Those Frozen Southern Grrrrls
Those Frozen Southern Grrrrls
You only see what your eyes want to see
How can life be what you want it to be?
You're frozen
When you're heart's not open.
You're so consumed with how much you get
You waste your time with hate and regret,
You're broken
When you're heart's not open...
Now there's no point in placing the blame
And you should know I suffer the same,
If I lose you
My heart will be broken.
Love is a bird,
She needs to fly.
Let all the hurt inside of you die
You're frozen when your heart's not open!
- Madonna, Frozen
When I moved to Boston from Atlanta 20 years ago I remember feeling like a foreigner in a foreign land, having to adjust to the fast-walking, fast-talking New England way of life. Back in my Southern culture, we sipped sweet tea at a leisurely pace and waved on fellow 4-way stoppers because what's the rush, really? From the comfort of my Honda Accord, I let the sunroof open and the windows down so my hair could blow, singing to the B52's blaring on the radio, "I'm headin' down the Atlanta highway..." on my seven minute commute from mid-town to downtown. Seven minutes.
The Bostonian I moved across country for convinced me to turn down the city apartment I found across from the MFA (walking distance to work, I might add!) because as a single woman living by herself Brookline would be much safer. Ditto for ditching Charlestown because of "the Irish mobs" and owning a car because where would I park it anyway? I trusted his opinion because he lived here but in retrospect I think his data was about a decade off (except for maybe the parking part) and so on to Coolidge Corner I went. I moved into in a one bedroom apartment on Beacon Street in a building right on the Green Line. This building had very few redeeming qualities to it, including the uncanny resemblance to the hallway where the creepy dead twins show up in The Shining and its permanent stench of Ramen Noodles. The entire village at the time seemed only to consist of drycleaners, pharmacies and synagogues but it was okay because I had my own place. In a safe neighborhood. Next to "convenient" public transportation.
My first blustery March morning as I waited for the "T" I heard it before I saw it: the squeal of train wheels in my ears made me cringe as I was crammed in a crowded cattle car of perfect strangers. We were all nudging in as far as we could before the doors slammed shut, usually hitting the folks on the bottom step, and my arms weren't quite long enough to reach the poles used to hold on. I inevitably bumped into the passengers on either side of me because the train jerked me off balance, eliciting glares and "whaddya doin'?!" from the cranky commuters unlucky enough to be standing next to me. Every day it never failed to amaze me how no one made eye contact on those rides into the city because they were so focused on their newspapers or class notes or novels and the like. It was even before the cell phone culture we live in today but I remember how strange it was that no one spoke to each other unless they were traveling together and small talk was apparently reserved for conversations outside of the train. If I was actually able to score a seat, my nose was instantly invaded by someone's B.O. from someone's damp winter coat because the train operators cranked the heat so we had to adjust our body temperatures from 25 degrees outside to roughly 75 degrees inside, akin to bathing in the Turkish saunas of Chelsea. Summers weren't much better, in fact it was reverse. For as much warning as I got about Boston winters, no one told me the summers didn't get much warmer than the 70's on average. For a chick used to 90 degree summer weather in Atlanta, I was wearing sweaters that entire first summer...20 degrees is a big difference!
It makes me wonder what my little doggie from Tennessee will make of her first snow fall here in Massachusetts? I've heard dogs love to romp around in the snow and if watching her chase the fall leaves is any indication, I think she will have a blast. Sticks and leaves are Maddie's favorite toys; it's sort of like buying your kids fancy toys for Christmas but they get much more enjoyment from the cardboard box the toys were packaged in...I actually bought her a simulated stick from PetCo and it's one of her favorites. With the snow and colder weather comes challenges. My sister-in-law warned me that goldens can get painful ice balls trapped in the fur between her toes. Cole told me Maddie was "shivering" in 60 degree weather the other day after prancing through a sprinkler soaked her coat, I can't imagine that 20-30 degree weather in wet snow will be much better. And if the kids fight over walking her now, in the gorgeous sunny fall weather, I’m sure it will be an all-out battle to get them to walk her in mid-February. Ugh. I can't think about that now. With the erratic weather we've been having all over the planet, I'm bracing for the worst. As I do.
Recent weather events like the tempestuous hurricane season, multiple earthquakes hitting Mexico in the same month and wildfires in California can make it feel like the planet is bracing for an apocalypse. Add in racial tension, political chest-thumping, mass shootings and the day to day stress of our busy lives and it becomes too much. It’s overwhelming. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been stuck, or “frozen” lately in a negative thought pattern. Or why I burst into tears when I can’t get my doggie to walk in a straight line. Is there anything I can manage in this chaotic world of events seemingly out of my control? When Maddie sees another dog or before she crosses The Line that divides the outside world from our invisible fence, she freezes in place. She looks like a statue, Frozen Action Figure Dog, until we release her with “Let’s Go!”
People always say to “let it go” when holding on to a past issue. Elsa from the movie (ironically) Frozen sang about it. Well-meaning family members say it to me all of the time, including my husband. My grandfather reframes it by saying, “Let go, Let God” but the sentiment is basically the same. You let go and give it to God instead; worry less, pray more. My therapist told me instead of trying so hard to “let it go” to instead stop holding on. Let me repeat that: Stop. Holding. On. We hold on to behaviors like negative thinking or past trauma that no longer serves us and we make ourselves sick. To truly let go of the hurt that consumes you, you have to stop holding onto it. It’s so hard.
What about the emotional response of freezing up when something scares us and we become paralyzed with fear? I talked about fight, flight or freeze syndrome in a previous blog post and when my depression comes back, I start to act like a frozen action figure. I wake up in the middle of the night and lie there for hours, unable to get up or fall back asleep. Paralysis sets in and affects every decision from getting dressed in the morning to what to eat for lunch. Nothing gets done because it all seems too overwhelming and everything is painstakingly difficult when you’re depressed. I've been in a funk this past week since the trainer came over and she tried to teach me to use a prong collar. I'm not sure who yelped more, Maddie or me.
I’m really struggling to get past my issues of caring for and training this dog; why does it trigger me so much? Why am I frozen? Why do I overthink this--she is A DOG-- as my family likes to point out. What am I holding on to that keeps me stuck? And why am I resisting her charms? Most people look at dogs for relaxation but she just stresses me out. I look at her and see one more thing I’m expected to take care of, one more thing to do, one more thing to worry about. It reminds me of the Steve Martin movie Parenthood when he says, “My whole life is ‘have to!’” When really the crux of the issue is actually that it’s one more thing I’m worried about screwing up.
My mother called me, crying, because the houseboat she shared with her man was destroyed in Hurricane Irma. As I listened, I tried to offer words of comfort but the sound of her voice triggered my frozen response; that feeling of helplessness when she’s being emotional. Feeling like it’s my fault somehow. The molecules in the air stand still and my heart feels like it’s stopped in my chest. I feel so conflicted because part of me wants to help her but my primal response is to protect myself; my experience has taught me that she can turn at any moment and it makes me feel unsafe. We do what we can in crises…raise money, collect clothing, donate blood, send supplies…but it never feels like it’s enough. It's like everything I try to do to try to please her, to make her proud of me, feels like it always falls short of her expectations. It’s like using a bandaid on a gushing wound. Her approval is never given unconditionally, a kind gesture may be appreciated but it still misses the mark somehow. I can’t fully explain it.
I am trying to embrace the journey, all of its ups and downs, and to open my heart to new growth even when I feel stunted and incompetent. If we only do what we know how to do, we never stretch our capabilities or reach our full potential. I’m certainly feeling this way now, even 20 years later as I’ve lived in the Boston area longer than anywhere else in my life. At 26, I was a dreamy woman-girl with stars in her eyes who was looking for love and adventure. At 46, I am still a dreamer but having found love and putting most of my adventurous days behind me, my starry gaze has dimmed over the years. The reality is that the issues I struggled with as a child have affected my outlook as an adult and it keeps me stuck. When a kid feels like a failure at such a young age and the parent reinforces it, it’s difficult to achieve self-validation as an adult. But now it’s up to me to overcome that programming and let it go…or should I say stop holding on to that perception of myself.
It has taken a good deal of effort to reframe that image of a hopeless/helpless girl into that of a confident, self-realized woman. I will tell you that it’s a work in progress. Fake it until you make it, as they say. In the “busyness” of my daily schedule I have to remind myself to slow down and take the time to nurture myself. I have to remind myself to remember that Southern girl who let her hair blow, singing her favorite songs at the top of her lungs and dreaming of adventure. And love. Love is a bird, she needs to fly; Maddie is a dog and she needs to walk. So Let’s Go!
You only see what your eyes want to see
How can life be what you want it to be?
You're frozen
When you're heart's not open.
You're so consumed with how much you get
You waste your time with hate and regret,
You're broken
When you're heart's not open...
Now there's no point in placing the blame
And you should know I suffer the same,
If I lose you
My heart will be broken.
Love is a bird,
She needs to fly.
Let all the hurt inside of you die
You're frozen when your heart's not open!
- Madonna, Frozen
When I moved to Boston from Atlanta 20 years ago I remember feeling like a foreigner in a foreign land, having to adjust to the fast-walking, fast-talking New England way of life. Back in my Southern culture, we sipped sweet tea at a leisurely pace and waved on fellow 4-way stoppers because what's the rush, really? From the comfort of my Honda Accord, I let the sunroof open and the windows down so my hair could blow, singing to the B52's blaring on the radio, "I'm headin' down the Atlanta highway..." on my seven minute commute from mid-town to downtown. Seven minutes.
The Bostonian I moved across country for convinced me to turn down the city apartment I found across from the MFA (walking distance to work, I might add!) because as a single woman living by herself Brookline would be much safer. Ditto for ditching Charlestown because of "the Irish mobs" and owning a car because where would I park it anyway? I trusted his opinion because he lived here but in retrospect I think his data was about a decade off (except for maybe the parking part) and so on to Coolidge Corner I went. I moved into in a one bedroom apartment on Beacon Street in a building right on the Green Line. This building had very few redeeming qualities to it, including the uncanny resemblance to the hallway where the creepy dead twins show up in The Shining and its permanent stench of Ramen Noodles. The entire village at the time seemed only to consist of drycleaners, pharmacies and synagogues but it was okay because I had my own place. In a safe neighborhood. Next to "convenient" public transportation.
My first blustery March morning as I waited for the "T" I heard it before I saw it: the squeal of train wheels in my ears made me cringe as I was crammed in a crowded cattle car of perfect strangers. We were all nudging in as far as we could before the doors slammed shut, usually hitting the folks on the bottom step, and my arms weren't quite long enough to reach the poles used to hold on. I inevitably bumped into the passengers on either side of me because the train jerked me off balance, eliciting glares and "whaddya doin'?!" from the cranky commuters unlucky enough to be standing next to me. Every day it never failed to amaze me how no one made eye contact on those rides into the city because they were so focused on their newspapers or class notes or novels and the like. It was even before the cell phone culture we live in today but I remember how strange it was that no one spoke to each other unless they were traveling together and small talk was apparently reserved for conversations outside of the train. If I was actually able to score a seat, my nose was instantly invaded by someone's B.O. from someone's damp winter coat because the train operators cranked the heat so we had to adjust our body temperatures from 25 degrees outside to roughly 75 degrees inside, akin to bathing in the Turkish saunas of Chelsea. Summers weren't much better, in fact it was reverse. For as much warning as I got about Boston winters, no one told me the summers didn't get much warmer than the 70's on average. For a chick used to 90 degree summer weather in Atlanta, I was wearing sweaters that entire first summer...20 degrees is a big difference!
It makes me wonder what my little doggie from Tennessee will make of her first snow fall here in Massachusetts? I've heard dogs love to romp around in the snow and if watching her chase the fall leaves is any indication, I think she will have a blast. Sticks and leaves are Maddie's favorite toys; it's sort of like buying your kids fancy toys for Christmas but they get much more enjoyment from the cardboard box the toys were packaged in...I actually bought her a simulated stick from PetCo and it's one of her favorites. With the snow and colder weather comes challenges. My sister-in-law warned me that goldens can get painful ice balls trapped in the fur between her toes. Cole told me Maddie was "shivering" in 60 degree weather the other day after prancing through a sprinkler soaked her coat, I can't imagine that 20-30 degree weather in wet snow will be much better. And if the kids fight over walking her now, in the gorgeous sunny fall weather, I’m sure it will be an all-out battle to get them to walk her in mid-February. Ugh. I can't think about that now. With the erratic weather we've been having all over the planet, I'm bracing for the worst. As I do.
Recent weather events like the tempestuous hurricane season, multiple earthquakes hitting Mexico in the same month and wildfires in California can make it feel like the planet is bracing for an apocalypse. Add in racial tension, political chest-thumping, mass shootings and the day to day stress of our busy lives and it becomes too much. It’s overwhelming. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been stuck, or “frozen” lately in a negative thought pattern. Or why I burst into tears when I can’t get my doggie to walk in a straight line. Is there anything I can manage in this chaotic world of events seemingly out of my control? When Maddie sees another dog or before she crosses The Line that divides the outside world from our invisible fence, she freezes in place. She looks like a statue, Frozen Action Figure Dog, until we release her with “Let’s Go!”
People always say to “let it go” when holding on to a past issue. Elsa from the movie (ironically) Frozen sang about it. Well-meaning family members say it to me all of the time, including my husband. My grandfather reframes it by saying, “Let go, Let God” but the sentiment is basically the same. You let go and give it to God instead; worry less, pray more. My therapist told me instead of trying so hard to “let it go” to instead stop holding on. Let me repeat that: Stop. Holding. On. We hold on to behaviors like negative thinking or past trauma that no longer serves us and we make ourselves sick. To truly let go of the hurt that consumes you, you have to stop holding onto it. It’s so hard.
What about the emotional response of freezing up when something scares us and we become paralyzed with fear? I talked about fight, flight or freeze syndrome in a previous blog post and when my depression comes back, I start to act like a frozen action figure. I wake up in the middle of the night and lie there for hours, unable to get up or fall back asleep. Paralysis sets in and affects every decision from getting dressed in the morning to what to eat for lunch. Nothing gets done because it all seems too overwhelming and everything is painstakingly difficult when you’re depressed. I've been in a funk this past week since the trainer came over and she tried to teach me to use a prong collar. I'm not sure who yelped more, Maddie or me.
I’m really struggling to get past my issues of caring for and training this dog; why does it trigger me so much? Why am I frozen? Why do I overthink this--she is A DOG-- as my family likes to point out. What am I holding on to that keeps me stuck? And why am I resisting her charms? Most people look at dogs for relaxation but she just stresses me out. I look at her and see one more thing I’m expected to take care of, one more thing to do, one more thing to worry about. It reminds me of the Steve Martin movie Parenthood when he says, “My whole life is ‘have to!’” When really the crux of the issue is actually that it’s one more thing I’m worried about screwing up.
My mother called me, crying, because the houseboat she shared with her man was destroyed in Hurricane Irma. As I listened, I tried to offer words of comfort but the sound of her voice triggered my frozen response; that feeling of helplessness when she’s being emotional. Feeling like it’s my fault somehow. The molecules in the air stand still and my heart feels like it’s stopped in my chest. I feel so conflicted because part of me wants to help her but my primal response is to protect myself; my experience has taught me that she can turn at any moment and it makes me feel unsafe. We do what we can in crises…raise money, collect clothing, donate blood, send supplies…but it never feels like it’s enough. It's like everything I try to do to try to please her, to make her proud of me, feels like it always falls short of her expectations. It’s like using a bandaid on a gushing wound. Her approval is never given unconditionally, a kind gesture may be appreciated but it still misses the mark somehow. I can’t fully explain it.
I am trying to embrace the journey, all of its ups and downs, and to open my heart to new growth even when I feel stunted and incompetent. If we only do what we know how to do, we never stretch our capabilities or reach our full potential. I’m certainly feeling this way now, even 20 years later as I’ve lived in the Boston area longer than anywhere else in my life. At 26, I was a dreamy woman-girl with stars in her eyes who was looking for love and adventure. At 46, I am still a dreamer but having found love and putting most of my adventurous days behind me, my starry gaze has dimmed over the years. The reality is that the issues I struggled with as a child have affected my outlook as an adult and it keeps me stuck. When a kid feels like a failure at such a young age and the parent reinforces it, it’s difficult to achieve self-validation as an adult. But now it’s up to me to overcome that programming and let it go…or should I say stop holding on to that perception of myself.
It has taken a good deal of effort to reframe that image of a hopeless/helpless girl into that of a confident, self-realized woman. I will tell you that it’s a work in progress. Fake it until you make it, as they say. In the “busyness” of my daily schedule I have to remind myself to slow down and take the time to nurture myself. I have to remind myself to remember that Southern girl who let her hair blow, singing her favorite songs at the top of her lungs and dreaming of adventure. And love. Love is a bird, she needs to fly; Maddie is a dog and she needs to walk. So Let’s Go!
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