At this point, I've watched most of the dramas and now I move to watch animated films. They are my least favorite genre behind action, war or fantasy. Last night, we viewed "Turning Red" from Disney. I came into it with low expectations, and it was "free" as we subscribe to Disney streaming. It was one more box I could check off my crumpled Oscar nominations page. I have also been obsessively filling out the same online quiz to up my score for how many of the 2023 Oscar nominated movies I have watched compared to others. I know it's not a hard feat, but I love it.
I knew there was a possibility that something would hit home for me in this Disney movie. ("Dig A Little Deeper" from "Princess and the Frog" comes to mind first and I think I wrote about it)
I have been acutely struggling with sadness and anxiety for the last year or so. The last days, I was really grappling hard with sadness. It is not a new struggle and I found journals where I wrote the same feelings 6 and 7 years ago. I was writing the SAME exact feelings!! I chuckled out loud and that felt huge. I began thinking that as freaking uncomfortable as these feelings are, they are not going anywhere. And the more gently that I accept them and even welcome them(!!!), they may grow to be less uncomfortable.
The following are ideas from ten years ago in my notes on my Iphone, and I will attribute them to Mary O'Malley, an author and therapist whom I likely heard them from at the time: The frontal lobe is dualistic in nature: we have been conditioned from very early on to live in war. Our core compulsion is to struggle. All other compulsions are an attempt to numb out the constant unease of this struggle. What you control, controls you.
What you control, controls you.
Eeesh.
Acceptance it is.
It seems that acceptance is always the solution but it may take time to see and become aware of it. The pain stands in the way of acceptance. Pain and discomfort need to be welcomed like old friends. Yes, really. I push pain away, fear it and become obsessed with it. It is the most difficult assignment, but yet time and time again, this truth is exposed to me.
What I have come to understand is that I feel like I am becoming sadness, not that it's just come for a visit. Sadness and anxiety are a protection from from the past, decades ago. There were events that I could not handle on my own and these were protective mechanisms for younger me. The current me, the older, wiser me has learned tools to better accommodate life.
Back to "Turning Red"as George, Mallory and I are watching it. Mei is a thirteen year old teenager who is now turning into a red panda when experiencing intense emotion due to powers passed down matrilineally. The first time she turned into the "monster" while having both anger and joy, I turned to Mallory and said something, like... here we go.
And then later on in the movie was this fantastic moment as her dad explains to Mei:
"People have all kinds of sides to them and some sides are messy, the point isn't to push the bad stuff away, it's to make room for it, live with it."
Wow, wow, wow.
I once again turned to Mallory and said something about here it is (the truth bomb). She turned her head towards me and had a quiet smile of recognition.
I ADORE and live for these moments. Moments on film or life that reflect something that I have grappled so hard with and I hear the same truth that I have painfully come to. I love that my daughters and I even lightly touch upon truths that I did not come to understand until my forties and now fifties.
If watching an animated Disney movie is the catalyst, it's so worth it!
Some of life's greatest pleasures come when you least expect it.
Namaste.
