A Different Membership Organization with some Similar Struggles

 I went and listened to the 2.5 hour Board meeting of the OCF because they had a contentious issue regarding appointment of a Board member to fill a seat opened by the death of one. I had to catch up on a lot of passionate and very considered statements from members, seated Board members, and the Membership Secretary, who resigned after writing a letter in the Fair Family News about this process.

Records showed that over the last decade, appointments had not been made mid-term for many other resignations, in fact, no appointments had been made or even discussed. This is obviously not about the person the Board wanted to appoint, who did get the highest votes under the election threshold in the fall election. However, the next person was only 2 votes behind, and they split on several positions. It's a bylaws procedure to appoint, but it hasn't been done in the past because the membership is so passionately concerned about their membership rights and past Boards have supported respecting the members choices. But the power structure really wanted to do this one. And succeeded. And spent most of two hours deciding the question. 

The OCF has a 13-person Board, and can operate just fine with 11 or 12 members. There is an election every October that hundreds of members participate in (over seven hundred.) For many this is a very concerning erosion of member rights. The OCF also has a somewhat hidden political party that supports the current power structure. The vast numbers of people who do not support this party and power structure have been besieged with oppressive policy changes and lack of transparency in the years since this party politics developed. I have personally received emails lobbying for certain candidates and disparaging others. This is highly unethical, and many people who should know better have participated in that effort to sway voters in non-public ways, which is also offensive and if not blatantly illegal, it's highly suspect.

The Membership Secretary resigned over this appointment issue. Anytime an officer resigns over ethical concerns, it is a huge red flag for the organization. Perception is everything in a membership org. They've gone through three membership secretaries in the past two years, all highly qualified and dedicated to service. That red flag is getting bigger and waving wildly.

I'm looking at you, Saturday Market. When I resigned for ethical reasons in August 2024, I did not use my soapbox to explain it, for fear of further breaking what I felt was in a fragile state. I view that lack of a statement as a personal failure at this point, but I did what I thought was best and tried not to make things about me. I doubt it would have changed anything that's happening now, if I had spoken up. But I should have, except I was convinced that no one would listen or want to hear my opinion. I fell for some gaslighting and manipulation. But that's a different story in most ways. They do also have a narcissist in a power position, though.

We have the luxury of watching zoom recordings of the OCF Board meetings. It's a great way to watch directors in action and form your own opinions about what's going on, as well as get vital information for your own informed participation. I was against the recordings when they began, but for the 501c3 that they are, it's at this point, vital that they hold onto this transparency. It has helped them avoid a lot of mistakes. They still have a lot of problems, and I won't really elaborate on them at this time. You can go and watch a few meetings for yourself. 

For market, member rights and transparency barely exist right now. I know of several Committee reports and minutes that have never been shared. I've waited in vain for even attendance at committee meetings; I don't even know who is on committees right now. This means I have no way to effectively communicate with these committees and members, outside of attending in person, which I won't do due to the toxic atmosphere of the office and power structure for me.

I've heard rumors of a ruling that will affect me...I don't feel confident I will even be notified if it comes up. I know of many things that have been done and not done which are at best, ill-advised. I've seen election interference by officers, staff, and other members, that was at best, unethical, and at worst, illegal. I'm glad I resigned when I did, but there has not been an effective and thorough Secretary since, which has been a great loss to the organization. The Board needs to address all of the root causes of this situation, but as far as I know from the minutes, they haven't. The most recent proposal was just to strip out all the oversight and parliamentary responsibilities of the position so someone would take it. Maybe you can imagine how that hits me.

People have to remember how hierarchies work. Those at the top will deny that they hold positions of power at the top of the hierarchy. They don't see anyone beneath them. All of the many people who are beneath them do see it, clearly, and attempt to fight for their equal rights, usually to the derision of the people at the top. Membership organizations are not supposed to be hierarchical. All members are equal members. Positions of responsibility are about service, not power. This is essential to maintain.

I know I, and others I served with, understood this and refused privilege or any ways we were treated as having any advantage from our positions. We didn't want points, we didn't want special favors, or to be seen as a member of a special group. That stance seems to have left our organizational values. We see quite a lot of favoritism. Of the three committee chairs who resigned their positions recently, only one was remarked upon, and repeatedly praised for her whole two years of service. 

The lead professional is supposed to learn about the legalities, foster Board education and support the Board and Committee volunteers to do their jobs well and serve with honor and pride in their work. Not pride in their positions...their service. What progress they are able to produce and nurture together. For the organization, and for the members who placed their trust in them. Not for the benefit of the power structure. Not to "support the staff." 

We just don't have that in place anymore. It's a huge loss, and until we restore some trust we will not see people step up for positions of responsibility. We have to do better. We have to do our best. And like OCF, we have to have an atmosphere where member rights are honored, supported, and held up by both the members and the power structure. We are supposed to be working together. We are not supposed to be in a situation laced with oppression, retaliation, and fear. 

You can watch the meeting here. 

Has to Be Said

 Just going to park this here so I can come back and listen some more. It's on a far deeper level than stuff I've found on FB. It's long so I couldn't really absorb it all at once. 

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLQzcOoWBmE

Overreach

 One thing about narcissists is they will definitely overreach...they feel so invincible and have so carefully constructed their perimeter and filled their foreground with sycophants. We are seeing this in the macrocosm brutally right now with what will be thousands of lives lost in a mad rush to avoid accountability. It's more than sickening and many of us have levels of fear that can't be tamped down. We know about the warehouses. We are paying attention. 

I took advantage of a sucker hole in the skies this morning to ride my bike downtown for bread and to put up a couple of Jell-O Show posters. I hadn't been on my bike much at all since December and only a time or two in January, and was worried I didn't have the grip strength yet for the brakes. Also I hate to be cold and I really had to just make myself do it. And it went very well, no problems with my body and only a little bit of rain. I didn't dilly-dally so I just made it before it got wet again. Nothing I feared happened. 

I am one who often lets my fears keep me from things, despite all the ways I know how to not do that, and how it always proves that the fears or anxiety were the worst parts of the experience. I remember seeing a general fear in many people older than me and now I do know more of what they were fearful of, but sensible or not, the fear can be a robbery. This will be a constant battle for me for whatever life I have remaining, I am guessing, but I can also try hard not to drag other people into my fear scenarios.

But what if...? Well, it isn't happening now, so let's just take a step. We can always step back to safety. And if we can't, we have skills and we know other people who have skills. 

Safety for some of us took a long time to establish as we just had to keep testing and trying. When I think back on some of the things I did when I was younger, I really wonder about my motivations. They tend to be more clear now, but not always. Fear is just built into a world full of domination and predation. We can do our best at avoidance, with that accompanying loss, but stuff still happens that we do not want to take on. Yet we have to, and we will. 

I so admire people who stride forward with confidence and courage. It's okay with me that it is often just a goal, because at least it is something I can imagine, if not quite enact. It is probably sometimes scary for those people too, but something is an override for them. Protecting the weak or innocent, preserving something irreplaceable, or just seeing injustice and not being able to live with it, are all reasons people act. Seldom are we called to dive into freezing water but sometimes we can imagine cases where we would do that. I remember when we were rafting when my son was little and he fell off. I didn't even think before falling off with him, even though of course that was not what the guide thought was a good idea at all. For him, two people to rescue, but for me, only one. I didn't even have a thought first, as I remember it, but I expect I did. It was I am connected to my child. A simple thought. 

But it is not always that clear, and sometimes we just have to realign with our values and take those small steps forward. I made a lot of rules for myself in the past few years of navigating my organizations and community, that were based in my values but were mostly about protecting my own self, from predation but also from the ways I know that I could serve to be inadequate.

For instance, I am not a good liar. I have intentionally not developed better lying skills...my own level of self-delusional thinking is plenty on that score, and I catch myself rationalizing and in denial as much as anyone. But trying to deceive another person for my own purposes, not interesting to me. So even though I know that to be honest makes me vulnerable, and it's regularly inconvenient and misunderstood, I just adopted being honest as a core value. I remember doing that a few times. There's a haunting page in my autograph book from about age five, from the mom of my best friend, that read "Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive." It's haunting because it hit home hard, and immediately, and I could not quote any other page in that little book. I worked on that. 

And not because I was raised Catholic with a side dish of bad boy mischief, though that main dish of guilt and shame I was served repeatedly was what built my bones, but because I did have a wish to be loved, and she was one of the kind adults I needed to love me. She probably did. I've always been loved far more than I believed I deserved to be. Probably hated that way, too...to be honest.

So I do have a sense of justice about the truth, if not the skills to know how to deal with the liars and cheats. I've heard myself say things like "ordinary people can't fix this." I saw what happened in South Korea with the guy who tried to seize power, when so many people just came out and stood there, witnessing, that the situation was decided and proceeded to justice. I read writers every day who want this to happen in this country, and I know many people do, but it isn't happening. All of us ordinary people are too scared. And it will be inconvenient. 

It isn't happening in the microcosm either. Despite the widespread knowledge of insider politics in a couple of my organizations, they keep succeeding in doing their damage. Interestingly, they often use the language and methods of oppressive cultures like white supremacy culture and we fail to put the pieces together and call it out. We are assured that efficiency, common practice, and professionalism are the reasons that things are done, not sense of urgency, power of the few, and only one right way kinds of thinking. Most Americans are so far out of touch with racism and control tactics that it is easy for them to just "assume the best" of the leaders and push down dissent or their own feelings of discomfort when they know something is not quite just or fair. There are always plenty of reasons. But that is being so rapidly destroyed by the insanity of the overreach that it even seems hopeful that the oppression will fall apart. Sometimes evil doesn't win. 

And the situations seldom seem important enough to just stop, call them out, and deal with them in a better way. I read in the FFN a letter from the Secretary of the org saying that something their board was doing was unethical and uncommon, and it disenfranchised the members. It didn't change the outcome and I haven't listened to any discussion at the meeting but I heard that some used justifications that they made up and tried to present them as the thoughts of someone who recently died. It sounded like it was beyond shameless. I wonder how many voices were raised. More to the point, what will they do next time? Probably they will change the policies to put the practice into a firmer space, like the bylaws. That's a common tactic for entrenched power. "Let's just change the rules so we can do what we want to do."

And because things like policy are complex, it takes everyone else awhile to catch on to it, if they even bother. So many qualified volunteers have walked away from unfair power dynamics that some of these organizations are hollow enough to resonate like a fallen rotting tree. 

Alarms are so loud for me that I experience dissonance every day, am numbed a lot of the time, and just resort to work to ease my discomfort, trying hard to limit input and keep trying to operate as the work piles up. I constantly feel like I might be doing things for the last time. I made myself stop climbing the apple tree...someday I will have to make myself stop climbing the ladder to the roof. Someday I will have to give away my bike. And my trailer. And everything in this house, and my shop, for that matter.

But I don't have to do all that today. I planned a course for something knotty I have to do, and took the first couple of steps, and I will keep working on it no matter how scary it gets. I know I am safe writing about it in my journal, even if I'm no longer safe here, and can't call anyone to talk me down. I know I can do the whole task, when I break it up into steps to take one at a time. I've been here before.

And I will go downtown and stand there when the time really comes. Maybe I'll let myself get herded into the warehouse with the rest of my compatriots. We'll have all the good songs.

Hold On

 

 

Other people know how to do this stuff and really, so do we

 I just moved this one to the top so it wouldn't be buried underneath all the posts from January I put here yesterday. It's also still in the place it was before, not removed.

Wow, go listen to Viola Davis' speech at the NAACP Image awards. I cried hard. She said that hell is when you find yourself at the end of your life: the person you became facing the person you could have become. That hit deep. That whole broadcast was filled with life and affirmation. Courage, and clear seeing. All the best qualities: strength, resilience, determination. Never giving up. I am a huge fan of how the Black community deals with the world. No wonder we still want them to save us from ourselves. I feel the same about the Jewish and Latino communities. I hate being white, I have to say. The peoples of the world don't make me feel that way, it is the actions of other white people that make me feel that way. Yeah, of course, not all white people. Just millions and millions of them, people who have not tried to pick up the tasks of the commons and do them fairly and justly. I'm very grateful to all of the people who have picked up their tools and tried to build a just world, and are still trying. It's not like we don't have the tools.

What would you have done if someone hadn't put their trauma on you? What would you have done if you hadn't been bullied, discouraged, blocked from finding your best self? What if you had been brave enough to do the things no one encouraged you to try? What if you hadn't given up when things seemed too hard? What makes you so afraid? What makes you so defensive? 

She said there is no man behind the curtain controlling your life. You already paid for your crown. 

I know she wasn't really speaking to me, a person who had plenty of privilege and opportunity to heal, plenty of support if I could have chosen to access it. The oppression I faced as a little white girl from the middle class was minor compared to the blocks people who are not seen as white feel every day of their lives. Even when they are celebrated for their efforts there are plenty of people ready to cut them down to some tiny place they don't choose to stand in. The amount of oppression for Black people during Black History Month this year was over the top, and you know it happens every damn day while we are just...doing other things. Complaining about the cost of mangos and avocados. 

I don't deserve her support and encouragement, though I have no doubt she would extend it to me, because she is kind in her fierceness. Many people are. I've felt their protection and seen them allow me to make mistakes that wounded others. I also watched a show about owning your mistakes and moving on, to restore your life and joy, without carrying that shame of doing something badly. Intellectually, I get it. Emotionally, I guess it is a practice I have to start doing every time I hear that self talk that cuts me down to a tiny place.

I've been reviewing some Board packets and minutes from previous years, yesterday 1990 and 2018. Packets full of committee reports, discussions, motions made, not made, reversed, and fought about. The market discourse was always, over the many decades, robust. We talked about everything, at the table, not hidden from the other members. We shared the work, and the blame if it was flawed work, and we repaired what we could and kept trying to do better. We didn't work as individuals subject to burning ourselves out, we worked as a community to share the load. And we wrote it all down.

There were 36 separate items in just this typical month, November 2018, including eleven reports plus separate minutes from task forces and committees. Eleven Committees and Task Forces.  Research the GM had done, the census, the financial report, the Annual Meeting preparatory packet, everything from planning for the 50th Anniversary, which we celebrated in 2019, to a Board Self-evaluation, with Task forces working on the Downtown and Park Blocks redesign process, The Street Team which developed the Guidebook, and a proposal for a website rebuild which we did then spend $10 grand on. No withdrawal from savings for any of all that. We weren't making any more money then, we were simply being managed by a professional with skills. With a staff she trained to do what needed doing. She trained the Advertising Manager, the Site Crew, the other support staff. She handled things. She earned that salary. 

Collaboration was a given. Many people came aboard because it was a pleasure to be in meetings where things were done and respect was maintained. We had fun, we made tons of improvements, and we frequently shared our history as we approached that celebration. We planned a party that we never got to have, and which people paid for and were never reimbursed. That didn't happen because of the pandemic. All of it continued just fine throughout the pandemic, even when we couldn't meet and lost the first ten markets of 2020. When we lost that manager, we did falter, but not so much until this current power structure decided that they'd get behind this mismanagement no matter what. 

What would we have been if we didn't accept these limits? It didn't come from the outside, it came from within. I got tired of speaking up and not being heard, and being forced to participate in things that were not ethical, and walked away. At the time I told myself I didn't want to blow it all up, which was a huge mistake that kept things buried that should have seen the light of day. Things were broken that didn't have to be. I didn't want to hurt other volunteers, and I still don't. Group process is what everyone does together. It isn't supposed to be a place where people are unsafe. 

I still have the pieces, and we could put them back together if people had the will. Instead we are told that sharing information is "leaking" as if it were state secrets. It's the members' business! We should all know all about it. There's no mutual benefit in hiding everything that needs to be worked on and made whole. This is common knowledge...you can't fix what you refuse to address. 

We should know how many people did not get their $40 work deposits back from HM after they did their work tasks. We should know how many people had to pay twice when their payments were mismanaged. How many donations did not make it to the Kareng Fund? I know of one...but we should know how that was corrected. We should know who goes away hurt or destroyed by bullying they are ashamed they couldn't handle. We should stand with the victims of bullying instead of shoving it under the rug. We get no information now, so we can't address things and we can't fix them. 

We need those committees and task forces and that collaboration. I was surprised to find a park blocks redesign in 1990 that somehow I missed remembering...a few spaces were lost and the process was clear to fix it. The displaced people were given first choice to reserve what was available, like we did when the deck changed people's spaces in a later time. I didn't pull that policy out of nowhere, it was brought forward that people get spaces in point order. We had to make a new map for HM before...and it was done by starting over in point order, everyone choosing new spaces. That was the most fair way. That was not how this latest map was filled. Without history and a Task Force, I dread this new iteration of the Park Blocks redesign. 

We worked hard to do everything in the most fair way, and if people disagreed, we listened to them and made the corrections we needed to make to right the situation as well as we could. Of course not every decision was the best one, but it all depended on the people in the room at the time, and there were always many. There was no risk in speaking up. There was never any real effort to get everyone to agree...we just had to ask as many people as possible to determine what would best serve the common good. In 1990 someone asked for what may have been the first LOA. Policies were written that are still policy today. When the jewelry guidelines needed work, all of the jewelers were called in to meet.

The same in 2018...policies were gathered by the Policy and Procedure Task Force, collated and revised so everything was brought forward and we didn't have to do the work over and over again. People didn't have to depend on memory, they had documentation. It took a lot of work, painstaking work, but it was so important to do it, as we have certainly seen. Except our members can't access that work, those documents and those policies. Without permission. 

We had embezzlement in 1989, and it's right there in the minutes. Ironically that manager had been hired to "make us more like a business." An employee took the days' receipts home where a roommate stole from them, getting away with $4500. They both resigned, and the money was not recovered. It took a few months to reconstruct what had happened. We barely even had a computer then. When Bill was hired, he knew what protections to put into the bylaws, what money-handling processes to put in place, what types of audits we needed to have checks on what the staff was doing. It was his responsibility to do that. We always had audits, which are not free...but obviously they can save a lot of money when there are mistakes being made. We haven't had an audit since Kirsten left in 2021. We can afford it. We have to afford it.

I'm so sad about how things have played out these last three years. It didn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be this way. Until I was bullied repeatedly, I was able to share a lot of how we historically handled things, so nothing had to be reinvented that would cause a loss of what made us strong and just. My life is too short now to be bullied. I can't help this Board, without sacrificing the years of my life that bullying takes from my body. I can't let market kill me after investing my life in it. 

Please see the big picture. Restore the trust and good will and collaboration we always had solidly in place. Restore the transparency and accountability. Don't accept excuses and lies and cover-ups. This is far too important of an organization to lose. Make it safe to disagree and a joy to work together. If you can't do that, please resign.  

 

"Something Nice" vs. Being Honest

 From January 16th. I'll keep the rest private for now. 

 

 Writing here still feels better since I doubt the stalkers have finished with the other blog. I'm determined not to give them any help or anything dramatic to entertain them. I'm dissecting my own attraction to having an audience and a part in the change that needs to happen, but I know I can get a report on the latest if I want to...just pushing that away as long as I can. But of course I am curious.

I got a text yesterday from one of the Board members inviting me to coffee, under the guise of social interaction. At face value, this is one of my Park Blocks neighbors wanting to catch up a little, but she is failing to acknowledge the reality that ever since she was elected to the Board, she has avoided speaking to me, numerous times. I tried to let her know right in the beginning that there was an alternate story to "support our staff" but she blanked quickly and we didn't speak of it again. I watched her submit to the charm offensive of the narcissist several times and saw the rewards she got...a mention in the minutes for knowing the stats of booth fees needed the additional category of "median" sales totals, since average was simply dividing the total by the number of sellers and wasn't very useful as a stat. She got that a few times but the last set from October did not give us the median. She also got to be one of the in-crowd and got to turn her 6-month term into another 18 months despite vote of no confidence from the membership.

So at HM, we were not in close proximity but I am right next to the office so I noticed her passing by many times and looking in the opposite direction, but I also did not seek her out and had only been polite the last few months anyway, when we were there at the end of the day as a couple of the last ones. She has tried mothering behavior to me many times and I have even told her not to mother me, as it is disrespectful behavior to me, someone who obviously does know what I am doing and doesn't need parenting. To be fair I've avoided her too, and I don't think she reads my other blog, though probably she has engaged in discussions about it at the Board, or at least gossip, level. She wrote a column to the members which was in two of the final newsletters. 

Without going back to read it again, I remember two points, one being "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," and the other saying it would be a shame if all voices were not being heard in crafting solutions to the problems facing the market. It didn't seem directly aimed at me, and in fact there are probably a number of people giving feedback to the Board at the meetings, as I was told they are regularly three hours or more. I think members are trying to engage in solutions, but I haven't gotten a full report of a Board meeting in a few months and just have the minutes to go on, obviously a very incomplete picture. 

And my position about helping this Board is that as long as they are enabling and protecting the narcissist, I won't be engaging with them, as I won't engage with her. I've had a very few private conversations with a very few Board members. I've written letters a few times, with bullying or non-empathetic non-responses. 

The person who loudly and violently bullied me on Xmas Eve also wrote in her post about the "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all," trope. This is so discordant with the actual time we are living in, I wonder how they sleep at night. In the macrocosm, both of these women have no problem speaking out against the political powers, with actions and language that are not necessarily described by "nice." Maybe they do speak nicely privately with people they disagree with, and maybe they are being consistent in a way, because they can't say something nice to me so they say nothing, with the wild exception of the bullying FB post that vilified the Kareng Fund trying to punish me. 

That was a serious loss of control on that person's part, and I attribute it to a shame spiral, a trauma pattern of people who can't handle being noticed when they do something wrong or inappropriate...they get angry and defensive if you point it out, and attack you for speaking up. I've analyzed the way I spoke up, and I'm a little part sorry for it, except that I did not name the person, just reported on the behavior, and the pattern of it that she had been using to hurt and intimidate other members who had been trying to speak up and engage in their own ways. Those previous incidents were what pretty much drove volunteers from engaging, not only with the committee she chaired, but with all of the committees. Our members tend to vote with their distancing...there were only 48 voters in the last election, which was a protest vote by many, though it was spun that people just don't want to vote when there aren't any real choices. We've had elections many times when only a small number of people voted, and many when there were only as many candidates as open positions, but with this admin we have seen subtle tactics to discourage candidates and manage the elections for a "favorable" outcome, one which "supports the staff." People see that and I know people, me included, who didn't vote for the first time in decades. 

I've written before about this message which devalues the members and portrays us as mean people who do not help and value our staff members, as a false narrative spread by the liar in charge. She is good at seeding these narratives which could be true, but only pull out a tiny part of our social culture and current dynamics and make that the main story. We saw that in spades in the KLCC interview. I had a lot of issues with that spun-out snapshot of a market that is limited and all about the narcissist and her friends, but one of them is that historical details and tales about our culture were falsified and now exist in the public record as what she wants the world to know about our organization. 

Sometimes these things are exacerbated by the media representatives not really understanding us at our best, but that is the job of those who speak for us to get it out there how we are at our best. Not to feature a person as a "ball-breaker," as what does that say about our artisans? Nothing endearing. Not to spin the tale of our problems hiring a good GM. That stuff is confidential to begin with, and the interview revealed the corruption of that last "hiring" and between the lines of that story is a humiliating and sad story about our sometimes weak and unprofessional leadership. I mean, that stuff comes out in the archives, but it is not promotional to make that the public story. And I've already written about how it trashed our relationship with the city. 

But what I really found the most objectionable about the recent communications was the quote from Thumper the rabbit from the 50's Disney movie Bambi. Your mother, and mine, used to repeat that at us, trying to get us not to fight with our siblings or say mean things as kids. Disney narratives are not adult narratives. The mother burns up in a fire (not many Disney mothers live) and the too-young Bambi has to step up to do their own protection in a mean world. Disney is not and never was a progressive reality we should emulate. Do some critical analysis, people. Being nice and not saying something to avoid hurting feelings is a dodge we use to protect the right of comfort that is part of the white supremacy culture. How can you not know this now? 

As a twenty-some, I had lots of thoughts about the word "nice" and how it limits behavior and hides the truth and I really thought that was far in my past, so it made me laugh that this is what is thrown at me and others who care enough about the situation we're in to be honest about the sources of it. You can't just be nice in this complex world. It is not going to effect change. EVERYONE can see this in the macrocosm, but these people are still using it to make the microcosm dysfunctional. I'm way beyond that. Truth is far, far more desirable than niceness and you can watch tons of films with that message, films that were not made by Disney seventy-five years ago. 

So no, I will not be going to coffee with this person, even though at face value she could have just wanted to connect. What I heard, in the background, was the narcissist sending a flying monkey to see if I could be fooled into helping them solve these problems they created. She let it slip when she asked/told me about my HM experience. Was it good for me, didn't the wider aisles and the Atrium "seem to help?"

Nope. I liked the wider aisles in some places, but my sales were down 15% and I got bullied brutally. No, it was not a good HM for me. Did she want to talk about the bullying, send me some empathy from the Board, or engage in solution discussions? If so, she didn't mention those things. Either they didn't mean anything to her, or she wanted to wrap them in some friendship cotton so she could try to bring me in. I'm sure I'm paranoid about this, but we aren't friends. We barely speak at market, and I will give her the benefit of the doubt that she needs social interaction in the offseason, but trying to get it from me is extremely sus. 

I'm having plenty of social interaction, more than I want. I'm very busy with the Jell-O Art Show, getting my stock filled in, and getting ready for surgery. I didn't tell her why I said no, being "nice" and not questioning why she was coming to me. I know how to be polite. I thanked her for asking.

But that was a big hell no that needed writing about. Now if I could only get back to doing it in a more public way...still feeling bullied, so it may be awhile. I heard the bully resigned from leading the committee she was on, but I don't know if that was in a huff, on the advice of the Board, or her own realization that she did damage. I fear for the subtle damage it did to the Kareng Fund, after two years of microagressions from the narcissist. There are over two hundred artisans who have benefited from our work as a nonprofit that supports people who need it. That attack was criminal. I don't believe there was any apology tendered for that, which as Secretary I would probably have heard about. Doesn't matter anyway. The damage can't be undone. We just have to keep moving forward. But to shred a safety net at a time like this shows some people really have their heads in the sand. I don't want to play in that sandbox.   

 

Amorphous Grief

 From Janauary 8th. Boy was I writing.

Even writing all day yesterday didn't exhaust me. I'm pulling up so many emotions from the past while also feeling numb that I can't focus on work and it seems very peripheral. 

I think I felt George leave his body last night, in my confusing dream that woke me up, and in my unease that sat in my lap all evening. I couldn't really eat, read, or do the things I meant to do yesterday. I know that grief is not any one thing and that I am in it, so I am trying to stay quiet, comfort myself, and let the emotions come. At the same time there is this quiet and remove that I am inhabiting where it is like nothing is happening. 

Discovering the shame spiral triggered me from within which can be just as destructive, but more clearly self-destructive. I gave up drinking but normally this would be the time I would drink something, escape somehow, set myself aside for a bit so I can move through it and come out with some healing inside. I'm trying to do that without the alcohol and I think I can, but that makes me feel weak and I tell myself things like alcohol has a positive purpose sometimes and this might be one of those, and so on. If it didn't involve going to the store I would have something potent.

I'll try to work, and I'll write. I'll hold my kitty and let her feel my heart. She likes it too. I need to put away the Xmas decorations and get out the Jell-O, so I'll try. I feel like I did the winter that we lost not only my son's grandmother but one of the treasured children of our community, and I made a sculpture called Hope. It helped. Art is important in these times, as is reading to be inspired, and reminding myself to just feel what is coming up and try not to judge myself.

Looks like the sun is coming up so I could have yardwork therapy, and probably will do that instead of sorting out my hats and bags. It's a long way until April so I can take my time with that, except for the plan of getting all my printing done before surgery, which is also important.

I have to launch Jell-O though, as people are depending on me. I don't want anyone to be disappointed with me, ha ha. People pleasing is in there just as deep as anything else. My avoidance gets in my way really hard at times like this, but really it just creates more time to sort through emotions and let myself feel, instead of shifting to taking care of other people which I am not very good at to begin with. 

My dream last night that woke me up involved houses (which represent relationships). My mother's house, and the one I was going to bed in were next door to each other. I had my kitty with me but realized my son, who was young, was in my mother's house, all alone. When I got up in my summer nightgown (defenseless, vulnerable) I quickly went into her house but there was someone there. He was friendly and seemed to be there legitimately but my mother was not, and I panicked, pushed him out and locked the door. I had left the kitty in the other house but now I couldn't go out there to get her.

He hung around on the porch and put up a shirt to block my view from the window, so I couldn't see him or anything in the neighborhood, and then I woke up. My brain did not know what it was all about, but it felt like a nightmare and it felt like I was having trouble sleeping for no known reason.

Grief is so complex. My mother's 100th birthday is coming up, though she died in 2023 and didn't get enough closure on that, which I guess most people don't when it is their mother. I didn't understand the type of grief I had with her and still have to feel it and give it meanings I can add up in some coherent way. That's probably trying to impose a structure that doesn't fit and isn't required. 

I'm not religious and my spirituality is amorphous, so I get little comfort there, but I know I am psychic to some degree and highly empathetic, which is part of why I adopted this avoidance. I do not want to grieve in a crowd. I dissolve in tears at demonstrations and they bring up the trauma of the 70s when I fought in the streets against Vietnam and Nixon. I can write but that is sometimes all I can do, which seems like cold comfort. But there are people who do treasure my words and I treasure my ability to put them in beautiful order when I do that.

 So I try to pretend that I am doing my part and no one gets to tell me otherwise. I'm scared about money so I'm not sending any to whatever organizations need it...though I probably don't need to be as scared about money as I am. The surgery is listed as taking 10 minutes! How much can that cost? Guess I'll find out.

I'm going to go do something active, and let my mind roll around for awhile, maybe all day. I have to be human so that means imperfect, so I can let myself be that. No one knows about this blog, or anyway how to find it, and I wrote a short message on the other one to let people know I'm just not available for a bit. Let the stalkers take a break and worry about someone else, something else. Let them self-reflect that they silenced a writer. Let them go back and read some of the beautiful posts I wrote for the 50th season in 2019. Let them write their own stories.

I'll keep living and keep writing and keep trying to find space for all that needs to be done and felt. I do have faith in that. 

The Shame Spiral

 From January 7th.

 Wow it's so wet today. I'm unendingly grateful for a warm and dry house and happy that I learned how to provide for myself, gain safety, and have a life that is practical and free from existential threats.

I'm grieving my old friend George, who is no longer conscious though his body is still present I think. He could be dreaming, visiting us. I had a dream about riding behind him on a motorcycle, whispering I love you into his ear. He didn't respond...but I know he loved me too. We first met around 50 years ago, a little less maybe. He attended poker games at Hap's Garage and I was living with Hap Hazard, as he called himself then. George was a Scorpio and about 6 months younger than me, and I have Scorpio rising, but we connected for lots of reasons. He had a partner but we tried to date at one later point, too early in my personal development to have a mature relationship, but we stayed friends and kept the trust and collaboration as we grew in community.

I've been remembering those times and his familiar face. I don't need to visit his body, as I know there are dozens if not hundreds of people who also love him and want him to still be there for them. He had some wonderful qualities and such a soft and nurturing presence, plus all that charisma. I greatly admired him even though we didn't always agree, and I think I saw his true nature. He made a powerful impact on many lives and I am proud to be one of the artists he supported with his vision. Even though I was "just the screenprinter" I also got to paint the Treehouse, twice, and we shared fifty years of t-shirt projects, which makes him my longest and oldest collaborator. 

I kind of do want to go sit with him, to be honest. I just don't think I will help anyone who needs help right now. I told them my heart is with them. I've always been chicken about dealing with death, since my dad's was so traumatic, and I was young then, and I always think I will do better. I also think I prefer to grieve in private. I'll talk about it, I'll help spread the news, but I don't want to have to say any platitudes or join in any group tears. I'll continue to work on it, as we're solidly in the time of our lives when we will be losing everyone, until we are the one lost. 

I heard a new term today that seems useful, the shame spiral. It's the reaction that happens when you feel shamed, and are sent into a process of defense, self-protection, and full display of your woundedness in that area. I've felt it, and seen it happen to others, but it's good to remember that this can help explain the seemingly outsize reaction people have when their errant behavior is addressed and acknowledged. They can't acknowledge it until they see the spiral themselves, track the process, identify their wound, and get to the healing. All of these types of healing take years. Shame is such a powerful emotion, imposed from without.

As someone raised as a Catholic, I'm well aware of how it feels. I can sometimes distinguish it from guilt, which is about what you did, not what someone else thinks about it. They get locked together sometimes, when the shame makes you feel guilty...but sometimes your outrage is because you don't feel like you did anything that deserved being shamed. And sometimes you didn't. I often find myself framing things as if there were a courtroom and a judge and jury, with all of my evidence and justifications. But I think I am learning to just sit with the guilt feelings, which usually can point out at minimum something I could have done better, and put the shame back on the source. 

I told someone they didn't have the right to scold me, and it's the same with shame. People don't have the right to shame you. However, often, they didn't, but your woundedness tells you they did, and you go into the spiral. If you did something that hurt them, or caused a problem, people have the right to bring it up and look for redress or point out a better action, but not to attack you for it. If they don't have the skills to have a rational and productive, problem-solving discussion, perhaps they are not the person who should address it with you. It takes skills and practice to keep that kind of discussion helpful. 

Many of us revert to parent-talk, bringing back the way our parents dealt with their need to guide or correct our behaviors. I felt lots of shame as a kid, sometimes put on me intentionally and sometimes just the reaction I had learned to feel as a little kid under attack. It was the 50s. My Mom was pretty good at parenting after helping raise her 9 siblings, but my Dad was toxic and barely tried to learn. My parents had a lot of late night discussions but I don't think there was any evidence that my Dad learned any better ways. I think he did carry a lot of shame. But all of that is decades old and it's more useful to pry into current issues and look at what I could be doing better.

Any kind of righteous crusade is fraught and I know I am falling close to that line with my need to help the market to get better management and get back on track. I'm frequently feeling shamed and scolded for telling the truth, which makes me even more determined to keep doing that. It's probably useful to go back to one of the primary experiences with lying that happened to me when I was maybe 8 or 9, not sure exactly. My older sister and I got to go to the yacht club with my dad, one of the only times I remember having any kind of nearly one-on-one experiences with my dad. He sent me up to the bar to get cokes for us, a huge treat we never got except at the yacht club, and on the way back along the dock, I took a sip from mine, and then because I had less than my sister, I took a sip from hers. I proavly did it twice, because my deprivation was a prime driver of my actions then.  I had no idea that I was being watched the whole time and I lied about it, denying trying to somehow get myself on equal footing with my sister, which was the underlying problem which of course was not understood or ever addressed. My sister and I were adversaries in many ways until we were adults, and talked about out mutual feelings of not being seen and heard as children. We took it out on each other for at least two decades until my dad's death changed the subject. 

But anyway, I was full of bad feelings and must have been promised some kind of discipline when we got home, and the day was spoiled. My father chose to make his point about lying by washing my mouth out with a bar of soap, witnessed by the whole family. It wasn't the first time I had lied. Lying was no doubt an adaptive behavior I had learned to get myself some safety in the previous years. One of my friends' mothers had written about it in my autograph book, and I can still see that entry in my mind, on the pastel page, reading "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." I was always grateful to her for even noticing me at all, but I puzzled over this and didn't really understand the level of my lying, and it could have been a major problem among many problems. I was also a bully to my little sisters, as secretly as I could be, which is just part of the same attempt to get out from under domination and control. We often try out domination and control as that's what we're seeing and feeling.

So a complicated early memory and I doubt I vowed that day to never lie again, because I focused on the cruelty of the punishment and the feelings of being utterly unloved, misunderstood, and threatened, as well as hurt. I don't eat cilantro...just one persistent soap issue. I vividly remember the incident in great detail. I wonder if I confessed anything about it. Confession was also a shame and guilt experience with a male authority figure so I probably did, or didn't. I remember confession vividly as well but not that one in particular. Someday I'll think more about my "sins" back then. But my point is that either within or despite these early experiences, at some point in my life I realized my main values included honesty.  

All this to say that the shame spiral is what I believe I set in motion with my observation of someone's immature behavior, which launched some vicious anger at me, and others, at a really bad time. It explains to me why I don't want another interaction with that person, even if it were an attempt to make it better, an apology or process or whatever. I don't even want anyone to defend me (because, oh lord, I am guilty of the following sins...) I just want it to never happen again. I don't want the person to be punished, since they punished themself by making the situation a hundred times worse than my little observation warranted. Part of my guilt is paying attention to that person in the first place. The only thing that's working for me with this group of people is pretending as hard as I can that they don't exist, and certainly don't have any power over me. They try to.

Some of them are in power positions over me, and have shown that they will exert that power, but that has only happened in small ways and I wonder if they are in touch enough with themselves and their own lying to realize that their power over me isn't effecting my compliance with their control tactics. Doubting that they have any self-awareness, but since I know I am nuanced, I try to think that they are too, and working on their issues, which like mine, are really hard to keep on top of. Childhood damage persists, as it is so deeply embedded when we are so vulnerable. It drives a lot of unfortunate behaviors.

Circling back, I don't like remembering the ways I wasn't mature with my dying companion in life, but we got past them rather easily as it turns out, with his insistence on reassuring me that even though my imaginary construction of what we would create together wasn't going to happen, we still created a lot together! We set aside our shame and worked on friendship. Respect, openness, just loving each other without romantic attachment worked. I do think I saw him as he was. I do think he also saw me.

Of course we had fifty years to do it. This other thing just happened. Other people may address it, and because it wasn't just an incident about me, but a larger pattern, it needs to be addressed. People with skills have to do that. That's why it is so damn important to choose good leaders for these complex community organizations. They need a big toolbox of skills and when they don't have those, chaos follows and that's where we are. 

George had a lot of skills, but most of what he did in public for the last while as he served on the Board of OCF, was to just be in the room. He was always calm and deliberate and strong, not drawing attention to himself, but sticking to the business of the org. I'm sure he had his weaknesses and made his mistakes. There was plenty I didn't know, but I always remember that he was a wrestler. He once said that Kesey and his people wouldn't really like him if they really knew him. They connected through wrestling and wood, and if I remember right, George was asked to make Ken's coffin. 

George will have a very well-crafted resting place and parts of the sauna will be his legacy made visible, but his real legacy resides in how he was able to bring so much creativity to fruit in others. I'm going to think of him in his garden, the last place I spent time with him really, when I was painting the Treehouse the second time. He had just lost Katherine, and he invited me in to see where her box was and other parts of his private sacred space. The Treehouse was being repainted as a part of a memorial to her, which I think was derailed by the pandemic. They had a smaller safer gathering.

I also remember when he came by the market to connect with me after her death. He held me while I shook and wept into that vest he always wore, and he held me as long as I needed it, even though his grief was obviously huge and not mine. My grief was for him, was really empathy, very deeply. When he released me and I wiped my tears, he said "Good talk."