Unbecoming Ourselves: Chapter 1
Who Are you?
“Paradise is our primordial pure consciousness, which is free of all limitations but embodies the infinity of the divine.”
-Anam Thubten
Am I a bad mother? Maybe my children are better off without me.
A familiar wave of panic starts to roll in over my body.
Another meal goes uneaten by my older child. Never mind that I am the only parent to these children at home right now, or that I am completely depleted of energy. Alex has been gone for only ten days so far, and I already feel like I’m losing grip on my sanity. Frustration builds inside me, riding the waves of panic, which is quickly followed by guilt.
What kind of mom gets mad when their child refuses to eat a meal? This can surely be added to the inventory of proof that I am, in fact, a bad mother.
Grabbing his plate with mounting agitation, I knock the uneaten food into the trash can and hurl the plate into the sink. The tension inside my body rises like a pressure cooker threatening to explode, and I clench my teeth in an attempt to keep these horrible thoughts and feelings hidden. But my efforts to contain it all are ineffective and my body reacts, against my own will. The tears come pouring out and my breath quickens, my whole body shaking as I gently slide myself safely to the floor. I come undone, into a trembling, heaping mess of snot and tears. Cradling my head in my hands, I finally begin to sense some relief as the pent up energy exits my body.
The wave of emotion begins to recede, and I wipe away the mess from my face. Jack appears bewildered by my embarrassing display of emotion, and Everly is shaking her rattle in her bouncy chair. Collecting myself once again, I push myself off the floor, resolving to turn this morning around with our new daily walk around the neighborhood. Smiling to my children, I reassure them Mommy is okay and ask if they are ready for our walk. I worry my mother-in-law heard my meltdown from her home office in our basement.
Good Moms would be able to handle this situation better than I am. I need my mother-in-law to see me as a good Mom.
Keeping my mother-in-law and my children safe has become my main job ever since Alex, my husband, temporarily moved out. This new Coronavirus threatens the lives of everyone, and his mother’s age puts her at high risk for serious complications. After many emotionally charged discussions, Alex and I decided it best that he move out until we feel safe, since he works as a nurse in the Covid ICU. His mom lives with us, and we couldn’t bear the thought of him potentially infecting her with the deadly virus. I feel responsible to keep everyone healthy and safe from this invisible, ruthless predator. The pressure suffocates me.
I need to be a good daughter-in-law, a good wife, and a good mother.
Fastened securely in the stroller, my kids and I head down the driveway and out of the cul-de-sac.
Ten days; it’s only been ten days that Alex has been gone. I have no idea how long this will go on. I hate hearing his stories about what’s happening at work; it’s yet another burden I don’t have the strength to bear. Another young man in his early 40’s went into cardiac arrest and passed away last night, despite Alex and his team’s efforts to resuscitate him. It happened suddenly. Like many Covid patients, he died alone in a double occupied hospital room, without his family there to comfort him in the end. No visitors are allowed in the hospital, even when they’re dying. Alex said one of the most difficult parts of the post mortem care for him was peeling off the pictures of the young man’s children from his hospital bed and placing them inside the body bag with the patient. Covid has claimed yet another life in this ICU.
I wish I only felt proud of Alex for courageously showing up in those ICU rooms to care for those patients, but I mostly feel angry and scared. I’m a terrible wife, and a horrible mother.
I have always failed to meet my own expectations of myself. I’ve never quite met the self-imposed requirements of the identities I strive for. There is nothing more important to me right now than being a good mother, which has been increasingly difficult since the start of the pandemic.
We reach the end of the block and I decide it’s time to turn on a podcast I recently discovered, called “Secular Buddhism.” It focuses on practical applications of various Buddhist concepts, and has become an anchor for me through this stormy time. The three of us stroll around the neighborhood, listening to Noah Rasheta, lay Buddhist minister and host of the podcast, discuss groundlessness.
I learn that groundlessness illustrates the nature of impermanence, the constant change throughout our lives. Fearing uncertainty, we cling to things in a desperate attempt to halt our descent, but we continue to fall. The fear of uncertainty in my life right now is agonizing. I notice I’m clinging to being a “good mom.” Constantly trying to check off boxes, I am deriving the majority of my self-worth from my ability to measure up to my perception of this “good mom” label.
A little arm reaches out from the stroller, my daughter’s hand brushing the overgrown pine tree branches extending out onto the sidewalk. Recently reintroduced to the sun after the spring snow melted, the branches covered in prickly green needles react to her stroke by enthusiastically rebounding back up to the sun.
Noah compares groundlessness to a game of Tetris, where we have no control over which piece we get next, so the best we can do is fit the shape we have now. It is more skillful for us to embrace the uncertainty and release our grasping, since clinging does not serve us well. A skillful Tetris player obtains the highest score possible while eliminating rows of blocks. A skillful life player, from a Buddhist perspective, makes intentional choices that put them on the path to enlightenment, or liberation from dissatisfaction.
The concept of groundlessness resonates deeply within me. My relentless striving to be a “good mom” has left me feeling like I’m falling, desperately grasping anything that feels stable around me. As if this pandemic is not difficult enough, I’m judging myself every step of the way. On our walk back home, I realize I have always derived my self-worth from perceived success in obtaining and maintaining various labels.
About a year and a half ago, I decided to leave my position as a nurse in the pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Unit. What led to this decision was a well executed, but failed resuscitation event of a three month old infant. Codes were fairly common in the CICU, but this time it felt different to me. I was a mother to my own child now, and I struggled to concentrate the rest of my shift, as I couldn’t help but imagine what it must be like to lose a child.
I had a lot of job prospects. I had already been a nurse for six years to people of all ages. Finding a new job wasn’t difficult; what was difficult was letting go of the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit nurse title. I loved being able to tell people I was a pediatric cardiac nurse. I had so much pride in that title, and letting go of it felt like mourning the death of a part of myself. Who was I without that label?
Whether it be the label of Critical Intensive Care Unit nurse or good mother, I have always clung to labels as if they are proof of my worthiness. Perhaps I am grasping for labels and identities out of fear of falling, giving myself the illusion that I have control over my life.
Arriving back at the house from our walk, I take the kids out of the stroller and we go back inside for a snack. While chopping strawberries and arranging them on a plate for my children, I contemplate groundlessness and my grasping of labels. My constant striving to “become” is exhausting, and leaves me feeling frustrated and ashamed. Curiosity drives me to discover who I really am, why I cling to certain labels, and how to reduce the pain I experience as a result of that grasping.
“Who are you?”
When someone asks us who we are, we answer with labels; we name our occupation, our political affiliation, our sexual orientation and gender identity, our family role, our race and ethnicity and nationality, our hobbies and interests, our religious views.
We don’t say these are things we do, but rather who we are. We say, “I am a nurse,” “I am a Democrat,” and “I am an athlete.” We live in a world where we over-identify with labels, and it can damage our relationships with others and with our self-conception.
Many of us experience strained relationships with people we care about because of conflicting labels. We struggle to separate the human in front of us from the decisions they make, because we see the decisions they make as who they fundamentally are. Many families and friends find themselves at odds with each other over their political beliefs, vaccine compliance, religious views, and more, and experience a painful collapse of their relationships.
As individuals, we can cause our own anguish by clinging to the labels we and others have given to us. We believe that we are our labels, which leads us to constantly striving to live up to our idea of what that “should” look like. This causes us unnecessary emotional distress when we feel we aren’t meeting our own expectations, or when we need to let go of a label. I often fail to measure up to my idea of a “good mom,” and that causes me a lot of anguish. When I have needed to let go of a label, such as when I left the CICU, that caused me a lot of distress as well.
Fear of the unknown causes us discomfort, driving us to create stories to explain who we are and why things are the way they are. As parents, we lose our temper and yell, then tell ourselves we are a “bad parent.” We fail to meet our expectations of ourselves at our jobs and tell ourselves we are “bad” at our jobs. Failing to accurately observe events as they truly are, we shoulder all the blame and responsibility for our perceived failures. In an attempt to preserve the illusion that we are in control, we cling to our identities, even when those identities are not serving us well.
This self-inflicted discomfort is referred to as all-pervasive suffering in Buddhism. Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, identified three types of suffering. They include the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change, and all-pervasive suffering. The suffering of suffering encompasses inescapable events such as physical pain, illness, old age, and death. The suffering of change includes our inability to hold onto what we desire forever, due to the nature of impermanence. All-pervasive suffering depicts our general dissatisfaction with our lives that stems from ignorance to the way things really are.
Our perception of the events in our lives greatly determines the level of contentment and satisfaction we experience. Two people with similar circumstances can experience very different levels of satisfaction. Things exist as they actually are outside of our perception, then through our own personal lens. We never touch the true reality of events, as we always experience them through our unique perspective. We can’t separate our lived experience from our direct perception of the events in our lives.
What would happen to our relationship with our labels if instead we said, I practice nursing, I subscribe to Democratic views, and I run marathons? Subtle differences in language help us distinguish between the temporary labels we create for ourselves and who we are at our core.
While attachments to labels cause us misery, they do simultaneously serve an important role in our communities and the world at large. When we are injured or ill, labels allow us to seek the help we need from doctors and nurses. When our vehicles break down, we need labels in order to search for a mechanic. If we need help managing our finances, labels can help us seek help from a financial advisor. When searching for a partner, labels allow us to discover potential mates.
But labels do not serve us well in many situations. Our labels can cause us distress and hinder our growth, and put strain on important relationships. We perceive our labels as a part of our core self, fixed and unchanging. The problem with this is that change is inevitable. Although some of our characteristics remain relatively stable over time, we are constantly subject to change based on our environment, and our acquisition of new knowledge and experiences.
When we were children, adults asked us, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question was never what did we want to do, but rather, who did we want to become? The seed of needing to “become someone” was planted for us in our childhood, and we’ve spent our lives watering that seed by extricating our self-worth from this ideal.
As adults, we suffer in jobs that we no longer find joy in, because we don’t know who we are without that title. We alienate ourselves from others who define themselves differently than we do. When we identify with our labels, we deny ourselves the opportunity for growth and self compassion.
Consider for a moment someone who strongly identifies with being a lawyer. They are highly respected at their law firm, and take on the most challenging cases. They say, “I am a lawyer,” and derive a majority of their sense of self-worth from their ability to successfully win cases. When they come of age to retire, what toll might losing this label take on their mental health? Many people suffer from depression at this stage in life, partly due to their inability to reconcile who they are aside from their career choice.
What about someone whose career is causing them severe distress, but they struggle to change it because their career is entangled with their identity? Many people in high stress jobs such as nurses and doctors suffer extreme emotional distress but remain in their current positions because it feels like a threat to their sense of self to lose that title. Who would they be if they no longer could say, “I am a nurse,” or “I am a doctor.”? Are they somehow less themselves than before?
If we choose to make a career change that pushes us out of a role where we were the expert into one where we may be a novice is a daunting task itself. It is uncomfortable to leave our comfort zone and enter into unknown territory. Beginning a new career requires a lot of learning and vulnerability, and this discomfort cannot be avoided. The part we do have control over, however, is how we see ourselves in relation to our jobs. If we say that our career is who we are, then when we choose to move on, we may feel like we are mourning the loss of a part of ourselves. When the self is entangled with our career choice, it can lead to emotional turmoil when we choose to make a change in our career.
“Our true nature dwells in the space underneath all the layers we show the world.”
The labels we give ourselves and others are just a facade, an illusion to what’s truly underneath. Much like an onion, we have layers and layers that surround our core. Each layer is a label we give to ourselves and show to the world, but underneath all of our layers lies our true self, our true nature. Our true nature dwells in the space underneath all the layers we show the world. Whether it’s a label we strive for or a label we’re avoiding, we forget that they’re just that: labels.
The goal is not to become shells of ourselves and abandon everything about ourselves that we value, but rather to change our relationship with the labels we give ourselves. How would our lives look if we were less attached to them? What limitations are we putting on ourselves by seeing ourselves as separate from others, permanent and unchanging?
Our identities are entangled with our own direct experience of our lives. Developing or strengthening mindfulness practices such as meditation and open awareness encourage the nurturing and discovery of the space between “I” and my experiences. Through these practices we gain the unique perspective of observing our thoughts and emotions with less attachment and aversion. We can cultivate an awareness of our connection to all things, and discover existence beyond the labels we see.
Exercises:
Each chapter will conclude with exercises, which will include journal entries, guided meditations and other mindfulness practices. For the journal exercises, find a few quiet moments in your day and a cozy spot to reflect on the prompts.
Journal Exercises:
Who are you?
Include both labels that you strive for, and those that you try to avoid.
How have labels hurt you?
Include labels that you avoid, as well as those you are/were proud of.
How have labels caused friction in your relationship with others?
Awareness Exercise:
Notice how labels play a role in your life and the lives of those around you.
Podcast episode referred to in this chapter:
This is great Heather! It was fun to read this and imagine where you were in your life and where I was in mine when you were listening to that podcast episode. I love that you are sharing this wisdom and writing your story. I also had to laugh when you were describing the uneaten dinner plate. My wife gets so upset with the kids don't eat the dinner she made. I look forward to the rest of the chapters!
Love this very personal, very relatable discussion. I’ve so often been in that emotional situation, and sometime let it overpower me to destroy relationships and possible futures. Less now, but it lurks.