Giving Exhaustion

For some of us the holidays welcome a warm distraction from the troubles of the country and the world, however, for many of us, myself included, I’m not feeling it.  I’m tired of worrying about the pandemic.  I’m tired of the politics.  I’m tired of the Internet and the advertisements that know my thoughts before I do. I tired of trying to comprehend the immense suffering.  I have friends in the one percent and friends who are on the verge of homelessness.

I’m tired of being asked for donations for charities, politicians, political action committees, and school fundraisers.  I’m tired of GoFundMe me drives to pay for simple hospital procedures and funerals.

While the National Retail Federation, a trade group, has forecast that that holiday sales will increase but just because people are stuck at home and spending more online doesn’t mean our quality of life is keeping pace.  I know being stuck at home paired with the painful convenience of Amazon, don’t get me started on my depression related to their shipping waste, means getting gifts is easier than ever.

But what about connection?  How do we when we shouldn’t gather, when we cannot easily gaze into the eyes of loved ones and read their true intentions above their meme posts.

In the past, travel and shopping would be in high gear for me as I think about those I love and want to see or acknowledge.  I have always enjoyed the hunt for thoughtful ways to connect through baking cookies, tree decorating, white elephant challenges, and tackling my children’s wish lists.

I came to giving young.  

It was 1974 the year the movie The Year Without Santa was released.  I was five. The elves inspired me so much that I remember getting up in the middle of the night and cleaning our dingy ground level apartment - making the bed tucking the heavy velvet spread right around my mother’s oblivious sleeping body.  My young career was on track.  My best friend from childhood recalls coming to a play date at my apartment and says, “Your mom would be standing there in her bra and underwear ironing her jeans on the board set up in the middle of the living room, smoking a cigarette with the place such a mess you could hardly walk through it.”  No one ever told me this wasn’t o.k.  But I had a sense that things were amiss, and I was just the person to right them.  

My mother would have been a window set designer at a department store or maybe a pattern cutter in a millenary.  If she’d had the resources to go to college rather than become the soul supporter of our household she may have been free to do something fun. I don’t remember what she was like before the anxiety and depression, before she turned to alcohol as a method of self-soothing.  I surely couldn’t have articulated my worry or fear or sadness.  

I knew she asked me to boil the water for her instant coffee so we could get out the door on time in the morning.  She was a nurse and after I repeatedly reading my Golden Book about how candy stripers helped the doctors and nurses in the hospital, I was ready to sign up.  

There is a whole book about symbiosis, separation, individuation and co-dependence, but for this story my astute ability to pay attention was born out of my desire to please my mother.  I was not worried, calculated or self-conscious about my giving.  I loved her, I wanted to make life easier for her. 

It’s likely I was swayed by the television commercial of Joe DiMaggio sitting in front of a warm fire next to a Christmas Tree pitching a Mr. Coffee coffee maker.  I wanted to make my mom happy so much so that I remember sitting on Santa’s lap at the mall that year and the only thing I asked for was a Mr. Coffee coffee maker.  While other children were busy circling items they wanted in the Sears and JCPenney’s catalog I was worried about my mom.  If Santa delivered it with a major league baseballe player to play stepfather I would be fine with that as well.

Usually, my five-year-old mirth shines stronger than my worries.  But when the worry of money and health and wasteful, useless giving weighs on me.

This is when I have to go inside, get quiet and give to myself.  When I doubt my abundance, I know that I’m worn down.  

It’s a cliché – the martyr, the mother who wants for nothing and is an endless well of giving.  And despite our awareness in the last two decades of self-care, wellness many of the tasks around the holidays are not well divided.  I watched my grandmother who had nine children and my mother who gave until she was resentful.

I was not going to be like either of them. I’m fortunate that I had access to quality education, good jobs and even better investments. I have resources that I use to care for other single mothers without such luxuries.

I’m lucky I can exercise, get massages and healthy food.  

I sleep in.  No, I really sleep in.  I make arrangements for my kids and sleep as late as I want, no judgement, no shame. I ask for help.  I talk about my problems.  I don’t look at Pinterest or Instagram.  I know there are lots of mothers doing way more than me, doing it more gracefully and making it look cool and easy.  But I know that no one wins when woman push themselves so hard.  

In fact, I have three friends right now with cancer.  I’m not for one second suggesting the cancer is their fault, but I also know there is no gold at the end of an over stressed rainbow.  I know that no one is handing out awards or paychecks for all the thankless jobs mothers manage.  I refuse to compete.  I don’t worry too much that I hate cooking or that my children eat take out more than would be

When I’m feeling low it’s not because I’m physically tired, but it’s because I’ve lost connection to my own desire.  I allow too many opinions, issues, and emotions of others to build on my shoulders.  I feel responsible for all the wrongs in the world even as I know logically I cannot possibly solve them.  My worries cloud my mind like storm that won’t settle.

How much giving is enough?  Does anyone need anything I have to offer. Where is the balance between giving to myself versus giving to others?  What do I want to receive? Would I even accept it if it arrived tomorrow?

If one of my children were still young enough to sit on Santa’s lap what would they ask on my behalf?  Certainly not anything material although that’s often where we go with giving as we have gently and persuasively indoctrinated by lifetimes of advertising.  Maybe a puzzle, or a game.  Maybe a prank or a surprise.  We know what happens to the Karen who asks for world peace.  So how can I be thoughtful in my wants and needs.

I don’t have any answers.  I know that Elvis’ Blue Christmas will make me nostalgic for a time when I didn’t know about the inequality in the world, or the hatred.  I know that stringing popcorn and cranberries will bloody my fingers and also connect me to a tradition of innocent joy. I know that when I believed all my hopes could be realized by a JCPenney’s catalog list, I was free to desire it all.

When I feel most hopeless I try to connect with my imagination and wants.  I practice feeling what it would feel like to be at peace in my own heart and mind.  I wander around empty beaches imagining those who would hurt me are safely tucked away in communities living at the bottom of the sea. I day dream about boarding wild yachts filled with glamorous writers, hiking just beyond the clouds and running into a hobbit. I turn to my imagination and meditation.  I start on a path and let the little girl in me run wild to greater and ever greater adventures. 

And slowly the power comes back.  It’s mine. The books lining my shelf are filled with knowledge that will never see the light of Facebook or Instagram.  Interesting and cool things that happened before anyone on this planet was born. I remember that I have choices. 

My attention isn’t for sale.  My love for others cannot be commodified.  I don’t have to check my email today.  I don’t have to login to social media. I don’t have to shop at stores or read the magazines.  I slowly remember the joy of wishing for a Mr. Coffee coffee maker as a simple exercise in delight.  And the ideas begin to flow on how I might connect with ideas for sharing that excitement.  

If I could gift the women in my life this year it would be the gift to sit quietly and imagine freely where their desire takes them. Uninterrupted as often as they want.