Laurita Dianita

It has been nearly a year now since I graduated from the University of Michigan with my Master of Social Work degree, packed up my apartment, flew home, moved into a new place, started my job, and found Oscar again to promptly fall in love with him.

It seems appropriate, then, to reflect on what this year back home has meant to me, what growth has arisen from my first year as an MSW, my first year of being with my life partner, my first year of really returning to Alaska to stay.

If I were to heed the mantra my dad always repeated from Shakespeare that “brevity is the soul of wit” and tell it in the, uh, wittiest? way possible, it would be simply to say that:

This year, I have grown more compassionate with myself and others.

But now I think I will un-heed his advice and flesh out the story, starting with the two people who have had the most influence over this growth: My best friend, Jessica Laura Russell and the love of my life, Oscar Avellaneda.

Here is Jessica Laura (who I write as JLR). She is hugging me as we say a long goodbye on the day after her wedding:

Oscar took the photo with his Hasselblad, proud and happy that his girlfriend had such a good friend. In this photo, JLR has just given me a book that her wife recommended for me called There’s Nothing Wrong with You. I am holding it in my hand. It’s a fun and easy to read Buddhist guide to getting over self-hate and treating yourself with compassion. Oscar and I read it together on the Caltrain back to the airport and in bed at nights. We took what we liked from the book and incorporated it into our practices with one another and with ourselves.

But still, even with this resource, after Oscar-Laura fights or during moments of acute insecurity, back when Oscar and I were still so unfamiliar with our own and one another’s fears, when we were trying to figure out how to communicate across difference, when we had not yet learned to take time-outs and clearly communicate our needs (not like we always do it right now, but we’re better), I would sometimes call Jessica Laura. She would tell me to treat my vulnerable and fearful Laura (my Laurita) with compassion rather than disdain, to acknowledge the vulnerability in me and feel sorry for it, but not give it so much power. This helped me to meet Oscar more calmly. And she would tell me how she and her wife deal with the others’ fears and needs, how they negotiate and forgive, how they have patience with their own and the others’ growth, but mainly, this idea:

Guilt and anger to try to change you or change someone else doesn’t work well.

Compassion does.

I was many many years struggling with this one, though now it seems so obvious. I think I didn’t know what the alternative to criticism, guilt, and anger was. To offer an easy example, “I shouldn’t eat more; I hate being over my good weight. It shows no discipline!” never worked well. Taking myself seriously in a positive way, seeing progress, feeling good about it and continuing that progress does work to maintain a healthy weight.

And so, it was through compassion and patience that Oscar and I have grown into very healthy problem-solving. It’s through compassion for himself that he now feels comfortable articulating his needs or offense in a constructive way at the moment rather than bottling it up for later. It’s through compassion for myself that I stop from getting angry at whatever inherited tendencies I have and don’t like and just try to manage them instead.

The funny thing is, Oscar thanks me for teaching him compassion, and I feel like I was a new student in it, while it was Oscar who taught me acceptance. I’ve never accepted anyone like I accept Oscar, and maybe I am capable of doing this because he’s just the right man for me and I am ready, but also because he sees me completely, every part of me, and accepts me—while still pushing me to be my best self, as I do him.  This is a picture of us in Girdwood at the state-wide youth conference where our Photovoice kids presented. We are ready to go to sleep, which shows in what Oscar describes as his “sleepy, happy, in love face”:

This was a night in which both of us needed compassion, patience, listening, acceptance, and guidance. We were both vulnerable and frazzled but met each other there and supported each other. What I learned through late nights like that and through the daily practices of acceptance– me accepting Oscar when we sit for hours correcting his punctuation or even when his poor time management drives me crazy, Oscar accepting me as he shows me how to deal with technology or even when my practices of criticism drive him crazy–is this:

Growth = complete acceptance + faith, truth, pushes  & opportunities

I always knew about the truth, pushes and opportunities part, and I guess I always had faith in people that they/we could grow and that’s why I pushed them/myself and sought honesty and truth.  My parents did a wonderful job of raising me and Claire with these principles. But for a long time I thought that acceptance meant complacency and I was afraid to ever be complacent, static, satisfied with where I am or where others are. What I failed to understand was that without the safety, the home base of acceptance, growth can’t take off in the same way. In truth, maybe our need for acceptance is like healthy attachment in babies—the ones with healthy attachment to their caregivers are the ones who can explore the most.  And maybe that’s why patients need non-judgmental health care providers and clients need non-judgmental social workers in order to grow towards greater health and control in their lives. We’re not so different than babies.

This picture, taken by our friend Steve Nigl, is a great illustration of the mutual acceptance and enjoyment I share with Oscar that fuels my ability to do so as a social worker, friend, daughter, sister:

There’s Oscar, being silly. There’s me, probably being overly serious or having some expectations about what this photo should be like. There’s us, just being with and enjoying our sometimes opposing characteristics, and out of it comes a photo neither of us quite expected but both of us love.

Oscar giggles and is amused by my mistakes, offended by some, and able to address them with dignitiy and acceptance so I can grow. This is what love is supposed to be, and I think this is what social work is supposed to be too.

I can’t really separate what is personal-only and what is social work. I practice my professional training in my relationships and vica versa. Over this last year, I strived to do “strengths-based” assessments and change processes both in Mt. View and in my personal life. Just as I struggled to accept Oscar’s sense of time, I had to adjust for and be patient with the senses of time held by many of the community members in focus groups or interviews, or now with the Latina patients for whom I serve as interpreters, or with clients and colleagues in my grant-writing work.

And luckily, when my professional training was not enough to control the rancor I felt at service providers/managers who I felt were unjust, Oscar was there to remind me of meeting people where they’re at and with compassion, and also the need to work around people who are barriers.

(By the way, the other big lesson of the year is that we won’t get anywhere if we continue to surrender leadership to those who are not leaders, those who cannot think and act creatively and humanely, and that we need to stop being complacent about the social services or education or whatever else status quo…but that’s another blog entry entirely.)

So, what are the consequences of these practices of compassion and acceptance as vehicles for growth? What have Jessica Laura, Oscar, the buddhist book, my social work training, and other dear and wise friends like Jay Pearson and Virginia Speciale helped me to do?

• Have fewer headaches
• Make & show more art (hence, two exhibitions, a photo in next month’s Hip Mama feminist parenting magazine, submitting photos for a juried show soon in Anchorage, 5 finished collage and painting pieces for Oscar…it feels good)
• Get farther along the path of outgrowing some of my old communication patterns of defensiveness and “you statements” that inevitably never work
• Have a successful relationship and future husband and co-parent
• Talk myself out of negative thoughts
• Reflect on my teaching, meeting facilitation, grant-writing, project management, etc. without so much guilt and stress and with more forward movement—because with compassion, critique is less damming and more useful
• Oscar and I made the New Years Resolution to take ourselves seriously, which is like a nice way of pushing ourselves to be disciplined, but from a place of faith instead of criticism. So, taking myself seriously, I intend to compete well in mt. bike races and the Xterra trail triathlon this summer, and maybe a bouldering competition or two.
• Use technology with more competence, comfort, and flexibility—from flow charts to Google platforms to photo software to this blog
• Form some new friendships, I think a little smoother than in the past
• Form meaningful relationships with the future in-laws, including with Herbert, Oscar’s Army Ranger brother, who is soooo different than me that it’s sometimes surprising to me that I  love him, but I do. This relationship, and that with Rodrigo, the kind-hearted boyfriend of my (courageous, creative, check out her blog) future-sister-in-law, Erika, opens up a new understanding for me of the military and what it’s like to be in the military and to be a professional warrior.
• Grow patience that I never knew I had. I mean, what choice do I have while Oscar & Erika are riding across the Americas? (www.quehubo.info). It sure helps in teaching.

I have learned and done many other things this year and have grown with friends and family, building community here in Anchorage with wonderful people and loving my friends and family from afar, building a little career while also dabbling back into teaching and gaining insight into education, traveling for conferences & family, and helping with my mom’s campaign for State House (http://www.barbaranortonforstatehouse.com). But this is what really sticks:

I need to and CAN practice compassion and acceptance, that elusive goal that I never understood very well and always saw as antithetical to change, and now find not only reconcilable with change, but necessary for it.

And I have a lot more growing left to do. I look forward to it.