Mississippi Soul - Abandoned, Part 3
Relaxing on a rocking chair outside the Tallahatchie Tavern near Greenwood, Mississippi Delta
Firstly, some notes on this blog post:
• I’d planned the third installment of my ‘Abandoned Series’ to feature the decline of the Mississippi Delta, with a soulful musical slant. But with most of the Delta bars - otherwise known as ‘Juke Joints’ - still closed due to COVID, my research options were limited, thus, this post has taken a different angle. It’s now about abandonment of our true selves, why we do it, and its consequences.
• There is much, much more I want to explore in the Delta and share with you – watch this space.
• I’ve ‘borrowed’ from a few of my favourite authors. What they’ve written is more eloquent and sophisticated than I can muster.
• Trying to write it was a bit like this:
‘When I get overwhelmed with what I’m going to write what feels like a symphony inside me, I freeze up, and cry, and spend most of my day cleaning the floor or the toilets so I don’t have to face my own ineptitude (in my case, I am more likely to distract myself with anything related to mothering). To start writing again, I turn to Hemingway’s reminder; “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” We just have to tell each next truth we hear from within. And this is what frees us from the very unique cages our own egos have constructed for us.’ ‘Mary Magdalene Revealed’, Meggan Watterson.
So, this is what I have tried to do. It’s very long – more like a book chapter - and rather personal, but if you’re able to find the time to read it, hopefully you will find some kernel of truth in there for yourself.
Mississippi Soul – Abandoned Series, Part 3
After 5 months of intense 24/7 time with the 5 other members of my family - due to COVID Pandemic restrictions - I was in need of some alone time. As I drove in solace through the vast, fertile land that is the Mississippi Delta, listening to Alannah Myles ‘Black Velvet’ – ‘with that slow Southern style’, I felt a magnetism to a place that I had heard about my whole life - but really knew little about. Much like the Bermuda Triangle, I wondered, once here, would I ever leave - not physically, but my soul? As I neared the Delta town of Greenwood, I was expecting what Charley Pride sings about in his song ‘Mississippi Cotton Picking Delta Town’ - ‘one dusty street, you walk up and down, and nothing much to see but a starving town’; but instead, I just felt an overwhelming sense of suction – like I was being drawn into a new world. But rather than aliens and strange lands, this world was embellished with God, love, fertility, music, creativity, and a dark past. Its mysteries drew me into its web and captured me. An alluvial, gold bearing, triangular land - what secrets would I discover on my 2 day escape from reality?
1. Abandoning our true selves (I’m calling this my ‘Before Memphis’, or BM time)
I wrote the introduction above when I was IN the Delta, and feeling an immense energy from the heavens, earth, and all around me. A couple of weeks later, as I was still integrating these intense emotions, I was walking through the forest near my home, when I looked up to see a gargantuan spider web - so intricate and perfectly balanced - with a bug trapped in the middle, flailing its legs around trying to escape. I then proceeded to see smaller spider webs scattered everywhere. I’ve been on this same walk many times, yet that was the first time I’d really noticed them. It was then that I realised what this post needed to be about. It’s not about the Mississippi Delta – its history, its decline, or its music; rather, it’s about the entrapment we find ourselves in when we abandon our true selves - that divine soul that was put on earth with a specific mission to enact. It’s about how we can get caught up in a vortex, one that may not necessarily be the right one for us – but one that we’ve been subtly conditioned (usually unconsciously) to think is right – by our upbringing, society, the Church – and once in there, it can be hard to get out without being sucked back in.
My suspicions that I was going through some sort of transformation - and had been for a while now - were confirmed, and I well and truly embraced the fact that I was experiencing a ‘midlife crisis’, or as I prefer to say ‘spiritual awakening’.
I was beginning to realise that as I woke up to myself and became more conscious of my own past conditioning, I was drawing in closer to the vortex that WAS the right one for me, and it had started by going deeper into myself - into my heart – rekindling a part of myself that I thought was long lost in childhood, that true essence of me. The one that had been sent to the background and was hiding under all the different layers and masks I’d tried to cover it up with. Sure, there have been numerous times since my teenage years that I’ve delved and dabbled back into creative and spiritual pursuits, but none of them stuck for long enough for me to truly embrace them.
I wondered, why do we abandon our true selves?
What is it that we hide from?
How is that we can so easily get entrapped into an intricate web of societal conditioning – the shoulds, the should nots, the do’s and don’ts?
I was a bit of sensitive kid, a middle child, the Switzerland of the family, and perhaps shared some traits with what some might now call an empath. I (mostly) always wanted to do the right thing – ‘a people pleaser’ as I’ve been called on numerous occasions - and I realise now how destructive that can be to the true self.
Family photo, I’m on the far left and I’m guessing I’m about 9 or 10 here, perhaps 1982 or 1983
This passage I recently read from Elizabeth Su struck a chord:
‘For a lot of empaths, people-pleasing tendancies first develop in the form of self-protection. Since we can feel people’s disapproval, judgments & criticisms so strongly, we learn at a very early age to give people what they want and to avoid the pain of their disappointment. This turns into a vicious cycle of overgiving, overachieving, and overanalyzing our way through life.’
I needed to read this a few times, and I wondered, at one point in my life, did I pull the shutters down over my heart, zip it up, and build an almost unbreakable armour around it to protect my sensitive nature? Did I continue to do this over and over as a worker and then as a mother?
Sue Monk Kidd also writes about this in ‘When The Heart Waits’, the personal story of her midlife transformation:
‘Many of us learned to be afraid of the feelings inside ourselves. Perhaps when we risked expressing them, we met with astonishment and admonishment, which led to embarrassment and vulnerability. So gradually we build an ego structure in which we separated ourselves from our feelings and avoided deep self-disclosure, even to ourselves.’
Reading this was one of those ‘aha’ moments for me. I could picture that young, awkwardly tall, embarrassed kid doing exactly that many times throughout my childhood.
But life went on - and it was pretty great - but rather than follow that creative spiritual path which my heart wanted and needed, I found myself falling into roles that were a means to an end – paying the bills and saving to travel. Eventually this led into a career that I thoroughly enjoyed, but focused more on the logistical, organising side of my brain. What was lacking, was soul or heart-centred work, and what I didn’t realise at the time was that I was moving further away from that ‘true essense’ of myself, and I squashed down any sensitive, vulnerable, or awkward emotions that ever arose.
I think unconsciously, and due to societal programming, I believed ‘Motherhood’ was the ‘Holy Grail’ of being a female. I do believe it is one of the most amazing jobs in the world that I’m privileged to be able to do, but it’s perhaps also where so many of us start (or continue as in my case) to abandon our true selves in the form of self-sacrifice for our children. We’re biologically wired to protect and nurture, but with continuous pressure all around us on one of the most judged jobs in the world, it can be hard to truly follow your heart, or gut instinct. It can also be another way we unconsciously defer getting back to the core of our true self, as we’re just too busy tending to all the needs of our little ones.
Taken in January 2014 when the children were 8, 7, 5 and 3
As Beth Berry writes in her book ‘Motherwhelmed’:
‘Self-sacrifice as a life-style isn’t sustainable. Eventually, it leads to resentment, burnout, and an unkind, distorted sense of self.’
It took me 10 years of mothering to finally accept and be happy with my own style of parenting. In that time, I’d continued to wrap further layers of armour around my heart when I was on the receiving end of judgement, but this helped me to cope, and I needed it to survive. I still wobble around this quite often, but deep down, I know that I am doing my best, in the only way I know how.
As wonderful as motherhood is - and on so many occasions it feels like my heart will explode with love for my children - it’s still a love for someone else, not myself. There have been times as a mother that I’ve felt like a shell of my old self, a bit like in this image: lonely, empty, isolated, unhinged, light on the outside but dark on the inside, and totally bereft of who I really was:
Abandoned building in Greenwood, Mississippi Delta
But as the children have become older, and less physically demanding, I’ve slowly been able to get closer to what I feel to be the true essence of me.
As Beth Berry also writes:
‘Your truth can only be found in your heart. You are the only one with access to it. Often, our personal truths are deeply buried beneath other people’s perception of truth or teachings that claim the truth. Discovering our deepest personal truth takes time. It often requires that we sift and sort and drill through crusted-over layers of shame, protection, hurt, and fear. Once we find our truth, however, we have found our internal compass. Our deepest knowing. Our timeless wisdom. Digging that deep is a brave, bold move and one of the most radical acts of love and healing on the planet. You can feel it when you’ve hit a vein of truth. It feels like absolute resonance. It feels like soul food of the purest sort. It feels like pure light shining on your very essence. It feels like you’ve finally made your way home.’
I needed to let that sit for a while…
Even though I felt I was finally able to hold that armour and be confident in my parenting choices, something still niggled. When I asked my Dad one day ‘what is my purpose?’, he looked at me puzzled and said ‘to be a mother of course’, but I knew in that moment that I needed it to be more. Yes, I always knew that being a mother was one of my missions, but it’s always felt like there was something else I was put on earth to do. I realised that all of those sensitive and vulnerable feelings I had squashed down as a kid had been bubbling to the surface for a few years, like a bouy in the ocean that the further you push down, the higher it jumps out after you let go. I had been doing all the things I thought I ‘should’ be doing in life, but I’d also been ignoring some of the things I’d maybe thought I shouldn’t.
But why doesn’t ‘should-ing’ serve us in the long run?:
‘It drowns out the voice of intuition. When preoccupied with what we ‘should’ be doing, it’s much more difficult to hear the quieter, less nagging wisdom deep within us. This disregard for our inner knowing further perpetuates the sense that something is missing and keeps us adding more in a futile attempt to satisfy our deepest longings.’ Beth Berry
And as HeathreAsh Amara writes:
‘When we create a life based on what we think we are supposed to do rather than from our own heart’s desire, we always feel like something is missing, that we are not quite free. There is a deeper longing that keeps calling us to stop conforming, to break the chains of our fears, to jump the fence of people’s opinions and find our innate wild happiness.’ (from the book Motherwhelmed)
Whilst I always knew that having 4 children was a decision that did come from deep within the heart, I often wondered, why we had ‘4’, instead of stopping at 1, 2, or even 3? Would a nuclear family have been more suitable to my sensitive tendencies?
Original signage (1950s perhaps) as seen on the Main Street of Greenwood, Mississippi Delta
Sure, we loved babies, we were good at it, and we wanted the kids to have siblings – but was part of my own reasoning so that I could keep hiding from myself, the real me?
Did I keep trying to cover over myself because I was too scared of who I really was?
Or was this it, as Beth Berry explains about herself:
‘Staying busy helped numb the pain of my perceived inadequacies.’?
In the absence of ‘the village’, which is how we were designed to raise children, mothers have been numbing the painful parts of motherhood in a variety of ways, for a long time - pharmaceuticals, alcohol, food etc, but I wondered, was having more babies just another method of numbing?
‘In many ways, we want to believe others’ needs are more important than ours because it saves us the pain of having to face how discontent or disconnected from our truths we really are. Motherhood is a wonderful hiding place when we can’t bear to face the truth of our own soul-starvation.’ Beth Berry
Was that what I was doing too, unconsciously?
Did this become a form of mask that I’d been wearing throughout my life?
Do we all wear them, and it’s just part of the experience of being human?
Do any of us ever ‘unmask’, or do some of us wear those masks for life?
Is this what we do when we abandon our true selves?
These are all questions I’ve been asking myself over the last few years, but the vacuum feel of the Delta seems to have brought them to a head.
Abandoned building outside Greenwood, Mississippi Delta
2. Letting go of the false self (‘Before Memphis’ or BM)
I’ve always felt like having my 4th child was a kind of divine intervention. People would ask if it (we didn’t find out the gender) was planned, I would say ‘yes, but he wasn’t IN the plan’. We always wanted 3, but after we had our 3rd, there felt like something was still missing – it was if God was daring us to go again. So, when people asked, I would kind of flail my arms about and say there was something else in the air making the decision for us – it was what I felt in my heart.
Having my 4th was my undoing in a lot of ways though, the beginning of the unravelling. I wondered at times, was the stress, chaos, and depressive bouts worth it all? Why couldn’t I have just been happy with the 3 beautiful, healthy daughters that I already had? But in hindsight, I can see what a gift these struggles that I faced were (and that many parents face). The 4th child wasn’t there because ‘we were trying for a boy’, or ‘because he would complete our family’; he was sent to us a divine teaching gift. It’s only by going through the really tough times – when you feel like you’re in a dark pit covered by a heavy blanket – then tackling the seemingly insurmountable climb out of that pit into the light, that I started to get a glimpse of myself again, the true essence of me, the one that I had kind of lost along the way.
This was the beginning of the ‘letting go of the false self’ period, and it’s continued as our family moved to Memphis, Tennessee.
Taken in the Gulf of Mexico, December 2018
3. The cocoon (‘During Memphis’ or DM)
As Sue Monk Kidd writes in ‘When The Heart Waits’:
‘When change-winds swirl through our lives, especially at midlife, they often call us to undertake a new passage of the spiritual journey: that of confronting the lost self – our true self. They call us to come home to ourselves, to become who we really are.’
She discussed the writings of C.G. Jung (someone whose work I studied a little at University, but which I’d mostly forgotten), and she writes:
‘Jung believed that every midlife crisis is a spiritual crisis, that we are called to die to the old self (ego), the fruit of the first half of life and liberate the new man or woman within us.’
‘Jung divided life into two phases. The first phase, or ‘morning’ is reserved for relating and orientating to the outer world by developing the ego. The second half, or ‘afternoon’, is for adapting to the inner world by developing the full and true self. The midlife transition between these two Jung likened to a difficult birth.’
As I’ve continued on my pilgrimage back to the true self, it’s felt a bit like the process of metamorphosis - with Memphis being my cocoon or chrysalis. Interestingly, the word Memphis can be made out of the word metamorphosis.
I feel like being ‘in the cocoon’, has encouraged me to contemplate the here and now so much more than what I ordinarily would. Moving to another country for a limited time, to a place where there is no societal expectation on me, has been liberating! It forces you to really live in the moment, to experience as much as you can in the time you have, and to soak it all in – every person you meet, every food you taste, every abandoned building you see, every piece of history you read, every type of weather you experience – you marinate in the differences and delve and ask questions and want to know more. There’s less thinking of what went before, and much less thinking of what lies ahead – it’s just living for the NOW, and of course COVID has only perpetuated the feel of the cocoon and intensified the experience.
I’ve also likened it to a bridge, connecting one side - my ‘Before Memphis’ time - to the other side - my ‘After Memphis’ time, and the flowing river below representing my ‘During Memphis’ time, or the cocoon. The river itself is sometimes light and glistening on top, but murky underneath, sometimes calm, sometimes flowing fast; if the river is high and full of water it’s strong and can wash away whatever is in its path, but when the river is low, what’s underneath is revealed…and all of this is happening now, in real time, in the moment!
Keeler Bridge over the Yazoo River, Greenwood, Mississippi Delta
Sue writes about being in ‘the now’ in her book:
‘There are two Greek words for time in the Bible: chronis and kairos. When chronos dominates, we live ‘by’ time, and life is experienced chronologically. When kairos dominates, we live ‘in’ time. Life is experienced as opportunity. Kairos is full time, real time. It requires dwelling in the moment so completely that the possibility of life opens up to us. Spiritual transformation enables us to move from chronos to kairos. We start to tap the immediacy of life again. We crack open the moment to discover the treasure of beingness.’
I certainly feel like I’ve been living in ‘kairos time’ since we got out of our comfort zone and moved to another country.
She also writes:
‘The spiritual journey is one of becoming real. Waiting can offer us the gift of authenticity. It can help us give birth to a new way of being true to ourselves. As we wait, we discover that it’s okay – really okay – not only to imagine who we truly are inside but to say who we are, welcome who we are, and even be who we are.’
and:
‘Making a cocoon and the transformation that goes on inside it involves weaving an environment of prayer, but not the type of prayer we usually think of. No, this is something mysteriously different. This prayer isn’t about talking and doing and thinking. It’s about postures. Postures of the spirit. It’s turning oneself upside down (literally in my case moving to the other side of the world) so that everything is emptied out and God can flow in. It’s curling up in the fogged spaces of the listening heart, sinking into solitude, wrapping the soul around some little flame of hope that God has ignited. It’s sitting on the window sill of the heart, still and watching. Such interior postures are themselves the prayers that transform, heal, and yield the answers in our waiting. They’re the shapes and contours that turn us into a cocoon.’
I don’t think it is a coincidence that I found myself in Memphis, in the Bible Belt of the US, at this inflection point of my life. It’s forced me to review the Catholicism that I was brought up with - that has mostly sat dormant in me for the last 3 decades of my life; and has also made me wonder how to integrate the more ‘New Age’ and ‘Eastern’ health practices and philosophies that helped through the rollercoaster years with young children. I found myself enrolling in a ‘Walking with Purpose’ Bible Studies – ‘The Modern Woman’s Guide to the Bible (which just about every lady I had met in Memphis was doing), and surprisingly found myself getting much, much more out of it than I expected. I don’t imagine this is ever something I would have embarked on back in Australia! Whilst there is much about religion that I just can’t ever agree with, delving deeper into the Bible through this female dominated interpretation, helped me to clarify a few things in my own mind.
As they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears….
Crosses near Greenwood, Mississippi Delta
Which brings me to a book that, when I read in 2019, was a revelation to me, ‘Mary Magdalene Revealed’ by Meggan Waterson.
Reading it enabled me to make more sense of Christianity, and has given me the power to truly embrace the strong spiritual force that I have always felt in my bones existed (God, Source, The Divine – whatever you want to call it), but with more clarity and understanding, and less attachment to religion.
It’s the story of the lost gospel of Mary Magdalene, and following are some edits from the book:
‘The gospel, as ancient and authentic as any of the gospels that the Christian bible contains, was buried deep in the Egyptian desert after an edict was sent out in the 4th century to have all copies of it destroyed. Fortunately, some rebel monks were rise enough to refuse – and thanks to their disobedience and spiritual bravery, we have several manuscripts of the only gospel that was written in the name of a woman: The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.’
Destroyed. Why? Because it went against what the Church were trying to teach? What I understand to be the main point that Meggan makes in this book, from her interpretation of the gospel, is that we only have to search within to find our true selves.
‘We will find ‘the child of true humanity’ if we search for it within. We don’t have to compromise, ever, and settle for an ‘almost’ version of who we are. We do not have to confirm to some external truth, some version of what someone else is telling us is better, or more right, more holy, more human. We don’t have to fit in. We don’t have to contort who we are in order to fit a mold that was never meant for us.’
Signange on an abandoned building, Clarksdale, Mississippi Delta
If we all heard this message as children, really heard it, loud and clear, I wonder how that would influence our future choices?
’There will never be a voice outside of you that is wiser than your soul-voice or holds more authority over what is best for you. You need guidance and support not to follow someone else’s truth but to remain loyal to your own. The voice that will guide you to your highest potential is within you.’
‘We’ve needed to learn to believe in ourselves, in our own voice, in what we know is true, even if the world around us does not confirm this truth for us. Cultivating a sense of self-worth seems to be a compulsory part of the spiritual path of Mary Magdalene. Because we cannot believe in ourselves if we don’t remember that we are worthy of belief.’
Meggan also references other sources in her book:
‘Saint Symeon, the New Theologian from the 10th Century, was among the last of what are referred to as the experiential theologians. He believed that spiritual authority comes from within, not from an apostolic appointment by the church. The emphasis of the Hesychasts and the experiential theologians was on this intimate, inner connection to the divine, from within the heart. That inner work had to take place or there couldn’t be an authentic transformation, a transformation that only comes from directly knowing or experiencing the soul.’
To hear these messages from a religious perspective, from a female, from a gospel that was meant to be destroyed – wow! That was powerful for me.
This same message can come from many different sources though. This quote written by Thomas Moore from the Oprah.com website:
‘If you go deep enough into yourself, you will come up against mysterious creative forces. You can't know yourself completely, and you may realise, again, as mystics have pointed out, that some of your problems stem from your resistance against that deep, unknown source of vitality. If you could get out of the way, who knows what you could become? The divine creator not only makes a world but also creates a self.’
And as Sue Monk Kidd says:
‘Now and then, in the search for your True Self, you have to find the courage to enter a great absurdity. Kierkegaard pointed out that courage isn’t the absence of despair and fear but the capacity to move ahead in spite of them.’ And:
‘True self-love isn’t about feeding the ego. It’s about nurturing the parts of ourselves that the ego has been mistreating. We do this by getting still, asking difficult questions, and listening deeper for the answers. We do this by getting the support we need. We do this by realizing that where we are today – however painful or messy our lives may feel – is exactly the right place from which to grow lives we feel proud of, nourished by, and excited to share with others who are also on path of growth and healing. We do this through soul work.’
As I drove back to Memphis from the Delta, I realised there was something very special about the area, something that was hidden and mysterious, and perhaps why ‘soul music’ was born there. I also thought about human souls, my own soul, and how easy it is in our current fast-paced, consumerist, technologically driven world to lose site of your soul, and forget that true essence of who you really are.
It reminded me to ensure that I reflected on this each day, and it was reiterated when I read this quote on my return:
‘Only by going to the level of the soul will you reach your full potential, bringing more intelligence, creativity, and awareness into every aspect of your life. Each day is an opportunity to renew our resolve and to declare to the Universe we are ready to change. Each thought is like a stone dropped into a lake, sending ripples into our world to affect all they touch. We can choose our focus and how we invest our energy, which gives us the power to design our lives to be whatever we choose in each and every moment.‘
4 - The Butterfly (‘After Memphis’ or AM)
Well, I’m not quite there yet, but I do feel like I’m waking up out of my cocoon, ready for the next adventure – one that continues to be back to the truest version of myself, that is heart-centred, and driven by intuition, not what I feel I ‘should’ be doing.
The fertile land of the Mississippi Delta, outside Greenwood
As Glennon Doyle writes so perfectly in ‘Untamed’:
‘The word humility derives from the Latin word humilitas, which means ‘of the earth’. To be humble is to be grounded in knowing who you are. It implies the responsibility to become what you were meant to become – to grow, to reach, to fully bloom as high and strong and grand as you were created to. It is not honourable for a tree to wilt and shrink and disappear. It’s not honourable for a woman to either.’
On another recent forest walk, I was surrounded by beautiful butterflies, with one landing on my arm looking up at me. It was if they were daring me to get out of my Memphis cocoon, to stretch my wings and fly the way I was created. It felt like a call to action, and one that I definitely needed to listen to.
As I continued on my walk and a glimmering spark of golden light caught my eye, I was reminded of the words of Spandau Ballet:
‘Gold
Always believe in your soul
You've got the power to know
You're indestructible, always believe in…’
Finally, I’ll leave you with this poem:
There are many whose eyes are awake
And whose hearts are asleep;
Yet, what can be seen
By mere creatures of water and clay?
But he who keeps his heart awake
Will know and live this mystery:
While the eyes of his head may sleep
His heart will open hundreds of eyes.
If your heart isn't yet illumined
Be awake always, be a seeker of the heart,
Be at war continually with your carnal soul.
But if your heart is already awakened,
Sleep peacefully, sleep in the arms of Love,
For your spiritual eye is not absent
From the seven heavens and seven directions.
- Jalal-ud-Din Rumi
Sources:
When The Heart Waits, Sue Monk Kidd
Motherwhelmed, Beth Berry
Mary Magdalene Revealed, Meggan Watterson
Untamed, Glennon Doyle
Further Sources (not referenced in this post, but related):
Light is the New Black, Rebecca Campbell
Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert, pages 150-153
The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak
St Theresa of Avila, Julie Land - a short excerpt on St Theresa, who trusted to find the answers within herself
Abandoned: Healing Your Inner Orphan, written by Being Mauger, Network Ireland - blog post about the orphan archetype, the story of the Ugly Duckling and healing