Multiculturalism and Racism

We’ve had a hard week of Cath Mac. The seminar this week was on multiculturalism. In the process of talking about what it would be like to be someone from another country coming here, and the disadvantages and assumptions that would be faced, I remembered that I’m from another country. And that people make assumptions about me. I look like a generic person of European descent, so I don’t have the same hardships that someone from Somalia or India might have….but as soon as I open my mouth, the judgement begins. I had actually forgotten this. And I thought that I was mostly immune to it these days. But I was wrong.

During our small group session, the judgments came out again. And in the usual racist guise of “of course I don’t mean you!” But it does mean me. If you think that all Americans are loud, rude, pushy, and inconsiderate of other cultures, you’re talking about me. And saying that members of another country or culture are all alike is unacceptable. We’re not all alike. We are all human beings, and we all have personalities, histories, and sensibilities that make us different. I would no more join any sort of bus tour than I would step on someone else’s flag. But that’s who I am. And the rude, inconsiderate people exist in every culture. Including yours. So when you see someone who looks different, or speaks with a different accent, try to avoid making assumptions. Get to know us before you decide that we are any sort of “type” of person. You’re missing out on a lot if you don’t.

We visited the Mercy Employment Services office and the Ishar Multicultural Women’s Centre as part of this seminar. The Employment Services office works with people who are having a hard time finding employment due to cultural problems, emotional issues (victims of torture and trauma), mental health issues, drug issues, and a whole host of other barriers to finding and keeping a job. They had some amazing success stories. And I admire the people who are so very giving of their time and mental and emotional energy. But I can’t imagine working there myself. I would feel unsafe (the mental health and drug issues mostly), and very depressed. There are so many negative stories, and only a few positives. I’m glad that someone can do this work. It needs to be done. But I can’t do it.

The Ishar Centre was another story. This is a place where women and their children can come for support, for classes, for social interaction, and for any sort of help that they might need. They have parenting classes, multicultural playgroups, teens groups, and all sorts of other classes. I need to find out more about this place, and see if there is some way that I can be involved with them. They are truly inspirational and uplifting.

The Senior Weekend (Eneagram)

Better to see your cheek grown hollow,
Better to see your temple worn,
Than to forget to follow, follow,
After the sound of a silver horn.

Better to bind your brow with willow
And follow, follow until you die,
Than to sleep with your head on a golden pillow,
Nor lift it up when the hunt goes by.

Better to see your cheek grow sallow
And your hair grown gray, so soon, so soon,
Than to forget to hallo, hallo,
After the milk-white hounds of the moon.

- Elinor Wylie “Madman’s Song”

"I might not win the argument, but they'll know that I was there!"

The Catherine McAuley Award has two groups. Actually known as the “Award Program” and the “Leadership Enrichment Program”, the participants in the older group refer to them as the Seniors and the Babies. I’m one of the babies. But I was lucky enough (or just confused enough) to be invited to participate in the “seniors” first weekend seminar. I wasn’t sure really why I was going, other than I had told Sister Anne that I really didn’t know who in the world I was anymore and that I was having a hard time finding my true self. I seem to be a bit of a chameleon, morphing to fit whatever everyone believes me to be. I was starting to think that psychoanalysis might be the way to go…and feeling really messed up and abnormal. Sister Anne said that she asked me (and one other girl from my group) to the seminar because we had both undergone cultural shifts in our lives, and as a result were a bit more confused than your average award participant. When I moved to Australia, I altered a fair bit of my personality to fit in culturally. Ten years later, I’m not trying so desperately to fit in (or at least to not stick out), but I can’t really remember who I am. It’s a bit like an actor that has played the same role for so long that they no longer have any other roles to play.

So this weekend we worked through the Eneagram personality types. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go…after all, I didn’t do so well with the Myers-Briggs test. I simply followed what everyone else thought I was….and wasn’t convinced at the end that any of it was really me. But this time, I found my type. After some initial resistance, I found that I’m an 8. I’m a warrior. I’m a challenger. I am powerful, dominating, self-confident, decisive, willful and confrontational. I am able to shoulder huge responsibility. I am soft-hearted just beneath the surface. I find it difficult to trust others enough to acknowledge any sort of vulnerability. I feel a responsibility to intervene in and direct situations.

This is what I am and how to deal with me:

The Asserter (the Eight)

Asserters are direct, self-reliant, self-confident, and protective.

How to Get Along with Me

• Stand up for yourself... and me.
• Be confident, strong, and direct.
• Don't gossip about me or betray my trust.
• Be vulnerable and share your feelings. See and acknowledge my tender, vulnerable side.
• Give me space to be alone.
• Acknowledge the contributions I make, but don't flatter me.
• I often speak in an assertive way. Don't automatically assume it's a personal attack.
• When I scream, curse, and stomp around, try to remember that's just the way I am.

What I Like About Being a Eight

• being independent and self-reliant
• being able to take charge and meet challenges head on
• being courageous, straightforward, and honest
• getting all the enjoyment I can out of life
• supporting, empowering, and protecting those close to me
• upholding just causes

What's Hard About Being a Eight

• overwhelming people with my bluntness; scaring them away when I don't intend to
• being restless and impatient with others' incompetence
• sticking my neck out for people and receiving no appreciation for it
• never forgetting injuries or injustices
• putting too much pressure on myself
• getting high blood pressure when people don't obey the rules or when things don't go right

Eights as Children Often

• are independent; have an inner strength and a fighting spirit
• are sometimes loners
• seize control so they won't be controlled
• fugure out others' weaknesses
• attack verbally or physically when provoked
• take charge in the family because they perceive themselves as the strongest, or grow up in difficult or abusive surroundings

Eights as Parents

• are often loyal, caring, involved, and devoted
• are sometimes overprotective
• can be demanding, controlling, and rigid

When I’m feeling secure (which I mostly do these days), I move to my security point, which is a two…the helper. I’m generous and giving. I will do anything in my power to help a friend. I won’t say no to someone in need…even if it puts me out. But stress me just a little, and I snap back to my usual warrior mode. Try to take away my autonomy, and I become angry and scared. If you push me a little farther, threaten me, or if I feel that I’ve just been fighting too much, I head toward my stress point, the five. An Observer. I will shut down all my emotions and step back. I will retreat from relationships that are stressing me. I’m just not going to engage with you if you are creating stress for me.

This really makes sense to me in a lot of ways. I like to feel powerful. Not over other people, just over my environment and my life. I like to feel that I can change and do anything that I need to. That no matter what life throws at me, there is something that I can do, say, or throw back that will keep me in control. If you take away my power (as my mother is very good at doing, or as pregnancy and childbirth did to me), I am nothing. I am a wreck that doesn’t know which way to turn. I can only climb out of that wreckage by finding something that I can have power over again. This is why my obstetrician and anaesthetist hated me when I had my kids. I researched every aspect of their jobs and knew how to do it better than they did. And told them about it. Constantly. Poor guys.

So what can I do with this? Recognizing that I need to feel powerful is the first step in letting go of that need. Maybe if I know that a loss of power is what’s making me angry or afraid, I can stop that reaction and say to the person “Hey…this is really getting to me. Can we find a way that I can regain some control over what’s happening?” And if I can do that one time out of a hundred, then that’s an improvement. I can also realize that my powerfulness scares some people. I am assertive and confident. I expect my friends to stand up for me with the same energy that I would use to stand up for anyone attacking them. I have no patience with people that I perceive as weak or ignorant. But maybe they aren’t weak…just different. I can try to temper my impatience with people that aren’t as assertive as I am. It will be hard, but I can try.

Mentoring and goals

After talking with another participant tonight, I’ve realized that I’ve gotten off track. In only a month, I’ve started playing a role and hiding behind a façade. This is what I always do. When things get too hard, when people get too close, when things get too real, I retreat to the roles that I am expected to play. Energetic, rational scientist. Steady, unemotional Carina. When Sister Anne told me that one of the reasons that I was chosen for this course was to provide the rational thinking perspective, my façade was set into place. I am the scientist in the group. The problem is that I’m not sure that I want to be a scientist anymore. At least not a career researching scientist. If I decide that’s what I want at the end of the year, I have the ability to do that. My networking skills are good. I can set up a job for myself. I can find the people to help me. What I need are people to help me figure out what I really want. What am I really about? I’m sure that I was meant to be a doctor, but I got off track a long time ago. I took the path that was easiest at the time, and changed the course of my life. I have thought about going to medical school now, but after careful reflection, I don’t think that’s a great idea for many reasons. My main reason for wanting to be a doctor is that I have a need to help people. Personally and immediately…not through research or a far removed idea.

I need to do this without sacrificing my family. I have two young children that still need me. I don’t want to ever feel that I haven’t given them everything that I possibly can. So I need a career that will allow me flexible working hours and time to be with my kids when they aren’t in school.

This year is about learning to stop playing the roles that everyone expects me to play. About lifting the façade that I am so good at putting in place. About finding the emotional component of my career. And learning how to be a better person in this world.

My selfish year begins

I am having a selfish year. Well…as much of a selfish year as the mother of a four year old and a two year old can have. I’m reclaiming some small bits of me before they fly away in the storm of reading lessons, potty training, breast feeding, house tending and meal making. I feel that I am at a crossroads in my life. I need to figure out where I’m going from here. Will I continue to be an academic scientist, as I was before children (and still am on a one day a week, contract basis)? Will I shift my life and do something completely different? What in the world would that thing be if I did it? How can I make my life meaningful? What can I offer to the world that will make it a better place? How do I fill that need within me to help people?

So…my selfish year. This is what I’m doing. I’ve been accepted to the Catherine McAuley Women in Leadership and Service Award. This is run by the Sisters of Mercy (a catholic sect based on women in service to the community), but it is in no way religious…spiritual perhaps…but not religious. The aim of this year is to know myself better, know the people around me better, and know where I fit into it all and how I can be of some use. There won’t be any gluttony fests in Italy (although the nuns do a mean roast dinner), or meditation in India (although we do a fair amount of inner searching, and begin every meeting with a ritual of some sort, including a shared meal), or searching for love in Bali (although we are all searching for some way to make the world better and to connect with our fellow people).

We’ve barely begun, and I can already feel the introspection working wonders in how I deal with the people that I love.

We had our induction, and we were asked to introduce ourselves. Here is the introduction that I gave.

The day the praying mantis eggs hatched in my bedroom and a thousand tiny insects covered the house, my mother said ‘Enough!’ From then on, my collections and discoveries from the natural world were prohibited from entering the house and confined to my cubby. That was two weeks after my sixth birthday.

I was born in a rural town in West Virginia, in the USA. Struggling financially and emotionally, and without electricity or running water, my parents divorced when I was two. Often busy with my two younger sisters, my mother left me to spend my childhood years roaming the woods and exploring nature. I give credit to these early years for nurturing my fascination with all things biological and my career in the natural sciences.

I married my university boyfriend and went off to his home in Australia to do my PhD in evolutionary genetics. I have done research in various areas of the natural world, including paleontology with the WA Museum, cancer genetics, environmental science, and conservation genetics with the Fisheries Department.

I have now been married for nine years and I have two children, L who is three and a half and R who is 18 months old. I have spent the past three and a half years devoted to my children and my home. I obsess over their education and delight in showing them how things work. I focus on eating locally, sustainably and healthily, and helping my children to learn where our food comes from and why some things are good for us and some things are not. I enjoy gardening (more so when my son isn’t pulling out all of my baby plants and calling them weeds!), and my veggie garden is taking shape. I love the fact that my neighbourhood is a true community, and I work hard to make sure that we all have connections with each other, through annual parties, morning teas, and playing outside together.

That is who I have been in the past. But this introduction is meant to be about who I am. At this moment, I have no idea who I am. I’m here to find out. I was a scientist. I am a mother. What else am I? Where do I go from here? How can I make my life as meaningful as possible? I look forward to exploring the possibilities with you all this year.

This past weekend, the other 14 women and I truly started on our year long journey of exploration. We started out with Meyers-Briggs personality type testing (guided by a leadership expert and psychologist named Kate) to find out where we fit in the spectrum of personality. We hashed out the differences between us and discussed how the other sorts of personalities interacted with ours. You can take a variety of these things online, if you're intersted, but a qualified person would tell you that you really need to have someone who knows what they’re doing with you to make real sense out of it. After spending the weekend with Kate, I would tend to agree. However, here is what I learned about myself:

1. I'm an extrovert. Yeah, yeah. I knew that. But that means more than I'm not bothered by social situations. That means that I talk through all my emotions and decisions. And I talk before I know what I think...I'm figuring it out along the way. This can drive introverts (like the one I'm married to...and a lot of my dear friends) absolutely insane. You can't take anything that I say along the way as being exactly what I think...it's just a step in the process.

2. My husband and a lot of my friends are introverts. They drive me crazy. And I drive them crazy. But there are ways to alleviate this crazymaking. I'm taking small steps (like not yelling at DH to "just talk!!!"), and I'm hoping to learn more as this year progresses.

3. I'm a J. Yup. Knew that too. I didn't know that all my planning and listmaking can drive P's nuts though. I figured everybody must want to be organized, and some people just aren't good at it. Now I know that P's feel strangled when I organize them. Oops.

4. I'm a S. I didn't really know that. Perhaps because I want to be the sort of person that has those amazing creative leaps. But in reality...I'm just not. And this was one of the lightbulbs for me this weekend. I'm a good scientist. I do solid research. But I don't have those amazing ideas that win Nobel prizes. My FIL (another scientist) is a definite N. He has incredible vision and creativity. But he doesn't have the methodical, careful research ability that I do (although he's very good at hiring people to do this for him). What does this mean? It means that I'm in the right profession, for a start. And that's a relief...because I haven't been sure lately. But it also means that I need a partner. Someone with vision. An N. And we'll take this place by storm.

5. I'm a T. In fact, I'm the only T in the group. I'm not sure I like being so obviously different from everyone else. But I am. And my T-ness makes me logical and rational. I like being logical and rational. I also want to make sure that there is some room for emotion in there...I don't want to be heartless (or as Kate says "a cold hearted bitch"). And I'm entering the "mid life" (!!!!!) stretch, which for me is all about emotion and feeling and learning to be a little less logical. Part of this stretching is figuring out what my purpose is in this world. I always felt that I was meant to help people in some way. I wanted to be a doctor and join Medicins sans Frontieres. That's not going to happen...so what am I meant to do?

The next step is a series of seminars and small group meetings. The seminars are run by truly inspirational women and men from all sorts of places. We then get together into small groups (structured into four people that will stretch each other as much as possible!), and discuss and wallow in the seminar aftermath.

So that’s my year. I’m looking forward to seeing what I can learn and where it will take me. I’m also committing to a once a week yoga class, and going away for things that I really want to do (like a music weekend).