Getting by with a Little Help from my Friend

Tobey and Jonah this summer at his family's lake cabin

Have you ever had a moment where appreciation just swells up in your heart and makes you momentarily float with happiness?  Well, I had one of those moments yesterday.  I was waiting at the children’s hospital while my eight-year-old son Jonah was in surgery.  He was having a hernia operation, which according to the doctors and many of my friends who have had it, is really a minor procedure.  However, I must admit that I was feeling nervous, and a little lonely by myself in the family waiting room.  One little girl had five adults and her sister waiting for her.  Most of the other parents came together as couples.  There was one young woman waiting by herself for her son, who wasn’t even walking yet.  I kept smiling at her, especially after she got tears in her eyes when the doctor told her that he came through the surgery fine.  My feeling was that at a moment in which you face the possible mortality of your child, whom you love more than life itself, you need some moral support, a little love and tenderness. Read the rest of this entry »

Fantasy Take Two

What if I had my fantasy

Already, yet eventually my handsome prince

Turned to a frog…normal…really,

Then hopped out of our pond,

Leaving space for a new prince.

What will this man look like?

Will he be smart, loving, funny?

Will he do hot sweaty yoga?

Will he share books with me?

Will he like the crossword puzzle?

Wait…that was the old prince

And look what happened to him.

How can I re-write this sequel?

By finding myself a patient man,

Confident, social, optimistic, grace under pressure

And this time, when he becomes

A frog, as they always do,

I will nonetheless adore his warts,

His bald head and wrinkles too.

Because love really isn’t a fantasy.

It’s the practice of daily appreciation.

And maybe, just maybe, it wouldn’t

Hurt if each frog had his,

Or her, very own lily pad.

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Again, it was Six Word Fridays that inspired me with this week’s topic of fantasy.

Of course, I’d love it if you’d share your fantasies with me…

External Validation

That pesky demon External Validation has had me in its talons lately.  Did any of you watch the 90’s TV show Northern Exposure?  It was my ex’s and my favorite.  We used to watch re-runs almost every night together.  There was this character Ed who was training to be a shaman.  He was helping out a woman who suffered from tendinitis and he decided that he was going to fight her personal demon External Validation in order to cure her.  Well his demon, Low Self-Esteem, scoffed at him and said that he could never beat External Validation.  Why?, he asks.  Because it feels soooo good.

His demon had a point.  There is very little more seductive than the admiration of our peers.  It feels exhilarating to have others praising you.  Nevertheless it can become addictive in that we come to depend on such appreciation in order to feel good about ourselves.  We get used to high of someone telling us that we are the best and when we don’t get that outside praise, we can wither.

That’s basically what happened to me this week.  A guy, who I really didn’t even have any interest in, showed me a little attention and affection, and I bought into it immediately.  He stirred some longing in me and I felt my whole body change.  My nerves tingled with excitement and anticipation.  I felt like I had been drugged.  This man, whom I had never really given a second thought to, all of a sudden seemed so attractive, all because he had shown me some appreciation.  I basked in it briefly but then when I realized that it was just a flash in the pan, I felt betrayed.  How could I have gotten hooked so easily?

I was reading one of my regular blogs last night and it hit me.  There is a chemical component to this.  This blogger, Evan Marc Katz, whom I discovered only because he had the same name as a former boyfriend, was giving advice to a woman who was afraid that the man she was interested in was a player.  He told her that the only thing that she was going to get from him was a “rush of pleasure – serotonin, dopamine, endorphins.”  Well that hormonal rush can be the best feeling in the world.  That sounded pretty good to me until he reminded her that that was all she was going to get.  He warned her that she wasn’t going the get the things that she really wanted in a relationship, such as consistency, kindness or love.  All she would get was a fleeting high.

Well, External Validation is definitely a player.  He sucks you in to thinking that you need him.  He gets under your skin and you find yourself craving him, and then he’s gone.  On to praise the next girl, leaving you feeling like an ugly duckling, like yesterday’s trash, like stale bread.  You know I’m being hyperbolic, don’t you?  But I think that you get my point.

So how does one combat the almighty powers of External Validation?  By not trying.  By realizing that our sense of self comes from a voice within, not from praise from without.  By cultivating love from people who truly adore us and can’t imagine life without us instead of courting the attention of superficial flirtation.

This weekend, I asked Jonah if he liked the lunch that he got at the Harvest Festival.  His response was an ambiguous “kind of,” to which Layla astutely replied, “That means no.”  It made me think of a friend of mine who is dealing with the waning affections of the man that she is seeing.  External Validation is slowly exiting her world without clearly admitting his departure.  We thought about it and decided that we were much better off spending time with each other or our kids, who really love us, instead of seeking the attention of a fickle man who kind of likes us.  This is not to say that we want to close the door on men or on dating, it just means that we know when someone truly loves us and when someone is just giving us that EV fix.

So, do any of you have moments in which you succumb to the powers of External Validation?  Do you realize that it is happening?  How do you deal with it?  And what are some of the ways that you cultivate true love of self (and others) instead of a fleeting ego boost?

My Favorite (Local) Fall Foods

Cooking, to me, has so many important functions.  The old saying goes that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.  Well, I think that works for both men and women.  It sure works for me, and the great part about it is that I am the one providing myself with the delicious food.  Like my yoga practice, cooking is an act of self-love.  It is also one of the ways in which I nurture my children.  Last week I made both pumpkin pie and banana bread and sent it with them in their lunches.  For that week, at least, I felt a sense of joy and satisfaction while packing their lunches instead of the usual drudgery mixed with dread.  My cooking is also a big draw for my ex husband and is certainly one of the reasons that he looks forward to our weekly family night dinners.

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Date Night

I am currently curled up in my cozy bed after a wonderful date.  No, I am not engaged in post-coital blogging.  The only afterglow that I am basking in is that of the delicious meal that I cooked.  Roasted butternut squash, tiny red potatoes, poblano peppers and leeks are seriously orgasmic.  Tonight’s date was with myself.

I looked forward to this date all day.  I thought about what I would wear, the food I would cook, the TV shows I would watch, the blogs that I would catch up on.  My platonic boyfriend Tobey tried to tempt me to have a drink with him tonight after yoga, but I told him of my plans.  He said, watch out because, like me, you might find that you are really good at single life.

Before any of my friends start calling for an intervention, I have to say a few words in my defense.  First of all, I just started back at school, where I interact with people all day, and I could use some alone time.  Second, this is really the first time in the three years since my divorce that I have chosen to spend blocks of time alone.

Right after my breakup I reveled in all the male attention I was getting and went on lots of dates.  Then I started making new friends and taking on new activities that engaged my attention.  I have to admit, though, that while this was great fun, I also dreaded having a night home alone, so I would make sure to schedule social engagements for all of my kid-free moments.  I was a little bit scared to spend time alone for fear that I would feel lonely.

Yet, lately, I just love my solo nights.  I get to cook what I want.  While my kids are pretty good eaters, they hate some of my favorites such as butternut squash (it’s so sweet that it’s like candy- what’s not to love?).  Tonight I got to cook and eat in peace and quiet.  No one was here to interrupt me.  No one spilled their food on the floor.  No one asked to watch TV.

Now I am blissfully alone in my incredibly comfy bed waiting for my Showtime lineup.  Tonight, with “Weeds” I get to fantasize that Andy Botwin/Randy Newman sous chef extraordinaire is my boy toy, not Nancy’s.  And I also get to live vicariously through Cathy while she spends her retirement money on a fancy sports car and floats in a stranger’s swimming pool without actually having cancer myself.

At last Thursday’s yoga group, my friend Jackson dropped the bomb that he had broken up with his girlfriend.  This week I think I will announce that I have broken up with Tobey.  It’s not him, it’s me.  I am having too much fun by myself.  I am like Cathy who, in tonight’s episode of “The Big C,” gets a Brazilian wax for no one other than herself, except, well…I don’t really have a Brazilian…right now.