Roots are what they are. They feed. They nourish. They grow where they can and how they can. But if you remove the roots, the plant dies. It's the same with human beings. My roots feed me, and nourish me. And if I try to remove my roots, I cease to be who I am. My spirit dies.
I am a psychological archeologist for a reason. I understand the nature of roots, and I dig them up so that I can understand, not to look for causative sources of blame.
On an ordinary and inauspicious day I look upon the weekly schedule at work to find that I am scheduled for a solo shift. . . the only one who's scheduled for a solo shift. . . .and I am curious about the internal reaction that immediately makes me feel bad. Upon deeper self investigation I find that my initial reaction is fueled by the insibile thought that my boss has scheduled me for a solo shift because my coworkers don't like me and don't want to work with me. There are a million possible reasons to explain the solo shift, but my initial reaction is to think that I my coworkers don't like me and don't want to work with me.
Yes, indeed. . . I find myself curious about this. . . .
One of the tools I continue to use from the PTSD treatment group is a framework of deconstruction that challenges unproductive beliefs called "stuck points." So I had already begun the deconstruction process of this obviously unproductive belief, but what struck me most was the absolute absurdity of the belief, because it's not the case at all. And yet, regardless of the absurdity of it, that remained my invisible reaction to seeing my name scheduled for a solo shift.
And that's when I started asking different questions.
I've been processing my process long enough to recognize familiar themes, and the theme of feeling unwanted and unloveable is the core theme that runs through the course and flow of my entire life, which is why I needed to trace the roots as far back as needed to find out why my reaction to pretty much everything is that I'm not liked or wanted. . . .and the source of this pervasive belief is rooted in the environment into which I was born. And this "truth" doesn't relinquish me from responsibility of my reactions. . . .but it does explain why I have come to believe on an almost genetic level why I so invisibly feel inherently unwanted and unloveable.
I was thinking about timing this morning. To track back from when I was born, that would mean that my mom had got pregnant around September of 1962. . . .just two months after she had turned 21. . . .which explains why she was at the bar in Robin's Pond singing with my apparent father to be. She had just turned "legal" for drinking, so she was out enjoying her new found freedom. . . .and ended up pregnant. . . . with me. My (married) father who wanted nothing to do with the situation fled the scene down to Texas. My mom's family was shamed beyond shame by her behavior, and she was considered a "slut" by friends and family alike, so there was no support for her in New England.
There were a lot of choices that my mom could have made, but she chose to chase down my dad, so she followed him down to Texas, which is where I ended up being born.
My mom's mother couldn't even call me by my name at first, as she refers to me in her first response to my mom after my birth (nearly two months later) as "the baby." I'm glad to hear that you and the baby are doing well. Even my God parents are a sign of my mom's isolation, as they were a hispanic couple that had befriended them in Texas, not a friend or relative from the life she had fled when she chased after my father.
My birth was a crisis in my mom's world, a shameful and unwanted event, not something to be celebrated or embraced. And these are the facts of the world I was born into. . . .facts that formed the roots of my exsitence and shaped the way that I would come to think and believe about myself. I am not inherently unwanted and unloveable, but a child doesn't have the ability to separate themselves from the invisiblel truth that surrounds their early development.
My mom may have had her limitations as a person (and as a mother), but she was a kick-ass warrior, and she wasn't going to let anyone else define her path for her. And these facts about my roots make me feel proud of who I am, and proud of my mother who fought for my life at great pesonal expense, because she wanted and loved me even when everything else in her world didn't.