A brave, funny, insightful memoir precipitating a ramble - Deborah Jackson Taffa's Whiskey Tender

 

This was a chance encounter. I was browsing on my free library app Libby for available audio books. 

Native American history, literature, culture has been one of my main interests over the past few years. 

In fact, I recently watched Dark Winds and Flybread Face and Me both directed by Billy Luther, a fact which I hadn't realized until after I had watched both.

This memoir fit really well with those shows/movie as much of her early life was spent in Navajo country in Farmington New Mexico although she herself is of the Quechan (Yuma) Nation and Laguna Pueblo peoples. She was born on the reservation in Yuma. She currently is the director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. (rad job btw!)

This memoir explores her journey of identity as a person of "mixed ancestry" living amongst both whites, non natives, and in the midst of the more populous Navajo nation. The story is a gripping tale of her close knit family. One of a series of sisters, their parents worked diligently to give them a life that was not as marked by poverty as their own had been. This path led them away from their place of origin and to a life of walking the line between honoring the past and the traditions of their ancestors and trying to create a comfortable reality in the present which meant at times suppressing cultural identity.

I'm reticent to create any parallels to my own life, but I've been recently reflected on the power of identity. Most people want to feel part of something larger than themselves and as our society has expanded through industrialization and global commerce, I think the cost has been the sense of continuity that humans experienced throughout much of their history with a sense of family/tribe.

People try to re-create it and simulate it through other forms of belonging, but I feel the simulation falls short of what there is a visceral longing for. 

Sometimes we are raised to strongly identify with something and then there comes a point when that identity doesn't serve but actually hinders us from evolving and adapting to the present. I grew up strongly identifying as a rancher, but my life took a turn that didn't involve me being a rancher. I can talk about a strong cultural affiliation, but that is all it is. It doesn't matter than my family heritage extends back on three sides in that subculture all the way to the 1800s, It is not the reality of my present or likely future. So, I can imagine a little tiny bity - the pull of a heritage (referring to the book) that extends back not 100 years but hundreds or thousands and is both cultural and ethnic and how difficult it is to both honor and yet integrate into the ever pressing pull of present exigencies. My family and extended family is extremely tight- knit, supportive, and clannish and I feel so grateful for the security that has afforded me my whole life. 

The story was both interesting and personal. I got the sense that Deborah is an HSP so I definitely related to her on that level. She seems like a natural harmonizer who thought deeply about things and worked at both pleasing and being authentic which speaking from experience is kind of an ordeal.

There was a part that really stood out to me. I jotted part of it down hurriedly in the kitchen one day (Due to my full time work schedule my book listens happen in snatches while I'm cleaning up the kitchen at 6 am, on my commutes, or on my 30 min lunch breaks.) I think she was exploring her tribal history, traditions, rituals, healing medicines, ceremonies etc in order to try to feel connected to her roots and people and to discover her place in the world. At one point it's like she had an epiphany where she realized that that was all well and good but what she needed to internalize were the edicts. This is all I got down "I vowed to focus on their edicts." How I interpreted this and applied to myself is the following: You can't really re-create the past because all of those things that I listed, beautiful as they are, were part of their time- what was needed for the time, made sense, and served. I can do them now, but perhaps it is more important for me to discover the rituals, ceremonies, art and nature connection that will serve me now. Somehow I can honor even preserve ancient traditions, whilst still being open to creating new ones and being part of the constant evolution that is life itself.

I tend to elevate, romanticize, and be nostalgic about the past: my childhood, my ancestors, times gone by when I like to think that life was more natural or vibrant. Sometimes I fall prey to melancholy, wistful longing, and regret for what I have no power to re-incarnate or create. I guess what I'm saying and why I jotted this down is because I don't want to live there any more. I heard her say that she wants to take the spirit of her people and their edicts into her life. I want to do the same. I want to own and speak my values and try to integrate them into my life now. It feels hard to infuse a suburban existence with some color sometimes, but the reality is wherever I lived on the space/time continuum, I have to acknowledge that I might be having the same struggle. Perhaps creating life moment by moment, being awake to the beauty of what is evolving spiritually, emotionally, and our part in the greater cosmos can be as epic as we frame it.

 

An Update, a Book, an Observation

1. Update:

I started a book club! It's called a very proper "Ladies Nonfiction Book Club." It's a public group through meetup.com and we've had 2 meetings so far. Yesterday's meeting was so much fun. Co- conspirator and I started ransacking our shelves and Amazon wishlists for dusty books that we will now actually read!


We met at a new to me cafe called "Mokha Cafe" and the espresso was delicious but the setting a little noisy for a discussion group and quite limited seating. We're dashing back to Dagny's, a local coffee shop in downtown BK.

You know I actually already do read books; but now I will hopefully knock out even more.

2. Book: 

This was June's book for club. This was on founding member's wishlist and my own so we put it at the top of the queue.

The Schaeffers were a household name in the milieu of late eighties and nineties evangelicalism. They were elegant, intellectual, and sophisticated Bible thumpers. They lived in a chalet in Switzerland and their ministry was basically hosting young impressionable bohemians and "witnessing" through dialogue and by administering lectures which called upon the arts and the high points of Western Civilization to reinforce Christian beliefs.


Author, Frank is their youngest child and only son. This book was published in 2007 so it's been out there awhile and based on a podcast interview of his that I listened to recently, I'd wager that since 2007 he's evolved from Orthodoxy to more of agnosticism or atheism. Actually another more recent book title of his is Why I Am an Atheist Who Believes in God so it's not a wager.


This memoir recounts his childhood at L'abri the name of the Schaeffer's multi-location ministry, rise to fame as a member of the fledgling but soon powerful American Christian right movement, his exodus from that world and reinvention of himself as an artist and writer. He had a pretty free-range "unschooling before it was a term" homeschooled/autodidact childhood up until he did some boarding schools in the UK. 

I found his portraits of his parents and upbringing to be the most interesting aspects of the story. I was less interested in his subsequent career but related to his perspective and found guilty pleasure in some of the snark.  His portrayal of his parents was honest but not cruel and I think like many families who were renowned in some way, the pressures can be significant and I believe they were for Frank and his siblings and his parents too. 

A few passages I flagged. 

"Everything we did was to witness. (to witness was to share Christ; in other words, talk about your faith in hopes that you would convince the person listening to convert. To witness also meant to live in such a way that people would see Christ" in you and want to convert because your life was so admirable.)"

I related to this a lot. Again - doesn't sound like a big deal - but it's a lot of pressure nonetheless. 

"When we traveled on the Coroveglia, Mom pointed out that "We still have to pay for our tickets....' The idea was that because we were in the Lord's work, any person with a lot of money what was truly discerning would give us the boat passage and to do less was something like Mary and Martha charging Christ for supper."

This was kind of a painful connecting point for me as someone who raised funds for our "missionary work." I always found it incredibly awkward and murky. 

"Life had two huge demarcation lines, a cosmic before and after, from which everything else flowed. There was salvation, the crossing of the line from light to dark. And there was marriage, and life before "the wedding night" and after." 

Frank, well captured.

Re: his mom's long winded prayers that seemed to be for the benefit of the listener rather than have anything to do with God "I sometimes wondered if God ever tried to duck out of the room when he saw Mom coming." 

"When Jessica (his baby) is not keeping her food down, I learned the prayer that has no words, the one that I'd be praying forever after I became a father, whatever I called myself or converted to, or abandoned, when the feeling of dread is prayer - prayer and longing for what I could never give a child in danger, or myself; the guarantee of joy."

"What I don't want is to live in a culture that makes sweeping and dismissive secular or religious "theological" one-size-fits-all decisions that oversimplify complex issues." 

Preach

3. Observation. 

People talk about their conversions to faith. Sometimes it was a lightning bolt moment of clarity or a supernatural occurrence that was the catalyst for a faith to be born. Other times it was a gradual realization or onset of a decision. My deconversion feels marked by both of those things - moments even seconds of startling clarity and a recognition of sudden alignment after many years of ponderous deconstructing. 

Like a new convert I want to talk about it. I feel excited about the peace and congruence I feel. Like a new convert who wants others to experience their knowledge, freedom, and awakening, my deconversion has spawned similar feelings. Yet, I know that you can't sell your own experience too hard. You can touch on it - but others in your life have to witness it in their own way. They have their own journey; own monsoon strikes of insight to uncover. 

Deconversion from what? Certainly not from  openness to a conception of  God(s) , spirituality, or faith - merely from a religion and any religion that would seek to overly simplify, stratify, systemize, and dogmatize access to and revelation of the mysteries.

Excerpt from my Memoir "Vignettes of an Exodus"

I used to idealize colonial America, the founding fathers, Pilgrims and most especially frontierspeople, cowboys, and white pioneers who “came west.” I still like them fine and I like them better than the established old european aristocracy which was so keen on premoginature at the expense of competency, lunacy, and efficacy. However they are no longer my idealized life. 

If I want to escape from the sterility of modern life with its hyper concern for safety, constant communication sources, and profound stability, I like to think about pre-historic, pre-agriculture, indigenous, hunter/gatherer, or tribal life. I realize you can’t lump a bunch of humans into this category and be anthropolgically sound, but for this reflection I can.

I used to romanticize about wearing a sunbonnet and tending a garden. Now, that sounds like drudgery. I want to cherry pick the things from what I fancy Indians did and think about that. I don’t choose to linger on chewing hides to soften them for clothing as Innuit women did. Nor do I want to wallow in buffalo blood as I endlessly tan the hides like my Comanche sister friends. Although I’m not sure how I would feel about these pursuits truly.

I don’t want to plow up the soil of 160 acres but I do want to wander the forests of North America, untouched by chain saws, freeways, and power poles. I want to forage for edible plants, and make my own house. I want dancing to be part of my spirituality. I want animal visions to be messengers of the beyond and to be in tune with every source of my food. I want to apologize to an animal’s spirit before I kill it; knowing that we are intimately connected. I want to drink straight from a spring and I want my cycle to coincide with that of the moon because I’m constantly privy to its light. I want to raise my children with my mother and sisters and look to elders for their wisdom. I want to wait for my man to come back from battle and comfort him with food and my body. 

I don’t want to go to the little red school house. I want the saguaros to be my teacher. I want my book to be the one inscribed by the stars.

Nor do I want to show up at the church steeple where some ideas from a far away land and the knowledge of another tribe have to be my guide. I want to learn from my own people, their stories, and their ways. I want my ideas about God to be something I absorb through watching the owl, navigating the river in a handcrafted vessel, and feeling the electricity of the earth pulsating through my feet. 

I don’t want to live within the wall of a house and have to ever maintain it and keep my children isolated within it. I want to hold my baby when she cries and feed her at will; keeping her close to my body as my instincts dictated; not force her to conform to an arbitrary sleep schedule. That my children could learn from play and play to learn, growing naturally into adulthood in the fold of a family clan. 

I want to harness my intuition to survive instead of going to Target. I want to learn the lore and patterns of creatures that are my foes, friends, and food. This is what I idealize. I dream of fashioning  a weapon that has been perfected slowly and passed down by oral tradition. I want to eat a food that I have intimately handled from start to finish. I want to bathe in the river and follow the chime of the seasons in my habits of life. I want to pick up and move if I need to and be able to assemble my belongings in one day. I want the earth to be my mother. This is what I dream of.

Instinctual Types Morality Shaming

I decided I wanted to learn more about Enneagram Instincts. I've read and studied quite a bit about the Enneagram over the past decade or so, but I haven't focused all that much on the Instincts. I recently discovered a podcast by The Art of Growth.

https://www.theartofgrowth.org/discoveryourtype?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjwhIS0BhBqEiwADAUhc21WR5YYhkWss7rd2HqNGN3rt7PFqDwkmIIdsl2zaV2w1NUI7Cg3oRoC3FYQAvD_BwE

I found a season where they are really focusing in on the instincts - perfect.

I'm only halfway through the episode but it's really interested.

The instincts are presented in a way as having developed through our evolutionary biology, all having fundamentally important contributions to human survival. We all possess all three, but just as in the primary nine enneagram types, we will find ourselves dominant in one area. The goal is to bring these instincts up from the lizard brain to a more conscious awareness of how we employ them. Perhaps we need to harness more of one energy that we're not tapping into. This kind of reminds me of a book club I'm doing on the goddess archetypes and the active role we can have in tapping into energies that we need.

Here are the 3 instincts: These are my summary takeaways 

Self Preservation: tuned into comfort, security, rest, well being, resources

Sexual: tuned into risk taking, intense energetic connections with other individuals, attracting and charming others, close merge/bonding, referred to as "one on one" in corporate coaching

Social: tuned into hierarchies, groups, tribal roles, preservation of the group, to be honest, I haven't finished listening to this part!

What was standing out to me is the way that we can tend to morally elevate our own instinct as if it's intrinsically more valuable or better than others. My burning need to write about this is because it's been coming up a lot for me lately. I see how I've been the recipient of this type of shaming and the doler of it. (I mention in my bio that I invent words right?)

As a sexual instinctual type, risk taking is inherently something I both crave and contribute. (*For anyone slightly prudish out there "sexual" refers to one on one connecting energy, not the act of sex or being "sexy.") 

Risk taking is a vital part of my well being and if I don't have it, I begin to get depressed. This is something I'm only just beginning to acknowledge and figure out how to implement in ways that are not harmful, addictive, or toxic. My propensity to seek change, new experiences, new friendships, new groups etc. is something that's often frustrated me about myself and I see that I've been reluctant to accept. I also think it hasn't always met with approval by others and has been difficult to understand. However, I have felt encouraged in this by a few cheerleader people in my life and for them I am immensely grateful. Healthy productive risk taking was a part of my upbringing on a cattle ranch, and I'm so thankful that it was developed within me when I was young. I think it's extremely underdeveloped in most young people in "western culture" in meaningful healthy ways. 

On the flip side, I have experienced (mostly self pres) types giving me some flack for my propensity to want to live in the moment, and unwillingness to focus on things they think I should value more like: coupons, savings account, eating, sleeping, safety, and security. 

In my experience self pres types tend to moralize things like savings and prudence in ways that can make sexual types feel less than or somehow inferior. In the podcast, I love how they highlight how risk taking types might have contributed to the human story by being willing to brave predators and make changes that ended up being vitally important to the survival of the group. Ever since I read Keirsey's amazing book Please Understand Me, about MBTI, I've always embraced the notion of myself as a catalyst personality who tends to stir things up, be big picture thinker, and an agent of change. However, I have also simultaneously experienced type envy where I wished I could be more like the steady beaver types who were really good at routine and structure, and don't seem to mind doing the same things day in and day out. I think I largely disregarded the risk taking part of myself - also because I think it was shoved outside by my role as primary caretaker of my daughters. Now that they're getting older and more independent perhaps my subconscious risk taker self is shouting for more attention.

Some time ago I read something about Tony Robbins Essential human needs (listed below) and I was floored. It fits in so well with the instincts. The one that stood out to me at the time was #2. I felt it validated something deep within myself that was resisting all the incessant voices of safety, comfort, security, social status... Not that there's anything wrong with those things. Just I felt I valued them less than others and I didn't understand why I felt so resistant to it and I resented the implication that somehow focusing on these things has some kind of moral benefit. I want to take a moment to highlight how important it can be to distinguish values from morals. (another topic for another day)

1. Certainty: assurance you can avoid pain and gain pleasure

2. Uncertainty/Variety: the need for the unknown, change, new stimuli
3. Significance: feeling unique, important, special or needed
4. Connection/Love: a strong feeling of closeness or union with someone or something
5. Growth: an expansion of capacity, capability or understanding
6. Contribution: a sense of service and focus on helping, giving to and supporting others

I also have been guilty of feeling superior somehow to others. For example I have a disdain for focusing on micro money. It reminds me of the British elite. I might be completely broke, but I'd rather pretend to be wealthy and generous at all costs. I don't want to haggle. I don't want to have a conversation about how much you spent on lettuce. Sorry. I also may have been guilty of mocking people who are too concerned with comfort and safety. I have pitied them actually - viewing them as people who are perpetually on the sidelines of life, which I'm acknowledging is rude and unfair of myself. 

Worst of all, I probably struggle most with social instinctual types. I may be dead wrong, but somehow I see them as the instigators of heinous social traditions like the tyranny of Mothers Day and incessant birthday festivities. (and may I remind you, these harbingers of social togetherness and groupthink bring up these topics every single year.) But ultimately, I see how these VALUES  of theirs have their place and I want to extend the gracious hand of freedom to those who wish to engage in lots of group activities and traditions at every opportunity. (as long as they don't shame me if I choose not to prioritize those things.) 

When I go on these tirades about Mothers Day and birthdays, I always want to make sure that I always make exceptions to my protest if anyone gives me a gift that includes: wine, coffee, going out to dinner, turquoise jewelry, or an outdoor experience, or a hug, a massage, monetary gifts must be included in this as well. Also please invite me to your party especially if there's Mexican food and alcohol, dancing, and a lovely outdoor setting. (We can't all be consistent all the time.)

I'm curious at the emotions that this has stirred up for me. I'm eager to keep listening to the whole season on the instincts and hopefully I can cultivate more awareness and extend more grace to self and others. I want to challenge myself to tap into and appreciate the strengths and contributions of others that are vitally significant to me and the group.