Tag: Clarissa Pinkola Estes

23. If You’ve Ever Felt Different…You Could Be A Mistaken Zygote!

Ever feel like you were dropped in the wrong house? You just aren’t like the rest of your family? You seem to do and value and feel things totally differently from the rest of them? They don’t get you? And because there’s only one of you and several of them, you feel the outsider? You feel ‘wrong?’

I’ve even gotten to the point of feeling totally alien. I described it like, somehow I came here with ‘others of my kind’–a brain cloud descended—they left—and I got left behind, stranger in a strange land!

Stories as Antidote.

We’ve talked about stories/myths holding clues for our survival, progress in life. Some can provide antidotes for our human foibles. Human foibles are just that—our quirks, shortcomings, eccentricities, imperfections—built-in to the species—and which all of us, in our evolutionary progress, have to recognize, deal with. Stories that will help us understand, accept, yea, even overcome when we feel life is unfair or we were dealt a crappy hand.

I discovered an antidote for ‘feeling different’ in The Mistaken Zygote story. Like a lot of good discoveries that end up helping us in the long haul, the road often starts out with a sour lemon handout of emotional distress or pain. (Post 1)

My discovery of the Mistaken Zygote story came after a rough visit ‘home’ for a family Christmas which ended in my being “attacked” by a loving grandma, mom, and aunt for my different religious thoughts, and worse, my questions! (It really felt like a reenactment of “The Birds” flying at my face!) I remember fleeing in a rush to my car screaming and crying at the same time to my (blood) family, “I don’t know who you people are, but I’m going home to my family.” I couldn’t get my car far enough, fast enough. I noted every mile-marking city in the 300-mile drive home, “ok, I’m here, just keep going; you’re gonna be home soon.” I remember to this day turning the corner to my street, feeling like I couldn’t breathe deeply until I was in my own home. Sanctuary once again. 

Later, I was discussing the “holidays” with Tony, a Jungian Group friend of mine. I was lamenting about my traumatizing visit back ‘home with family.’ After a few moments of consolation, Tony quietly stated, “Your story is in ‘the book.’ It’s The Mistaken Zygote.”  (I knew ‘the book’ was the one we’d both been reading, “Women Who Run with the Wolves,” by Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Ph.D. He had told me he’d actually given a few copies of the book to women friends of his as Christmas gifts. Oddly enough, my copy had been given to me by a man also.)

Yes, I’d been reading the book, but had slacked off for my visit ‘home’ for the holidays. I had stopped just 12 pages short of the story “The Mistaken Zygote.” (Page 192) I went back to the book and read it. Wow! There it was: The Reason “Why.”

I could paraphrase the story, but I would rather let Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. tell you in her own cantadora words: (P 194)

“Well see, the Zygote Fairy was flying over your hometown one night, and all the little zygotes in her basket were hopping and jumping with excitement.

You were indeed destined for parents who would have understood you, but the Zygote Fairy hit turbulence and, oops, you fell out of the basket over the wrong house. You fell head over heels, head over heels, right into a family that was not meant for you. Your “real” family was three miles farther on.

That is why you fell in love with a family that wasn’t yours, and that lived three miles over. You always wished Mrs. and Mr. So-and-so were your real parents. Chances are they were meant to be.”

Different Is as Different Does, and It Ain’t Wrong.

There it was! Dropped into the wrong house!

I felt different often. For too much of my life. As a kid, you can’t quite discern 1) you’re different and, 2) different is wrong. What you see and live is what you think everybody sees and lives. Then you start pre-adulting and full-adulating and that’s when you begin to feel pushback for ‘not fitting’ with everybody else, not thinking like everybody else. They want to slap you with a label. They can’t just look at you and accept ‘hmm, you’re different.’ No, they gotta have a label: Flighty. Weird. Bookworm. Nerd. Geek. L., G., B. or Non-B, T., or Q. Or other B-word. With all the intonation that says: “Wrong Wrong Wrong!”   

Here’s what I learned from my Jungian Group. When someone hurls a label, especially a deprecating one, at you, it’s for their purpose of shutting you down and shutting you up. When you’re proud of an accomplishment and someone hurls “hubris” at you, what’s the natural reaction? Shutting up. In the midst of a heated discussion or argument, someone calls you a horrific name, it’s for the purpose of wounding you into retreat off the battlefield! Shutting you up!

At the urging of too many friends and family, I was encouraged to see my different as being wrong.  Often, dismissed when different. Mostly because I wasn’t seeing things like they did, didn’t accept things like they did, didn’t conform to previously-dictated roles or norms. My experience made me relate different to being wrong. Honestly, it took me a few decades to discover and accept:

Different is not Wrong.

Different is just Different.

Then, it took me a long time of living to convince myself of it. Struggling to convince others to see different wasn’t wrong. Struggle, I say, because too many people with ‘slow seeing’ cannot bear for different NOT to be wrong!  

Antidotes for the job.

For balance, know these things to strengthen you in your unique differentness:  

Most people’s attempt to convince you you’re wrong is because of their own feelings of inadequacy and/or insecurity (which they can’t/won’t admit to). They have a need to convince you to be like them, think like them, do like them, because that would prove to themselves they are right.

In reality, deep in their unconscious, they are not totally convinced they are right. However, they are not aware enough to be honest with themselves, thus they repress it in the unconscious. So they must convince you your different is wrong…that makes them right. Right? Score one! Even when they are unaware that they are keeping score.

I believe, when you ‘Know Thyself,’ you ‘Know All Others.’ So when you know the real motivation for their making your different feel wrong, you are free not to consider their label of wrong as valid whatsoever. Null and Void.

The second thing to know: The Mistaken Zygote gives meaning and raison d’etre for it all, I’ll let Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. tell you:

“Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say a nonconformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge, means one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and stunning contribution to her culture.”

To those who have felt alienated and different:

Go forth and be different, you Mistaken Zygotes of the World! We need your contribution!

An Aside: 

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D is a cantadora (storyteller) and a Jungian analyst. The book “Women Who Run with the Wolves” shares stories and myths relating to a woman’s passage and growth through life. Somewhere I even recall hearing, reading, seeing, or saying, “Every woman will find her story there.” I did that Christmas—The Mistaken Zygote. It gave succor and salve for a sore heart. Pertinent to my survival. Retained. A default for future applications. I noted the synchronicity of finding it at the exact perfect time that I needed it. If you’ve been harangued with feeling ‘different,’ you’ll find it is an understanding of your Self that validates you are ‘different;’ it’s okay and more than likely a good thing! I think the story is even more validated if you’ve been one of the lucky ones who has found his or her own real (if not blood) family that you were intended to be with before you were plopped into the wrong family.

20. Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, But Words Will Hurt Forever.

That sounds a little like the schoolyard retort we used in our childhood, when someone said something mean to us. But the one from ‘the good ol’ days’ touted that “words would ‘never hurt me:’”

Sure, we flung that ditty back at our tormentors, but those nasty words did hurt! Our retort was our childish bravado; the chant an immature deflection for actually being hurt—by words, as well as sticks and stones. We probably were too young even to acknowledge that the words hurt us. We just wanted to convince ourselves that saying was true…words will never hurt me!

But, we’ve evolved from ‘the good ol’ days.’ We’ve grown in our understanding of ourselves; we’ve learned from the experience of many lives, even generations of lives, examined. And the new and improved understanding is:

            “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will hurt forever.”

Shortly after I had my first daughter, I found a class called PET—Parent Effectiveness Training (By Dr. Thomas Gordon–I still have that book, too.) I wanted to be the best parent possible so I enrolled. I took away several things from the class, tried to incorporate and use them in bringing up what became two girls 13 months later. I remember the impact of understanding ‘active listening’—hearing what your child is telling you (or acting out) even though the words are completely different.

Another memorable one was an example about words. The instructors (it was a woman and her husband) were illustrating how we had been talked to as children and how we, thusly, talked to our children. How words can hurt; and they illustrated, perhaps there was a better way.

The example was…you (the parents) just bought a brand new beautiful white couch. It was a dream come true. You’d always wanted a gorgeous white couch. A neighbor came over to admire your new couch and, lo, and behold, they tucked their legs up under them with their dusty shoes resting on your beautiful new white couch! Did you react outwardly like you did inwardly and yell at them, ‘Get your shoes (or damn shoes) off my couch right this minute or I’ll blister your behind”? (Or worse?) No, you probably asked them rather kindly if they would please not put their shoes on your new couch—if you said anything at all! You might even have laughingly offered an explanation for your request, saying it was new and meant a lot to you to keep it that way. 

Then think about your child running in from playing in the dirt outdoors and throwing him/herself onto the new white couch. Reaction! Do you imagine a much different scenario of words?  More than likely it was the one you’d had yelled at you as a child.  If we’re being honest…

Are Only Hard Lessons the Ones We Learn From?

My early writing came out as what I learned were called ‘epigrams. Short, concise capsulations of many times large ideas. Here’s one I wrote long before I read the new version of sticks and stones hurting forever:

            Children are like clean, pure slates

            And we mark upon them

            With chalk

            With china marker

            With chisel.

To children, especially, but adults too, our words can be chalk–lightly written and easily erased or washed away, even rewritten.

Or our words can be like a china marker, indelible, leaving a permanent mark.

But the worst words can be as damaging as a chisel on stone, harsh and cutting, chipping away parts of a young psyche and self-esteem. These do damage and can remain carved into the heart of a young psyche forever.

I, of course, had to learn that the hard way. How else could I write the words I wrote if not from my experience?

It was way back in the heated atmosphere and stress of a husband and a wife in the midst of a family about to be split asunder. An early morning before school, everyone rushing around to get ready for their daily duties, school, a job. Something occurred which set the two parents into fight or flight mode, and neither one fled. In the midst of that anger, frustration, and distrust, an innocent little 8-year old daughter asked some question of the day. Lost in the frustration I was in, I snapped an answer. And I saw it. Even if it took much later to recognize what I saw, my subconscious registered that look on her beautiful sweet face.

A light went out in that sweet little girl’s eyes. Even in the heated atmosphere of that fleeting moment, I registered that look. I didn’t process it til later, but I am grateful that my subconscious did register it. I can see it still today. And feel it. It breaks my heart just as surely as a mother broke her daughter’s heart that day. Just with words. And when I visit it in my mind, I want to cry for that sweet, sweet, giving, loving little girl.

My words had hurt. Deeply. Have they hurt forever?

In that flicker, she felt she had disappointed. She had received disapproval, not approval. One sentence and words had chiseled into that pure little heart as if I had wielded the cold metal object. Did she, at that moment, tear off an inquisitive little part of her and throw it into the Bloody Room so that she could be accepted and continue to be loved by mom?  The Bloody Room holds those bright, inquisitive, talented, generous, humorous parts of our psyche that we tear out and toss in order to be valued and loved and fit in with the authority figures, family and peers that mold us in our early years.  The Bloody Room is sequestered in the Unconscious which is where all repressed emotions are locked up—and cry always, always to be recognized. (Post 11).

I have apologized to my daughter, the woman, many times. But can that truly fill the cleft of a chisel even after years of weathering?

I have used this experience to explain to others why the words we say to our children can hurt forever; and, moreso, how they shape or mis-shape them for a responsible and caring, giving, loving adulthood. 

Yet, there are many of us who have had chisel words cleaved upon us. In her book, “Women Who Run With the Wolves,” author Estes tells of an exercise she does with women. She has each make a material Scapecoat. “A scapecoat is a coat that details in painting, writing, and with all manner of things pinned and stitched to it all the name-calling a woman has endured in her life, all the insults, all the slurs, all the traumas, all the wounds, all the scars.” Through the exercise comes the lancing and draining of stifled, oft-times long-buried pain. Dr. Estes continues, “Sometimes we also call them battlecoats, for they are proof of the endurance, the failures, and the victories of individual women and their kinswomen.” A woman comes to see how strong she is and has been.

The Continuum

Life is a continuum, perhaps The Continuum (Post 1). The definition of a continuum is “the line that progresses between two opposites,” like the continuum of life, from birth to death. Some have described it as ‘the whole made up of many parts.’ Its elements are always interconnected. It marches ever on. It changes unperceptively as it grows its way toward the opposite, until it has changed from cold to hot, or from spring-to-winter, from baby to crone, from birth to death. A continuous whole made up of elements that are both affected by the element before it and affects the element after it. (How can you separate the warm water from the cold water on the continuum from cold to hot?)

The psychological application—the Life application—is that in order to grow an adult with peak physical, emotional, and mental health on the continuum, you must treat the beginning of that life continuum with great care—during infancy, childhood, even challenging teendom. And words count.

All words count.

Actions speak louder.

All along the continuum.

From birth to death.