Comments for Wonk-o-Mance

Comment on Telling a Story is Sometimes the Only Next Thing to Do by Lammie

Lammie — Tue, 28 Jul 2015 20:48:31 +0000

This made me cry. I so understand the struggle, and when something works, it is like magic. My child has Asperger’s, and any kind of class was always a bit hellish. Reading this brought me back to that horrible feeling at pickup, when I couldn’t be sure what I would face. Hearing about your child’s success, and the fact that the instructor did not give up when it became challenging, and found ways to praise your child and make it work made me really happy for you. I hope the struggle continues to be a positive experience, for both of you.

Comment on Another Brick From the Wall by North American Wordcat

North American Wordcat — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 03:23:13 +0000

Thank you for the wonderful post. I am vacation and for me it is one of those neural pathways that has been laid down–change in routine–low grade anxiety. I allow my self my information soother too if though I know it doesn’t mean I rule the world. I read a wonderful article in the Huffington Post about how being anxious doesn’t mean your unhappy– http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ravishly/your-panic-attack-doesnt-care-if-youre-happy_b_7717142.html.

It is just a body thing. I try to think of it like having a trick knee. In certain circumstances, its gonna wobble. Talking opening about anxiety is wonderful gift to ourselves and others. Peace and joy to you and your son.

Comment on Another Brick From the Wall by Amy Jo Cousins

Amy Jo Cousins — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 21:21:02 +0000

Thank you for sharing all this! When you talk about choosing to think things, I am reminded of two books that very much changed my life in my early twenties. The first was a slim memoir written by Dorothy Gilman, A New Kind of Country. Ms. Gilman also wrote the delightfully silly Mrs. Pollifax spy novels, but her memoir is quite spare and insightful. In it, she talks about reading Viktor Frankl’s Holocaust memoir/psychotherapy work, Man’s Search for Meaning. One of her takeaways from that book, which affects me to this day, involves recognizing that emotions, while overwhelming and immersive, are not YOU. They are feelings you are having, or rather, choose to have, which makes it all sound very glib and dismissive of the force of strong emotions, but it’s really not. I’m just doing a terrible job of describing the idea. In any case, fascinating stuff, and thank you for sharing here all of the interesting resources we were DMing about. I can soothe myself with some more research reading! ;)

Comment on Be Your Own Heroine and Hero by Teresa Noelle Roberts

Teresa Noelle Roberts — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 20:15:17 +0000

I knew it! I’d be “doing it wrong” all along. I read romances as a rule for the heroine’s journey and often get frustrated with the heroes because they need so much emotional rescue.

This leads to frustration with many old-school romances, and may explain why my books aren’t exactly climbing the NYT bestseller list: they’re about women.

Comment on Another Brick From the Wall by Cherri Porter

Cherri Porter — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 19:49:01 +0000

Anxiety is hard, yo! It is such a powerless experience. Ugh. I’ve been working on my own anxiety for most of my adult life, without much success, until recently. My go to strategies were (and still are sometimes) diversion and dissociation. Not particularly effective or healthy.

What I’ve come to understand recently about anxiety is that I am either creating all of it from scratch, or making the underlying existence of it worse, by the thoughts I’m choosing to think. For many of us who know anxiety well, that feeling of the downward spiral–that one thought leads you down the path to a teeming hell of anxiety–is all too familiar. And it’s something we can learn, through practice, to avoid.

Many of us are so disconnected from our thought-feeling-action chain we often don’t think we’re “choosing” to think things–we rather believe that our thinking just is, that our thoughts are a reflection of reality, rather than our reaction to reality.

This has been hard for me to wrap my brain around, but the more I work with these concepts, which are cognitive behavioral practices, the more I see these patterns in my own life and in the lives of those around me. However, understanding these patterns and learning to practice new ways of thinking are two different things. Ultimately, I want to manage my own mind rather than let my mind manage me, so I’m working on all of this stuff.

There are many versions of these concepts around the internet, but I have found Brooke Castillo’s work immensely helpful. She has something called the “Self Coaching Model,” which is scaffolding for identifying our thinking-feeling-action chain, for recognizing and acknowledging the thinking we are doing that is creating the feelings we are having, etc. That’s the place to start if you’re at all interested in this.

Here is a handout she developed for a workshop that overviews the model, if you want to see it in writing.
http://afterautism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/SELF_COACHING_101PDF.pdf

Here is a video in which she introduces.
https://youtu.be/En3_jDNifC0?t=3m02s

Here is her book, which goes into depth about it. Skip the intro and start on page 19 if you want more on this model.
http://thelifecoachschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Self-Coach-101-eBook.pdf

And, what I have found most helpful are her podcasts. #1 starts w/ this model. If you like them, I’d listen to the first few in order, then skip around to topics that interest you. She covers anxiety in a number of episodes. http://thelifecoachschool.com/1/

Comment on The Finite Well of Shits by Cara McKenna

Cara McKenna — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 14:40:34 +0000

This sounds like great advice—to start forgiving myself now for all the times I won’t have the time or energy (or the shits) to be my best on all fronts. It reminds me of an excellent mantra that friends instilled in me during the RT Convention this year: “Be the okayest mom you can be!” Not the best, certainly NOT perfect but, rather, perfectly adequate. Great at times, totally boning things up on other occasions, with all of that averaging out to good-enough.

Comment on The Finite Well of Shits by Cara McKenna

Cara McKenna — Sat, 11 Jul 2015 14:34:29 +0000

Love and miss you, honey :-)

Comment on Be Your Own Heroine and Hero by Fiona McGier

Fiona McGier — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 16:25:01 +0000

I’m the oddball in any romance discussion. I prefer beta heroes, and their idiosyncrasies usually aren’t so torturous as those of the more common alpha hero. Instead I want the heroines to be the alphas, because that’s the kind of woman I am.

I’m a proud feminist. I raised our 4 kids to be feminists, to the point where my boys don’t enjoy movies/books, etc, that have spineless TSTL heroines. They prefer stuff like the most recent Mad Max movie, where the females kick lots of bad guy ass. And those heroines all were damaged by their lives. But they were interesting, as well as sexy and passionate. In Melissa McCarthy’s new movie “Spy,” all of the important roles are females, and the eye-candy is Jude Law and Jason Statham. We all enjoyed that.

I find men sexy just because they’re men. They don’t have to be tortured or over-bearing, or in need of some serious healing, to be whole. I don’t believe that the love of a good, virtuous woman will help them. I want to send them for some extensive therapy to deal with their issues. Then come and romance me.

Comment on The Finite Well of Shits by Shireen

Shireen — Fri, 10 Jul 2015 03:45:50 +0000

After working three months on a piece for a competition due at the end of June, I couldn’t make it through the last stretch. The week it was due my four year-old got sick and my 11 month old was teething and clingy. I made the decision to let it go. The work is still good and it’s still usable. Am I disappointed? Fuck yeah. Do I regret my choice? Hell no. This period of parenthood is so short and Tiffany is right, this is long-haul stuff. The most valuable thing you can start doing now is to forgive yourself, because parenting is full of choices where all the answers seem pretty iffy.

I look forward to your new work whenever it emerges.

Comment on Be Your Own Heroine and Hero by Cherri Porter

Cherri Porter — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 15:03:52 +0000

I have read this idea repeatedly in personal development literature: if someone doesn’t like you, it’s not about you–it’s about them. It logically has to be, because some people like you and some people don’t, and it if was about you, all people would like you or wouldn’t. Reality is as we are and not the other way around.

I think about this when it comes to heroines. How we feel about them isn’t about them, it’s about all the crap in our own heads and our own hearts. It’s about our own feelings of inadequacy and our own struggles to love and be loved.

I love a messed up hero, yet I tend to identify more with the hero and all his drama than I do with the heroine in these kinds of stories. Heroines who fall into the more traditional romance patterns ARE capable of love and that story doesn’t interest me because I don’t identify with it. I am more interested in the one for whom love feels like not just a new language but a new solar system.

This probably explains why I am attracted to books where the heroine’s heart and story are a wee-bit (or a woe-bit) fucked up. The struggle to let ourselves love and be loved is where it’s at for me in romance, and I would like to see more heroines struggling in these ways.