"You Do You"

“You Do You”

 

“to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” – e.e. cummings

 

            Recently, Wren and her Girl Scout troop were working on a badge that involved feeding the homeless.  They met up at the Scout mother’s house and made sandwiches and packed bagged lunches for a hundred people and then we all piled into cars and drove down to the Kensington section of Philadelphia.  The girls joined up with a community action group that was also handing out other food and personal hygiene supplies and clothes and I was so proud of them.  They all did such a great job and they were compassionate and respectful and smiled and looked people in the eye and treated them as equals and gave them more than just food and necessities by offering them a few moments of humanity.

            It could not escape anyone’s notice that among the homeless there were many people suffering from addiction.  The troop mother and I were standing to the side and we were talking quietly about the drug epidemic and I told her about Dermot’s recent questions about Narcan and how I now carry it with me.  In the course of conversation my book came up and she wanted to know if I would consider coming and talking to the troop about the book and about addiction the next week at the troop meeting.  I agreed.

            As the meeting approached I can’t tell you how nervous I became.  I speak at meetings a lot and I have told my story countless times now and have a background in theatre arts from high school and college so speaking in front of others is really not that hard for me anymore.  But something about the thought of talking in front of these girls and their mothers was giving me palpitations.  I was at a loss as to what to say.  Now I get the irony of having written a children’s book to help explain addiction to children and then being at a loss as to how to go about talking about it to this group, but there you have it.

            After thinking about it, I realized there were a few things that were bothering me.  The book is aimed at children but children who are touched by addiction and I was going to talk to children who may or may not be affected by addiction.  I also know that Frank and I are very open with Dermot and Wren and we talk about just about everything with them, to the point I think of it making others a little uncomfortable.  I wasn’t sure how much I should go into or how far these other mothers wanted me to go as the book touches not only on addiction, but co-dependence and childhood trauma.  And finally, as much as I am an individual and a free-thinker and a breaker of norms now, I still worried about what these other mother’s thought of me on some level.  There is still a stigma and I still feel the sting of judgement as much as I would like to say that I am above that, I still feel twinges of it from time to time.

            I expressed a little of that to Dermot and Wren in round-about terms.  Wren looked at me and said, “Why do you care what other people think Mom?  You do you.”  Dermot also later stated, “Mom, you tried to be a Main Line soccer mom and it just didn’t work.”  Damn if they haven’t been listening to Frank and me all along.

            So I, in turn, listened back and went to talk to the Girl Scouts.  I won’t say I wasn’t uncomfortable, because I was and I won’t say that I knocked it out of the park, but it started a discussion and the girls asked some intuitive questions.  I had to laugh at one point when one girl raised her hand and said, “I get that the red dragon is supposed to be addiction, but what is the black dragon about?”  This was the point when Wren cheerfully piped up with, “Oh that’s easy, that’s childhood trauma!”

            I had to be reminded by my kids to step outside my comfort zone and remember to be me and a space where I used to try and conform.  The truth is I did try to be a Main Line soccer mom and it didn’t work out so well because it wasn’t me.  I don’t fit that mold or frankly any other.  I am a glorious contradiction on so many levels and I have to embrace that and live every day in the absurd light of my own spirit.  To do otherwise is a betrayal of what makes me, me and sets a bad example for Dermot and Wren, who apparently, are listening.