The Postmodern Narrative of the Self and the Shadows of our Emotions

“we are continually transforming our-selves within a community, out of the past into the future, with and within a complex mind, trying always to gain a little more liberty to be what we are becoming” (Gould, 1980, p. 237)

 “The balance between the fragmenting of all things and the character content of a person, serves as the binding agent for de-fragmenting and establishing connections, like sinew being rebuilt in the human organism.  How are metaphors used in the telling of stories to indicate the narrative of a persons’ historical life and the time period of the development of their value orientation. To tell your truth in transparent and transformative ways makes it much more difficult to create or imagine a reality within your own head without the notion of interaction.  Advancing the struggle for controlling images and representation by the reinsertion of stories helps us to reclaim our humanity.  Reinserting stories into the material and historical context denies dominance intellectually, spiritually, economically and socially. The use of metaphors in our stories allows us to capture the public imagination with the insertion of language that relieve us of the shame and guilt of good and evil. What are these stories but the stories of our lives- auto-biographies.” (Hafiz, 2007)

Who we are and what we have become in a postmodern world is whoever we choose to be, not bound by the constructions of modern man and his ignorance of the whole and his separation of the parts without a clue about how they should be re-assembled.  Modern man’s ignorance to the beauty and function of the difference in creation and what it means in terms of the evolution of humanity has created unmitigated borders of pain and suffering.  Out of the pain and suffering we are bound by our fears that deny the emergence of our caring from a deeper and more soulful expression of the best of our humanity. What have been our vulnerabilities in a world of greed, conformity and debilitating labeling?  Who were the teachers of the modern world and who will be the teachers of the postmodern world which we are melding into at a rapid speed?  The new breeds of teachers are those who are not afraid to face the vulnerabilities we have inherited and created.  The new breed of teacher is one who has courage and opens themselves to the possibility of becoming teacher and student, servant and served, risk taker and protector and challenger and supporter.  To become this new breed of teacher one must be willing to face the shadows of their own personal and collective history in this race we call humanity.   

The Long Shadow of Self

When did my emotions as a conscious experience become void?  When did they become disconnected from the exploration of the life I was living? What did I experience and tell myself subconsciously about the experiences that made me forget or worse, not know how I felt about the experience. Perhaps it was the loss of my great-grandmother at the age of 10 whom I felt protected by, what was the risk of that loss;  Maybe, it was when I was molested by the old man in the basement who was trusted to watch me and my sister; maybe it was when I was molested by older boys as a young girl playing hooky from school; Maybe it was the molestation by older boys on a beach far from home and shouting to them when I was back home safely, that I was going to tell my uncle, that I didn’t even know; Maybe it was the molestation by a stepfather when my mother was in the hospital; All this before the age of fifteen. Who was my protector and how did I not know that the instant loss of what was a protective factor in my life would leave me vulnerable in ways that I could not imagine.  If there were not other protections then what did I have to protect, I could protect my emotions, I could not protect my body, so I protected my emotions.  My body belonged to the world with no one to protect it from the ravages of devaluation, so it became only a shell for others use, but my emotions, my emotions I could dole out at will or not at all. By denying the feeling of the experience meant the experience was not processed as significant or was it when as a child the missing connection from those around me did not provide a supportive space for me to know how to experience love without fear.  Perhaps we all have different conceptions about love and care and what we are afraid of because of our own experiences with those feelings through our relationship with family, friends, peers, teachers, leaders, institutions, media and the epigenesist of history.  What we come to expect as being cared for is present in those hidden experiences in our lives that we have suppressed this is also true of what we fear.  For me the moral and ethical judgments we make are stored from our own pain and sufferings.  Through the fire the hope is to transcend the emotional void within us to re-connect with our soul, because it is the experience of love beyond the pain and suffering which allows us to feel and care from the soul for another human being and thus act in ways that value the other person as human, not as any of infinite number of labels we place upon them.  The only label that deserves recognition is that of human and perhaps Mother. 

Ode to My Mother

My visit with you was exhilarating and frightening

When I saw you it felt like I had come home – you standing waiting for me behind that invisible fence – the gate to all my tomorrows

Standing at that gate waiting for your mother as I stood at that same gate waiting for you, as my children stood at their gates waiting for me

Your smile, the skipping gait towards me before I could release the hold of the strap that held me

The almost tears that welled in our eyes, afraid to fall but not untypical for hearts with walls

Your long and strong hug like a long lost child, a child returned from captivity, the open sigh of longing and not wanting to let go

Your words – I am glad to see you –– how are you doing – are you hungry – your invitation to love

This all in those first moments of breathing together, Giving birth to one another affirming our being, our true value with one another without a false desire or expectation of the other, and this, this was exhilarating!

 As we burrowed more deeply into each others’ eyes, into each others’ lives, the experience of frightening reminders of a past that recycles over time again and again

You moved in your words with a knowing of what to say to make me feel whole – you were a wanted child, If they had not interrupted, intruded and disrupted the relationship between your father and I would have been different - I would have had more children – 

I don’t like what they did, I was lonely, they put me out, and they took my money, I had to sneak to see you, to dress you up in the two little pretty dresses that I was able to buy

I gave as much of myself that I knew of myself

I had been put on the shelf, high above the reflection pool from which I could see myself and ultimately from which I could come to know my self

Only through the shadows and rippling water beneath the feet of my yesterday could I even fathom a possible tomorrow

I mothered you the way I could mother you… life lived unguided by the hands of a father or the mothering reframes of I love you baby, only broken consciousness, unsure of what all of THIS meant, 

All that was missed in my not knowing what to say along the way of your journey

This was the way I could not mother you…Look Baby 

THIS is how you bathe the baby

THIS is how you hold her

THIS is how you love them

This is how you grow them

Now Baby 

THIS is what you say to him when he is not sure whether to cry or hold it inside

THIS is what you tell her when the blood trickles between her legs, 

THIS is what you tell them when their innocence has been stolen

THIS is what you tell him when he has been violated by a world that does not care about him

Now listen baby, 

THIS is how you don’t become jaded and bitter by that which life has offered you by way of experience

My darling sweet child 

THIS is the journey that is yours alone’

THIS is your journey to shape every moment 

THIS moment is not your yesterday, 

THIS moment is your tomorrow - give to yourself the gift of forgiving your self…

Through a glimpse in my mothers’ eyes, through a whisper in her voice

I had to be still in my heart to hear all that God was trying to tell me….

Lost in the reality of unreality we find the spaces in between the sun and the moon to claim the shadows and the light.  Only when we are able to claim it all can we say I am human, so completely and totally.  I am spirit waiting and wondering and listening for the beat of my soul and for the next right thing.