Mixed Metaphors

Hibernation definition — an extended period of remaining inactive or indoors

Hideout synonyms — hiding place, hideaway, retreat, refuge, shelter, safe house, sanctuary, sanctum

First, I’m a creature of habit. I find comfort in my routines. There’s a rhythm to my days and nights. I read somewhere recently that we all experience some degree of OCD behavior. It’s certainly true for me. The gears of my Circadian clock are still trying to mesh with some synchronicity since the ending of Daylight Savings Time (DST) and turning the clocks one hour behind. Who knew that would make such an impact? They’re grinding a little right now as I try to slip back into a sleep cycle. 

Second, though I’m not a big ole bear preparing for the long winter, or a scurrying squirrel burying nuts, I’m craving extra calories, especially carbs and sugar, two food groups I don’t need to store since I already have sufficient reserves. Oh My!

Lastly, when snow fell and remained on the ground and the wind howled through the windows of my home — followed by a chicken noodle soup breakfast this weekend — I crawled under the comfort of a throw on the couch and watched the news on CNN. Though there are many reasons to remain hopeful about the future since the midterm elections, the political climate will get worse before it gets better. It’s time to hibernate and retreat to the hideout. 

The Changing Season

The changing seasons and its impact on emotions, spirit, and energy is a topic I often write about. I revisit it today because it’s also a metaphor for the changing political climate. The cycles of our lives serve us. Sometimes it’s necessary to replenish our reserves before we retreat to a hideout to seek sanctuary and when we’re restored reemerge to fight the good fight again.

“Living in Wisconsin, our lives ebb and flow with the changing seasons, sometimes winter is unrelenting and it’s a struggle just to get out the door for our day-to-day lives. We are restored in the spring when the changing weather brings us hope and quells the itchy restlessness of spring fever. Summer is our reward, a time for leisure and vacations. In the autumn we reap the harvest of the land and prepare for the long, cold nights again, the cycles of change repeated.”

Emotions

Late fall leads up to a trifecta of holidays, first Thanksgiving, followed by Christmas (insert ethnic, religious, or pagan alternative), and ends with the New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day holiday. For me, I also add a bonus celebration, my birthday in January, when my introverted self retreats and most years, I prefer a low-key acknowledgment of the day.

A byproduct of the holidays are the body memories triggered by our senses — the sights, smells, tastes, touch, and sounds of the season. Add to that the reminiscing we do, reliving holidays from the past, repeating family rituals, and remembering loved ones no longer with us.

For most of us, including me, this is a bittersweet time, a mix of joy and grief, including challenging family interactions, and for some a conflict between free choice and obligation. We both revel in and endure the holidays. In the end, the excitement, anxiety, and anticipation leading up to the holidays is frequently followed afterwards by an emotional (and often physical) hangover and weariness. It’s not uncommon to hear people remark, “I survived the holidays.”

Spirit

In response to our holiday experience we often find ourselves reflecting on our lives and asking questions. “Am I living an authentic life, does my behavior in my relationships match my values and intentions?” “Do I have amends to make to others, or repair my relationship with myself?” “Am I living the life I choose to live, or the life others expect me to live?”

Retreating to my hideout to temporarily go underground is essential for me to answer those questions, to take an inventory of how I’m living my life, and address what is in essence a maintenance checklist.

Late fall, and what seems like an endless Midwestern winter, is the perfect time to do that before the spring, which is often a time of reawakening and resurrection of the spirit.

Energy

It’s been a little over two weeks since Daylight Savings Time (DST) ended and we turned the clocks back an hour, gaining an hour of sleep, however my Circadian clock is still wonky. I’ve lost my sleep/wake rhythm. I’m napping on weekends and after work; I’m awake for awhile, then fall asleep early with the setting sun. I wake early at 2 or 3 am for a trip to the bathroom, followed by difficulty returning to sleep. I’m tempted to get up but I’m fearful of hardwiring a new sleep cycle. Oh My!

The irony is that I think I’m getting more sleep, yet it’s truncated and I feel less refreshed than before. It’s as if I’ve lost motivation for the simplest tasks. I’ve at least temporarily become a sloth or snail, a slow-moving creature. I have to nudge myself and fight inertia to leave the hideout for the simplest errands or social activities.

The good news is that after time — three months or more of winter — one side effect of hibernation is at some point I wake up rested. Not only rested but restless, and for most of us, it expresses itself as Spring Fever, that itchy restlessness of our spirits which manifests in our body’s desires. We want to be on the move again, satisfy our urges, and return outdoors.

Healthy Relationships and the Holidays

For the past four years I’ve attended a Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation recovery workshop at Edgewood College presented by Fred Holmquist, author, speaker, and recovery workshop leader. It’s an annual tune-up, perfectly-timed just before the holidays. This year, the workshop focus was, Principles & Practices: How to Build Healthy Relationships in Recovery. Yes, it was just what I needed, a reminder before I cross the threshold of the past when I return home for Thanksgiving. Holmquist’s reminder for us, “We often react to the present as if it’s in the past.”

One of the objectives of the workshop was to “Recognize our longest, practiced ways of feeling safe.” Now, that may at first glance seem like an effective tool, yet often, some of those responses or ways of coping, may in fact undermine and complicate our closest intimate relationships. He illustrated how we unconsciously complicate the relationships where we are most vulnerable. “How we respond to things that happened to us in the past, determines the quality of our future.”  This provides incentive to work on my character defects or shortcomings.

Holmquist differentiates the two words and conditions this way: Character defects are dysfunctional habits expressed in relationships by over-functioning and dominance, and shortcomings are under-performing by employing dependence. We may default to one mode over the other, but often vacillate between the two based on the degree of our vulnerability in different relationships and our historical habit(s) in response. In essence, “We meet our needs by making demands on others through dominance or dependence.”

We need to remember, “The challenges in our most intimate relationships are the biggest opportunities for change.” He also states emphatically, “It’s healthy to walk away from a relationship if we’ve done our work.”

Holmquist is a very quotable presenter. I take a lot of notes and capture as many statements that I’m able. One of Holmquist’s passions is etymology, what he describes as “The true sense of a word.” His next book is a book of recovery affirmations featuring the historical origin of words to support emotional sobriety. Here’s a sampling:

• Intimate – Latin root, the superlative of inner.
• Intuition – Inner knowledge
• Victimstance – Not taking responsibility for our actions
• Trauma – Anything less than nurturing
• Emotion – Energy in motion
• Instinct – Quick reactions to our emotions for future fulfillment
• Emotional security – The goal in relationships
• Material security – In the service of emotional security
• Ambition – Feeling safe in the future
• Character defects – Exceeding instincts
• Shortcomings – Falling short of instincts
• Maladaptive relationships – Caused by physical, sexual, or emotional abuse
• Sober suffering – The awareness of unsustainability

Social instincts are the five core drivers for:

• Companionship
• Personal Relationships
• Self-Esteem
• Pride
• Prestige

The role of instincts and emotions:

• Instincts for security
• Instincts to be social
• The instinct to be sexual

At the core of many relationships, one member functions as the project manager and the other, the project, which mirrors the roles of dominator and dependent. Unfortunately, this kind of co-laboring or system management is not sustainable.

The practice/solution is to gain:

• Insights of the past trauma,
• the awareness in the present,
• and the intention to change.

Some signs of our responses to conflict and trauma:

• Fright – Disappear
• Fight – Anger
• Freeze – Quiet

Questions I need to ask myself. “Do I seek out conflict to replicate situations in my adult-life that mirror my childhood trauma?” “Am I undermining opportunities for positive change?” “Am I over-relying on self?” The first step to change is to acknowledge our part in defective relationships and to seek help.

Home for the Holidays 

It’s the Tuesday before Thanksgiving as I write. Tonight, I’m baking two blueberry pies, my family’s go-to favorite for Thanksgiving. Tomorrow, I pack clothes, camera, notebook with cheat sheets for cooking times and logistics, groceries to make dressing, Jell-O, gravy, chicken broth, butter, bread crumbs, seasonings, and brioche dinner rolls. I leave work an hour early to head home for Thanksgiving. Before I hit the road, adopted Loud Family member and friend, Leanne, drops off a banana cream pie, my father’s current special request. She’s also made both sister Kelly and Dad a cherry pie in the past, and when Mom was alive, the best pumpkin pie Mom said she ever ate.

I begin the prep work for Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday night while I catch up with Dad. We begin staging the dishes and I review my notebook to plan the next day. I’ll make the Jell-O and the dressing before bed. It’s my one-on-one time with Dad before my sisters and their families arrive the next day. Tami and her daughter Gemma will help with the mashed potatoes, and when Kelly arrives and it grows closer to dinner in the small kitchen, in the home we grew up in, where our parents raised six children, we’ll get the food on the table after the hurried flurry of gravy-making, potato whipping, vegetable stirring, turkey breast basting, ham glazing, dinner roll warming, meat carving, serving spoon searching. You get the picture.

My biggest challenge as the eldest child and head chef filling in for our mother is tempering my controlling behavior. As it gets closer to dinner I interrupt conversations in the living room as family catch up with each other without me to announce updates. Hungry children and husbands begin entering the kitchen, asking questions, or wanting to sneak a taste of the turkey, ham, or mashed potatoes as they land on the buffet table. In the past I shoo them away for fear someone will get burned as we manage hot dishes transferring from stove to table. The kitchen is so small we’ve experienced, turkey juice spillovers, oven fires, beeping smoke alarms, wobbly fans, the stuff of legends.

Turkey-carving was my sister Roz’s chief responsibility. After she died, sister Cindy stepped up to confidently get the bird on the table. I’m not sure Cindy will be able to help this year. She’s living with Stage IV cancer and we’re grateful that she’s with us to share in the holiday. This leads me to the next honor, someone to lead Grace. Last year, niece Gemma read her poem about the family, the perfect prelude to the abundance we shared.

After spreading out into different rooms, including Dad’s kitschy 1960’s knotty pine, cold basement bar to enjoy the meal, many of us return for seconds. Afterwards, some family members retreat to the small bedroom to watch football as the rest of us find space to spread out, relax, and catch up with each other. We never run out of stories, including gossiping about the family members not present (yes, it’s one of our family rituals, and no, I’m not proud).

Our desire to setup the pie buffet is sufficient incentive to clear the table, pack up leftovers, and wash what appears to be every pot, pan, bowl, and piece of silverware that my father owns. Though the turkey, ham, dressing, mashed potatoes, and gravy, plus all the special side dishes are the stars of the day, the encore, featuring five or six pies and endless aerosol cans of whipped cream make both children and adults giddy.

Retreat to the Hideout

I usually head home Thanksgiving night. I live alone so the refuge and quiet of my hideout calls me. I need rest and downtime after experiencing the cacophony of my family. Our nickname is the Loud Family, and we’ve earned the moniker. While I drive home, I review my behavior and take an inventory of any amends I need to make, and yes, I’m not proud to say it, but every year there’s some interaction with a loved one I need to repair. I love my family and the holiday, and yet I remain perfectly flawed and a work in progress.

“Memories recycle of seasons past
of people absent and places far away.
I soothe myself with the solace of ritual.
There is comfort in repetition
and wonder in change.” — From the poem, The Solace of Ritual, Linda Lenzke

Things change and remain the same. We remember our loved ones who can’t be with us due to distance or death. We say our prayers of gratitude, relish the bounty of the season, experience the joy and challenge of being in each other’s presence, and we’ll gather again for the next holiday.

Grateful.

Related Reading from Mixed Metaphors, Oh My!

Another Dispatch from the Hideout

Home for the Holidays

Thanksgiving: Things Change

The Orphan Holidays

Comfort Food: Winter Blues, Holidays, & Weight Gain

Seasons/Change

Additional Reading About Family at the Holidays

Therapists Explain Why Your Family Drives You Crazy at the Holidays