You just have to proceed, to listen, step by step. And trust that that uncomfortable feeling, your unhappiness, is actually a life-saving feeling. Your life crashing around you is actually a life-saving event. You have to pay attention.

Karen Maezen Miller
from an interview with Lisa Erickson

but if you want to know what I believe, go here and push play:

Trevor Hall

really. I’m stunned that someone can express it so well.

peace.

RI, NM, CA, CA, CA, CA, RI, WA, CA GER, RI AK, WA

That’s 13 moves in 16 years.  Five states plus one foreign country.  Pack/unpack.  A new house.  Pack/unpack.  A new school.   Pack/unpack.  Make new friends.  Pack/unpack.  Say goodbye.  Pack/unpack.  Repeat.

Wikipedia’s entry on Military Brats is long.  It doesn’t all ring true to my experience.  But some of it…

Having had the opportunity to live around the world, military brats can have a breadth of experiences unmatched by most teenagers.

True.  I saw many amazing things.  Met wonderful people.  Our longest stay in one place was Germany and I was lucky to have parents who delighted in learning about German culture.  We traveled around Europe as much as we could.  I wouldn’t trade that.  I am also certain that being stuck in a town where you are unhappy for your whole youth would be absolutely horrible.  I’ve lived in the smallest state and the biggest state–how cool is that?  And I pick up accents like you wouldn’t believe.

But…

Some can struggle to develop and maintain deep, lasting relationships, and can feel like outsiders to U.S. civilian culture. Their transitory lifestyle can hinder potential for constructing concrete relationships with people and developing emotional attachments to specific places, which may later develop into psychologically developmental disorders (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder, Separation Anxiety Disorder, etc.). 

Also true.  When I first realized I’d had friends past the 3 year point, I wasn’t sure what to do next.  I’ve lived in this state for over 25 years, but don’t think I’m “from” here.  After a decade in our home I still haven’t mentally unpacked.

I’m scared to.

I dream anxious dreams of having to move and not being ready.

Been thinking about this a lot lately.  The social notworking miracle that is facebook has allowed me to find a couple long lost friends.  I’m so looking forward to catching up with them over time.  Filling in the missing years.  Today there’s been a wonderful “You Know You’re From Aquidneck Island When…” thread going on there.  Ha!  I’m not the only one who remembers Chicken City, the frightening basement pool, and skating at St. Georges.  It’s like finding little lost pieces of my childhood.  Proof I really existed.  You move too much and reality gets sketchy.  Iffy.  Erased around the edges.

32% feel as if they are only spectators on U.S. life and another 48% do not feel as if they are central to any group.

When Cheryl Jacob’s reviewed my early portfolio she suggested my photographs looked as if they had been taken from the outside looking in.  “Was it the childhood you had or the one you wish you’d had?”

A few years ago I printed out maps of the cities I could remember living in and created a bowl with them.  It was beautiful, the blues and greens zig-zagging about.  Street names full of memories.  I kept it around the house for a while but didn’t quite know what to do with it, so I crushed it.

But most assimilate quickly and well as they have to do so with each move.

Quotes from Wikipedia entry: referenced there from Kathleen Finn Jordan’s work “Identity Formation and the Adult Third Culture Kid ” in Morten Ender’s, “Military Brats and Other Global Nomads.”

“… Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: ‘Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind’s eternal re-creation’ (Faust, II).  And that is the self, the wholeness of the personality, which if all goes well is harmonious, but which cannot tolerate self-deceptions.” C. G. Jung *

I think it was at Daisy Yellow that I rediscovered Mandalas.  It might have been a post on the facebook, or maybe from the amazing Still Life With Coffee Goddess.  Hmm, I’m not sure.  So…if it was you tell me and I’ll give you credit!

Well, somehow this led to that and to time lapse mandala which I watched and I don’t know about your house but as soon as my kids hear a video they come running in to see what’s up.  That’s all it took to get them started.  My son started drawing them on napkins and my daughter came home with this plan:

That’s my girl.  We’ll be at the store this weekend picking up what we need to make that a reality.

Then:

And today we created all of these:

Our 6 year old guest created one that resembled a beautiful conch shell, and her 4 year old brother looked around, asked for some paper, and proceeded to create his own amazing circle without the least bit of instruction.

Center.  Wholeness.  Geometry.  Creation.  Impermanence.

Check out How to Grow a Mandala for inspiration.  You can find lots more videos online, but don’t watch too many.  It’s in the doing.

*p.V, Mandala Symbolism. C. G. Jung. (a collection of three works)
translated by R. F. C. Hull, (Princeton University Press, NJ, 1973)
I've seen this written a couple ways.  Book is on hold and I'll update once I can check the source!