I receive a lot of emails but one of my favorites came in yesterday.
Subject line: the work works
“I sat down and wrote a Trash Your Neighbor. By the time I had written, fumed, and done The Work, the whole dynamic shifted. The part that surprised me was the change in [other person]. We had a lovely evening. With love and gratitude to you, Mom.”
First of all, my heart bursts with how cute my own mom is and the way she does The Work. She even took one of my classes on doing The Work When You Work For Yourself (back before it became the class on Money). She’s had her own business for 25 years.
But my favorite part was the way Judge Your Neighbor has become Trash Your Neighbor.
Isn’t that hilarious?
And it really is the spirit of the thing.
Childlike, adolescent, mean, nasty, feisty, unedited, judgey, critical, rude, name-calling.
Many people can hardly write this way at the beginning. They feel so bad about their thoughts. So embarrassed!
When people DO go ahead and write their worksheet, they think, “If this person ever read these words I’ve written about them, or found this Judge Your Neighbor (er, or is that Trash Your Neighbor) Worksheet, or heard me say this…..they would be mortified. I would be mortified. They would be wounded to the core.
People have asked me to shred their worksheet when we’re done with a mini retreat, or a session. I even have a dark brown unmarked envelope where I keep JYNs for people in storage, in between the times they visit to do The Work.
A memory.
I’m hiding under one of my sister’s beds, the one I’m closest to in age. I dove there when we heard footsteps coming up from the ground floor, most likely one of our other sisters (there are four of us girls altogether).
I whisper “if it’s E, ask her what she thinks about me and DON’T SAY I’M HERE!”
E enters the room. I can feel it, from under the bed. I can see her shoes moving towards the middle of the floor, closer to my other sister.
My other sister, the one I feel closer to, says a little awkwardly….”so, hey, um, I have a question for you, um, so what do you think of Grace?”
Pause. Silence hangs in the air.
“I think she’s a bitch.”
A huge sweep of shame rises from my gut through my chest into my face and while E says….
….”Wait, is she in here?”….
….I fly like lightening from under the bed and race out of the room in less than one second, skipping stairs two or three at a time down, through the kitchen, out the door, running through the alley and in the street. Just, running. Tears coming out of my eyes.
After awhile, I slow down, pause, I turn around, and I start to walk slowly back home.
It’s almost dinner time when I return.
My mom rings the cow bell and everyone is supposed to come right away who hasn’t been assigned table-setting duty.
I go to the table, and fake like nothing happened. Conversation, eating, passing the salt, quiet. E and I never look at each other. She’s across the table and one seat over. I pretend she doesn’t exist. My cheeks are hot.
Now, I’m doing my work on that moment, so aware it felt like a horror show, the feelings were so immense of hurt. And guilt.
She trashed me! And I heard it!
I do this work from my 11 year old self, right in that vivid moment.
She shouldn’t think I’m a bitch. I need her to love me.
Is it true?
Yes. This is horrible. I can’t take the crushing criticism. I should have known. She hates me.
Are you absolutely sure she shouldn’t think you’re a bitch? Are you sure you need her to love you?
Are you sure they’re saying that MEANS it’s TRUE? Is it really something to be ashamed of?
No.
How do I react when one of my sisters says about me that I’m a bitch?
Devastated. Shocked. Wall goes up between me and this person, like a 4 foot cement barrier, never to come down.
She even used a swear word.
So who would I be without this thought that she shouldn’t have thought what she thought, said what she said, and shouldn’t have called me a bitch?
Well. My first thought, from my 11 year old self, is “it’s a free country”!
In other words, people can think what they think, feel what they feel. I mean, jeez.
Without the thought that I’m destroyed by it, or should be ashamed, or that I need her to not have ever said, or thought, I’m a bitch….
….I might wake up to how angry she is with me.
Gosh, I wonder why.
Maybe it’s because I ignore, manipulate, hide under beds and play tricks on her. Maybe it’s because I never ask her a single question about herself or her life.
Maybe she’s right! Gasp!
I turn the thought around: she should think I’m a bitch, and she definitely shouldn’t love me….Now that I’ve seen how I treat her, I might think the same thing.
I shouldn’t think she’s a bitch. I shouldn’t think she’s someone awful, or boring, or worthy of ignoring or mocking (I’ve done it) or teasing or tricking.
And finally, I shouldn’t think I am a bitch. The minute she said it, my whole body froze and went into panic mode with shame and fear.
Truth be told, I needed that ice cold bucket of water over my oldest-sister oldest-daughter boss-of-everyone attitude. It was probably about time.
I didn’t have The Work back then.
But I did have connection, and the ability to have a broken heart. Like other humans, I had feelings. So did my sisters. It was a wake-up call to respecting them, and to not taking everything so incredibly personally.
A growing up moment. A moment I can revisit, over 40 years later, and notice how the universe supported me by hearing those words.
I see now, in moments like this, what Byron Katie means when she says “love kills”.
I knew there was something cracked open there, in that moment age eleven…..and it came from lack of love.
“Love is the power, and it won’t be distracted.” ~ Byron Katie
Thank you to everyone who called me names. Those brave souls breathed some significant life into my inner growth, acceptance, kindness, gentleness and capacity to love. It raised the fire up, I felt the passion of the “cut” and knew who to move towards and connect with.
Me. Them. Us.
That same sister, ten years later, I adored and respected…..and still do.
She really, really hurt me? More like, she really, really helped me.
Maybe even healed me by slowing down a huge 11 year old ego-fire, or a huge 11 year old ultra-sensitive scaredy cat.
Actually, she’s the one who suggested the School for The Work.
Need I say more?
Much love,
Grace