Spiritual Sisters
Spiritual Healing Serene Salad
Spiritual Voices Creativity Bakery
excerpts from
The Stages of Self-Esteem
While horror stories abound of those who become addicted to the microphone,
dependent on applause from the audience, this does not mean that the experience
cannot also be healthy and growth-enhancing. It is possible to poison yourself
if you manage to eat too many carrots, but a moderate amount of carrots is still
considered healthy. It is a fundamental human need to be seen, and to be heard.
In my experience in writing workshops, and in open mics, I see someone start to
fill out from the first night that they read their own poem in front of a room
of people who are paying attention to them.
I want to share what I have gained from some of those experiences.
An "open mic" is a public venue where all comers are allowed to sign up and
perform. The quality of performance ranges from the first public rendition of
"Home on the Range" by a new guitar student, to try-outs of the latest song by
local pro singer-songwriters. A "Poetry Slam" is a further evolution in open
mics, in which performances are judged and rated by members of the audience,
performers going head-to-head in elimination rounds until one is declared the
"winner".
In 1985, at an open mic in Tacoma, I tried to sing an original parody of "Ghost
Riders in the Sky". The host of the open mic came up to me afterward and said,
"I never want you on my stage again!"
The summer of 1996, I won first prize in the Seattle Poetry Slams.
In 1985, when my first completed story was savaged by a panel of professional
authors in a science fiction convention workshop, I gave up writing prose for
years.
In 1996, although I won my first Poetry Slam, I lost many of them. I have had a
judge give me as low as 5.3 (on a scale of 1-10) for what I knew was a good
poem. Yet I keep going back, week after week, and I keep writing new poems.
There's an obvious growth in both skill and self-esteem in those comparisons.
But it wasn't a straightforward progress. It was complicated, as most things in
my life were, by a condition that would eventually be diagnosed as bipolar
disorder, or manic-depression. I would have spurts of extremely high energy when
I was so enthusiastic and giddy that I worried people; longer stretches when I
was just a bit more active, enthusiastic and cheerful than the average; long
stretches when I was quite lazy; and short stretches when I did almost nothing
but sleep. Often I would be in full gallop on an exciting project when the steam
would go out of me. I would not feel like working one day, and decide to catch
upon my sleep; still felt like sleeping the next day; and on and on until by the
time I pulled out of the fog whatever I had been working on had fallen apart.
I hated being called "a ditzy broad", but by the time I was forty-five I had
begun to use the term myself. It was part of my identity. In both my energetic
and my lethargic times, I was often unaware of social cues, or the rest of my
environment. I was either caught up in my own racing thoughts, or I was dulled
to everything. And when I was alert and chipper, I could be impulsive and
impractical in my eagerness.
My marriage ended in divorce, partly because of my problems and partly for other
reasons. I worked a lot on my writing after the divorce, partly as a way of
working through my feelings.
Talking to people through my poetry also began to open up an intimacy that I had
never had with anyone. It was a way to begin to relate feelings, not just
intellectual abstractions.
When I began to recite poetry on stage at open mics, at first I was almost
unaware of my audience. Even after I grew confident enough to look past my
paper, I misread my audience often. For instance, I thought everyone had been
greatly amused by the parody-song that got me banned from the Tacoma stage.
But lessons like that one, and others, slowly tuned me in to body language and
other emotional cues. My stage experience began providing me with a social
education my childhood experience never had.
My progress was interrupted by another, prolonged, depression. For over five
years I experienced briefer and briefer bouts of energy and creativity, and
longer and longer periods of depression. In 1995, when I was 46, my long
downhill struggle ended with me walking the streets of Capitol Hill, out of
work, broke, and homeless.
I had been diagnosed a year before, but I was afraid of the side effects of
Lithium, the most common medication prescribed for bipolar mood disorder. Now I
went to a free clinic and said, "I'm ready to try Lithium."
Three days after my first dose of Lithium, I awoke on my bare mat in my homeless
shelter and realized that I felt spiritual fire inside - that hunger for growth
and creation that had been missing in my life for the last five years.
Among the resources I discovered when I started reaching out of my fog was the
Church of Mary Magdalene, a ministry for homeless and battered women, and, as
the mission statement describes it, "women in multiple difficulties." One of the
sermons was on 'Self Esteem'. Pastor Jean Kim asked us all, "Where does our
self-esteem come from?" She got the variety of answers I expected-- from
achievement, from a clean conscience, from self-knowledge, from having something
to call your own, from relationships. Then she asked, "So where does a six-month
old baby's self-esteem come from?" That rocked us all back.
One very assertive young black woman told us all in the voice of Gospel, "You
don't get self-esteem from possessions, or looks, or education, or doing great
things. You just HAVE it."
And Pastor Kim said, "The baby gets self-esteem from being loved, from being
unconditionally accepted."
"Our self-esteem begins here. Here we are unconditionally accepted. Here we are
loved. Here we learn to accept and love ourselves, just as we are, right now."
I looked around and realized I was in the presence of a hundred women who had no
competition over dress, makeup, looks, or possessions. I had been accepted every
time I walked through the door, with no evaluating looks up and down, no
questions of where I was last week, or at the latest committee meeting. When I
began coming to church, I was living in emergency shelter-- night hours only, no
bathing or laundry facilities. I usually showed up in what I came to call "three
day-old clothes and three week-old hair." But I was accepted with warmth and no
questions, however I showed up.
I had already dropped a major amount of self-consciousness. My reaction to my
final extremity, landing on the streets, had been to drop all defensiveness.
There are people on the streets, broke, homeless, and ill, who still have
elaborate explanations for why none of this is due to any personal problems they
may have. I didn't bother. I could almost hear every self-defense and denial
system I had fall on the ground and go crash. That was a great emotional relief
right there.
I had been rather puzzled when, after for the first time in my life admitting to
all my flaws and weaknesses, I immediately began acting with more
self-confidence and spontaneity than I had ever shown.
That sermon explained it to me. I had discovered self-esteem. I accepted myself
just the way I was.
This was that "love yourself" business everyone had been trying to tell me about
for years!
I had reached such an ebb that my first creative effort was crocheting one
granny square, which took me at least an hour. One of the older women at the
Church of Mary Magdalene patiently guided me through it. When I was done I was
thrilled. I had been unable to complete even very simple projects for months, my
mind had become so dull and confused. I really was coming back to life!
A day or so later, a volunteer in the shelter where I ate my evening meal was
leading a group of women in making crafts, I made a very simple Halloween card--
a rectangle of orange on a black background, with a two-line poem:
Now all threatening shadows open into warmth and light.
I enjoyed shuffling the words around, playing with the inflections of my voice
to make multiple meanings out of the same poem.
Reading my new poems, I realized that I was writing a whole level beyond
anything I had written before. There was a greater emotional reality in my
poems, both because I was facing the gritty realities of the street, and because
I had freed my own voice by my new level of self-acceptance. There was very
little I was afraid to say.
I discovered the StreetLife Gallery, a program that provided workspace and
materials to homeless and low-income artists. Some of the artists were also
poets. I began working at the Gallery. One day, one of the artists at the
Gallery took a poem that I had written down to the Real Change, Seattle's
"street paper", vended by the homeless and largely written, edited, and
illustrated by the homeless too. Shortly afterward, I was asked to be on the
Real Change editorial committee.
The December issue of the Real Change was to be a Women's issue. I had a poem
about Mary that I had been working on for years, and the imagery combined with
the issue of identity and self-esteem in homeless women. I sat down and wrote my
longest poem ever. It was printed as a full page feature, and when I saw it was
one of the most emotional moments in my life.
Quantum States of Mary
Mary,
Frightened child bride,
Untouched maiden
Conniving seductress
Daughter of the prophets
Mary,
Mary,
Joseph,
Or was he so kind and noble
Your child-man
Did you ever lie awake
When you found him
Did you fear for him, Mary?
Mary,
Mary,
Am I angry,
Am I stupid,
Am I the player,
Mary,
Mary,
Mary,
Mary,
A more dramatic example of change is Storm, a young woman who exemplifies the
phrase "women in multiple difficulties." Storm still has a photo taken when she
first came into StreetLife Gallery in 1994. Thin and ragged, hunched over, she
stares at the world through a screen of matted hair, her eyes both hostile and
afraid. She claimed that she "couldn't do anything" -- but wanted to. An artist
named Boyd McLaughlin introduced her to pastels and acrylics; he also played the
guitar with her, encouraging her to use her untrained but powerful soprano
voice, and to write. Within a year Storm was wearing clean clothes, standing
upright, and you could see her face. She was active in the gallery, not only as
one of the more prolific and popular artists, but as one of the artist-staff of
the increasingly self-managed administration.
She had enough strength to survive Boyd's death. That hit us all severely. Boyd
had been very much the heart of the Gallery -- Storm was not the only one that
he had helped to find their own creative outlet.
But Storm found continuing support in StreetWrites. She also began coming to
open mics. It was like watching the entire family coax the puppy out from under
the porch, at first. She only went when at least six of the rest of us were
going -- three in front of her, pulling, and three behind, pushing. When she got
up on stage she would "flame on", doing intense performances of crowd-pleasing
word-avalanches full of rapid-fire double-entendres. By the next week she would
be uncertain again, and we would once more have to coax her out.
I can almost chart the growth of Storm's self-esteem in inverse ratio to the
number of companions it took to get her to the open mic. First six, then four,
then two, then one -- now she will come around to drag one of us out, and if we
won't go she'll go on her own. She has subsidized housing and even a computer of
her own, and has begun publishing her own newsletter on public issues. She has
moved from the StreetLife Gallery to a more mainstream gallery at Art Not
Terminal. She has stable housing, and has begun efforts to regain custody of a
child removed from her at birth by Children's Protective Services.
But I have repeatedly seen people drag in through the door with that gray
pavement look on their face, and after an hour or two of making something with
their hands or putting their own thoughts on paper, walk out with their head up
and life in their eyes. I believe myself that the creative spirit is central to
our human spirit, that it is creativity that gives us our heart and our
strength, and whatever encourages the growth of our creativity encourages growth
in our lives. I see repeated evidence for that each week as StreetLife Gallery
and StreetWrites continue to grow.
There are many stages of self-esteem. The performance stage can be one of them.
Anitra is currently a freelance writer and activist living in Seattle,
Washington. She has been a computer programmer/analyst (20 years); her life,
career and relationships were repeatedly disrupted by undiagnosed manic
depression (which her mother also sufferred). In October 1995 she ended up
homeless, and was finally diagnosed and treated. She made many of the closest
relationships in her life in the homeless community, and although she now has a
limited income and subsidized housing, that is still her community. She works
with half-a-dozen grassroots empowerment groups -- programs to help the homeless
that are run by the homeless and formerly homeless themselves. Some of the
things she does: facilitate meetings and workshops, including a conflict
resolution class, write and do public speaking, and create websites. She is also
one of the editors of Real Change, Seattle's homeless street-newspaper.
by Anitra Freeman
holding your baby;
did you see a shadow fall
on the stable wall?
When the shepherds came to pray,
what had they heard the angels say?
Did the wise men dare to tell you all they knew?
Mary,
who are you?
towed by an angry Joseph
through the swirl of history,
shouting prophets
thundering over your huddled form...
meekly kneeling
to the Master of the Universe,
raising one cuckoo
and a flock of sparrows,
never losing serenity
or innocence...
foisting her bastard off on God,
hoaxing Joseph to raise it,
muddling the boy into visions,
all to mask your own guilt...
poised in ancient wisdom,
cuddling the sweetest infant
to the tenderest breast,
nursing him to sacrifice and glory...
who are you?
did you ever fear?
cuckold of God -
did he take it out on you?
you felt unworthy,
distrusting any moment
of anger
or any human weakness?
who never cried at night,
or begged for toys
then broke them,
who never raided the cookie jar,
or rubbed dirt in his best friend's hair -
did you know how weird he was,
before you raised the other boys?
with some deep grief;?
did he come hold your hand,
wisdom far too ancient in his eyes?
lecturing the scholars,
did you see a cross-shaped shadow
on his path?
Did you fear Him?
I am afraid.
To fall,
to fail,
to feel..I am afraid of pain
and of the long slow numbing dark
without pain...
I do not know
who I am.
With no home and no money
am I helpless,
hopeless,
sick and pitiful?
robbed and ruined
by the System,
Them,
the Others,
Mother,
Men?
wrong,
a wicked woman,
reaping the returns
of evil ways?
one strike down
but grinning,
setting my feet
to jump back in the game?
am I your child?
Will you hold and warm me
until I am ready
for my destiny?
am I your sister?
where are you?
Have you found your ground
beyond the swirl of history,
cascading quantum images
have you made a place
to be your self?
show me.