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Friday brings the pain
Jan. 3rd, 2025 11:00 pmToday was phone calls to find out whether the kind and amount of pain R. is experiencing is normal at this point. It appears that it is. Note to everyone out there: try never to have this happen to you. I have no advice specific to that but will get back to you if I come up with anything.
I got my hair done, which was fun.
I had a delightful phone call with K.
I walked with M.
FF was enjoyable, altho light on attendees. J is ill and I’m not sure what happened with R.
More interactions with JB. She’s remorseful about dumping so much on me immediately upon my return. I think she’s just in that edgy phase of a cold feeling like she has to do All the Things. I hope she feels better soon.
I read WaPo for a bit while at the hair salon, and fell down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what to make of Joshua Coleman. I’m still on the fence — it’s useful to build a bridge from both sides, and he’s clearly building the side from the problematic parents. My lack of relationship with my parents for three decades was a choice by them that I was never able to modify, even slightly. Despite having been on the shunned side of this, I am generally firmly on the side of adult children who choose to reduce or end contact with their parents; make of that what you will.
I’ve been reading what people have to say about Coleman in Reddit and similar forums (also makes appearances in raisedby[insert pd here]). Obviously, it’s not positive. I was reminded of Bowen family systems, which has always felt super blame-the-victim-y. A conversation in FF really reminded me of how I think about kinship networks, and also that I literally never talk about how I think about that with anyone. So I told the H. and B. S., and they have known me so long — since when I first devised the portfolio approach to relationships — that they 100% get that this is weird and this is me and it’s a pretty effective way to do things albeit not how anyone else would ever think about it. I’ll try to post about it in the next day or so.
I’m increasingly realizing that the therapeutic community literally has no idea how common ruptured / unhealthy / estranged relationships are between adults and their parents. I mean, they’re figuring it out _now_ because social media has let everyone find each other and talk about it, so they are not nearly as isolated as I and my friends have been for decades. Coleman is acting like estrangement is new, but that’s entirely garbage. It’s been around at this level since forever, more or less (hey, if everyone whose job this is can believe unsupported nonsense, I can too! And I’m more likely to be right because I’m paying much more attention to reality than they are). It’s just now, people are finding each other and able to work together collaboratively to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and how to make a better life going forward.
I got my hair done, which was fun.
I had a delightful phone call with K.
I walked with M.
FF was enjoyable, altho light on attendees. J is ill and I’m not sure what happened with R.
More interactions with JB. She’s remorseful about dumping so much on me immediately upon my return. I think she’s just in that edgy phase of a cold feeling like she has to do All the Things. I hope she feels better soon.
I read WaPo for a bit while at the hair salon, and fell down a rabbit hole trying to figure out what to make of Joshua Coleman. I’m still on the fence — it’s useful to build a bridge from both sides, and he’s clearly building the side from the problematic parents. My lack of relationship with my parents for three decades was a choice by them that I was never able to modify, even slightly. Despite having been on the shunned side of this, I am generally firmly on the side of adult children who choose to reduce or end contact with their parents; make of that what you will.
I’ve been reading what people have to say about Coleman in Reddit and similar forums (also makes appearances in raisedby[insert pd here]). Obviously, it’s not positive. I was reminded of Bowen family systems, which has always felt super blame-the-victim-y. A conversation in FF really reminded me of how I think about kinship networks, and also that I literally never talk about how I think about that with anyone. So I told the H. and B. S., and they have known me so long — since when I first devised the portfolio approach to relationships — that they 100% get that this is weird and this is me and it’s a pretty effective way to do things albeit not how anyone else would ever think about it. I’ll try to post about it in the next day or so.
I’m increasingly realizing that the therapeutic community literally has no idea how common ruptured / unhealthy / estranged relationships are between adults and their parents. I mean, they’re figuring it out _now_ because social media has let everyone find each other and talk about it, so they are not nearly as isolated as I and my friends have been for decades. Coleman is acting like estrangement is new, but that’s entirely garbage. It’s been around at this level since forever, more or less (hey, if everyone whose job this is can believe unsupported nonsense, I can too! And I’m more likely to be right because I’m paying much more attention to reality than they are). It’s just now, people are finding each other and able to work together collaboratively to figure out what works, what doesn’t, and how to make a better life going forward.