THIRTY from Tao Te Ching by Lao Tsu, translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English
Whenever you advise rulers in the way of Tao,
Counsel them not to use force to conquer the universe.
For this would only cause resistance.
Thorn bushes spring up wherever the army has passed.
Lean years follow in the wake of a great war.
Just do what needs to be done.
Never take advantage of power.
Achieve results,
But never glory in them.
Achieve results,
But never boast.
Achieve results,
But never be proud.
Achieve results,
Because this is the natural way.
Achieve results,
But not through violence.
Force is followed by loss of strength.
This is not the way of the Tao.
That which goes against the Tao
Comes to an early end.
It’s been four days since arriving back from my trip to Houston to visit my family. My face is inflamed, pink and splotchy, with small little angry bumps covering my cheeks and forehead. Thankfully, when I woke up this morning, I noticed the rash has begun to calm down. A relief, as I’m traveling again in one short week, this time to visit my in-laws.
Our bodies don’t lie. The rash arrived suddenly Monday night, after a much needed cleansing shower post-flight, ushered in by a few small glasses of cold sake. I had just discovered a screw in my deflating tire, leaving me stuck in Los Angeles that night as my partner drove back to Idyllwild to relieve our friend who had been pup-sitting for us while we were in Houston.
Secretly, I was relieved I was alone that night. I had felt an intense resistance to the idea of being around others as I was about to leave, before I discovered my flat tire. I had been feeling frustration and anger that I couldn’t shake, brought on the previous night in Houston when my partner’s hip began to hurt so badly that I had changed my flight (at my mom’s stern urging) to fly back with him instead of staying the two extra days like I had planned. He had played tennis the day before with my brother, uncles and cousins, and had evidently pulled or torn something that was causing him excruciating pain.
Rationally, I knew it wasn’t his fault. But I still felt this flush of frustration rush through my body as I was bagging an ice pack for him to put on his hip, and my mom was hovering over me, directing me as if I were a small child, as she has a tendency to do.
“Don’t fill the baggie too much because then it won’t lie flat on his hip.”
“Put the baggie into a bigger gallon-size baggie so it won’t leak.”
“Cover the big baggie with a towel. No, a thinner towel.”
I inhaled sharply and held my breath as I marched the bag up to my bedroom and handed it to my partner, who was lying on the bed looking like he was about to pass out. I covered his injured area in Biofreeze cream and insisted that he take the ibuprofren he had been refusing. The pain was so bad, he finally agreed.
This whole time, my body was tight and my lips were clenched. He asked for a thicker blanket because the Biofreeze and ice combo was making him cold. My mom was waiting at the top of the staircase, not wanting to interfere but clearly concerned and holding herself back from overstepping. I asked her where the comforter was. She rushed into the room and pulled it out of a big plastic bag that she had carefully wrapped and tied the comforter in for protection.
Everything in her house that she doesn’t use daily is wrapped in protective plastic bags. If you opened any cabinet in the house, there would be numerous plastic bag bundles stuffed in them. Bags of toilet paper. Bags of old photos. Bags of pans. Bags of unused supplies several decades old. All forgotten in her growing short term memory loss until suddenly there is a need to hunt down a relic in one of the plastic bags. Then the mad hunt begins.
My mom takes the comforter and throws it over my partner, fussing over straightening out the comforter with the light blanket he already has over him. She attempts to tuck the comforter under his feet like he’s a small child.
“No no, it’s fine. Please just leave it alone. It’s more painful when you try to tuck it in.”
She reluctantly backs away, the comforter and blanket messily strewn over my partner. This is eating her alive, I think to myself.
Flashback.
I’m five or six years old. My mom is brushing my hair and pulling it back into a ponytail. I wince in pain as she combs my hair over and over, pulling it tight so that not one hair is dangling free out of her grasp. It has to be perfect, clean and neat.
I hated ponytails. I hated how tightly pulled back my hair was that my head hurt a few hours later. I hated how I looked with my hair pulled back so tight. I wanted my hair down. To feel the strands around my face. To feel it flying behind me as I ran fast.
I see my little five year old niece Emerie, who just celebrated her graduation from kindergarten. I see my mom reaching for her hair every visit, trying desperately to tame the little wispy baby hairs under a barrette and to tie the rest back. I see Emerie squirming away, saying as kindly as she can in her frustration, “No grandma, I don’t want you to touch my hair.”
Witnessing my mom fussing over my partner triggers me EVERY. TIME. Witnessing her fussing over my two nieces triggers me as well. It conjures up all the little Ellens from the past, particularly my 16-year-old that craved autonomy and the permission to make her own choices, and all the frustration, anger, guilt, shame that these versions of me experienced while living under my mom’s strict disciplinarian gaze.
I left Houston carrying the activated rage and resentment of my past selves back to California, when that unexpressed fire decided to express itself as a pimply rash all over my face.
Clearly, my high school self was trying to get my attention. And not surprisingly, I had a hankering to listen to old 80s hits driving from LA back to the mountain.
When I finally got back to my home and reconnected with my pups, my body began to exhale. I was exhausted. I slept for almost 11 hours the first night. I was feeling profound burnout and fatigue. I decided that this summer, I’m foregoing onboarding new mentorship clients. I needed to tend to my body. I needed to redirect the care and energy I give out back to myself.
I needed to truly learn how to stop over-giving.
Divine timing is unquestionable to me these days, now having had the awareness around the timing of messages, gifts, healing sessions lining up perfectly in the moments that I am in most need.
As I tended to my face with nightly sheet masks, aloe vera and a clean diet of veggies and nuts once more (Sidenote: the food in Houston is amazing. But it definitely takes its toll.), I saw that my final booked session with my friend AJA miraculously was scheduled for yesterday. As I shared about my trip and getting smacked over the head by my people-pleasing pattern (read: lack of boundaries) yet again, reflected back to me by my mom’s insistent over-caring behavior, my guides shared that my mom is facing her hardest lesson this life. And it’s being delivered by her memory loss.
She has only known how to show love by giving her energy away to others – caretaking, prioritizing everyone else over her own joy and desires. In fact, this IS her joy – being of service and fussing over other people, namely her children, son/daughter-in-law, and grandkids.
She has only known how to be a giver, not a receiver. And in this stage of her life, as she is heading towards dementia or Alzheimer’s, she is slowly being forced to learn how to surrender, to let go and to receive love from all of us. And this is terrifying for her.
All I can do is honor how she loves, as frustrating as it is for me and those who care about her. I have tools that she never got to learn because she was so busy putting her family’s needs first. She was my grandmother’s caretaker for 12 years before my grandmother died. She, too, had Alzheimer’s and often battled my mom as my mom tried to care for her.
My own inability to receive comes from a long lineage of poor receivers in these women. Ancestors who only knew how to sacrifice to show love. This is what I’m here to heal in myself – the ancestral and generational wound of unworthiness – so that I can clear this survival pattern from my lineage. And it’s a stubborn one!
I’m being given an opportunity with my mom’s memory loss to finally love her on my terms as she is forced to receive due to her body slowly shutting down. She is giving up her role as caretaker, and passing that role onto me.
I have to just allow this natural cycle to play out. Not forcing her to understand me and my frustration. Not forcing her to accept a different way of being. But instead, softening.
ALLOWING her to be who she is.
ALLOWING her to love as she only knows how.
ALLOWING the natural cycle of death and rebirth to occur in divine timing.
This is how we heal. Not by will or force. Not by violence. But by letting go and allowing.
And so it is.
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*Jia character drawn by award-winning calligraphist Wai Jia.
so beautiful. thank you for sharing. this touched me deeply
Powerful piece, Ellen. Thank you for sharing your journey.