Garbled Messages

Here the well ordered world version of one generation becomes the straight jacket of the next.

My mother really wanted me to fit into society and so she would teach me by saying things like “People won’t like you if you pick your nose. Or people won’t like you if you’re not polite, or if you don’t look them in the eye when they speak to you.”

This well meant advice may have improved my behavior somewhat, but it also made me uncomfortable around people. They had too many confusing demands.

I thought this wall hanging would have lots and lots of people looking down on my protector and exiled little girl. But once I found the matron whom I’d made a while ago for something else and put her in the upper left corner, the urge to make any more people vanished.

Next came the protector. I didn’t expect him to be so big. I had a whole table cloth and when I draped this as his robe he sprang into being. I thought I would cut his feet apart but they didn’t want to be cut and so he like the 8 year old he’s protecting can’t move very well.

In the IFS session he was caught up in his cat’s cradle and this got him more and more tied up. But here the cat’s cradle immediately took his entire focus. I’m reminded of Kurt Vonigat’s writing about a cat’s cradle. “Where’s the cat? Where’s the cradle?” as the world spins out of control.

Meanwhile my exiled eight year old part is stuck in an elegant straight jacket of do's and don't's as the words that clearly meant something to the older generation become twisted and confused and end up in a ball that looks more like a ball and chain rather than a clear manual on how to live well.

The vertical bands on the elegant wall paper begin to look like bars on a jail and the girl's jacket of silk still functions as a straight jacket.

I still get scared in some social situations. But it's a big help to look at Garbled Messages when this happends and to know that it's just a part of me judging my behavior. Sometimes I can go inside and ask this part to soften and step back. Sometimes she does.

Over the time of working with Joanne and making the wall hangings I've noticed that I've moved away from trying to please people as in Garbled Messages to dumping my responisbility for other people's happiness down a well and finding God inside of me.