Author: Anna

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I feel guilty

“I feel kinda guilty about it…” I concluded as I finished scrubbing the last pot. Dishwashing is a lot more fun when I chat with my sister-in-law. Besides, I would rather wash dishes in her kitchen than in mine.

Franky, I do not even remember what I felt guilty about, but Axita’s words stick in my head: “Yes, you keep saying that. What is that all about? You are not even a Catholic!” We both chuckle: I have been the member of this Puerto Rican family several years now, and I know exactly what she means. Then I ponder: I often do feel guilty; about everything, it seems. Guilt is such a familiar emotion to me that I cannot imagine describing myself without the acknowledgment of its weight and presence in my life and even character.

In certain disciplines, guilt is not necessarily a negative construct. In fact, the existential philosophy of Heidegger does not even perceive guilt as a feeling or an emotion; rather, it is the “Being-the-basis of a nullity”  (2006, p. 285, as cited in Kim, 2017, p. 235), and the frequently paired with it construct of anxiety, is a “state of mind” (Kim, 2017, p. 234). Other philosophers, for example, Benjamin,  may not agree with Heidegger’s definition of guilt, but they do not measure it in terms of emotions, either (Moran, 2013).

Unlike philosophical texts, contemporary psychology literature identifies guilt with social and moral developmental contexts (Tani & Ponti, 2018); it is “a self-conscious emotion characterized by a painful appraisal of having done (or thought) something that is wrong and often by a readiness to take action designed to undo or mitigate this wrong. It is distinct from shame, in which there is the additional strong fear of one’s deeds being publicly exposed to judgment or ridicule.” (VandenBos & APA, 2015, p. 476).

Heimowitz (2013) further distinguishes between “normal” and “neurotic” guilt (para. 4) (the latter is the contribution of Freud’s psychoanalysis theory) and therefore, suggests that not all feelings of guilt are unhealthy. Similarly, Roberts, Strayer, and Denham (2014) place guilt on “adaptive-maladaptive continuum” (p. 465) and reference a functionalist view of guilt as an important self-regulatory behavioral mechanism. Self-regulation sounds important, and I wish I could say my life filled with shame and guilt is a textbook case of self-regulation.  I am afraid, however, that psychoanalysis fits much better here.

One of my earlier memories captures the moment of being shamed. I am about 3 years-old if that–I always remembered myself really early. I am at my grandmother’s, playing with rows of book spines in her bookcase. I cannot yet read, but I am impressed with the size of grandma’s collection, the long row of spines of different colors forming a ru.gged terrain on top. My fingers tip-toe, then jump, over a tall “hill,” then another one… The spot smells of old paper and bookbinding glue and of perfumed soap that my grandmother keeps on top of the bookcase. I feel elated, maybe a little hyper, then I realize: I need to use the restroom. Suddenly, my little legs in cotton tights feel warm, then wet and soggy, and finally, cold. My feet are in a puddle. I did not make it. I feel anxious–what will grandma say? Will she remind me, like my mom, that I am a big girl and that big girls do not have accidents? Will she shake her head? Say “ay-ay-ay!” and tsk her tongue like Mom? I call my grandma. She is kind. She does not make me feel bad and quickly takes care of the mess; I think I help. Unlike my mother, grandma lives in a Khrushchevka with all the modern conveniences, including running water.  Laundry is not such an epic undertaking for her as it is for my mom. Can this be why grandma is not cross with me? What a wonderful speculation! I dislike the idea of linking my Mom with my earliest memories of shame, but in reality, I have no idea why my mother made me feel bad for my missed potty runs, and my grandmother did not. Moreover, my mom tried doing the same with my little ones when we stayed with Dad and her one summer. I asked her not to do it to my kids, then immediately realized how guilty I feel for being irritated with her, and for not adequately raising my toddlers to live accident-free. Later still, I catch myself for shaming one my children for something and realize that I am no better than my mother. It is a vicious circle that intergenerational transmission of values and parenting practices (Yaffe & Seroussi, 2018) phenomenon makes it difficult to escape.

 

 

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Spencer, 2010: Mapping Society, a Sense of Space

Spencer, 2010: Mapping Society, a Sense of Space in Spencer, S. (2010). Visual research methods in the social sciences: Awakening visions. New York, NY: Routledge 

“Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space criticised much modern theory for taking space as a given rather than a highly problematic and undertheorised concept, a concept in need of its own science which might distinguish between and examine its different forms: mental, physical and social.” p.70

Understanding space and sense of place brings together philosophical concepts of production and dialectical change (Hegel, Marx and Nietzche) p. 70

While the mechanics of vision have a biological and physiological basis, the way in which we ‘see’ the world is culturally ascribed, learnt, a process of recognising and separating pre-determined categories and meanings from the visual array before us. p. 71

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The world is black and white, and grey.

The world of my childhood is black and white. Like the new snow and the black coal in the zinc pail scooped for our furnace at home. …and the black soot on the white bricks of the furnace wall. “Black and white” sometimes even smells like smokey, crisp, frosty winter air. My childhood world is black and white like the birch trees with their soft, smooth, flaking bark–birches are my favorite trees. My childhood world is black and white like my school uniform aprons and hair ribbons–black for daily wear, white for special occasions–and like my black valenki sliding on the smooth, slippery white winter sidewalk. My childhood world is black and white like the freshly lime-painted white pavers and bottoms of black tree trunks–the last Saturday before Mayday people all over the country, young and old, came out of their apartments to clean up parks, playgrounds, and other common areas, to plant trees, to welcome spring, and to connect in a meaningful way. I like the energy that black and white create together.

Yet, my childhood world is also grey. Not because it was not exciting. It is unfortunate that people associate grey with fatigue or boredom.  I get it–rainy or snowy days are grey; they are wonderful for napping, but greys induce plenty of other feelings, too. In my childhood, there were a lot of greys. Greys were everywhere. Some of my favorite greys accompany the earliest of memories, like the dark grey lines, curves, and angles created by the graphite of Koh-i-Noor pencils. My favorite of the family is HB. The HB is used most frequently and it is perfectly in the middle–not too soft, not too hard, just right. Bs are richer and deeper, almost black, but they smudge easily. F and H are neater, allow for more precision and thinner lines, but they also scratch drafting vellum if you are not careful. These scratches make the ink bleed when you later outline, and the line comes out imperfect, fuzzy. These pencils were some of my favorite objects to see on my father’s desk: they were important tools if not weapons–my father taught auto-engineering at the Politech, drafting came with the territory. His Koh-i-Noors were always ready to go, peeking from the heavy cast iron pencil holder shaped like a solder’s boot. They were sharpened by my father’s skilled, sure hand with his trusty surgical scalpel, a souvenir from his fourth appendicitis-related surgery. I borrowed Dad’s scalpel to sharpen my pencils since I was young. I hate dull or broken pencils; and yep, I will still take Koh-i-Noors over any other brand any day–quality, soft smooth wood, easier on my sore thumb red from pressing hard on the scalpel blade and dark grey from the graphite dust. At the time, I had no idea Koh-i-Noor made colored pencils and other art supplies, too: Soviet stores in the mid-80s were no exemplars of retail assortment, and Koh-i-Noor pencils were imported in limited quantities from a fellow Soviet Bloc country, Czechoslovakia.

The grey concrete of our new 9-story highrise. My family lived in an old multi-family wooden house with no indoor plumbing until I was six. The Soviet government distributed apartments through professional unions, and my father finally got his turn after many years of being on the Institute’s waitlist. The brand new grey stairs leading up to the seventh floor, the best spot on Earth; four apartments every two flights of stairs. The elevator is not yet working. Young grey concrete whipped into shape by the Soviet builders smells like excitement, happiness, and payoff after many years of using communal outhouses and showers, cooking on the furnace, making water runs in all kinds of weather to the neighborhood pump sometimes frozen solid by the frigid winter temperatures of the Soviet Far East. Grey is a very happy color, full of potential, life, new beginnings.

…The grey soft thin sweater my mother gave me for my fourteenth birthday; I loved it–it complemented my eyes. She knitted most of our winter clothes, but this one she bought. My brother teased it was the same color as mice, as in vermin. But I like mice, no offense here, and since I am on the subject of cute animals, grey is also the color of my pet hamster Homka and my soft, warm winter hat (or was it a coat?) made of rabbit fur. I feel the twinge of moral and cognitive dissonance (Breslavs, 2013) as I pair such contrasting examples of roles animals play in my life in the same sentence–one is a beloved pet, the other is a nameless bunny bred and murdered for its skin. Yet, I remind myself about survival, and the moral discomfort lifts.

…My eyes are grey, as are my father’s and my brother’s. My mother’s eyes are hazel, and I love them, but for some reason, I am more drawn to grey; perhaps, because it is more common then hazel. Safety in numbers, they say.

Grey is a calm, neutral color, but it is full of visual potential-it plays well with others; it complements and softens stark contrasts of black and white borders; it grants flat objects dimensions by simply defining their shadows. It becomes surprisingly loud when it clashes with other neutrals, especially those with a yellow base. Grey is versatile, rich; it comes from the union of black and white. I love grey.

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Art Bochner

” memory is both an epistemic project, a seeking after fidelity with what actually took place, and a pragmatic one, a coming to terms with what chance has given us in order to make a self for oneself” p.172

Bochner, A. P. (2012). Bird on the wire: freeing the father within me. Qualitative Inquiry, (2), 168.

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Ethics and Understanding Through Interrelationship.

“Sο often, we who have dedicated ourselves to the study of lives over time engage in this endeavor alone. We fret away in isolation, full of doubts, questions, and uncertainties. Not only do we typically struggle with the vagaries and low points of this work alone, we usually experi­ence any high points, triumphs, and joys alone as well.”

Melvin E. Miller, 1996, p. 129 “Ethics and Understanding
Through Interrelationship. I and Thou in dialogue.”

Josselson, R. H. (Ed.). (2012). Ethics and process in the narrative study of lives. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com

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“Language can never contain a whole person, so every act of writing a person’s life is inevitably a violation,”

Josselson (1996, p. 62) On writing other people’s lives:Self-analytic reflections of a narrativeresearcher. In R. Josselson (Ed.),Ethics and process in the narrative study of lives(Vol. 4,pp. 60-71). Thousand Oaks,CA:Sage.

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Communications with peers

Selene in June 2018, after our last Interviewing Theory and Practice class where our shared a quote from Dr. Richard’s encouragement to me (“you are my star student”). I did not share her name :

“She (he?) is great. Hang on to her, if you can. I am nearly finished with my program, but keep asking every professor: “Are you my mommy?”

Erin in a phone conversation on July 2, 2018. We talked about our Visual Research Methods assignment:

“I am not like you. I get carried away by an idea. You are a great communicator!”

I was flattered: I get carried away by ideas, too, but I never thought I am great at communicating. In fact, I thought I was just the opposite. Not a confident one, anyway.

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Constructivism Quotes

Humans as social being interact with two realities: a physical/temporal reality, composed of houses, streets, (…) children, co-workers, families, (…) and other tangible objects, and time; and an enacted, or constructed, reality, composed of the interpretive, meaning-making,(…) role-assuming activities which produce meaningfulness and order in human life. p. 61

Yvonna Lincoln in Paul, J. (2005). Introduction to the philosophies of research and criticism in education and the social sciences. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

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Tom Barone: Arts Based Educational Research ABER Quotes

Tom Barone. Perspective 5: Arts Based Educational Research

“Despite all these encouraging developments, artistic approaches to research in the areas of the human studies, including education, remain somewhere on the margins. Academics who have been professionally socialized into a narrow view of what constitutes legitimate research often find it difficult to imagine the potential utility of alternative research approaches.” p. 69

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Phillips, D.C. “Nine Perspective of Research” Quotes POSTPOSITIVISM

Philips, D. C. Nine Perspectives of Research, Chapter 4

“A few aestheticians might argue that art (and hence ABER) can involve a quest for certainty. (…) For a story, play, photograph, or film to fulfill this sort of summative purpose, it must function as a kind of mirror that reflects the reality of what has occurred. It must accurately represent, with a high degree of certainty, the facts of the matter. To that end, the unique perspective of the researcher must be filtered out of the work lest it be tainted by a bias that reduces certainty.” p.69

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It is about power

Power Struggles

Becky is almost three. I am in a rush to get to work. My shift at the newspaper begins at 3:30 pm, and my husband who works mornings in the same department is waiting for me in the Tribune’s parking lot, as he did every day: he’ll take our kids home, and I will go in until midnight.

But Becky does not want to leave home. She is busy doing her own thing. I asked her to put on her sandals–she can–as I wake Eddie from his nap. She ignores me. I stop for a second and look at her—what a cutie! She is adorable with that pacifier in her mouth (a permanent fixture on her face those days), busy with her plushies. A few minutes later, I am almost ready to go and run a checklist to see if I am forgetting anything. Diaper bag loaded? Check! Snacks and juice? Check! My dinner? Check! Am I dressed? Check! Are the kids? Eddie is good to go. I look at Becky: she is dressed and looking pretty, but her brown sandals are a still a few feet away. I start to panic–I cannot be late, not again, my boss had already given me a warning about this several weeks ago.

“Becky, please put your shoes on!” I plead, but there is no movement. Even the couch is more responsive than she is–at least it yields when I press on it. I go through my options: I could put Eddie in a stroller and grab her. Dang! The stroller is in the trunk… I cannot put Eddie in the car and come back for her–we live in an apartment complex, and not with the classiest of neighbors. The parking lot is too far away for my comfort, and safety is a concern.

Eddie is on my hip; the diaper bag and the lunch box are on my other shoulder. If only Becky would cooperate! But she does not. She is playing with her plushie. “Let’s go, Becky!” I shout. She barely acknowledges me with a turn of her head in my general direction. I cannot remember exactly what I say in the next minute–probably explain that I will get in trouble if she does not march out the door with me this second. “You do not want me to get in trouble, do you?!” I do not remember the exact words, of course, but the sentiment seems accurate—I am trying to make her understand and sympathize. She knows what “being in trouble” means.

I set Eddie down, pile my bags next to him, then grab brown sandals and try to put them on Becky. She resists. We struggle, and then she bites. She practically hangs on the upper-inner part of my wrist. I scream in pain, then peel her off by pulling her cute little ponytail and she lands on her butt. I grab her, grab the bags, and instruct Eddie to toddle behind me. She is kicking and screaming and trying to get away, but I am holding on to her as firmly as I can. We make it out; somehow, I manage the lock the door, and make a run to the car. A few more struggles and minutes later, everyone is buckled, and we are on our way. I am crying, and the exact nature for my tears is difficult to discern. Let’s see. It is a mixture of things, for sure: I fought with my toddler, and my toddler won. What kind of a mother has no control over her kid?! I felt like a failure, again! My ego is badly bruised, for sure. Then I recall how I pull her hair. Poor baby! I wonder if this was child abuse but conclude it was self-defense. I look at deep purple teeth marks on my wrist rested on the steering wheel in front of me. What could have I done differently? I sob and feel sorry for myself.

When I finally reach work, I have only a minute to spare, so I give my husband a quick kiss and show him Becky’s teeth marks to explain my puffy eyes. No time for anything more. Two hours later, when all my ads are in and the pagination department is satisfied, I go to my friend Beth’s cubicle. She is my mother figure in the absence of my own mother nearby. She is a mother of six and a very much involved grandmother. I pull up a chair and fall apart. “I pulled her by her hair! I am horrible!” I wail. She is patient. “I should go to jail” “Of course you shouldn’t,” she assures me and tells me of her troubles with her ten-year-old very spirited granddaughter, and I feel better.

At that time, I knew nothing of autism. I thought Becky’s terrible twos were just that, terrible. I read in books and heard from others that power struggles at this age are normal, and I dutifully tried every reasonable solution to improve my position. Some things worked, others did not. I now wonder what I would have done differently if I had known she will be diagnosed with ASD?