I’m Not the Church Lady | Maybe I can put my script down

||| I’M NOT THE CHURCH LADY by ROSIE KUHN |||

The relationship that challenges me most profoundly may also be the relationship that shows me where I am still not free to be me.

I recently discovered that I’ve been carrying around a script. Actually, I have quite a few of them. There’s The Role of Mother. There’s The Role of Daughter. There have been a couple editions of The Role of Wife. I probably have scripts for friend, coach, client, sister, neighbor, good person, spiritual person, responsible person, and God knows what else tucked away somewhere.

And apparently, I haven’t just been reading my own lines. I’ve been keeping track of everybody else’s.

This came to me recently while I was thinking about my relationship with my daughter. I realized I have a context for what a daughter is and how a daughter should be. In my script, daughters are kind, caring, respectful, honoring, interested, engaged and loving. A daughter wants a relationship with her mother. She cares how her mother is doing. She stays connected. She includes her mother. She appreciates her. She loves her in ways her mother can recognize as love.

It’s a perfectly lovely script.

There’s just one problem. My daughter seems to be reading from a different script. This realization made me laugh, because suddenly I could see the absurdity of what I’d been doing. Here I am, script in hand, on stage. I’m delivering my lines beautifully—or at least believing that I’m delivering them beautifully—and waiting for her to say her next line.

Nothing.

I try my line again, perhaps with more feeling this time. Still nothing. I glance down at the script. I’m pretty sure this is where you’re supposed to say something kind and loving. She isn’t even reading from the same script! And that’s when something much more uncomfortable occurred to me. She isn’t being the daughter I believe a daughter should be. AND I am requiring myself to continue being the mother I believe a mother should be.

WHAT???

There is the bind.

Because if another person is free to ignore all the rules I’ve unconsciously assigned to their role, while I remain governed by all the rules I’ve assigned to mine, I’ve created one hell of a convincing one-woman play.

They go off book, as they say in the theatre world. While I remain Mother. Or Wife. Or Daughter. Or whatever role I’ve decided comes with obligations I am not allowed to question. And suddenly I begin seeing this everywhere in my life.

My mother didn’t fit my context of Mother. My husbands didn’t fit my context of Husband. And, of course, they had their own ideas about what a wife was supposed to be. Apparently, I wasn’t reading their scripts correctly either.

It goes round and round.

Everybody is standing onstage frustrated and disappointed that everybody else ignoring the cues. And each of us is standing there thinking, But I said my lines correctly!

It’s funny when I see it this way. And it’s also heartbreaking. Because underneath all these scripts is something incredibly tender:

We want to love. And we want to be loved.

We want connection. We want belonging. We want to matter. We want to experience the people we love as wanting to be with us. So somewhere along the way, we begin creating formulas for how love is supposed to work.

If I am a good mother, perhaps my child will love me. If I am a present wife, perhaps my husband will be present to me. If I am a devoted daughter, perhaps my mother will finally adore me. If I am patient enough, available enough, forgiving enough, loving enough, maybe eventually every one of my relationships will become what I believe they are supposed to be.

There is an implicit bargain buried inside the performance: If I perform my role correctly, you will eventually perform yours correctly. Then everyone will be happy.

Except nobody agreed to that Not even me! And I think this is where I experience what I can only describe as a kind of insanity.

Reality is presenting me with one thing while my context insists that reality ought to be presenting me with something else.

This is my daughter. And: This is not how a daughter should behave. Both are living inside me simultaneously. Insane. Right?

So, I keep trying to reconcile them. I explain. I accommodate. I wait. I hope. I rehearse conversations. I wonder what I should say and how I should say it. I try to understand. I try not to offend. I examine what I might have done wrong. I consider what I could do differently. I work harder at playing my part.

But what if there is no play? What if there are no scripts?

What if there’s just this human being over here and this human being over there? That’s where this inquiry has become far more interesting to me. Because I don’t think the problem is that my scripts are bad scripts. Look at the qualities I associate with being a good mother, daughter, wife, friend or human being: loving, respectful, kind, caring, patient, understanding, generous, available. What’s wrong with any of those? Nothing.

The problem begins when those qualities stop being expressions of who I am and become strategies for producing a particular relationship outcome. Ouch! (I hate these moments where I uncover my stuff.) JEESH!

I’ll be loving so you’ll be loving.

I’ll understand you so you’ll understand me.

I’ll show up so you’ll show up.

I’ll be available so you’ll be available.

I’ll forgive you and you forgive me.

I’ll perform Mother correctly, so you’ll perhaps eventually perform Daughter correctly. Ah. There’s the negotiating.

And I know something about negotiating for love. I’ve spent a great deal of my life learning how to be available, devoted, flexible, supportive, understanding and accessible. These are qualities I genuinely value in myself. I don’t want to get rid of them. But I am beginning to recognize the difference between being loving because love is mine to express and being loving because I’m hoping my loving will produce love in return.  Those are not the same thing.

One is expression. The other is transaction. And transactions come with expectations. And expectations come with disappointment. And I know a lot about creating expectations that lead to disappointments. I’m a master!!

When I’m in my script, I’m not actually relating with you. I’m relating with my context of who you should be. And you’re probably not relating with me either. You’re relating with your context of who I should be. Then we wonder why we can’t connect with each other.

But….What happens if I put my script down?

This question is beginning to feel enormous to me. Not: Fine! If you won’t be a good daughter, I’m not going to be a good mother. That’s still the script. That’s retaliation within the same play.

I’m wondering about something much more radical, raw and vulnerable.

What if neither of us has to play the role?

What’s actually available between us as we actually are?

Now the more important, radical, raw and vulnerable questions arise: Do I enjoy being with you? Do I feel respected in this relationship? What happens inside me when we are together? What kind of relationship is actually possible between us? What am I continuing to participate in simply because I believe this particular role requires me to participate?

And perhaps most importantly: Who are you if I stop requiring you to be my idea of who you should be?

And then, inevitably: Who am I if I stop requiring myself to be my idea of who I should be? That second question scares the Bejeezus out of me!

Because these roles don’t only tell me what other people should be. They tell me who I have to be. And, truthfully, I don’t know how to be me without my scripts. OUCH!

My script defines my character as: A mother keeps trying. A mother keeps forgiving. A mother keeps understanding. A mother doesn’t give up on her child. A mother keeps being available. A mother keeps putting her children’s needs before her own. A mother keeps taking responsibility even when it’s not hers. A mother keeps making everything better. A mother should….

And one day I look down and realize:

Oh. Wait. This is just a script. I didn’t know it was just a script. I thought it was the law.

This realization connects with something else that has been arising strongly for me lately:
I belong to myself. These four words have been rearranging something fundamental inside me. It’s a practice to consider the possibility that I belong to myself. Not to my children. Not to my clients. Not to my history. Not to someone else’s disappointment in me. Not to someone’s interpretation of who I am. Not to guilt or shame. Not to the role of Mother, Wife, Daughter, Coach, Good Person or Loving Person.

I belong to myself.

This doesn’t mean other people’s needs cease to matter. It doesn’t mean I stop caring. It doesn’t mean I become unavailable, unkind or indifferent. It doesn’t mean I don’t apologize when I’ve caused harm, or reconsider my behavior when something needs reconsidering.

What it does means is that I am no longer required to abandon my own truth in order to remain faithful to a role and a script I was handed. What it means is that I can hear your need and say yes. I can hear your need and say no. I can understand your disappointment without concluding that I’m unforgivable. I can feel guilty and inquire into whether I’ve actually violated something I value, or whether I’ve merely violated someone else’s expectation of me.

I can love you without using my love to purchase a particular response from you. And maybe that is what putting down the script actually means. It doesn’t mean I stop being a mother. It just means I stop being governed by Mother. It doesn’t mean I stop being loving. It just means I stop using loving as a strategy for getting love. It doesn’t mean I stop valuing relationship. It just means I stop requiring relationship to look a certain way before I can feel fulfilled in my role.

And here’s the part that feels both liberating and humbling:

Nobody is ever getting their role wrong!

My daughter isn’t getting Daughter wrong. She’s actually nailing it!!