Monday, June 7, 2010

Why Eclectic-Collected? or let me introduce myselves!



Me and my girls, monkeying around!
Tree photo by Mona Lisa Styles














Team Wildoney, my sweet dogs!
Lead: Fire & Windy,
Point: Ashley & Gabriel,
Wheel: Taffy & Lakota
photo by unknown newspaper photographer

Hermosa Beach, from the pier, photo by me
Everyone I have ever gotten to know -- and as a very social person and a marriage & family therapist I have had the privilege of knowing many people quite well -- is a fascinating, one-of-a-kind mix of many things that seem consistent, along with some special things that surprise. I suppose I'm no different, and yet... Somehow, I feel that I have taken the suprising-mix-thing to an extreme, and it can be troubling. Or at least befuddling.

You see, I am a passionately eclectic person! I love and crave diversity, color, adventure, abundance, and texture in my life: past, present, and imagined future. I have no desire to fit in any single mold -- and yet, I desperately want to "fit in," to find a place to belong, to be understood and welcomed -- where friends warmly shout, "Norm!" (does that mean "normal?") when I walk into my real or virtual watering hole. I adore wearing every one of my many hats (and yet I sometimes feel a little identity-crisised). If forced to be constrained within a single, predictible channel, I imagine that I would feel angry-panicky and excrutiatingly bored! And yet I yearn with an intense angst for the many pieces of my life to feel cohesive, connected, coherent, or at least -- collected!

I do believe that having moved so much as a kid and in my 30's and early 40's explains a good deal of the discontinuity that disorients and dismays me. Certainly the divorce contributes. I believe that everyone needs and wants witnessing of their life -- to make it feel real and meaningful, and to help it all relate -- and so I struggle, because there are no witnesses to all of mine. We know ourselves at least partially through other's knowing of us. Moving as much as I have, dear friends have only been near for a few years at a time. Sometimes now I have a sensation of having begun to exist at the beginning of the most current chapter of my life, the one in which I moved back to California almost 6 years ago. Strange feeling.

Hence I am drawn to write this blog, so hopefully titled "Eclectic-Connected." I hope I can keep some of what I've been, even as I emphatically embrace all I am and all I hope to be. This is my attempt to write stories about...something that is me, that is my life, unique amongst the multitude of precious lives in this created universe!

I am a list maker, a taker of stock, a put-it-down on paper gal. So let me begin with who I am today:


  • a full-time, work-from-home Mom of two wonderful girls ages 12 and 14
  • a full-time PhD student in Marriage & Family Therapy (all-but-dissertation)
  • a really good cook
  • a half-time research scientist & author
  • a music lover who loves to sing
  • a therapist for victims of crime in the LA area
  • a sometime room-Mom, coach, PTO volunteer, party planner, and whatever else the kids need...
  • a wanna-be author of articles for popular journals (and books)
  • an on-again/off-again ebay seller and frequent ebay and thrift store shopper
  • an occasional university instructor of research methodologies and statistics
  • a very spiritual person
  • a demon for speed
  • a fiancee, in love with the most amazing and good man, planning a wedding in August

Here are some of the things I have been and done:
  • a young kid whose parents were in graduate school, in Louisiana, Florida, and Texas
  • a 10-year-old, tall and skinny kid who moved to California and grew up spending most of her time on the beach and in the ocean in Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach, California
  • an avid tree climber and book worm
  • an athlete in cross country and track (I could run 10 miles in 80 minutes), and a high jumper (I could jump my own height: 5'9")
  • an almost concert pianist (but I quit), a violin player
  • a super devout Christian
  • a librarian's assistant at UCLA
  • a nanny in Beverly Hills, one summer
  • an electrical engineer who helped to design super-secret communications systems
  • an expert pitt crew for my bf's track, bicycle (road and velodrome), and triathlon racing
  • an award-winning sled-dog racer, who showed and bred champion Siberian Huskies for 16 years, all over the USA and Canada
  • a college math teacher of algebra and statistics
  • an editor for the International Siberian Husky Club magazine
  • a 200-mile-a-day commuter (Cincinnati, Ohio to Lexington, Kentucky) for 4 years, putting my ex thru medical school, working an engineering job that made me miserable
  • an over-achieving pregnant woman/Mom in the rural outskirts of Cleveland for 4 years, solo parenting while dad did his 100-hour/week residency -- this was a really tough period of isolation and hard times
  • a small-town "Doctor's Wife" in Hoquiam/Aberdeen, Washington (whose husband kept a mistress), solo parenting while going through that dark 5-year period of divorce, heartbreak, & rebirth
  • a graduate student in Marriage & Family Therapy my last 2 years in Washington
  • after a move to California, a clinician and doctoral student in Marriage & Family Therapy while living with my parents in Murrieta, CA for 4 years
  • a budding party girl, when I had the time for it, with my awesome friends
  • a month-long vacationer in Jackson Hole, Wyoming while my daughters learned to ski, and I fell in love with the most amazing man
  • a renter, just my kids and me, and then adding my bf, in Winchester, California
  • a happy returner to my hometown in Hermosa Beach, California a year ago!

OH, you know, there's always more, but that's about all she wrote this evening. :) See ya later, oh blog o' mine!

7 comments:

  1. What a mondo-cool person with a mondo-cool blog! Can't wait for more posts!

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  2. Thanks, Julia! Happy you read my blog! Wooo-hoooo!

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  3. This is a very good start. A very, very good start.

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  4. Kristin, that means a lot!! Thanks for your support, sweet lady! <3

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  5. You certainly have a great ability to express yourself in the English language. I know it sounds a little silly but I hope you print and save all of these things. As a GM I can certainly tell you that the things that make me smile at this stage of my life, are letters and cards kept. Photographs are wonderful but what is inside the person that you are looking at can only come from memories cards and letters. Good luck on your journey.

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  6. I like it. Especially the parts about uf. :)

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  7. J-W: Those are my favorite parts, too, love!!

    J-G: Thanks for those thoughts. I love photos, but that is so true that the thoughts expressed can mean even more. <3

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