Yes. This. (Re: Jian Ghomeshi's Charges and Trial)

I don't often write a blog post that's basically just a link to someone else's blog. In fact I don't think I've ever done this before.

However, this blog post captured so perfectly feelings that I haven't been able to articulate about the charges against and trial of Jian Ghomeshi that I decided to share a link to this blog post here.

If you are a someone who has been upset by Jian Ghomeshi's (yes, yes, alleged) actions and/or our society's response thereto, or if you are someone who wants to understand why many people are upset by this, please read this blog post.

Here's an excerpt to give you an idea of where this (eloquent and pithy) blog post will take you:

"The woman, discredited witness #1, wrote him flirty emails a year later, attaching a shot of her in a red bikini. Does that mean Jian Ghomeshi didn’t assault her?… Nope. It means we live in a society where women are so devalued that the deeply engrained desire for male approval supersedes our own intuition constantly. We don’t even know how to recognize our intuition, let alone respect and heed it, because we grow up speaking less, being listened to less and being recognized as complex and intelligent, worthwhile individuals much less."
~Bone broth and breastmilk blog

(Alert: adult language) Link to full blog post: https://bonebrothandbreastmilk.wordpress.com

Night sweats and marble jars

I'm having one of those peri-menopausal nights when I can't stay asleep because I can't stay comfortable. I'm too hot! But I'm not! But I am! But I'm not!

It's the usual temperature in my bedroom, but under the covers, I'm boiling and then when I kick them off, I'm too cold. So, forget that. I'm not one for trying to sleep when I can't. I'd rather be up and doing something interesting. 

This morning, as I often am lately, I'm thinking about Dr. Brené Brown's work. I did a free e-course a couple of days ago called The Anatomy of Trust. The course centres around a talk Brené filmed for Super Soul Sundays (one of my dear friends sent me the link last month and recommended I watch it. The video forms the central part of the course; if you're interested in watching the video without doing the rest of the course, you can watch the video here). 

Dr. Brown breaks trust down into seven components that fit into the catchy acronym: BRAVING.

Boundaries

Reliability

Accountability

Vault

Integrity

Non-judgment

Generosity

Since Brené Brown's work is based deep in grounded theory research with data gathered from thousands of participants, I find it no surprise that her take on trust rings absolutely true to me. 

If I consider the relationships where I place a lot of trust, I can think of instances where each of those seven components have been enacted. And in situations where I have experienced a lack or loss of trust, this model helps me understand more clearly what happened. 

What does this have to do with a jar of marbles?

Dr. Brown talks about a "Marble Jar" that was used as a classroom management tool by one of her daughter's teachers. If behaviour was appropriate for the classroom, marbles went into the jar and if behaviour was inappropriate, marbles came out. When the jar was full, the class would have a celebration. 

The concept of marble jars strikes me as an excellent one to explain trust and human relationships. 

However, it seems to me that Dr. Brown talks about the marble jar as if the jar belongs to the individual – as if a person has one jar which various people put marbles into and take marbles out of.

I think I see it a little differently. I think each relationship (including the relationship each of us has with self) has its own (mental) marble jar. And each participant in the relationship can put marbles in (contribute to the relationship) or take marbles out (disengage from, betray or damage the relationship). This can get pretty complex, but I think it works this way – for instance for a family consisting of two parents and two kids, that a family has a jar for the whole family and there are also separate jars for each relationship within the family (Parent1– Kid1, Parent1–Kid2, Parent2– Kid1, Parent2–Kid2, Parent1–Parent2, Kid1–Kid2 and probably even Parent1–Kid1– Kid2 and Parent2–Kid1–Kid2 and then jars for each individual's relationship with self). The relationships are interconnected – some actions affect the entire family at once, others affect a sub-set or an individual.

There is a temptation here to see relationships strictly in terms of quid pro quo – you do this for me, I'll do this for you. While I think that if we are honest with ourselves, there is a transactional component to every relationship, I don't think the marble jar concept is best used to simplify things down to that level. I don't think the concept is very helpful as a scorekeeper, but I do think it is useful as a barometer. And also as a tool for communication – a way to help people visualize their perceptions around behaviour and the way it affects relationships.

If people in connection with one another view their relationship as a co-creative endeavour, ideally, each person in the relationship is interested in contributing to the jar (in ways that count for the other or others) so that the relationship feels satisfying for everyone involved. 

What counts as a marble?

I believe there is some delicate work here around understanding what each person feels is a contribution or a withdrawal. The whole "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" idea, is actually not as useful in relationships as "Do unto others as they would have you do unto them." People are put together differently and have different boundaries and expectations. I believe great relationships are founded on a desire to learn about one another and build mutual understanding, care and acceptance.

I recently read a blog post someone posted on Facebook about how some guy's wife left him because he wouldn't put his used drinking glasses in the dishwasher. As the writer himself admits, he finally figured out, too late, that those used glasses in the sink made his wife feel unseen and disrespected. So every time he left one out, he was taking a marble out of their shared jar. While, on his side, he felt that every time she complained about those drinking glasses, she was being unreasonable, stupid and annoying and taking a marble out of their shared jar by making his life needlessly less pleasant.

Often, there is simply a failure to understand another person's marble code – one person puts a marble in, thinking they are making a contribution and the other person fails to recognize it  – or worse, sees the other person's contribution as a deficit. 

Another common dynamic is unequal contribution. If one person feels like they are putting in way more marbles than the other person, they may come to feel depleted and decide to leave the situation. It can work the other way around, too, where the person with fewer marbles to contribute leaves a relationship because they feel overwhelmed, judged or resented.

I think marble jars can get too full as well as too empty. Sometimes the weight of expectations or of obligations can be just as damaging to a relationship as disregard, disinterest or an out-and-out betrayal of trust.

Marble Jar Relationships

I have to say at this point in my life that I think I have personally experienced a vast array of relationship marble jar failure: too little investment, unequal investment, waning interest, apathy, misplaced or unrecognized marbles, plundering, jars that cracked and then broke due to over-filling, initial contributions that were later clawed back (sometimes with interest), and the classic, "I'm taking all of my marbles and going home". A few times, I've hurled a marble jar against a wall and walked away, and a few times, someone else has done that to me.

I have also had a number of marble jar successes. I have relationships (some life-long, others dating back as many as 35 and some within the past 5 years) where both people are committed to contributing marbles to the jar. There have been challenges to work through – places where we have disappointed one another in one of the 7 BRAVING trust areas, and places where we have worked things through with accountability and integrity, built or repaired trust and continued with our process of being in relationship.

Self-trust is the root of all trust

For me, one of the biggest take-aways from this idea, is the importance of self-trust. The e-course I mentioned above includes worksheets for trust in organizations, with another person and with oneself. I found the self-trust inventory enlightening. I feel pretty solid in some areas and much shakier in others. I'm going to keep that inventory on-hand for difficult moments. When I'm not sure what to do, or when I've just done something I feel ashamed of, I am encouraged by the thought that I can bring myself back to the BRAVING framework to build and/or repair self-trust.

I'm also percolating an idea about how I might be able to use an actual physical marble jar as an exercise with self-trust, but as this blog post is already pretty long, I think that will have to wait for another post.

30 Days of Hustle – Report

A little more than 30 days ago, I posted that I was embarking on a program called the 30 Days of Hustle.

This is a motivational challenge to boost productivity (learn more at 30daysofhustle.com). I decided to focus my hustle on picking up the quilting hobby I dropped cold about 8 years ago and completing as many quilt tops as I could.

I finished THREE and made progress on a fourth.

I was impressed by the 30 Days of Hustle process – the videos, exercises and the camaraderie of the private Facebook group. It turned out that doing it was so much easier than thinking about doing it. After all, one of the quilt tops was only about 4 hours from completion, the other two about 6 hours each.

It certainly helped that I spent those hours in very good company with the wonderful staff at The Lunenburg Makery. (Big shout out to Rita, Kat and Jo)

Things are getting busier with my day job now, but I feel like I still have some hustle in me. In the course of doing this project, I found still MORE unfinished quilt projects, including 2 more sets of inherited quilt blocks, so I'm going to keep hustling on them at the Makery, as my schedule permits.

I also learned that there is woman nearby who runs a quilt shop and does long-arm quilting for a reasonable price, so as soon as I can afford her services (and batting and backing), I will skip my least favourite part of the quilting process and have these tops quilted for me.

Happily, I also learned that I still enjoy the process of piecing a quilt top – or two – or more.

Here are some photos!

Quilt top #1: Colour Wheel baby quilt

Quilt top #2 – double bed-sized log cabin
from inherited quilt blocks

Quilt top #3: single bed-sized quilt with
stereotyped (yuck), appliquéd Dutch children,
made from inherited, hand-worked blocks

Quilt top #4 (in progress): paper-pieced
New York Beauty

Shame and Body Image

I had a dream recently in which someone I know (yes, it was a man, whose name shall be withheld to protect the innocent) appeared to me and gave it to me straight:

"You're a big girl, Alex. You should wear better clothes and some make-up. Make yourself look as good as you can."

Sigh.

It was my dream, so no matter whose mouth I happened to put the words into, this is something that I am trying to communicate to myself.

So, part of me thinks I'm a "big girl" who needs to make more of an effort to appear attractive – to compensate for how I look and how society judges my appearance.

Another – much larger – part of me could care less.

Yet another part of me is in direct revolt against the entire concept of fulfilling an external beauty ideal.

And yet another part of me hates my body and lives oppressed under a lifetime of feeling too big.

And through all of those conflicting emotions and thoughts, that one powerful, suppressed opinion struggled through my mind to show up in one of my dreams and try to shame me for all of it – for being the size I am, for caring, for not caring, for being lazy, for not playing The Game.

Shame Culture, Gender and Body Image

In Dr. Brené Brown's book I Thought It Was Just Me (But It Isn't), she writes about how shame in western culture organizes itself along gender lines. Shame for women is (mostly) about not being feminine enough (thin, modest and nice) and shame for men is (mostly) about not being masculine enough (tough, powerful, competent, tough, tough, tough – and did I mention tough?).

So, if I were a man, being the weight that I am would not be a source of shame. Because it wouldn't interfere with my ability to be (or be perceived as being) tough. In fact, I would just have a little more weight to throw around. But, as a woman, I am in violation of the demand that I be (or be perceived to be) thin. And therefore, my weight is supposed to be a source of shame.

I think this is really interesting. It seems obvious to me that shame is used as a cultural enforcer, an attempt to solidly define everyone so they stay put – in the place where everyone else thinks they should be. This shame then gets internalized and is self-actuated within individuals, even against their conscious will – as it did in my dream.

My Body Image Story So Far

I've had an uncomfortable relationship with my body image for a long time. In a culture than bases value on competition and comparison, I've always felt like I'm at a physical disadvantage. My body type as a kid was short and muscly – a combination of genetics and gymnastics. Because I was shorter and stockier than a lot of people around me, I felt inappropriately large. But there is a difference between being larger and being large. When I was a kid, I was not a big kid, but because I felt bigger, I felt big. And then I had a whole bunch of value judgments around that. And felt a whole bunch of shame.

My shame intensified when I hit adolescence. I put on weight. Part hormones, part comfort eating, trying to stuff down all of my unacceptable feelings. This is where the cultural expectations on women in North American culture form a real double bind – Thin, Modest and Nice can become an impossible set of expectations for those of us who use eating food to help suppress the feelings that are not Modest or Nice – which means we can never meet all three expectations at the same time!

Anyway, as an adolescent, I felt much bigger than I actually was. I look back now and realize that I wasted being young (and skinny) feeling fat and unacceptable.

Somewhere in there, I realized that my body image was not only negative, but also disturbed. What do I mean by that? My perception of my own body was completely variable. When I was most aware of this phenomenon, during my thirties, I could look in a mirror twice, just a couple of minutes apart, and have radically different perceptions of my body accompanied by radically different value judgments about what I saw.

I never met anyone else who expressed having that sort of experience and so I made up a name for it – dissociative body image. But a little internet research shows that the phenomenon is generally called having an unstable body image and it is not an uncommon experience for people with disordered eating.

When I lived in the city, I often had the experience of passing a reflective surface – like a building with a mirrored exterior – and not recognizing my own reflection. I didn't know what I looked like. Probably because I rarely saw the same thing twice.

And, my experiences with other peoples' perceptions of my body were often jarring to me. I would hear others' opinions with a mixture of disbelief, shame and humiliation – feeling that I were somehow ludicrous – my body was ludicrous and my mind was ludicrous for not being aware of how ludicrous my body was.

I am developing a different relationship with my body now. Living in a more natural enviroment, with few events or people in my life for whom I need to look in a mirror, I experience fewer jarring conflicts between what I think I see and what others see, or what I think I see at various times. But it still happens.

And I'm not sure if the instability of my body image has improved, or if I have just moved myself into an environment where I'm less frequently confronted with the discrepancies. I think my body image is getting more stable, but to be honest, I only dare to hope that it is getting less negative.

Body Image vs. Body Experience

There is a major difference between my body image issues and the way I feel living in my body. Living in my body is an experience I truly enjoy. Apart from times when I am seriously ill (like that time I had a gastric ulcer in my late twenties – UGH!), I love being in my body. My body is strong and capable. I can do the things I want to do with ease – stretch, dance, get myself around, work, lift heavy things, sleep, wake, work, play, laze, read, write, sing, create and appreciate music, etc. etc.

Each of my five senses is a source of great pleasure to me.

I am endlessly moved, entertained and pleasured by the beauty my eyes perceive, the delicious things I smell and taste, the sounds I hear and the luxury of touching and being touched. Even the soft tip-tap of my fingers touch-typing on my computer keyboard is delightful to me.

The question is, if my body is so perfectly able to do all of these things that I love to be able to do in it and through it, what is my damn problem?

Back around to shame

The way I see it, there is shaming and there is shame. Shaming is imposed from the outside: advertisers, media, peers, family, and selves shame other people and ourselves if we are perceived to lie outside of the accepted norms. Shame is what individuals feel in response to shaming.

Disrupting shaming in such a shame-based culture is a big project. It involves changing the way many people think, feel and communicate – often against their own self-interests. Advertisers use shaming tactics to manipulate people into spending money. Often people use shaming to manipulate themselves or others into doing things that they desire them to do.

Shaming is also used to silence people and to shut down uncomfortable ideas. When Dr. Brené Brown posts ideas and research on-line that stir up people's shame, the vicious comments rarely focus on her ideas – they focus on her body. Those comments attempt to shame her for not being thin enough, in the hopes that she will stop writing about shame.

While the cultural shaming is overwhelmingly difficult to change, we can change our approach to it and our willingness to feel shame in response to shaming. We can work with our own shame. We can transform it. We can become shame resilient.

For example, Dr. Brown says that one of her main shame-resilience tools for on-line comments is a tiny piece of paper she carries around in her wallet with the names of the handful of people whose opinions actually matter to her. When she receives a shaming comment on the internet she can check, "Is this person on my list? No. Then it doesn't matter what they think."

Each of us has the ability to choose to buck the system and refuse to accept the dictates of societal shaming. I don't have to accept that it's shameful not to be Thin, Modest and Nice. I have choice.

Transforming shame

This past summer, my friend Jonathan Rotsztain gave me a copy of one of the books he has written and illustrated. The book is entitled Everything that's wrong with my body. I recommend you read it now on Jonathan's web site (Note: adult content). The book is an inventory of everything that Jonathan feels is wrong with his body – too much hair in some places, not enough hair in others, every perceived bump and flaw and wrinkle. Every time I read Jonathan's book, I feel deeply moved. I am moved by Jonathan's honesty and his courage.

And I am moved by the way his book makes me understand that the negative feelings we have about our bodies are not the whole story. Not by a long shot.

This morning, I did an exercise. I created an inventory of everything that I feel is wrong with my body. I listed 28 things. Then I made a list of everything that I feel is right with my body – 35 things on that list. And as I've continued writing this blog post, I've thought of more things to add to both lists.

I am not as brave as Jonathan. I don't feel ready to post those lists publicly or transform them into art. But I will tell you this: the feeling of making those lists was deeply instructive. I made the shame list first – and I felt shame and self-judgment. I felt disgusting and discouraged. I made the list of things that please me about my body second and I felt pleasure, smiles and contentment. And those feelings washed backward toward the shame list.

I believe that if I can focus on the places where I love myself and my body, I might be able to build resilience around the shame about some aspects of my body. And become – gasp – a more integrated person. And hopefully, a more integrated person who will no longer have dreams about people telling me I should wear make-up and make more of an effort.

The SECOND driveway (A Tiny Home/Land Development Report)

On a couple of days over the past month, my forest ecologist friend (who is also an artist with a chainsaw) and I have gone to my land to cut out the "real" driveway (if you missed the back story on this one, you can check out this earlier post).

One afternoon, my friend stopped off by himself and cut down a few trees.

Today, we were able to complete the job. 

Walking down the "false" driveway toward
"my clearing" through soft and
peaceful snow.

Some tools of the trade – branch trimmers and tea.

I had forgotten how much we had already completed.

It only took us a couple more hours to finish the job.

Most of what we've cut out so far has been fir,
but my friend dropped a couple of large pine trees today.
The pine boughs smelled so good and for some
reason reminded me of being sprinkled with holy
water as a child in church. I know in Toronto
the priests used palm fronds, but in Lunenburg,
I seem to remember the priest using pine boughs.

There was one particular bit of excitement when we had to fell a tree that was close to the road, leaning toward the road and with all its branches on the roadward side. We thought we might obstruct the road and cause a massive traffic jam (in Crousetown – haha) but in the end, my friend did such a stellar job felling it that this is how much of it wound up (very briefly) on the road. Given that it was between my car (with its four-way flashers on) and my buddy's truck, I don't think it had a major impact on anybody's drive home.

Here is the final view of the driveway entrance from the road.

I'm tired and happy and I smell like pine trees.

Next, the plan is to haul out the logs that are suitable for lumber and get them milled.

After that I just need to get through winter so I can get the heavy machinery in to build a road! 

A thrifty soup idea

A couple of months ago, I remembered something from the eight months I spent in cooking school at George Brown College in the late 1990s.

Most of our cooking instructors had been raised up in the apprentice system in big hotel kitchens in the UK and Europe in the 50s and 60s. One of them told us about how they used to have a big pot going on the back of the stove containing Le grand jus. Everything that would have otherwise been wasted went into le grand jus: vegetable and meat scraps, leftover gravy and drippings. The pot was simmered down and simmered down until it produced a thick jelly rich with flavour. This jelly would then be used as the base for sauces and gravies, giving them a deep and complex flavour.

Remembering this story gave me an idea. Since I don't work in an old-school hotel kitchen, it's not practical for me to have a pot simmering away on the back of the stove all the time, but I realized that I can adapt this idea to suit my lifestyle.

I like making broth from scratch in the winter. Soup makes a delicious, warming and healthy meal. In the past, when I've made broth I've added a carrot or two, some celery, onions and garlic as well as herbs and spices to some meat bones leftover from a roast (roasted meat is my other favourite winter meal).

Remembering le grand jus made me consider that through the week, cooking all sorts of other meals from scratch, I produce a large amount of vegetable scraps: parsnip peel, carrot ends, onion and garlic skins and roots, mushroom stems, spinach and chard stems, the woody parts of broccoli, etc. 

I had been putting these scraps in the compost bin and chucking them away.

But since I remembered about le grand jus, I have started keeping a ziploc bag in the freezer. When I have meat or vegetable scraps, I put them in the bag and keep it in the freezer until it's full.

Last week I made lamb soup. The contents of my ziploc bag met a lamb bone, some bay leaves, coriander seed and peppercorns, were covered with water and simmered into a delicious broth.

When it was done, I strained out the broth and put the veggie scraps in the composter – having gotten an additional use from them before they became waste. And having saved myself from using wasting perfectly good carrots, celery, onions and garlic to flavour the broth.

Then I put some carrots and parsnips into the soup – and put the veggie trimmings back into my rinsed-out Ziploc bag to begin the cycle again:

And now I will leave you with this link to Hawksley Workman's Almost a Full Moon: Let's make some soup 'cause the weather is turning cold.

PS: When curating your veggie scrap collection you can choose an active or a passive role. You can just throw everything into one bag and toss it all in the pot when it's time to make soup. Or, you can have several bags in your freezer at once: perhaps a "sweet" one for puréed root vegetable soups that could contain apple and pear cores among other things, an "Asian" one that could contain ginger scraps and green onion trimmings, and a "pungent" one that could contain more strongly-flavoured scraps (especially those from the cabbage family), which could be reserved for cabbage/broccoli/cauliflower-based soups. If you want to get really fancy, you could save each different kind of veg in a different bag and use your preferred amount in each soup that you make. Personally, I prefer the random approach – and I haven't been disappointed by my soup yet. 

Menopause: Mood Swings

I have noticed an interesting trend in my moods. The bouts of peri-menopausal euphoria I've been experiencing occasionally over the past couple of years have been extending into a pretty regular phenomenon. I can no expect to feel unreasonably happy and high for about 7-10 days out of every month.

Pair this with 4 or 5 days a month when I feel absolutely full of hate and have to bite my fingers to keep from trying to start big fights with people via email or Facebook.

Definitely a weird place to be.

I'm trying to stay even-Steven. No big decisions on the up days, no massive outburts on the down days. Afterall, there are still 15 days a month when I feel like myself. Plenty of time to get things done.

Makes me think of this song, Mood Swings, that I wrote in the 1990s and posted as part of my 52-song project last year. Have a listen, if you will.