out if it makes sense. Because after all, chasing butterflies makes no sense at all. Unless you like doing it.

Her job is to grow and my job is to let go

Tags

control, driving lessons, fear, Jane Butler, joy, trust

It seems I had failed to cover sufficiently the usefulness of the brake pedal in controlling the car on hills and instead we were in what felt like a free fall down our steep driveway, barreling towards the street and potential live traffic. I let out a little cry at the prospect of my life ending prematurely. I don’t normally do that during driving lessons, but I thought we were just going to do three-point turns when suddenly I was on a roller coaster.

In driving lessons with my sixteen-year old daughter I see the same dynamic between us that has been going on since she was a baby. Her job is to grow. My job is to let go. Even better if it can be with my arms in the air in the front row seat screaming bloody murder because it is so thrilling.

Every day I offer a challenge, something she thinks she is not ready for that I know she can do. Whether it is cutting with scissors when she is a toddler, or maneuvering our car through the parked vehicles of the neighborhood on off-peak hours just yesterday, it is my job to know her abilities and guide her, and not let my own fears drive our discoveries together.

Okay, so I should have gone over the brake thing more clearly, but until I am in a free fall I don’t realize what I have not yet taught. By the end of our half-hour lesson she is saying she is proud of herself and hadn’t imagined she was ready for actual road driving even though I know that passing one moving car in an isolated neighborhood barely qualifies, but live traffic it was.

My job is to let go. To see that she is capable and encourage that even though doing so means she is moving farther away from me. I try to imagine that she is actually moving closer as we forge a bond of trust. It is a powerful bond that we will both cherish because it will be stronger than any cut the scissors can make, and any road that may lead to places far away.

We all must be plucked from the raging waters sometimes

Tags

fear, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, play, security, swimming, trust

Yesterday I kicked off my sandals and jumped into my swimming pool with all my clothes on. That’s right. Everything in my world suddenly disappeared except for the little girl slowly going under, and I do not remember thinking about anything except getting her out. Phew!
My four-year old visitor, my friend’s granddaughter, seemed unfazed by my rescue, but me and the two other adults there, and I’m counting in that my recently certified lifeguarding sixteen-year old daughter, all had to catch our collective breath and debrief a moment. Blondie coughed and sputtered, choked and was a little shaken, but generally fine after her dead weight imitation. Her seven-year old brother had given her a little shove and in she went with no apparent swim reflexes. When I looked over she was sinking, quickly filling with water, first her mouth, then her nose, her eyes, her little blond head all going under. In defense of the adults, I want to say we did have a life jacket on her but she took it off because she is four and she can do everything herself already.
Afterward, although a little timid about it, this girl got back in the pool without so much as a wimper. Big brother had to sit out the rest of the swim time, but she was praised for her bravery and encouraged to continue playing near the pool. After all, we’d just shown her that we were there, watching. She could not have been under the water more than three seconds, and her grandmother was kicking off her sandals when I splashed in, and my daughter was on her way as well. This little girl was informed that she is safe and in good hands even in a dangerous situation.

Life is full of danger, but we all must carry on despite that. Having trusted strength nearby, for all of us, is the way to navigate the waters of fear. Someone has to hold your hand, scoop you out, explain it all, or whatever you need, in order to keep going even when life gets tricky.

It was news to me when I figured this out, but now I see it clearly. We must always surround ourselves with those who care and who lift us up when we don’t even know we need it.