T-M-I from T-I-M

Why "You can only love others as much as you love yourself" is wrong

TL;DR:  How I love my daughter has taught me how to love myself, not the other way around

I know how I feel about myself. My self love has become, slowly, less conditional. It will never be unconditional, that's not for the humanity.

I've been struggling for years thinking I gotta love myself more or I'll never really love others. The stress and confusion of that statement is debilitating at times.

I finally realized something, it's not completely correct.

I love my daughter in ways that I know I don’t love myself at times. My capacity to love has expanded exponentially being her father as time has passed.

I find places in myself that I’ve even thought of.

Whether it's listening to her talk about the most challenging parts of her life without jumping in or stepping back and letting her have the dignity of difficult experiences, giving her choice it's the same.

There are these "Wow if I can love like THAT, I know I have that capacity for love, even for myself".

I tell her I love you often and it’s often from the depths of myself. I almost never say that to myself.

The bodily sensation of saying it is so notably atypical that I feel a bit shook that it’s there. It's at the cellular level as a friend once said.

My body, the greatest truth teller of all, tells me I've reached a new level in service to love her.

It feels like a devotion and care that at times is or has been dormant to the point of non existence. I realize in those moments, wow that’s the kind of love I’m capable of perhaps I can give that to myself.

You might be saying “Ah you couldn’t have done that if you didn’t already unknowingly love yourself!”

There are two issues with that statement:

First, I virtually never say that to myself. I have at times, in the mirror but rarely day to day.

Second, when I do I never have that bodily sensation that shakes me into thinking “Wow I didn’t know I had that in me about myself”.

I know my self talk and self feeling and neither fits into that category. My body sensation when I say that is less like WOW and more like Dracula reacting to holy water.

You may also be saying “Maybe that’s you grieving what you didn’t feel when you were a child”

Hmmm, that’s not a bad one but the thing is I’m not talking about what Zoe feels. I’m talking about what I feel.

Is it possible that when my Dad (he said it often) or Mom (she said it less often) said it they felt that shook feeling in their body?

I suppose that’s possible but honestly I’ll never really know.

For me when I submit to the near tyranny of the perspective that “I can only love others as I love myself” I find myself spun and unwilling to share love as freely as I do.

I can make the case, credibly, about how I eat, exercise, work on myself, etc are demonstrable examples of how I love myself. I can certainly make the case the thoughts that I have are examples as well.

I can certainly say that I NEVER have the thoughts about my daughter that I have about myself. Having been through numerous periods of my life (including very recently) of continuous casual thoughts of suicide, I simply never talk to her like that.

However I’ve found that by exercising more my mindset and feelings change. I don’t think “If I really loved myself I’d do this”. It’s shaming, not motivating.

I don’t love my daughter to “act as if” I love myself. That feels disingenuous.

It’s really simple I have moments when I show up for my daughter in ways I would NEVER dreamed possible, I learn what’s possible in me and for me.

I do have those moments when I help my closest friends or family members I deeply care about so the pressure isn't on Zoe. Rather Zoe is the easiest example to point to.

It's not on her for me to grow like this and it led me to this conclusion:

I prefer to reframe the statement as “I learn how divinely I can love myself by how I love others”.

 

 

Review: Being Mary Tyler Moore on HBO (2023)

TL;DR: I knew very little about Mary Tyler Moore and wasn't a big fan and this documentary is a must see.




The Mary Tyler Moore documentary on HBO is compelling and fascinating. I knew almost nothing about her personally.

The only real roles I knew her for were the mom in Ordinary People and Flirting With Disaster. I was a marginal Dick Van Dyke Show fan and never watched the Mary Tyler Moore show.

Given the roles I knew her for which were either a quite flawed, unwilling to change or an over the top at times inappropriate mom I hadn’t really connected with her as a major TV star.

The documentary is held together by a couple of incredible interviews with her and Rona Barrett, Dinah Shore, David Letterman (his daytime show) and others. It also includes a number of interviews, most of which you don’t see the person, friends, family members, etc.

She was an entertainment vanguard.

She was super progressive in her shows for the time. For example, she was the first woman on TV who wore pants instead of those god-awful dresses I’d see women doing chores in.

She also was a comedic actor trailblazer. It’s described exquisitely how she achieved it.

More impactful was that the Mary Tyler Moore shore was groundbreaking as it was supposed to be the first show with a divorced woman as the main role. CBS scrapped the idea as unacceptable (incredible factoid).

She played the role out as a single woman in Minneapolis and a working, career-oriented woman.

Not surprisingly given that, the writers included the first woman who ever wrote on a national broadcast sitcom. Unbelievably the creator was James L. Brooks (yes THAT one from the Simpsons).

It was fascinating to see how it played out that she was an advocate of women’s rights. She and her team pushed the envelope and yet it tells a story where Gloria Steinem said it wasn’t enough.

She was a kind of America’s sweetheart. It was fascinating to see how she ended up with two incredible casts with spectacular writing rooms.

And yet the doc also tells the stories of how she handled rejection and difficulty. So much so she almost didn’t take on the Dick Van Dyke show.

The show really took off when it moved into how she moved to New York and took on new roles and personas that were so different. I LOVED her in Ordinary People (one of my top 5 movies of all time).

I couldn’t understand how she could step so deeply into that role and become this person who I somehow both despised and felt sorry for.

I learned that her family life was full of misunderstanding, difficulty, alcoholism and tragedy. I thought the documentary emphasized this at the perfect time with the perfect weight. It didn’t feel overwhelming and it set the perfect context.

It reminded me of those pictures that used to look like a bunch of random colors and shapes until you looked through it or at it slightly differently and suddenly a rocket ship would appear.

It opened my eyes to who she really was. It’s like her whole career and personal life were the whole story. She loved dancing as a child, it was her first passion.

Towards the end of the doc she says something like “I consider myself a failed dancer and a successful actress.”

During all those interviews there’s this somewhat frenetic energy that seems to protect some core part of herself.

The documentary does an incredible job of illuminating that core part of herself. She was a multi-dimensional, quite wounded woman.

It’s so profound to see the parallel between her doing the “everything looks dreamy” type roles while her insides had a lot of turmoil and her role Ordinary People (a movie about that subject on a familial level).

Not surprisingly, there are some serious tear jerker scenes in the documentary.

The most poignant is a scene in the Mary Tyler Moore Show with the actor who plays her father. Mary had a challenging relationship with her father (her parents are touched on somewhat mostly by reference).

I won’t spoil it. I will tell you that the poignant dynamic of unsaid things finally really said is emotional writing at the very highest level.

I didn’t know that she lost her son to a what they describe as a gun accident, it’s heartbreaking. It was another reminder that when a parent loses a child I think in almost every case a piece of that parent is lost. It’s as if a slice of the soul lifts out of their body.

The final scenes of the movie include a stunning list of women actors who credit their emergence and success partly or substantially to Mary Tyler Moore. It's really moving.

After watching it, I’m not a bigger fan of hers. I don’t feel compelled to watch either TV series. I do feel slightly compelled to watch Ordinary People again.

This movie is a perfect piece of art that demonstrates stories well told make the resonance, interest or even fandom of the subject secondary.

For me the documentary became a human interest story and a powerful reminder of how our stories matter if we only ask about them.

Mary Tyler Moore's story is somehow fun, sad, moving, hopeful and connecting. I would never have thought it could be.

#marytylermoore #BeingMaryTylerMoore

Laura Dern & Cheryl Strayed at SF City Arts Lecture

Laura Dern live on her new book Honey, Baby, Mine: A Mother and Daughter Talk Life, Death, Love (and Banana Pudding)

TL;DR: Laura Dern reminded me that in intimate impactful relationships truth held back is damaging, truth shared is freeing.

I saw Laura Dern in convo with Cheryl Strayed (author of the terrific book Wild) last night. The subject of the talk was Laura’s (yep I'm calling her Laura!) new book about her relationship with her mom, actor Diane Ladd.

Her mom got a possibly fatal diagnosis from a respiratory illness as a result of a weed killer chemical used on a farm nearby her. As part of Diane’s rehabilitation, the two of them went on a bunch of walks.

They started with short ones and grew from there. As part of the time together and the near term fatal diagnosis (Diane’s lived beyond it already) they decided the would talk about ANYTHING and EVERYTHING about their relationship.

Laura started by noting: Parents lie to their children. Children lie to their parents. Oftentimes because neither wants to hurt the other one’s feelings.

I’d never heard it put so plainly and it hit right to my heart.

The types of talks they had were wide ranging from recipes to deeply hurtful emotional experiences as time went on.

When Laura shared that sometimes she just needed to say “You did this when I was younger and it hurt me” without necessarily litigating what happened it was quite touching.

She admitted that while they hadn’t figure everything out and may never that being in the mess was better than holding it in. Laura thinks that part of her mom’s health improvement is setting aside the burden of these unsaid things.

She told a hilarious emotional story of when her mom gave her parenting advice. She was triggered and found it in her to lift and throw a 7 foot couch.

She made it clear that it actually happened!

Oh and she does an AMAZING Diane Ladd imitation.

Laura told her mom that it hurt that she was gone so much for her job acting (at a time when both Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern were making very little money).

Laura followed it up by sharing that she did the exact same thing when telling her teenage daughter she was going to work over an important week for her daughter.

I go to a lot of these events and I love it when authors, scientists, actors, etc. share parenting stories (France McDormand did the same thing with a different story).

Laura told an incredible story that she was booted out of UCLA from her college degree path because she took the job to be in Blue Velvet (one of my all time faves).

Speaking of which (of course) I asked a question. I started saying that she was one of my hardest to explain crushes as a teenager having seen her for the first time in Blue Velvet.

I’d be like “Wow Blue Velvet is SO disturbing…..did you see Laura Dern she is so HOT!!”.

Given my background with my daughter that many of you know with my addiction and now sustained long term sobriety I wanted her perspective.

You see given what she talked about her children lived an awful long time with someone who modeled her relationship with her mom Diane Ladd with her kids. So she certainly behaved in some ways that she’d like to take back (like me).

I think there are two categories of things from the past for my daughter (I’m sure there’s more but this is how I think and feel).

She’s aware of an issue and not ready to talk about it and may even tell me that.

I can actually handle that one ok. It’s a touch nerve wracking but that’s about my patience.

The second category are issues she’s not aware of. Those are the ones that are hard for me to take because she’s being run consciously or unconsciously by them potentially.

How do you navigate that?

She said the most important party is the invitation to have the conversation. And when the time comes be ready.

She opened my mind to something I’d never thought of before.

As part of the conversations with her mom she realized that she always wanted to ask about her parents’ relationship before their divorce.

She playfully watered down her mom’s response but one of the big hooks was that Bruce Dern was an incredible lover.

I was thinking about my daughter SO many times during the talk and she actually called during it.

I called her later and gave her an invitation to ask about my relationship with her mom before our divorce (which had a ton of good times and incredible journeys).

Oh in case you’re wondering I would not look back at myself as any kind of incredible lover back then….key words there are “back then”

She told a story about being 6 ½ on the set of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and peering through a crack in a bathroom door below Martin Scorsese as her mom and Ellen Burstyn talked earnestly about the realities of being a single mom.

It was a bit of a mind-twister because her mom was single at the time and she’s observing her mom talking about it.

They both touched on the idea that people might say that character is a "powerful woman" rather than just the character is powerful.

At several points like that in the interview I had a few "aha's" in the subtle or overt way I might say things like that in front of Zoe in particular or anyone else.

Cheryl Strayed was INCREDIBLE as the interviewer. They admitted up front that they have a great relationship and that was undeniably evident.

Having gone to so many of these the interviewer makes a GIGANTIC difference and Cheryl delivered.

Admittedly I was positively biased going into it in that I LOVED her book Wild.

Their real life chemistry is unmissable.

I also went in wanting to like Laura Dern (not surprisingly…honestly I still have a crush on her!). Sometimes stars just aren’t very interesting in long form more intimate interviews. She delivered and so much more.

Revisiting my teenage Blue Velvet crush turned out to be basically the only slightly uncomfortable part of the event. I’m SO glad I went.