Sophia

My Sophia. My oldest one.

She had already e-mailed me for my birthday with a little s.o.s. cry.

"hey mom happy birthday!!! i wanted to call u but i didnt know where to call and i dont have any number to call!
hope your having fun!
i went to the country this weekend! and im feeling kinda homesick and stuff!
so call me when you can!
love you!"

Asking to be called means something. As our schedule and time difference had arranged the next couple of days, there was no time to have a longer conversation. We didn't end up speaking until Friday night after Jimmy and I had arrived back home.

"Every morning I wake up and I wish I hadn't" Woa, that's serious.
"You can't imagine how hard it is to do something, Mom. It's like I just can't. I am so afraid. ...so afraid not to be good enough." That means her acting.
"And now I have done the first day of this acting workshop I feel so accomplished, and once I am there I always discover it is fine, but that doesn't make the fear go away. The fear always comes back."
"And my job is just so... so boring. There is just nothing really interesting about it... and I hate living alone... I am so much alone... and now when I see my friends I am even alone when I am with them... and that is so depressing... and what if the acting doesn't work out, then I have nothing to fall back on..."

She is in despair. She cries. Throughout the call. That despair still sits deep in her guts even on this day of feeling accomplished again for the first time in a long time... probably since she finished her senior project over a year ago. That was an acting accomplishment she had performed brilliantly. A one woman show. I had cried each time I saw her play. Each of the four times.

I listen to her and I understand her pain. But I don't feel desperate with her. Somehow I am very calm, as if I already know she'll come out of this with all her passion, strength, and humanity in full force. As if this is a boiling point she needed to reach that will transform her and move her forward in a way nothing else would. Not so long ago I might have jumped right into this crisis with her, made it my responsibility to bring her out of it, taken on the burden to be the healer, or to get her to do what I would have deemed most powerful... and most likely that would have been the Journey. Not a successful strategy. In the past I have suffered when she wouldn't let me help her. Not so much now. There is a new humility here and with that a new freedom. A breath. She is walking her path, and as I stay present and slow and just listen, I can recognize that I don't really have a clue about what's best for her. She'll have to make that choice.

Sure I can make some suggestions... and I did. Write brags, gratitudes and desires. And express your feelings. Don't swallow them down. When we poked around in that subject, it turned out that she doesn't talk about her fears with her friends. None of them. When she tries, she doesn't experience a sincere interest... somehow her own story is always used as a springboard that jumps the conversation back to their stuff, their story, their problems. No wonder she feels alone in their company.

Being locked into being the listener... Ah... does that sound familiar? Man, I have done that all my life. I know how hard it is to expand relationships that have run so smoothly in the safely assigned separate tracks of who is the listener and who is the talker. Very, very, very scary to have to speak up and say: stop, hold it for a moment, I can't be there for you right now, I can't listen right now, I am overwhelmed right now, I can't take this in right now, I'm feeling xxx right now... I'm so sorry, I really want to, but right now I can't.

It seems frighteningly impossible to do. And yet it is.

Not only possible but also necessary. Because it creates balance. Because not only does the listener need to learn how to talk - just as much so the talker needs to learn to listen.

I'll have to talk more about this with her.


When she was smaller we used to have epic battles about some things she wanted that I felt I needed to say NO to. Epic. Battles down to the core of the soul. She would scream, and cry and talk and argue and not give up, as if giving up was a question of life and death. It started when she was three and continued for years and years and years. I thought this would never end. But I also though this child will never have any problems asking for what she wants. And now? Where did she lay this part of herself to rest? And when?

She says she doesn't have any memories from her childhood, she doesn't remember what it was like. Constantin used to say the same thing. And he is her dad. Hmmm. Memories always carry the building blocks to our identity. Even the negative ones. Because the part in ourself that can recognize something as negative is the part that knows "this is not right", the part that knows the truth. So... was there so little that held her truth, only so few building blocks worth carrying along? Curious - to say the least. What had happened on the receiving end of my intention to raise her with as much freedom, as much space and trust in her innate abilities, instincts and self expression as I saw possible? And as much unconditional availability of my body and my attention as I could give? Let alone love?

This is a big time for her now. And I so much want to be there for her and at the same time I know the limit... not of what's possible but really of what is good for her. Right now less of me is better. I believe that is true. It's important to remember that.