Been slacking on the posts a bit, mostly because I’m having a challenging time balancing my upcoming book release with my mommy-ing…
Add homeschooling Tariku’s stuffed animals, and my schedule is way overbooked.
Here’s a picture of Tigey and Willie doing their math homework. Tariku is very serious about their education. He wrote out a whole schedule for me (Monday: Library, Tuesday: Music, Wednesday: Art, etc..) I took this photo to prove that they’re hard at work while he’s at school.
Cute, right?
Well, very often, no, not so cute. Tigey winds up in time out more often than Tariku does. I’m totally serious. We have to put his stuffed animals (he calls them “the kids”) in time out. Mostly for talking back and fighting with each other. Your patience hasn’t truly been tested until a buffalo puppet has been whining at you all morning and demanding more bacon.
T’s thing with his stuffed animals started about 4 months ago. When he was a baby, he never took to a binky or a lovey. In order to self soothe, he would suck on his bottle like a man dying of thirst in the desert, while he rocked back and forth. As his trauma begins to heal and he feels safer in the world, he’s able to turn the clock back a bit and avail himself of some of the comforting things he never got the hang of back then.
As T’s behavior improves, “the kids” continue to act out. They’re whiny, aggressive, needy, demanding. In Jungian terms, I think that the kids are Tariku’s Shadow. The general idea of the Shadow is that it’s all of the thoughts and feelings we deem unacceptable to the public eye- it’s what we don’t want to be but fear we are. The tricky thing about the Shadow, is that if you try to stuff it down and ignore it, it may manifest in undesirable ways in your life. The Shadow needs some form of expression.
Tariku often expresses his socially unacceptable impulses through the kids. Which seems so creative and emotionally intelligent to me. It strikes me how tender and caring he is with them. He doesn’t care how much they’re fighting with each other or crying about bedtime. He makes them little shirts and pants out of paper and tape. He cuddles them while he watches TV. He puts them in their pajamas (yes, they have pajamas) and makes sure that they each have a soft pillow under their heads before bed. He sleeps with his arms around them. He gives the kids unconditional love.
I think about the Shadow a lot. As a writer, I express the shadow on the page. That’s where I can allow all my darkest, most shameful thoughts and feelings to be heard. It’s a frightening thing to do, but it’s absolutely necessary both for the vitality of the work and for keeping my destructive impulses from screwing with my life and my relationships, including my relationship with myself. Tariku reminds me that even the really sticky icky stuff- especially the sticky icky stuff- deserves to be treated in a loving way. Our vulnerabilities are essential to our humanity. And they deserve to be dressed in their striped orange pajamas and put gently to bed.
For more on the Shadow, I highly recommend the book The Tools: 5 Tools to Help You Find Courage, Creativity, and Willpower– and Inspire You To Live Life in Forward Motion, by Barry Michels and Phil Stutz. It’s been tremendously helpful to me.
Here’s Willie at his first Weezer show:
